Of course, this is grounded in my interpretation of the mystical basis of Parmenides vision of 'to be' - Parmenides and the other early Greek sages are much nearer in spirit to the Buddhist and Hindu sages than modern philosophers generally (cf. Peter Kingsley, Thomas McEvilly). — Wayfarer

I also think that the mystical strain in Greek philosophy is under-explored.

I also agree with the gist of the 'fundamental abstraction', although again, I differ somewhat in my analysis of it. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with your elaboration. My central point is that abstractions leave data on the table.

Metaphysician Undercover — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no point in continuing to respond to you.

Somehow, your intelligence knows all of your qualia, but they are completely separate concepts and things. — Leftist

They have to be united in the act of knowing.

If an object exists physically then it is affected by physical matter.

And if an object is physical matter then it can affect physical matter.

By observation, thought can affect physical matter and be affected by physical matter so thought is physical matter." — Mark Nyquist

First, this line of thought does not preclude intentional realities from acting on physical reality.
Second, it does not show that purely physical operations have intentional effects. We can and do know physical things and events, but we do not know them without first turning our attention to them. So, knowing physical things requires a prior intentional act, i.e. choosing to attend to them, and that choice is an act of will.

Would it be fair to say you sympathize with social conservative perspectives on many matters? — Joshs

No, I respect the human person, so, I am socially liberal except for abortion, where the problem is complex. I see a distinction between being alive and being a person, and rights as prospective.

I do not think that there is a universal exemplar idea to which persons should conform. Rather, I think that each individual is unique, as is their self-realization (which I see as the basis of morality).

I just reviewed the entire thread, didn't find any reference to the microscopic instantiation of macroscopic properties (other than when you brought it up just now). — Pantagruel

That is because we were not discussing entropy, or even order per se.

Where does Aristotle demonstrate this? We can distinguish between the final and formal cause but they are always at work together within a being. — Fooloso4

Exactly.

And then there’s Nietzsche’s take on causation: — Joshs

Aquinas says that we cannot know essences (including our own) directly, but infer them from the actions flowing from them. Nietzsche (or maybe his sister) seems to want to do more, saying that there is nothing out of which what we observe to be dynamically continuous flows. I think that is metaphysically impossible, as potential acts are not yet operational. So, they cannot operate to make themselves actual. Consequently, something already actual must be the source of our phenomenological acts.

Maybe I'm just naive, but how is the well-documented physical phenomenon/fact of negentropy not in and of itself sufficient evidence of this? — Pantagruel

I think you two are defining "order" differently. Metaphysician Undercover means determinate form, and you are referring to the number of ways macroscopic properties can be microscopically instantiated -- for that is what entropy describes.

I saw supporting the rejection was the passage I quoted, where you moved from a rejection of the Fundamental Assumption (a rejection unsupported in principle), to a rejection of both property and substance dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do not reject the FA. It has led, inter alia, to the science of physics. I only reject its adequacy in studying mind.

Within Aristotle's conceptual space, as explained in his "Metaphysics", this type of actuality is necessarily prior in time to the material existence of that body, as cause of its existence as an organized body. — Metaphysician Undercover

You continue to be confused. First actuality is being operational. Second actuality is operating. While something actual must effect a change, the first actuality of organisms (their form) is being alive, and it is concurrent with them being able to act as they do.

So I ask you, how do you proceed within this conceptual space, to reject dualism? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said in the article and in my earlier response to you: by not treating psyche as a thing, but as a kind of actuality, we avoid Cartesian dualism.

This is completely unsupported and wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

I referred you to my hyle article, where it is supported. I have no interest in repeating my explanations.

Material cause is simply indeterminate possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the common view. It is not what Aristotle said. See my hyle article.

Aristotle's dualism — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not arguing against having more than one principle in an organism (not against matter and form) as Aristotle recognized, but against having two things (res cogitans and res extensa) as Descartes thought. I've told you this a number of times before.

one created by the human mind as formulae — Metaphysician Undercover

Aristotle does not say that the human mind creates forms, but that it actualizes the intelligibility belonging to the form of the sensed object. He even says that in doing so, the nous becomes, in some way, the thing it knows. Thus, the known form is the form of the known.

you to recognize that Aristotle's conceptual space necessitates this duality of actuality (form) — Metaphysician Undercover

I have not proposed such a duality. Again, the known form is the form of the known.

In my taxonomy, beings are differentiated from things precisely because they are animated (by soul, in Aristotle’s terms.) And you can see it in that even the simplest organisms embody intentional actions even if not conscious in any real sense, although that will sound too near vitalism for most. — Wayfarer

This seems reasonable. I think Aristotle's idea of form is more applicable to organisms than the inorganic world.

At best you have pointed to Aristotle's idea of the active intellect, which he says is immaterial. It is not a process because it is unchanging. — Fooloso4

I made no such claim.

By leaving out an essential feature you are misrepresenting it. — Fooloso4

Asked and answered.

what if anything are you actually explaining with regard to consciousness? — Fooloso4

That it is not reducible to a physical process.

“The novelty was the notion of a single inner space in which bodily and perceptual sensations ("confused ideas of sense and imagi­nation" in Descartes's phrase), mathematical truths, moral rules, the idea of God, moods of depression, and all the rest of what we now call "mental" were objects of quasi-ob­servation. Such an inner arena with its inner observer had been suggested at various points in ancient and medieval thought but it had never been taken seriously long enough to form the basis for a problematic. But the seventeenth century took it seriously enough to permit it to pose the problem of the veil of ideas, the problem which made epistemology central to philosophy. — Joshs

I agree that neither Aristotle nor the Scholastics focused on issues of personal identity, and that I am concerned with them. So, to that extent, I am post-Scholastic. I also deal with modern science more than "Thomists" do.

I disagree that there is a "veil of ideas." Aquinas's concept of intelligible species was an innovation that led to Locke's absurd notion that we only know our ideas, and so, on to Kant.

something other than our grasp of universal truths must serve as the mark of mind. — Joshs

I am writing an article for the Thomist community in which I argue that intellection is not essentially universal, that there are physical representations of universals and that we have concepts of individuals. I also think that the notion of universal exemplars underpins prejudice and undermines natural law ethics.

Here's the difference: I regard philosophy as inquiry into questions and problems. You think you have the answers. — Fooloso4

I think I have some answers. If answers were not attainable, there would be no point in inquiry. Philosophy is not a game.

We have been over this. The term 'agent intellect (νοῦς ποιητικóς)'. — Fooloso4

I have not misrepresented it. I said it was controversial and gave my understanding.

It does not take volumes to say deathless and everlasting. — Fooloso4

True. But, it is not relevant to my topic any more than the related discussion of the Unmoved Mover.

Sufficiently vague. Consciousness, the operation of the agent intellect, is the operation of our power of awareness. — Fooloso4

The quoted text is relating the agent intellect to phenomenology, not explaining its dynamics.

To say that the agent intellect is a deathless and everlasting power seems to be right in line with your metaphysics of God and Mind. But you side step — Fooloso4

Because it is best to deal with each issue in a focused, rather than in a convoluted, way.

Actually your claim was that Aristotelian conceptual space provides a means for rejecting dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, an Aristotelian approach is more than assuming an Aristotelian conceptual space.

I'm being hard on you on this point, because I believe that you ought to leave your intentions as open and revealed as possible. — Metaphysician Undercover

An introduction cannot exhaust intentions that take a full article to elaborate. It can only indicate the direction one intends to take. The article reveals my intentions.[quote="Metaphysician

Undercover;784927"]induces you to cherry pick Aristotle's writing[/quote]
This is utter nonsense, and a sign of bad faith. Any article citing Aristotle must make a selection from his voluminous corpus. If you think I have twisted his meaning, feel free to say why; however, my purpose was not to interpret the Stagerite, but to credit inspiration. So, I fail to see that you are making a relevant point.

I told you that Aristotle seems quite clear to me, to compare the coming into being of a natural article to that of an artificial object. In this case, the form comes from an external source, the mind of the artist, and it is put into the matter. You insisted that Aristotle allowed that the form inhered within the matter itself, in a natural object. But of course Aristotle's analogy of comparing a natural object to an artificial object does not really allow for that interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem not to understand analogies. The analogues are partly the same and partly different, so one has to look beyond an analogy to understand its relevant aspect. Aristotle is careful to distinguish natural processes, in which change derives from natural or intrinsic principles (physis), from artificial processes in which change is imposed by an extrinsic agent. I explained this over 30 years ago in my hyle article, to which I refer you ("A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," Modern Schoolman 68 (3):225-244 (1991) https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=POLANR&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FPOLANR.DOC).

by saying that the form of an object inheres within the matter, you interpret "form" as necessarily the property of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say that "the form of an object inheres within the matter." I said that, in natural substantial changes, hyle is the potential to a determinate form. What is potential does not "inhere in" anything, nor is it a property (Aristotelian accident), because it is not yet actual.

This allows you to deny dualism — Metaphysician Undercover

No, what allows me to avoid Cartesian dualism is Arsitotle's definition of the psyche as the actuality of a potentially living body instead of as res cogitans.

and cling to emergence. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confused. If the hylomorphism allowed me to "cling to emergence," I would see it in every case of substantial change. I do not. If you read carefully, you will see that my argument for the ontological emergence of cosciousness is based on far more modern considerations -- the nature of mathematical physics as limited by the Fundamental Abstraction.

it completely neglects Aristotle's "Metaphysics", especially his cosmological argument where actuality is shown to be prior to potentiality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ultimately, it is. Proximately, it cannot be, because change requires a prior potential to new form. That is why the Unmoved Mover cannot change.

As such, [t]he reality of "potential" which Aristotle argued for, is derived from introspection. It is subjective, mental. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is incorrect. First, the Metaphysics presupposes the analysis in the Physics and other works on nature. That analysis shows the necessity of prior potentials in natural processes. Second, nowhere does he "derive" potency from introspection. In De Anima he applies the distinction of potency and act to the analysis of sensation and intellection, based on a combination of first and third person data.

You very clearly use the type-token distinction as the basis of your rejection of dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

As the first paragraph you quote shows, I use the type-token distinction only to show why introspective data is methodologically acceptable. It is the end of a previous line of thought. The second and third paragraphs you quote do not summarize the first paragraph, as can be seen from the fact that neither mentions introspection.

There are certain necessary conditions, essential aspects of what constitutes a "knowing subject". One of these necessary conditions is the FA, (that there is a distinction between known and knower) as an a priori principle. — Metaphysician Undercover

You misunderstand the FA. It is not the fact that "there is a distinction between known and knower," but the methodological choice to attend to the object to the exclusion of the subject.

we cannot get access to the being without the thinking — Metaphysician Undercover

More fundamentally, we cannot think without existing. The order of knowing is not the order of existence.

Within Aristotle's conceptual space this is an act of creation — Metaphysician Undercover

"Creation" is an imprecise word. We need to distinguish between making what was potential actual, and making something with no prior potential (true creation).

So in the case of "discovering" ideas, the form, which is the essence of the idea, comes from the mind of the geometer in an act of creation, and this is an act of creation by the agent intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

I cannot agree. If known content came from the mind, rather than reality, there would be no reason to expect it to apply to reality. The reason prior concepts apply to new instances is that the new instance is able to elicit the same, prior concept. If a new instance can elicit the concept, it can to so even when the concept it did not already exist.

If the intelligible object had actual existence in some mode independent of the mind which "discovers" it, then it would have to be the passive intellect which receives it into the mind. The passive intellect is posited as a receptor, because it is necessary to have something which can receive the forms of sensible objects through sensation. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is: our brain is informed by sensation. When a neural representation is actually understood (which is done by the agent intellect), no new representation is formed. If it were, it would not be the neural representation that is understood. It would be a different representation, the new one (which Aquinas calls the "intelligible species"). Since to understand a new representation is not to understand the neural representation, the passive intellect is the neural representation, not simpliciter, but as understood. Therefore, the passive intellect receives its content physically, and its being understood intentionally.

the reality of such independent potential is denied. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. The intelligiblity is neurally encoded in the mind.

Therefore the Christian theologians posited independent Forms, as prior to material existence, to account for the forms of natural objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite. Augustine had exemplar ideas in the mind of God. Aquinas reduced them to God's intention to create whatever He creates (see my "Metaphysics and Evolution: Response to Critics," Studia Gilsoniana 10 (4):847-891 (2021) https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1005583).

You are assigning to matter special powers to act which are inconsistent with the concept in Aristotle's conceptual space. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read my hyle article, you will find citations supporting my view.

It has no actuality, therefore no act, and the becoming of material objects cannot be accounted for because there is no act as causation. That matter cannot have such special power is the reason why the cosmological argument is so powerful. — Metaphysician Undercover

We need to distinguish secondary causality, which is the causality found in nature, from metaphysical actualization, which is what the cosmological argument relies upon. Aristotle is clear that hyle is a kind of physis (an intrinsic principle of change), a "source of power," and that it "desires" the new form in a substantial change. Thus, it is an active tendency, and not passively receptive, in the case of natural changes. In artificial changes, it is passively receptive.

Still, hyle is not self-sufficient. Its striving for new form can be traced causally upward to the Unmoved Mover, which is its ultimate source of power.

And, by the law of identity the object must be what it is, it cannot be something other than it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

At any moment, it is what it is. Potentially, corporeal being can be something else. It is because of this that we need a source of potentiality, i.e. hyle.

Therefore when the object comes into existence as an orderly thing, its form must be prior to its material existence, to account for it being what it is rather than something else — Metaphysician Undercover

Its form must be determined by a prior potential, viz. its predecessor's hyle. Also, it must be actualized by something that is already operational/actual. That line of actualization can be traced to the Unmoved Mover. Still, the form cannot exist prior to the being, because the form is the being's actuality, and it is not actual before it exists.

Why is it an example of the Enlightenment instead of an expression of Scholastic philosophy? — Paine

I did not understand that claim either.

The category 'b' must exist in order for 'a' to be an instance of it. — Fooloso4

Only potentially. The intelligibility of a must include notes that elicit the concept <b>, as I explained in my paper. It is because of need to elicit <b> that we must be aware of a to categorize it as an instance of b.

if you are an Aristotelian, as you say you are, then what you claim about Aristotle should be supported by citing Aristotle. — Fooloso4

If Aristotle deserves credit for my position, I try to cite him. I do not cite him as an authority.

In any case, an attempt to understand Kant does not make me a Kantian. — Fooloso4

Quite true. It is citing Kant as an authority against my position that makes you seem a Kantian.

What is categorized are the manifold of sense intuitions. — Fooloso4

No matter what you call the categorized content, the act of categorizing is an ace of judgement, requiring awareness, and hence knowledge, of those contents. Different sensory processing (e.g. of visual vs auditory signals) is not categorization. Only judgement of type is categorization.

Based on your claim that our power of awareness is agent intellect, and that according Aristotle the agent intellect is deathless and everlasting, then it can only be ours as long as we are living beings. It is then separable from us. — Fooloso4

So, you conclude that our intellect is immortal. I think the conclusion requires more reflection.

The claim that the categories are the a priori conditions for knowing and that knowledge is not of how things are in themselves but how they are for us. — Fooloso4

So, you are a Kantian, holding "that the categories are the a priori conditions for knowing." As far as I can see, Kant's position is unjustified. It is certainly irrelevant to my paper unless you wish to use Kant to attack scientific knowledge -- saying that science cannot study reality.

I do not recall any claim in Aristotle or Aquinas that we know the object beyond its relation to us. In fact, Aquinas is quite clear that we do not know the essences of things, except indirectly. Further, both insist that knowledge comes via sensation, which is to say via our physical interactions with the object.

So, again, what did Kant add of value?

You made the distinction between neural signal processing and a recognition of meaning. A variation of your claim that we can't get there from here, that we will never understand consciousness by studying neural signal processing, that conscious is not the result of neural activity. — Fooloso4

None of that says neural signal processing is simple. Further, I did not say "conscious is not the result of neural activity" without further qualification. I said that the contents of consciousness are neurally processed, but that such processing does not explain our awareness of those contents.

You are using his terminology but have neglected to indicate that you are using in in ways that differ from his. — Fooloso4

Do you have an example in mind? Note that not stating his entire position is not abusing his terminology. To state his entire position would take volumes, and no one has yet done so to universal satisfaction.

mind cannot categorize without first knowing — Dfpolis
That is an opinion stated as a matter of fact. — Fooloso4

No, it is based on understanding, from experience, how we judge -- for categorization is a judgement, <a is an instance of b>. As Paul Churchland pointed out, there are no neural structures corresponding to propositional attitudes.

According to Kant there cannot be knowing without the mind's categories. — Fooloso4

This is the worst case of an argument from authority -- citing Kant in support of Kantianism.

There is nothing incoherent in the idea that there are innate categories of mind. — Fooloso4

It is not the existence of categories that is incoherent -- that is merely an baseless conjecture. It is categorization without knowing what one is categorizing that is incoherent.

The bottom line is that I did not discuss Kant in my article, so this discussion does not relate to the topic.

Or your claim that the active intellect is consciousness and thereby the consciousness of human beings is deathless and everlasting. — Fooloso4

My article made no claim about immortality. So, are you concluding that our capacity to be aware of contents makes us immortal? In my view, we need more premises to reach that conclusion.

To the extent seeing and knowing are not independent of the seer and knower, yes. — Fooloso4

Aristotle argued that two millennia earlier. Aquinas concurred. So, what of value did Kant add?

I did not say signal processing was simple. That is twisting my words. — Dfpolis — Fooloso4

I wrote "simply neural signal processing," meaning nothing more than neural signal processing, not that neural signal processing is simple.

First of all, whether seeing and knowing are receptive or conceptive, passive or constructive has direct bearing on what you are addressing. It relates to the question of the activity of the active intellect. — Fooloso4

I have given my view of what the agent intellect does. If you think my view is wrong, please say why. If not, we need not continue in this direction. I am not arguing that my view is Aristotle's view, I am only crediting Aristotle with inspiring my view. So, what Aristotle actually thought about the agent intellect is not relevant, unless it provides an argument against my view.

Sensation cannot impose abstract categories. — Dfpolis
It doesn't, the mind does. — Fooloso4

That is my point. Categorization cannot be a sensory function, and mind cannot categorize without first knowing, so Kant's theory is incoherent.

According to Kant the categories of the understanding are a priori. — Fooloso4

That is hardly a cogent argument for Kantianism.

You are confusing the attempt to understand Kant and my stance on naturalism. — Fooloso4

Okay. I am not concerned with understanding Kant, but with understanding reality. So, do you think his theory contributes to understanding reality? If not, let's not waste more time on Kant.

I doubt that neuroscientists studying neural signal processing regard it as "simple". — Fooloso4

I did not say signal processing was simple. That is twisting my words.

It should be: The question is whether ... — Fooloso4

Okay. But, that is not the question I am addressing in my article.

Metaphysician Undercover — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment upon my article.

So I think your basic premise, that dualism can be rejected through an appeal to Aristotle's hylomorphic dichotomy, is fundamentally misguided. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not my premise. I agree with your observations in one way, and disagree in another, more relevant, way. I agree that any distinction of one thing into two aspects may be called "dualistic." I disagree if you are denying that the Aristotelian approach disposes of Cartesian dualism, which was my actual claim. Identifying Cartesian dualism with dualism in the first sense equivocates on "dualism." Aristotle does not see the psyche as necessarily thinking (res cogitans), or even as a thing (res). Thus, he is not a Cartesian dualist.

Therefore he proposed a duality of matter/form for physics, which would accommodate the duality of potential/actual derived from subjective introspection. — Metaphysician Undercover

While it is peripheral to my article, I think you are looking in the wrong direction for the source of the concept of potency (dynamis). As I note in my hyle article, (https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=POLANR&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FPOLANR.DOC), the source of the concept is medical, referring to the hidden healing power of medicinals. A. then applied it to the argument against the reality of change in order to go between the horns of being and non-being. Thus, the origin and original application of the concept are physical, not mental.

we cannot realistically exclude the Fundamental Abstraction — Metaphysician Undercover

We can, as shown by the fact that Aristotle does in De Anima, as I and others have noted.

The "Fundamental Abstraction" can be apprehended as the a priori, and since the a priori is very real, and supported by real introspective analysis, we cannot simply reject it just because we desire to absolve ourselves from dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure what you are saying here. We are able to know from experience, and so a posteriori, that all knowing involves a known object and a knowing subject. Whether we focus on one (as the FA does) or attend to both, is a matter of methodological choice. If attend to both, we are not employing the FA.

Further, I see no reason to think we know anything in a truly a priori way.

you refer to a type/token distinction, which is an ontological distinction, then you draw the invalid conclusion: " Thus, the consciousness impasse is a representational, not an ontological, issue". Only one side of the distinction is representational, the type side. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, we do not represent token observations?

The context of these remarks is methodological, not ontological. I am saying that the objection that introspective data is inadmissible because it is private is misguided. It misunderstands the methodological requirements of science. There is no requirement that observations be public, only that they be type-repeatable.

The conclusion you cite is not based on the type-token distinction. That is only used to justify the use of introspection. The conclusion is based on the Hard Problem being an artifact of a dualistic (in the Cartesian sense) representation or conceptual space.

And your claim that the type/token distinction is representational rather than ontological — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not discuss the basis of the type-token distinction in this article. So, it makes no such claim. If you want to see what I think about the relation between universals and instances, see my "Metaphysics and Evolution: Response to Critics," Studia Gilsoniana 10, no. 4 (October–December 2021): 847–891 (http://gilsonsociety.com/files/847-891-Polis.pdf). There, I discuss the relation of the species concept (a type) to individual members of that species (tokens) (pp. 849-63).

The difficulty that the Scholastics, like Aquinas had, was to explain the reality of the passive intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

I address that in the article I am currently working on. I have fundamental problems with Aquinas's rational psychology. I think his notion the agent intellect does is flawed. I see the passive intellect as neural representations (the phantasm) being understood.

he agent intellect, as the creative source of imagination and conception, — Metaphysician Undercover

The agent intellect does not create content. It actualizes (makes known) prior intelligibility, which is the source of known content.

And under Aristotle's conceptual structure, passivity, and potential, are the defining features of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the standard Scholastic view. My view is more complex, and is given in my hyle article. Briefly, hyle plays a passive role in cases where there is an intelligent agent informing a result, but not in natural substantial change, where it is a "source of power."

So one could interpret Aristotle as demonstrating that the human intellect depends on the material brain for its capacity to receive sense impressions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly! He also insists that the phantasm, a sensory, and so a material representation, is necessary to thought.

Thank you for your informed and intelligent comments.

I think it would be more useful to copy and paste or at least summarize the article so that it could be part of this discussion. — Fooloso4

They are available online and some are quite long.

The basis for categorizing sensory intuitions, not facts, is the a priori categorical structure of the human mind. — Fooloso4

Sensation cannot impose abstract categories. It can only modify of our prior neural state. To categorize we must judge that we are dealing with an instance of a category, and judgements are propositional attitudes which, as Churchland notes, have no neural counterpart. Are you now abandoning naturalism?

Kant would argue that in order for there to be recognized content the mind must organize and make sense of what is given to it, that is, sensory intuitions. — Fooloso4

But it cannot do so at the sensory level, which is simply neural signal processing, not on a recognition of meaning -- which is required for categorization. So, you must either abandon Kant, or explain how neural processing can impose abstract a priori categories. (Connectionism assumes training, which may establish a posteriori patterns or associations. As I point out in my article, associations are not judgements.)

You may not agree but that does not mean the theory is incoherent. — Fooloso4

The theory is not incoherent because I disagree with it. Rather, I disagree because it is incoherent. Categorization requires judgement, which is not a sensory function.

It coheres quite nicely. — Fooloso4

Only if one does not reflect on the mechanisms it proposes.

The question of whether seeing and knowing are receptive or conceptive, passive or constructive. — Fooloso4

This is not a complete sentence, and I cannot complete it in a sensible way. Sensing and knowing are similar, but essentially different, as sensation does not involve concepts, which require awarenss of content.

The categories are the architecture of mind. They are not imposed in the sense that one can either impose them or not. They are the way the mind makes sense of sense data. — Fooloso4

According to Kant's totally unnecessary theory. In reality, ideas such as Humean causality are empirical generalizations.

I get a message stating that I cannot open files from Microsoft 95 or earlier — Fooloso4

I have Windows 10 and can open all my files. Message me with your email address, let me know what you want, and I will send it in a format you can open (docx? pdf?).

A follow up. You skipped right over the point:

According to Kant, it is not that the mind organizes or categories facts ... — Fooloso4 — Fooloso4

Quite so. As Kant has no facts to be categorized, there is no basis for categorization, as the mind categorizes based on recognized content. The theory is incoherent.

his concept of matter or material (hule) would have undergone a radical transformation. He would retain his focus on intelligible wholes and living beings, but he would no longer regard matter itself as something unformed. Matter or material is self-forming. Matter too is "being at work", energeia. A living organism is not simply a whole but a whole of wholes, a system of systems, self-organizing structuring structures. — Fooloso4

Aristotle already said much of this. https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=POLANR&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FPOLANR.DOC

So I take then that you don't subscribe to scholastic realism concerning universals? 'Universals, strictly speaking, only exist in minds, but they are founded on real relations of similarity in the world. Scholastic realism goes beyond moderate realism and affirms that universals also exist transcendently; but instead of having a separated existence, transcendent universals exist in God's mind.' — Wayfarer

According to Copleston, Aquinas is a moderate realist. So, Yes, and no. I am a moderate realist, and see God as having exemplar ideas in the sense of intending to create whatever He creates (which is what Aquinas holds). I do not think God has any universal ideas. I explained this in detail in my 2021 article. (http://gilsonsociety.com/files/847-891-Polis.pdf).

According to Kant, it is not that the mind organizes or categories facts, it organizes and categorizes the manifold of sensory intuitions according to the categories of the understanding. — Fooloso4

Not "according to the categories," as I understand him, but by imposing the categories. For example, Hume rightly found causality as he defined it lacked necessity. Kant saw the mind as imposing causal necessity on the succession of events.

At this point in my reading of your work, I find I understand it most coherently by placing it within a pre-Kantian and likely pre-Humean historical context. — Joshs

That is its context, though I agree with Hume's observations on the lack of necessity in "causality" as he defines it.

hat is, despite your embrace of Aristotle, your thinking on God and nature is much more compatible with Enlightenment philosophical ideas circa 1650-1750 than anything produced in Classical Greece. — Joshs

If you read De Anima, you will find that most of my theory is based on its analysis. I found Spinoza's more geometrico is an irrational approach (see my Metaphilosophy article). Leibnitz's monadology assumes Cartesian dualism, which I find wrong-headed. Locke misunderstood the nature of ideas, distorting epistemology. (See Veatch's Intentional Logic.) So, I think you misunderstand me.

This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

I am writing an article for publication in a Thomist journal rebutting this idea. I laid some foundations in my two articles on the evolution in Studia Gilsoniana, where I argue the relativity of the species concept.

I hold, against Aquinas, that (1) we can encode universal representations materially (as exemplified by connectionist models) and (2) have an intellectual knowledge of singulars/individuals.

Aristotle is quite clear that the senses already separate form from matter. We also have intellectual ideas of singulars, which abstract away temporal variations.

This is part of a more general thesis that knowledge involves the union of knower with known: — Wayfarer

I think that the union of knower and known is independent of the thesis that the essence of intellectual knowledge is universality.

for Aquinas “form” is the principle of perfection

This thesis needs elaboration. Form is the principle of actuality of individuals, who strive toward perfect self-realization. There is no universal form. Universals are abstractions, existing only in the minds thinking them. If they are well-founded, they have a sound basis in reality. Still, they have no independent existence and are descriptive, not normative. Thinking that they are normative is the basis of moral condemnation of, and prejudice against, individuals whose self-realization is not "normal."

Is this something considered in your philosophy? — Wayfarer

I agree with the quotation from De Veritate, and speak of it in terms of "shared existence." Shared existence is an essential aspect of knowing.

Aren’t we all Kantians now , including those physicists who extend the scope of Quantum theory? — Joshs

There are certainly many who have been confused by Kant. I am not one.

I know of no major theorist who has rejected — Joshs

I reject it, and I do not find myself alone in doing so.

his key premise, that the mind contributes to the organization of our experience, and this organizing, categorizing and synthesizing activity of the mind is the condition of possibility for empirical knowledge. — Joshs

I see Kant's thesis as the mind imposing, rather than organizing, content. Our minds do organize content, but that is hardly a Kantian insight, as the idea precedes him by millennia, with the traditional definition of scientia as organized knowledge.

The conditions for empirical knowledge were outlined by Aristotle in De Anima. They are (a) that the world be intelligible (if it were not knowable, it could not be known), (b) that we have a mind capable of being informed by that intelligibility, and (c) that we have the capacity to actualize both potentials in a single act by which the intelligible informs a mind capable of being informed to produce actual knowledge. Absent any of these conditions, we could not have empirical knowledge. None of this involves, or needs to involve, the mind imposing forms of thought as Kant believed.

I would ask you to reflect on your claim, "this organizing, categorizing and synthesizing activity of the mind is the condition of possibility for empirical knowledge." It is prima facie impossible. Why? Because the mind could not possibly organize, or categorize facts it does not know. If it synthesizes a judgement, that judgement is neither empirical nor a fact. Thus, empirical knowledge must precede organizing and categorizing, being the precondition for those activities, rather than the reverse.

Are you rejecting Kant’s central premise or offering a critique of Kant which preserves this premise? — Joshs

I am rejecting the premises that (1) the mind imposes forms on experience, (2) we cannot know noumenal reality (the ding an sich), and (3) that we synthesize facts. We know reality, but not exhaustively, as God does. We know it in a limited way, as it relates to us.

This is a bold and risky move for an outsider to philosophy of mind. — Joshs

I would not call myself "an outsider." There is no club to which one must belong. One must only study and reflect -- and I have done both for decades.

you are turning your back on an entire community of thought. — Joshs

Not at all. Having studied them, I can see what is common to most schools in the community. I am open to suggested refinements, but I think that most subscribe to the SM.

While you say I am ignoring an entire community, another critic says I cited too many sources. [De gustibus non est disputandum..

quote="Joshs;784300"]As a result, much of what was formerly attributed to the non-physical in the form of the subjectively mental can now be placed within the category of the objectively natural and material( although ‘physical’ is a more contentious term).[/quote]
No doubt. Many things are "attributed." I am more concerned with the justification of such attributions. Having a doctorate in physics, I have a reasonable idea of its explanatory capacity. It does not extend to the intentional theater of operations. I am open to correction.

This give the subjectively mental little to contribute other than an affective feeling of what’s it is like to experience. — Joshs

Then you will have little difficulty in disposing of the seven problems I have enumerated. I only ask you to be critical in accepting the "common wisdom."

For you, by contrast, epistemology, logic, Will, intentionality, propositionality and mathematics still belong to the subjective pole as pre-given capacities or attributes. — Joshs

You have a very mixed bag here. Some are contentless capabilities, while others are laboriously elaborated sciences.

God is the completion of scientific analysis -- the end of the line of causal explanation. If you think that everything has an explanatory dynamic, then there must be an end of the line of causality, for mathematical induction allows us to show that an infinite regress is an inadequate explanation.

I'm saying that life = group of chemical reactions that seek to self-sustain. — Philosophim

So, you see life as teleological? Seeking the goal of being self-sustaining.

You seem to put some attribute beyond the physical to it. I don't. — Philosophim

By definition, chemistry seeking non-chemical outcomes transcends the physical.
.

Yes, we all know what analogous means. You described consciousness as analogous. That means it is partly the same and partly different to what? — Philosophim

As I said, it is the different senses of "consciousness" that are analogous.

"I shall argue that it is logically impossible to reduce consciousness, and the intentional realities flowing out of it, to a physical basis." — Philosophim

That does not mean that there is no physical aspect. If you read the whole article, my position would be clear. For example, "Descartes drew the wrong line in the wrong place. It is the wrong line because discursive thought requires neural representations." (p. 109).

Thank you for the congratulations.

Yet nowhere in your paper do you mention this important point. — Fooloso4

I am not writing a commentary on De Anima. I am discussing the Hard Problem.

But if consciousness (active intellect) is deathless and everlasting then it does not emerge in an interaction, it is employed. — Fooloso4

In one sense (its genesis) it does not emerge in interaction. In another sense (its actual operation) it does -- just like electron repulsion.

You say the active intellect is a "personal capacity", as if the ongoing controversies have been settled. — Fooloso4

I said it was controversial and offered my argument to resolve the controversy.

Your appeal is to a notion of logic that abstracts from physical reality, as if it is perfectly logical to think that rocks can become hummingbirds. — Fooloso4

You make my case. If we abstract away physical reality, anything can happen, so the reason many things cannot happen is an aspect of physical reality.

Of course you are free to use Aristotle when doing so supports your argument and abandoning him when he doesn't — Fooloso4

I am never using Aristotle as an authority. I am crediting him as a source.

Your a priori metaphysical abstraction — Fooloso4

By definition, an abstraction focuses on some aspects of experience while prescinding from others. As it is based on experience, it is necessarily a posteriori.

That's not a non sequitur at all. If consciousness depends on a physical basis, then it is up to you to demonstrate aspects of consciousness that do not depend on a physical basis. — Philosophim

If you read my article, you will see that I did so.

Analogous to what? — Philosophim

"Analogous" is a logical classification of meaning. It means that a term is predicated in a way that is partly the same and partly different.

Its your job when someone misunderstands your work to clearly and politely point out where they've misunderstood the position. — Philosophim

I have done so. It is also my job to recognize when further explanation is a waste of time.

When a person has spent days writing and no one responds, be it positive or negative, that is a waste of your time. — Philosophim

I spent weeks writing my article, and you have yet to address its arguments. So, you are wasting my time.

I am noting your position was that it was logically impossible to link consciousness to a physical basis — Philosophim

I made no such claim. You continue to waste my time.

Kant attributed apriori categorical content to the subject. — Joshs

I am neither Kant, nor a Kantian. I think his approach is fundamentally wrong.

I am an Aristotelian. For Aristotle, the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object -- for these are alternate formulations of the same event. Thus, knowing is not a relation between the subject and a representation, as it is for Locke and Kant, but a case of shared existence. The sharing is limited because the subject and object are each more than their shared act. Still it is, and must be, an ontological union founded on the described identity.

By contrast , contemporary naturalist-evolutionary accounts of subject-object relations conceive the genesis and content of the subject pole in the same naturalist terms as the object pole. — Joshs

Yes, I am well aware of this a priori assumption. That is why I asked you to comment on my discussion of the genesis of representation and consciousness on p. 99.

Essentially the subject pole contributes recall of previous states to the interpretation of objective sense. — Joshs

I have no problem with this; however, it does not explain how we become aware of the relevant contents.

Furthermore, there is no transcendent or self-identical self, ego, ‘I’ underlying subjectivity. — Joshs

I have not suggested that humans have a "transcendental ego." Again, I am not a Kantian. As for "self-identical," whatever is, is identically itself. So, this is a nonsensical claim. As for an ego simpliciter, you have implicitly admitted that humans can be subjects in the act of knowing, and egos are simply the capacity to be a knowing subject, and this capacity, which is not a Cartesian res, is the 'I' required to be a subject. We could hardly know absent an underlying ability to know. Thus, I am unclear what is being objected to.

The ‘I’ that wills in each willing is never the same self, because its nature and identity is subtly reorganized as a result of each encounter with a world. — Joshs

Again, this is confused because of your physicalist bias. Self-identity over time, whether of a river or of an organism, does not mean material identity. It means dynamic continuity. My present self has few, if any, atoms in common with the baby that came from my mother's womb or with the zygote that preceded it; however, I am dynamically continuous with both.

You should impart this important bit of news to the burgeoning field of consciousness studies in comparative psychology. — Joshs

There is no need to. It has long been known that we cannot experience the first person experience of others. This is the so-called "problem of other minds." Also, the behaviorists roundly criticized the method of analogous introspection, by which some early psychologists claimed to study non-human minds.

None of this prevents the study of medical consciousness (a state of responsiveness). It is fully available to third-person observation. Still, it is the rankest form of equivocation to equate medical consciousness with subjective consciousness (awareness of intelligible contents).

Given the intimate proximity between cognition, emotion and awareness, now that multiple sources of evidence point to the presence of the first two capabilities in other animals, it is not a leap to hypothesize consciousness also. — Joshs

I have no doubt that medical consciousness is a purely biological phenomena.

only if we make the thought process into a solipsistic internal activity — Joshs

As I explained in my article, and at the beginning of this post, this is not the Aristotelian view. Rather than knowledge being solipsistic isolation, it is shared existence.

So far, you have not criticized one argument in my paper. Instead, you have accused me to the errors of others and made unsubstantiated claims. Perhaps if you addressed what I actually wrote, we could make more progress. For example, in an earlier post, I listed 7 problems I have with the Standard Model. You could explain why these are not real problems

Have you forgotten your own claims? — Fooloso4

These are not the basis of the arguments made in my article. You will find no theology there.

One person can think on many topics. I think about science, philosophy and theology without mixing them up, as you seem to be. So, I affirm what you quoted. I only deny their logical relevance to the arguments in my article.

Have you heard of the genetic fallacy? It is a fallacy of irrelevance, and you are making it.

This may be difficult for you to understand because you are convinced of the truth of your own arguments, but not everyone is persuaded. Being open to rational discourse does not mean accepting the agency of a God. — Fooloso4

I understand and expect that my sound arguments may change few minds. Once people commit to a position, reason is a poor tool. My hope is to inform fresh, open minds.

As for God, the arguments in my paper neither assume nor conclude His existence. That you persist in the genetic fallacy only confirms my view that some atheists are closed to reason, even when the matter being discussed is not theological.

Is a bird simply what is contained within an outlined drawing? Or is it also the niche that sustains the animal and in which it is embedded? — Joshs

I do not think this is an either or question. There are different ways of conceptualizing the world. In one, the bird is circumscribed and interacts with other circumscribed entities. In another, the bird is conceived in, and is an inseparable part of, its ecological context. Neither mode of conceptualization is wrong, because both are adequate to a set of human needs (and it is humans who are conceiving them).

The point I am making is that we can represent the same reality in diverse ways. This is very common in physics, where we use different coordinate systems depending on which makes a problem easier to deal with. In biology, we can think in terms of cells, organs, organisms, biomes, or ecosystems. None of these concepts is unfunded or useless. We just need to make sure that what we have abstracted away can be safely ignored in the case we are considering.

It is a system of processes in which the dividing line between niche and animal can only be drawn artificially. — Joshs

All distinctions are "artificial" in the sense that we do not find dividing lines in nature. Rather our mind must abstract two or more aspects of a single reality. That does not mean that the distinctions are not both well-founded and useful.

You mean the dualist split between matter and subjectivity? — Joshs

There is no such split. All knowing is a subject-object relation. Without a knowing subject and a known object, there is no knowledge. In other words, subjectivity never occurs absent objectivity -- the essence of each is to be a relatum in the relation of knowing.

Where does awareness begin in the animal kingdom? — Joshs

I do not know. Do you? I do know that humans are aware.

Certainly not with humans. — Joshs

There is no evidence to support this. We are ignorant of the possible experience of other species.

Does it emerge suddenly or gradually as a function of neural complexity? — Joshs

How do you know it is a function of complexity? We only have one data point. Human brains are complex and humans are conscious. Maybe that is a coincidence, or maybe it is not.

If will and awareness is a gradual evolutionary development, then, as been suggested by biologists and neuroscientists, then in some sense one may see it in incipient form already in single-called organisms that have sensory capacities and show learning and adaptive goal-oriented behavior. — Joshs

"Maybe" is a poor basis for conclusions.

Perhaps you would like to comment on my discussion of the in compatibility of the Standard Model and the evolutionary genesis of consciousness and environmental representation in my article (p. 99). Instead of blindly applying a standard explanation, it is good to reflect on how the mechanisms it proposes could apply to the case at hand.

Willed commitments are organized on the basis not strictly of the survival of my organism, but as I have been arguing, are designed to maintain adaptive sense-making, which is as much a social as an individual process. — Joshs

That would be nice if true, but many willed commitments make neither individual nor social sense, as I am sure you know. Some are destructive both to the individual and to society. Even if they did make sense, they are unlike the adaptive biological responses you originally called "will" because they involve conscious reflection.

moral emotions — Joshs

This is a very strange turn of phrase. Emotions are psycho-physical responses. As such, they have no "moral" value. Anger, for example, can be morally righteous or immorally vindictive. Sexual attraction can be destructive to both parties or the basis of a committed and supportive relationship. In any event, willed commitments are not emotions, although they may be responses to emotions. We can see that they are not emotions because they persist through emotional changes.

I am wondering how you define "moral"? I think of it in intentional terms as willing the self-realization of ones' self and others. Perhaps you are a consequentialist, thinking that intent doesn't matter, only outcomes. The problem with that is that we cannot fully predict outcomes, we only know what we intend to happen. So, we are brought back to intention.

Sacrificing oneself for the protection of others is seen in other animals. — Joshs

Of course. What we do not know is if these responses in other species are conscious or not -- and that is what is at stake in the discussion of will vs. instinct.

Anthropologists hypothesize that conscience evolved in order to protect tribes from the violence of alpha males. Even behaviors which on the surface appear unadaptive, such as suicide or homicide, are driven by a combination of such moral emotions. — Joshs

What about beta females who may add poisonous herbs or fungi to a stew? Unconfirmed hypotheses have little cogency. And, here is "moral emotions" again.

Rather, it is social systems ( friendship, marriage, family, clan) that sustain us and that we are primed to defend. — Joshs

This is true of socialized individuals, but untrue of those not properly socialized. So, it seems more a matter of nurturing than of immutable (biological) nature.

what we symbolize in thought ... the way these tentative symbolizations talk back to us — Joshs

You realize that these "tentative symbolizations" need not be the work created, but part of the agent and her agency -- her thought process? So, this need not be the work acting causally on its creator. My thoughts, creative or otherwise, are my acts of awareness. I have heard a number of film actors say that they do not look at the "rushes," "dailies," or their finished films.

There can be, and is, both causal reciprocity and feedback, but there can also be causality without reciprocity or feedback.

Thank you for sharing your reflections. It helps to have other views.

Aristotle is starting with a connection rather than having to presuppose one. — Paine

Aristotle was a biologist. So, I think he came to his understanding of organic wholes from observation.

it is another way to ask what laws of nature refer to in our picture of a caused world. — Paine

We need to remember that mechanism does not contradict teleology. It merely rearranges its constituents. Mechanically, initial states and the laws of motion determine final states. "Final state" is just another term for "end." So, mechanism says systems act toward ends. Every physical end requires means, or mechanisms, and every set of determinate means leads to a determinate final state or end.

My point about differential drives is that psychologists and biologists today view organisms as self-organizing systems whose functioning is defined by reciprocal interactions with an environment. — Joshs

Of course.

The organism is nothing but its adaptive interactions. — Joshs

Not quite. It is a structure able to interact in what was an adaptive way in its native environment. Whether its species will survive depends on the rate at which its progeny can adapt to environmental change.

‘Will’ derives from the overarching tendency of living systems to maintain consistent goal-oriented adaptivity in the face of changing environmental conditions. — Joshs

Scare quotes always concern me. Clearly, you recognize that this is not "will" by the usual definition. It is an adaptive response without conscious commitment. Will, in the proper sense, is a commitment in light of knowledge. This is analogous to what you are describing, but hardly identical. The common note in the analogy is desire, or goal orientation. The difference is that biological desire need not involve awareness, while will proper does. This is a move from the physical to the intentional theater of operation.

‘Will’ makes no sense outside of this reciprocal feedforward-feedback adaptive relationship between a living thing and its world. — Joshs

This would be true if I let you equivocate on "will." I won't. Will in the proper sense is a conscious commitment, and as such transcends the merely biological. So, I am happy to agree that an adaptive biological inclination makes no sense outside the biological context, but that is not what will in the proper sense is.

You can see this from the fact that willed commitments can be extremely unadaptive and harmful -- both to the individual and to the species. Even more telling is the fact that in making willed commitments, we typically have immanent within us incompatible alternatives. There is no counterpart for this in the physical theater of operations, where one initial state is always mapped unto one final state. It would be unadaptive to take the time and energy to represent alternative courses of action if the outcome were predetermined and the alternatives were actually impossible.

The idea of a divine will , a first or final cause existing outside of a continually changing system of interactions, is an empty, incoherent concept. — Joshs

Thank you for your faith claim. Now, how about an argument that shows that one conscious being cannot commit to the good of another, even if it is unadaptive for the one committing? You might just show that the concept of conscious commitment is incoherent.

All causation is reciprocal — Joshs

Really? So an artist creating a work is acted upon by the work that does not yet exist? My learning a song causes the song? Perhaps you can explain what you mean.

What gives Will its meaning , even for a hypothesized god, is its relevance to the aims of adapting to a changing world. — Joshs

No. Will is the capacity to knowingly commit, even if it is non- or un-adaptive.

Will prior to world is like the smile before the Cheshire Cat. — Joshs

Again, this does not work. I can commit to the good of my children even before they are conceived.