There is a conflict between the requirements of scientific and philosophical definition. As I am addressing a naturalistic or physicalistic position, it is reasonable to use the criteria of physics in speaking of material state definitions. — Dfpolis

This is no different than the position which apokrisis supports, that there are differences which don't make a difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're missing the point, but that may be because I was insufficiently clear. The thesis I am rebutting is that physics has the potential to explain intentional reality. To do this, I'm looking at the kinds of intelligibility physics deals with -- its Fundamental Abstraction: what it looks at and what it sees as outside of its purview. To determine this, we need not consider all reality, which includes intentional subjects as well as physical objects, but at the representation of reality physics actually employs. It represents reality in terms of material states specified by dynamic variables and laws transforming these states over time.

Your point that there is more to reality,is exactly the what I'm trying to show. It's not that this "more" doesn't make difference. It is crucial to our understanding of mind. It is rather that it makes no difference to physics, which is limited by its Fundamental Abstraction.

if you believe that physics does not give us an exhaustive understanding of reality, then why choose an ontology which contradicts this? In your ontology you have stated that you believe there is no difference between a material state as represented by physics, and the material state as it is in reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Such an ontology is precisely what I am arguing against.

Our abstract ideas, such as <material state> can be well-grounded in reality without exhausting reality. That is why I keep referring to Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. There is an adequate foundation in reality for the concept <material state>. If there were not, it would be hard to understand the phenomenal success of physics. Still, since that concept is not exhaustive of what is, its foundation is not the whole of reality.

Thanks for the reference.

First, I never said that the overlapping definition was that they both exist. I said the overlapping definition was that they both have causal power. — Harry Hindu

Which is the same thing. Nothing can act (cause) unless it exists and any putative thing incapable of acting in some way is indistinguishable from nothing, and so does not exist.

Second, unicorns do exist and have causal power. They exist as ideas, not as an animal and I wouldn't say that animals and ideas have different "essences" because I don't know what that is. — Harry Hindu

Let us not equivocate. Unicorns as such do not exist. The idea of a unicorn is not a unicorn.

Since things have to act on us to make themselves known, anything we can know of a being is based on something it can do. So, we can think of what a thing is, its essence, as the specification of its possible acts.

Traditionally, "essences" are the basis in reality for species definitions. For example, humans are rational animals because we can do what animals do, and also think rationally. This is a logical projection of what a thing is, underwriting universal predication.

Ontologically, there is no reason to think that all the individuals of a logical species participate in some invariant universal Form such as a Platonic Ideal or Exemplar Idea. Generally, we can attribute the characteristics shared within a species genetic factors such as common biological descent or being engendered by shared a physical process such as orogenesis or crystallization.

So, in my view, humans, for example, can have individual essences. While sharing many abilities, we may each have unique dispositions and talents.

In sum, while we need a universal concept of essence to underwrite logic, ontologically, we need to allow for individuals to have essences with unique variations.

As for animals and ideas, they have different essences because they can do different things. A goat can eat grass, but the idea of a goat can't.

What do those scribbles refer to? What do they mean? — Harry Hindu

An essence is a specification of possible acts. The correlative concept is existence, which adds the note that the specification is not merely abstract, but operative -- having, as you say, causal power.

How could there be pictures of unicorns if the idea of unicorns didn't have any causal power? — Harry Hindu

If you are thinking of efficient causality, it is because the people who conceive them have causal power. If you are thinking of formal causality, of how the idea informs the image, it is because the acts of agents can be informed by their concepts and imaginings.

I'm not saying ideas have no causal power, only that they have no existence/causal power independent of those thinking them.

Both things (pictures of unicorns and tree rings) are effects that carry information, or mean, their causes. So there is an aboutness to matter as much as to minds. — Harry Hindu

Not quite. Material states are intelligible, but until they are actually understood, that intelligibility is not operative. Smoke can indicate fire, but in itself, it is just combustion products, and does not actually indicate anything. It is only when a subject recognizes that it is smoke, that it can indicate fire. If the subject mistakes it for dust, it will not indicate fire.

In the same way, we tell the age of a tree from its rings, but only if we know that there is one ring per year. In each case, we need the operation of an interpreting mind.

And effects refer to something beyond itself - the cause. Causes refer to their effects. Your "aboutness" is the same thing as a causal relationship. — Harry Hindu

Again, they do do so only potentially, not actually. When I count the tree's rings, I'm actually enumerating its age. When the rings are not counted, but merely countable, there is no actual enumeration of age, only the potential to enumerate it.

What do you mean "final" step? — Harry Hindu

I mean the step in which the physically embodied intelligibility becomes actually known.

For what reason would you be aware in the first place? Isn't it to react (the effect), which then becomes another cause for another effect, which can refer all the way back to your "encoded intelligibility becoming"? — Harry Hindu

You are confusing efficient and final causality. The question I am raising is: what actualizes intelligibility, making it actually known. The question you are raising is what is the purpose of doing so.

"Becoming" is another one of those philosophical buzz-words that have no meaning. — Harry Hindu

Aristotle defined it quite precisely: "Change is the actualization of potency insofar as it is still in potency." As long as we are in the course of actualization, but not yet fully actualized, we are becoming.

Well, being that you have yet to make that clear distinction between "intent" and "matter", (they both have an "aboutness" (causal relationship)) determinate outcomes could just as well be material and intentional. — Harry Hindu

I think the distinction is clear to most readers of the forum, as it is to most philosophers. I am sorry if I have been unable to communicate it to you.

I have no idea how your consequent relates to your antecedent.

Lol, no I'm not doing it purposefully. — Terrapin Station

Okay, thanks.

Why would "this triangle" in your usage refer to an idea rather than referring to the triangle we're looking at? The triangle we're looking at isn't an idea. — Terrapin Station

"This triangle" does refer to the triangle we're looking at. It is just that for our communication to work, my words need to express my concept and induce the corresponding concept in you, i.e. one referring to the same triangle. If I can't make you think of the same triangle, I've failed to communicate.

But in saying that there is no exhaustive understanding of reality, aren't you also saying that there is no such thing as a material state which is fully defined? — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a conflict between the requirements of scientific and philosophical definition. As I am addressing a naturalistic or physicalistic position, it is reasonable to use the criteria of physics in speaking of material state definitions. That is what I have done. As my whole point is that physics does not give us an exhaustive understanding of reality, I obviously think that a specification sufficient to do physics is not exhaustive.

I had thought that all forms of Christianity accepted the immortality of the soul, and that ‘the rational soul’ was fundamental to pre-modern theology. — Wayfarer

Yes, Christians accept the immortality of the (rational) soul.

Aristotle wrote of vegetative, animal and rational souls, not as substances, but as mentally distinguishable aspects of human nature. The vegetative soul is simply our power of nutrition and growth, the animal soul our power of sensation and responsive movement, and the rational soul our intellect and will.

So, when I wrote of immorality as the survival of a residue (intellect and will) of a full human being, I was speaking of the rational soul. I did not use "soul" because Cartesian dualism has given it substantial connotations in did not have in the Scholastic era.

Intellect and will are seen as survivable because they have no intrinsic dependence on matter, but since humans are rational animals, the rational soul is not a fully human person. Theologically, this is seen as an argument for the need of a resurrection. Philosophically, no such argument is made.

Denigrating what I say because I am a theist is an instance of the genetic fallacy, verging on ad hominem. — Dfpolis

But you called naturalism vague and irrational without good justification. And as a theist, you have yet to show that you are willing to deal with the metaphysical problems of theism rather than just cherry-pick naturalistic science that you can bend towards the support of a theistic conclusion. — apokrisis

Yes, I did. I called it "vague" because when I read David Papineau's SEP article "Naturalism," that is how he characterized it. Even the present version of his article declines to offer a definition. I called it "irrational" after spending over two years researching, thinking, corresponding and writing about it, producing a book with a 23 page bibliography explaining precisely how and why it is irrational. In that effort, I was threatened with a law suit and confronted with other indications that many naturalists are less than open to criticism. I also posted a number of key arguments online to elicit responses. None rebutted my conclusions.

I'm always willing to discuss any supposed "metaphysical problems of theism." I do here and elsewhere regularly. I do not cherry-pick science. I accept all the usual data and have no problems with any falsifiable, well-confirmed scientific theory. My book contains hundreds of references to scientific texts and articles. What I have done is to take the science accepted by prominent naturalists and show that it does not, in any way, support their metaphysical positions. I have also shown how, in many cases, naturalistic philosophical commitments have undermined scientific reasoning and so the very fabric of science.

So maybe you are just unfamiliar with that distinction? Systems thinkers are holistic naturalists and not reductionist naturalists. Hence the semiotic twist which recognises that things like finality and meaning are part of nature too. The goal becomes to give a fully scientific account of that. — apokrisis

I am familiar with the system's approach, having taught a graduate course on the topic. I also realize that there are many flavors of naturalism. I outline the major ones in the first chapter of my book. The fundamental problem with metaphysical naturalism is its unscientific commitment to the a priori exclusion of logically possibilities, rather than how one proceeds after making that error. Finally, I too see the need for a full account of meaning, finality and other intentional realities.

My claim is that a systems naturalism is what modern science now clearly supports. Whereas religious belief still makes bad metaphysics. — apokrisis

I agree, but methodological naturalism is not metaphysical naturalism, and provides no support for it. Beliefs of any sort, religious or naturalistic, can properly motivate metaphysical reflection, but they cannot be the foundation for metaphysical conclusions, which must be adequately supported by our experience of being qua being.

While I agree that the mind does a great deal of modelling, I think it is an error to think of mind primarily as a modelling process. — Dfpolis

If you have thought about it so deeply, you could then quickly explain why. — apokrisis

Sure. Activities can not occur absent logically prior agents capable of doing them. So, modelling processes require the operation of agents capable of representing and reflecting upon the system being modeled. So, while you can consider modelling processes in abstraction from modeling agents, but the they cannot exist independently of modelling agents. Thinking they can is an instance of Misplaced Concreteness.

The Peircean position would be that mindfulness does reduce to the absolute generality of a sign relation. Even the Cosmos is built of regulative habit. So the active interaction is the primary one. A contemplative or self-reflecting consciousness would be a secondary "luxury" that emerges with systems complexity. And psychological science says the self-aware human mind, with its inner world of thoughts and plans, is still primarily an active rather than a passive modelling relation. — apokrisis

The notion of reduction seems to anticipate, to a degree, Shannon's definition of information as the reduction of possibility. I agree that there are laws operative in nature, and that they are instances of intentionality, as defined by Brentano. Further, I see the priority of action.

It is your claim of consciousness as being a "luxury," that I find problematic, though I would like to see how you support the idea. I am unconvinced by hand-waving allusions to emergence and complexity.

First, as I recently commented, all "emergence" means is that one believes that a certain basis is responsible for a new property, but has no idea how or why. Such ignorance is cannot motivate rational consent. Second, all "complexity" means is that what we are considering is too involved to grasp holistically. This, again, is no basis for rational consent. It simply allows us to hide our ignorance in the tangles of a mental jungle.

Complexity also takes us away from the essential simplicity of awareness, characterized by the unity of knower and known. (The subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject.) So, the more ontological distance (complexity) we place between knower and known, between the mind and what the mind intends, the further we are from describing mental operations.

As my approach to naturalism is semiotic, it fits my metaphysics that our abstract accounts of reality must arrive at this essential duality of matter and information — apokrisis

We agree on the fundamental polarity here. I'm opposing material and intentional, you matter and information. The problem is that information cannot be a primary concept. Since it is the reduction of logical possibility, it presupposes the existence of logical possibilities to be reduced. Logical possibilities are possibilities in the realm of knowledge, and knowledge presupposes a knowing subject. So, we need knowing subjects (minds) to ground the concept of information -- as well as that of intentionality.

That means that minds are logically prior to information and cannot depend on information, as your emergence thesis posits.

It all starts with the complementarity of information and entropy built in at the Planck scale. Context and event become indistinguishable at the microlevel. So the basis of a semiotic division - one that can develop thermally with Cosmic cooling and expansion - is a modern empirical discovery. You can't now do metaphysics and ignore that fundamental finding. — apokrisis

I am sorry to disagree. I am well aware of the relation of entropy and information, but you seem not to know that the concept of entropy is based on different ways of conceptualizing thermal systems -- macroscopically and microscopically. It relates to how many microscopic states can give rise to the same macroscopic state. So, it is not ultimately a physical concept -- the physics is fully specified by the microscopic state -- but a representational (and so mental) concept. If we did not try to describe the intrinsic complexity of microscopic states simply, with a few macroscopic variables (e.g. temperature and pressure), the concept of entropy would not arise.

What this means is that entropy, instead of being a pure physical property, is one that depends on how knowing subjects conceptualize physical systems.

No, meaning need not result in action. Meaning is found in theoretical reflection as well as in practical reasoning. What action results from being able to distinguish essence and existence, or knowing that we cannot prove the consistency of arithmetic? — Dfpolis

You are talking about minds at the top of the food chain. As a philosophical naturalist, my argument is developmental and evolutionary. — apokrisis

Perhaps, but if we are to commit to theories as fundamental, they need to apply in all cases, not a select subset.

So I am saying, sure, we have a modern cultural tradition - an attitude that arose in the philosophy of Ancient Greece - where the human mind is understood as essentially contemplative. As Plato said, look inwards and the enlightened mind will simply remember the realm of ideas. We celebrate this rather mystic and passive notion of mindfulness, putting it above the pragmatic kind of thought that is in fact the basis for our everyday, rather habitual and uncontemplative, being in the world. — apokrisis

While I agree that there is such a tradition, there is an equally ancient understanding that sound practical reasoning is essential to a well-lived life.

So meaning remains founded in the ideas or theories that we would be willing to act on - stake our lives on if necessary. — apokrisis

I don't see how you can continue to assert this while admitting counterexamples.

Sure, philosophy, maths, poetry, and all other kinds of "contemplative" thought are good habits to cultivate. They are socially supported because historically they generate pragmatic social value. We pay folk to reflect in theoretical fashion ... because we get stuff like new technology and better ways of organising society as a practical outcome. — apokrisis

That is the political reasoning for support. It is not the generally the reason individuals pursue these fields. Rather, as Aristotle says at the beginning of his Metaphysics, "All humans, by nature, desire to know." We have intellects that are naturally truth-seeking. We are curious and will pay a practical price to have intellectual satisfaction. Evolutionary psychologists may see this as having survival value. Aquinas sees this as reflecting a natural desire for God, Who is Truth.

The angle of your argument is always to take the complex extreme of mindfulness and present it as the monistically simple starting point. As with Socrates, the philosopher becomes then top of the tree. The end of a journey is made the beginning. — apokrisis

I don't think that's so. I am happy to admit that meaning often, perhaps even typically, can be cashed out in terms of consequent action. It is just that if we're looking for fundamental understanding, our theories need to address the full range of human experience, not merely the greater part of it.

I - as a naturalist - prefer to travel back to the root. And biosemiotically, that would be the nano-scale machinery that regulates the thermal blizzard we call the chemical basis of life. I can see the "mind" at work there - the active downward causation of organismic purpose and plan. — apokrisis

This is the basic datum of Aquinas' Fifth Way to prove the existence of God.

So you're saying "this triangle" as "this concept I'm thinking of"? — Terrapin Station

No. I imagined we were both looking at the same triangle. My idea <this triangle> referenced it. My words, "this triangle" expressed my idea, and so, via that idea reference the same triangle.

It seems that you have a very hard time understanding me because you keep thinking of strange interpretations of what I say. As a result you raise non-issues far removed from the topic. I am wondering if you are doing this purposefully, and if it is worth my time to continue.

Things all share being, but they differ in how they share being. As matter and ideas have non-overlapping definitions, they are different. — Dfpolis

They do have overlapping definitions. They both have causal power. I said that and you agreed, right? — Harry Hindu

Things do not have overlapping definitions because they both exist. The basis of definition is not existence, for we can define things with no existence, like unicorns, but what they are (essences).

You still have yet to make a clear, coherent distinction between what is "matter" and what is "intent". — Harry Hindu

I have. Following Brentano, intentions are characterized by aboutness and matter is not. You might also want to look at my last response to Metaphysician Undercover.

I don't understand your use of "intent" anyway. Most people use terms like, "ideas" and "mind" as opposite notions of "matter". In my mind, "intent" is "goal". Goal-oriented behavior is intentional behavior. Intent is your goal in mind that caused the action. — Harry Hindu

What I am contrasting is materiality, as characterized by physics, and intentionality, which is characterized by "aboutness" -- by referring to something beyond itself, as a referent, target of action or desire and so on. If I used "intent" in a confusing way, I apologize. Intent can be goal directed, or it can be what is meant. I usually try to say "committed intent" when it is goal oriented.

If there were no parts outside of parts in reality, the mind would have no reason to separate them in thought. — Dfpolis

If this were the case, then for what reason does the mind bend a straw that isn't bent, or create a pool of water where there isn't one? — Harry Hindu

I am not saying we cannot imagine things in general, I am saying to imagine extension, we need to have a representation that has parts outside of parts and we cannot have that unless the representation is actually extended. We know for a fact that visual images are represented in an extended way that only sightly distorts the image in the posterior or visual cortex.

It seems to me that the apprehension would be just a continuation of the causal sequence. Tree rings still carry information about the age of the tree independent of any mind coming along and being affected by their existence (like becoming aware of their existence). If awareness isn't a form of knowledge about the world, then what is it and why still call it "awareness" if it doesn't fit the definition of "awareness" we already have? — Harry Hindu

Of course it is a continuation of the causal chain. The question is: is the final step, the received, encoded intelligibility becoming actually known describable by physics? Clearly, it is not because physics lacks a concept of awareness (because of the Fundamental Abstraction). So, no physics-based argument can conclude: "And so Harry is aware of the tree."

The "laws of nature" is a human invention. There is just how things are, and then our explanations of how things are (laws of nature). — Harry Hindu

We need to distinguish between what I call "the laws of physics," which are approximate human descriptions and the "laws of nature" which operate in nature and are what the laws of physics attempt to describe. If their we no reality described by the laws of physics, physics would be a work of fiction. It is not. Instead, we discover the laws in nature and do our best to describe them accurately. If they did not exist in nature, we would have no reason to observe nature to discover them. So, there are laws in nature, that instantiate Brentano's aboutness criterion (being about determinate outcomes), and so are properly called "intentional."

Everything interacts causally, so I don't understand the distinction being made between "matter" and "intent"/"ideas". — Harry Hindu

I explained this earlier today:

In physics we abstract physical processes into states conceived as static time slices (matter) and tendencies by which these states evolve into other states over time (laws of nature). The states are fully specified by the values of their dynamic variables (classically, by their energy, momentum, etc., or, quantum mechanically, by their wave functions). So, all physics has to tell us about what reality is at any given time is its intrinsic state specification -- and that is what I am calling the material state. — Dfpolis

Yes,, communication requires patience, thank you for yours.

you say that you're not talking about the word itself. That makes no sense if you're talking about the ("formal"--what's the alternative here) sign qua the sign. — Terrapin Station

"Formal sign" here is a term of art opposed to "instrumental sign." I explained the distinction, which is from John of St. Thomas' Ars Logica, earlier in the thread. It is also explained in Veatch's Intentional Logic. Basically formal signs are ideas, judgements and arguments in the mind and based on a binary relation. Instrumental signs are the kind we sense and are based on a ternary relation.

Why would we say that "this triangle" isn't referring to the thing itself, by the way? — Terrapin Station

It does, but mediated by the elicited concept.

Since there is no triangle to point to, I said "this triangle" to be clear.

Because it is fully exhausted by its physical description. It is not "about" something else in the sense of Brentano. — Dfpolis

It isn't fully exhausted by the physical description though, that's the point. Survival of a living being, and the activities of living beings are not fully described by physical descriptions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I was insufficiently careful. I should have said "fully specified." Obviously, we have no exhaustive understanding of reality. The possibility of surprise is always present. What I meant was that once we give a material state its intrinsic specifications, it is fully defined. Defining something does not exhaust it. On the other hand, when we say what an intention is intrinsically (a hope, desire, belief, etc.) it is not fully specified. We have to say what we hope for, desire to have, believe, etc. -- these are what the intentional states are "about" and it is the need for this additional element of specification that makes them intentional vs. material.

I want to know what you mean by "orthogonal" here. — Metaphysician Undercover

I mean that they share no notes of comprehension in their definitions. The image I have in mind is from Rudolf Carnap. He imagined a space spanned by independent truths as dimensions. Truths that are independent in this way are orthogonal, and cannot imply each other.

In a more Aristotelian perspective, he points out that the habit of science is finding middle terms -- in other words connection making. Logic is invalid if we have an undistributed middle because then we cannot connect our premises with each other. As there are no connections between orthogonal terms, they cannot be reduced to each other.

I assume that it means one thing is at a right angle to another. — Metaphysician Undercover

It means that they are in different dimensions (of thought). As the origin/starting point is abject ignorance, that is what they have in common.

Do you mean that "matter" and "intention" are two distinct ways of explaining the same thing (the point where they meet)? — Metaphysician Undercover

Material and intentional operations are two distinct ways in which unified humans can act. Thus, we can separate them in thought, but not in reality.

Perhaps you mean "parallel", but then how would they interact? In any case, your use of "orthogonal" doesn't make sense to me, can you explain? — Metaphysician Undercover

Physical reality can be thought of by conceptualizing it as material states transformed by laws of nature. There is a basis in reality for both the concept <material state> and <law of nature>, but neither occurs separately. It is not that they inter-act as separate things (that is what dualists might think). It is rather that these are different ways of thinking about something that is what is is now and has determinate tendency be something else in the future. One and the same thing is, and has the tendency.

In the same way, one and the same human has a neural state and is aware of the contents encoded by that state, or has a commitment and changes its state to work toward that commitment.

Because it is fully exhausted by its physical description. It is not "about" something else in the sense of Brentano. Our awareness of the state, on the other hand, is both and act in itself and points to the state it is aware of. So, it is intentional, while the original state is not. — Dfpolis

Yes, natural processes have ends, and as a result an intrinsic intentionality. That is the basis for Aquinas' Fifth Way to prove the existence of God and the reason I hold that the laws of nature are intentional realities. So, physicality is partly intentional. I am not denying that. — Dfpolis

Don't these two statements directly contradict each other? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, but I could have been clearer. In physics we abstract physical processes into states conceived as static time slices (matter) and tendencies by which these states evolve into other states over time (laws of nature). The states are fully specified by the values of their dynamic variables (classically, by their energy, momentum, etc., or, quantum mechanically, by their wave functions). So, all physics has to tell us about what reality is at any given time is its intrinsic state specification -- and that is what I am calling the material state.

Still, when we look over time, we see well defined tendencies (the laws of nature) that meet Brentano's aboutness criterion. Just as my intention to go to the store is about me arriving at the store, so the laws that evolve an initial state are about it realizing a final state. So, physical reality is not exhausted by material states, it also has an intentional aspect in the laws of nature.

I'm sorry but I doubt that; or rather I believe that the idea of 'encoding' must be mistaken here. — Wayfarer

I am not sure why you think that, but OK.

I agree to the extent that neural encoding does not work like any other kind of sign. It is not an instrumental sign. We do not first apprehend our neural state and then infer its meaning. (Some have tried to explain consciousness as a type of proprioception. It is not.) Nor is it a formal sign. Signifying is not all all neural states do. So, the semiology of neural encoding needs further development.

I have an interesting book, 'Why Us?' by James Le Fanu. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the reference. I found this review: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16544-review-why-us-by-james-le-fanu/.

As you can tell, while I accept good science, I too reject the overreaching claims of those who extrapolate beyond what we actually know.

one point is that all of the neural studies which attempted to understand the areas of the brain, or brain processes, involved in learning new words, via fMRI scans, were hopelessly inconclusive. — Wayfarer

I think that we can accept the idea of neural encoding because we know that data is, for example, transmitted from the peripheral senses to the central processing organ. (Aristotle figured this out long ago.) That does not mean either that we know all the mechanisms, or that the mechanisms are instantiated in the same way in every one. (I am thinking of the type vs. token distinction in the theory of neural representation.)

But the correspondence between the brain and the elements of meaning is nothing like that at all. What about people who suffer brain damage, and whose brains re-configure themselves to compensate? — Wayfarer

Clearly, the brain is very adaptable. To say that information is neurally encoded and processed does not mean that it can only be encoded or processed in one way.

But they do cast doubt on the idea of a kind of 1:1 relationship between brain function and content. — Wayfarer

That is not what I mean by "neural encoding."

I think the idea of 'encoding' is what I call a 'rogue metaphor' — Wayfarer

It can be. In my book I spend many pages knocking down false analogies between the mind and computers.

What does 'fully natural' mean here? The whole point about theistic philosophies, which I had the impression you accept, is that there is an element in the human, namely, the soul, which transcends the (merely) natural. — Wayfarer

Not in Thomism. Aristotelians and Thomists define the psyche/anima/soul as "the actuality of a potentially living being." In other words, all we are saying when we say that an organism has a "soul" is the fact that it is alive. That allows the possibility that some residue of life might survive physical death. Still, what survives is, in Aquinas view, not fully human -- only the residue of a fully human being -- say just our intellect (power of awareness) and will (power of commitment).

So, there are material and intentional aspects of unified humans, which are fully natural, but not all that is natural is described by physics for the reasons I outlined in my OP.

Something with which any scholastic philosopher would concur, I would have thought. — Wayfarer

Not as a philosopher, as a theologian. The standard Thomistic view is that humans are fully and completely natural. Unlike many Protestants, we reject the notion of a nature corrupted by original sin. If our nature were corrupt, it would no longer meet the definition of "human nature," so the idea is logically inconsistent.

What we, as Catholic Christians, hold is that what was lost in Original Sin was not intrinsic, but extrinsic -- a special relation to God -- one that empowers us to love unselfishly by drawing on the infinite resource of God. We see the possibility of this relation as restored by the Incarnation and life of Jesus Christ. Finally, when we speak of the "supernatural" mean what is empowered by this extrinsic relationship. "God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God in him." 1 John 4:16. So, we see cooperation for common ends as natural, but unselfish love as a supernatural act.

Still, I see myself often searching for the right word(s) to express what I think, and occasionally fail. Thus, my thoughts have priority over even my internal monologue. — Dfpolis

I relate to an experience like that, but I tend to interpret it in terms of condensation. I'm reluctant to classify this 'cloud' as an actual thought. — sign

Of course this depends on how you define "thought." If you define thought as conceptual ratiocination, as following a chain of well-defined steps, then it is not thought. However, it is meaning and awareness seeking articulation and expression. When I think, <No, that doesn't quite express what I mean> or <No, that's not the right word> I am aware of, I have a prior meaning to be expressed, and it is well-defined because it does not match the words I'm thinking of. In the same way, language grows because our current vocabulary is inadequate to express our meaning. So, we are not entirely limited by language, but see beyond what it can express.

It looks like I'm basically describing a position like James'. Note that 'experience' must change its meaning radically once the idea is grasped. It is a ladder to be thrown away. James has no choice but to use subject-object language in order to be intelligible as he tries to lead subject-object thinking somewhere rich and strange. — sign

I am not sure where that is. There is an identity in subject-object relations. The tree being known by me is, identically, me knowing the tree. These articulations merely express the same activity in alternate ways. So, while subjectivity and objectivity point in different directions -- toward the knower and toward the known -- in the act of knowing they are part of an inseparable act.

Mystics reject the subject-object distinction for their experience. I think it's because they're experiencing the even deeper identity of their existence being maintained by God and God maintaining their existence. Here the identity extends beyond the act of awareness to what we are aware of: God holding us in being.

James was very familiar with mysticism. You can see it not only in The Varieties of Religious Experience, but in his close friendship with Richard Bucke, the Canadian doctor and life-long atheist, who wrote Cosmic Consciousness after his own experience. The quotation you cite shows him struggling against an inadequate materialist framework to articulate this.

In sum, while in everyday, sensory experience, in the experience of limited being, we are justified in maintaining the subject-object distinction, in mystical experience, in awareness of the divine, we are not. We are not because our very existence is a Divine Activity.

One final point, and, I think, an important one. As I said earlier, we can only know potencies in their actualization or in the actualization of analogous cases. Yet, in the case of mystical awareness, however vague, what we are aware of is not a potency, but an activity -- the activity of God holding our potential open to us. In grasping this, we may be able to come to some knowledge of our unactualized potential, not because it is potential, but because it is actually maintained by God.

Thus, in synteresis and in the vague awareness of our potential, I see the on-going activity of God as essential to our self-realization.

Thanks for sharing that. — sign

You are welcome.

My influences are Christian, but this Christianity has passed through the 'fiery brook' of the Left Hegelians. For me the incarnation is central, and I suppose my mysticism inasmuch as I can keep and enjoy it is much like Blake's. — sign

As you may be able to tell, my religious background is Catholic Christian. The Incarnation is the central event, but here I'm writing for a philosophical audience, much of which does not share my beliefs.

Finally, for me religion is higher than politics. 'He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.' 'And He saw that it was good.' — sign

I see politics as an often troubled way of advancing the common good. When it does not, it is corrupt.

Why would you not call this prior state an intentional state as well? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because it is fully exhausted by its physical description. It is not "about" something else in the sense of Brentano. Our awareness of the state, on the other hand, is both and act in itself and points to the state it is aware of. So, it is intentional, while the original state is not.

Under your preferred definition, "aboutness", the "natural deficit" which develops into hunger is intentional, as it surely points to something beyond itself, the well-being of the animal. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, natural processes have ends, and as a result an intrinsic intentionality. That is the basis for Aquinas' Fifth Way to prove the existence of God and the reason I hold that the laws of nature are intentional realities. So, physicality is partly intentional. I am not denying that.

What I an asserting is that the concept of matter is orthogonal to the concept of intentionality and so intentional operations cannot be reduced to material operations. Just to be clear, in physics, we distinguish material states from the laws under which they evolve.

First, "This triangle" isn't a concept, it's a particular. ("Triangle" is going to be a concept, but "this triangle" conventionally refers to a particular, as a particular.) — Terrapin Station

It is not a universal concept. It is a particular concept. It is not the thing itself, but a formal sign referring to a specific thing. Call it an "idea" if you prefer. In particular concepts we have not abstracted away the relations that individuate the object. The critical point here is that we are primarily dealing with thoughts, formal signs, and not words or the objects they reference.

If A is a particular and B is a concept, then "A is B" is the case because A fits the concept, B, that someone has in mind. — Terrapin Station

"A fits the concept, B" is just another way of saying what I said, that A properly evokes the concept <B>.

Thus, the copula "is" betokens identity — Dfpolis

Not necessarily. It can refer to set membership. That's a different idea than identity. Or at least we need to point out that "identity" is often used to refer to "the very same thing" and not just "a property of this thing." — Terrapin Station

I am speaking of "is" as a cupola in a proposition. If the subject and predicate do not have identical sources, the the judgement is false. E.g. this is an apple and that is red, "This apple is red" is unjustified.

Even in set theory, a is an element of B is unjustified if what is a is not identically what is an element of B.

Please note what is identical. It is not the concepts or set elements, it is the source of subject and predicate.

affirming identity of concept source — Dfpolis

That phrase doesn't read so that it makes grammatical sense to me. — Terrapin Station

We experience objects, and form concepts based on that experience, as I tried to show in my examples. "Identity of source" means that the identical object instantiates the subject and predicate concepts.

In this example, obviously there's a problem with the concepts fitting, since to Joe, it didn't actually count as an explanation. — Terrapin Station

That simply means that Joe's concept is not Frank's so they are equivocating on "explanation."

My question to you is how would you understand meaning, without some implicit or explicit dependence on mind? It seems to me that the meaning of a sign is information it evokes in the mind of the recipient. — Dfpolis

...

Signs are beings here. What we usually divide into concepts and objects are both understood as signs (intelligible unities of sensation and emotion). — sign

Signs exist, and so are beings, but the problem is that merely potential realities, such as intelligibility, have no actual existence. So, it can't be known directly. Intelligibility can only be known by experiencing cases where it's actually understood -- implying the existence of a mind that understands it.

The sign is the unity of signifier and signified. — sign

Conventional signs have no intrinsic unity. They are linked by some external convention, such as agreeing to think of actual apples when we read "apples," and that agreement represents acts of will by those consenting to the convention.

The 'mental' and the 'non-mental' are 'gone' here. — sign

No, they're merely implicit instead of explicit.

And note that the end of this sentence determines the meaning of its beginning. — sign

There are different kinds of meaning. Simplistically, individual words mean concepts of objects, actions, aspects and relations. Sentences generally mean judgements, which assert relations between concepts. Still, context helps specify meaning. So, as we come to know the context, the meaning of the individual words becomes less ambiguous.

Still, since words express thoughts, thoughts are logically and temporally prior to the words that express them. — Dfpolis

I understand this view, but I have the sense of thinking in words. — sign

I agree. We often think in words. Still, I see myself often searching for the right word(s) to express what I think, and occasionally fail. Thus, my thoughts have priority over even my internal monologue.

The theory I'm presenting as a though-experiment needs the signs to refer to one another in order to generate a sense of the subject. — sign

But, doesn't that, like the consistency theory of truth, leave us out of touch with reality? We check the truth of what we believe, the adequacy of our semiotic structures, by comparing them to experience. And, to have experience, we need experiencing subjects.

Putting this theory aside, I think even in ordinary experience that the 'I' is not perfectly present to itself. The meaning of 'I' is elusive, although we use it successfully in everyday life. — sign

We agree. We do not know even ourselves a priori, but only in the experience of living. We are an integrated set of powers, and, as I said above about potencies, we know them only when they are actualized. So, I think we can always do more than we know.

What is the relationship between phenomenology and mysticism? Are mystics non-conceptual or just precisely aware of the movement of concepts? — sign

This is a deep subject. Being trained as a scientist, I used to dismiss mysticism as unworthy of investigation. Reading W.T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, changed that. Since then I have educated myself by actually reading the literature. Stace provides a starting point, but he only scratches the surface.

I see the ontology of mysticism from a Thomist, not a Platonic or Kantian, perspective -- not that Aquinas had much to say about mystical experience. So, I do not see phenomena as opposed to noumena, but as revealing them "though a mirror darkly."

This is how I think of mystical awareness:
God maintaining our existence is identically our existence being maintained by God. Because of this identity, we are inseparable from God, and the divine intelligibility, which is unlimited, and so uninformative (unconceptualizable), is always present. Recall that information, which delimits and defines concepts, is the reduction of possibility, while God is unlimited being.
Normally, we turn our our attention, our awareness, to the world of limited being. If, for some reason, we break the fixation on limited being, our intellect, always in search of intelligibility, can turn to the divine intelligibility that is always dynamically present because of the above identity. So it is that we have direct experiences of God, who being unlimited, is not reducible to concepts.
I also think that, even while our awareness is thoroughly engaged in the world of limited being, we are vaguely aware of the presence of Unlimited Being. As I mentioned above, in connection with the inner monologue and the search for articulation, this awareness can be, with difficulty, articulated. The best articulations are sound proofs of the existence of God -- structures that articulate our awareness of the sustaining presence of God.
Again, the same awareness, a vague awareness of the intentionality behind our being, is what the Scholastics called synteresis -- the inner spark driving conscience.

By the way, great response. And thanks for taking the time. — sign

Thank you as well. You are welcome.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness loses its power when "physical" things are simply described as things that have causal power, and both "matter" and "ideas" have causal power. — Harry Hindu

I did not notice this. There is no reason to think that everything with causal power is material in any commonly accepted sense. The laws of nature are unextended and appear to be unchanging, so they have none of the characteristics thought to define material objects. Still they cause physical phenomena to operate as they do.

The common word for anything that can act is "being."

Actually I don’t see how anything could be ‘neurologically encoded’. DNA is a code but I can’t see how neurons could encode anything. — Wayfarer

Neurons encode data in their firing rates. Neural nets are systems of connections that develop to favor or inhibit successful responses, allowing them to be "learned."

Naturalism is a vaguely defined and, in my considered and elaborated view, irrational movement motivated by an a priori prejudice against what its proponents call "spooky" realities. — Dfpolis

A theist would say that. But scientific naturalism accepts the empirical evidence that life and mind evolved and so there are good grounds to expect nothing spooky or transcendent going on. That then leads to an appreciation of a systems approach anchored in the immanence of Aristotelian four cause thinking. — apokrisis

Denigrating what I say because I am a theist is an instance of the genetic fallacy, verging on ad hominem. I have sound reasons for my judgement, elaborated in hundreds of pages of well-documented text.

I am not rejecting methodological naturalism in natural science. I simply do not see the abstract and limited consideration of data on which natural science is (rightly) based as rational grounds for the a priori exclusion of logical possibilities -- which is what metaphysical naturalists do. Their blindness with respect to their to the fundamental assumptions, their preference for the a priori over the a posteriori, and their unwillingness to consider fully what is logically possible run counter to the entire scientific mindset.

Aristotelian thinking, rigorously applied, leads us to such "spooky" realities as an agent intellect operative in an immaterial theater of operation and the logical completion of science by an ultimate cause rightley called "Self-thinking Thought."

It seems to me that the meaning of a sign is information it evokes in the mind of the recipient. — Dfpolis

This is a passive/substantive notion of "mind". And it might fit a dyadic Saussurian notion of semiotics. But I prefer a triadic Peircean approach that fits the modern neurocognitive understanding of "mind" as an active process - an embodied modelling relation. — apokrisis

You are reading a lot more into my short description, "evokes," than I intended. I do not think of the mind as a purely passive recipient of information. My seconding of Aristotle's treatment of ideogenesis as involving a twofold actualization (in response to Wayfarer above in this thread) makes this clear. The twofold actualization requires the mind to have a aspect operative in the intentional theater of operations prior to the actualization. This is Aristotle's nous poiêtikos (= agent or active intellect), which, for phenomenological reasons, I identify with our power of directed awareness.

So, I have no problem with Peirce's analysis of sign, object, and interpretant. You will find my take on (instrumental) signs as triadic relations in my video "#40 Knowledge as a Sign" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3APhv_I3p8), which is part 4 of my series on knowledge.

Still, I do not want to divert the thread into a full-blown discussion of semiotic issues.

I prefer a triadic Peircean approach that fits the modern neurocognitive understanding of "mind" as an active process - an embodied modelling relation. — apokrisis

While I have thought a great deal about presentation, re-presentation and modelling in the structure of formal and informal theories, that would also take us off on a major tangent. While I agree that the mind does a great deal of modelling, I think it is an error to think of mind primarily as a modelling process.

So there is no passive "recipient" - the Cartesian ghost in the machine. — apokrisis

Of course there is no ghost in the machine, passive or active. There are integral human beings which have material and intentional operations -- operations describable by physics and operations that are not. I have given my reasons for holding that there are human operations not describable by physics. You have chosen not to rebut any of them. Instead, you are making dogmatic and unsupported claims as though I had not made my case.

Meaning is not evoked. It is meaningful action which is evoked. — apokrisis

No, meaning need not result in action. Meaning is found in theoretical reflection as well as in practical reasoning. What action results from being able to distinguish essence and existence, or knowing that we cannot prove the consistency of arithmetic?

When we judge that A is B, it is because what evokes the concept <A> is identically what evokes the concept <B>. For example, when we judge <This triangle is equilateral> it is because the object evoking <this triangle> is the very same object that evokes the concept <equilateral>. Thus, the copula "is" betokens identity -- not in the concepts it links, but in the source of the concepts it links. If what evoked <this triangle> did not also evoke <equilateral>, even if some other triangle did, the judgement would be false.

So, when we make affirmative predications, we are affirming identity of concept source, and when we make negative predications, we are denying it.

So, the explanation works, because in the actual case, the relevant concepts are all evoked by the same event -- and we have previously accepted that in any case evoking all the required concepts their relation will be given by F=ma.

Then he does not understand how predication works.

We can each define terms to suit ourselves. So, Joe can define "explanation" in his way and Frank in his. That seems to be what is happening here. Assuming that both understand the relations I outlined, they agree on the facts of the case. Instead, each has a different idea in mind when they say "explanation." Logically, this is equivocation, and so it is not a problem about reality, but about choice of linguistic convention.

Joe says that "F=ma" isn't an explanation, because F=ma doesn't at all seem like what it's supposed to be explaining. — Terrapin Station

OK. Now I understand. For "F=ma" to be the explanation involves a lot of indirection. The string/proposition "F=ma" points to/elicits the mental judgement <Applied force is equal to mass times induced acceleration>. (I use "" for words, <> for thoughts.) The concepts in the judgement (<force>, <mass> and <acceleration>) point to any aspects of reality capable of properly eliciting them. So, <force> has for its referents any possible measured values of pushes and pulls, for example. It is because these concrete cases are all equally capable of eliciting <force> that <force> is a universal concept. The judgement, <Applied force is equal to mass times induced acceleration> states a relation between these concepts that we believe always obtains in reality.

So, while Joe is right that the proposition is unlike the reality, what he is forgetting is that what the proposition points to is the reality and others like it.

I am still not sure what you're asking. The first thing that comes to mind is that there are many kinds of explanation. Aristotle distinguishes material, formal, efficient and final causes.

Materially, the ball moves because it retains its integrity and so is the principle of continuity in the change.

Formally, the ball moves as it does because of the laws of nature, approximately and partially described by F=ma.

The efficient cause of the ball moving is the strike of the cue, and beyond that the action of the player.

The final cause of the ball moving is, perhaps, the player's desire to win the game.

Is that what you are asking? In any event, F=ma is part of the explanation, but not all that can be said.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness loses its power when "physical" things are simply described as things that have causal power, and both "matter" and "ideas" have causal power. The Fallacy is in thinking that ideas and matter are different types of things. — Harry Hindu

I disagree. The fallacy is forgetting that, when we abstract, we leave contextual data on the table.

Things all share being, but they differ in how they share being. As matter and ideas have non-overlapping definitions, they are different.

Okay, so now it's "you" that has an intent that changes, just as an apple has a color that changes. — Harry Hindu

Yes. I am what has changed. One intent ended. Another came to be. I remained. The point in contention was whether there was continuity in the intent rather than in the intending subject.

In a change of intention, what is the same is not part of the original intention, but the intending subject. We simply stop believing in Santa, and start not believing in Santa. The Principle of Excluded Middle forbids a continuous transformation as in the physical case. Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous. — Dfpolis

Yes, but WHY did you believe in Santa in the first place, and now why do you not? For no reason at all? For no cause at all? — Harry Hindu

As I said, "Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous." So, not without cause.

If there were no parts outside of parts in reality, the mind would have no reason to separate them in thought. — Dfpolis

The mind is just another process of reality and functions at a certain frequency relative to the other processes in reality. Time speeds up and slows down based upon your mental state, just as lethargic lizards need to warm up in order to speed up their mental processing to become more aware of those fast-moving predators. Your relative location in space/time relative to the size and speed of everything will influence the minds perception of everything. Slow processes appear as stable solid objects, while fast processes appear as blurs, or popping in and out of existence. — Harry Hindu

How is any of this an argument against my claim that matter has parts outside of parts?

What is your take on evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind? — Harry Hindu

I think that our psychology is largely based on our physical nature, and that nature is largely the result of evolution. So, I have no problem with looking at evolution to find reasons for various psychological dispositions. I am, however, generally opposed to any approach that is confined to a single projection of reality.

As for the computational theory of mind, I agree that the brain is a data processing organ and control system, but the computational theory of mind goes beyond this well-founded conclusion. I see some major problems: (1) Confusing instrumental signs, such as computer states, with formal signs such as ideas. (See my response to @Sign above.) (2) Dealing only with the contents of awareness, and not with the act of awareness. (3) Physical states have no intrinsic meaning. What, for example, does an abbababa state mean? It depends on the conventions we use, such as assigning 1 or 0 to a or b and the order in which the bits are read (left to right, the reverse, or something else). As a result, to determine the meaning of a state we have to look beyond the machine to the mind(s) assigning the conventions.

What do you make of the pairing of 'meaning' and its 'vehicle'? For instance, the intelligible aspect of the voice as opposed to its arbitrary sound. Another example would be a chair grasped as a chair and the sensation organized by that grasping. One way to understand 'matter' would be as the opposite of pure meaning. Not mind but just meaning or form. These would be the poles of a continuum. — sign

The hylomorphic theory (the analysis of bodies into matter and form) has a long and venerable history. In my book, and in my article "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," I distinguish three incompatible versions (those of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas) and I am sure there are more. You seem to be hinting at another.

Your question opens the whole of semiotics for discussion, so there is not time for a complete answer. Clearly, there are natural signs like smoke and conventional signs like the spoken word. The meaning of natural signs is generally grounded in a causal relation and consequent mental association, a la Hume. Conventional signs also signify by association, but the association is grounded and acquired culturally.

My question to you is how would you understand meaning, without some implicit or explicit dependence on mind? It seems to me that the meaning of a sign is information it evokes in the mind of the recipient.

It's not clear to me that we ever have pure meaning. — sign

I am unsure what you have in mind when you speak of "pure meaning." For some, the term might invoke the idea of God as Pure Intelligibility. If you mean that we have difficulty in communicating exactly what is in our mind to the mind of another, I could hardly agree more. Because of our varying life experiences, even the most precise words can have different associations in you than in me.

To grasp something as a thing is already to grasp it as a unity, to install a boundary between it and not-it. — sign

Yes, that is Aristotle's understanding of a substance -- an ostensible unity -- a "one" we can point out.

I think that one can (not at all must) argue that the 'intellect' is one more sign within a steam of signs that refers to relationships between those signs. This is being as signs, including signs like 'consciousness' and 'physical.' These signs can occur in such a way that 'I' have the experience of being an 'I' or an intellect. — sign

Clearly, when we quote words, we mean to consider them as signs. Still, since words express thoughts, thoughts are logically and temporally prior to the words that express them. Thoughts again are signs, but as John of St. Thomas points out in his Ars Logica, a very different kind of sign. Physical signs have a physical form that needs to be recognized before we can grasp their meaning. If I can't read your writing, or if I mistake smoke for dust, they fail to signify. These are Instrumental Signs.

Ideas are very different. We do not need to recognize an idea as an idea for it to signify. It signifies transparently, as it were -- without the need to be "seen" first. It is only in retrospect, if at all, that we realize that to think of an apple, we employed an <apple> idea. Ideas are Formal Signs. While instrumental signs can do physical things (scatter light, vibrate membranes), all formal signs can do is signify.

So, while consciousness involves signs, they are not the instrumental signs we typically think of. The signs of consciousness are formal signs -- signs that do not involve what you are calling a vehicle.

Going deeper, since the formal signs that are our thoughts can do only one thing -- point beyond themselves to their potential referents -- no ultimate analysis can end at the sign. To get a fundamental understanding we need to consider the relation of sign and referent, and so the nature of the referent.

Thus, if there were no subject of experience, 'I' and the <I> idea it expresses would be empty. They might have meaning, but that meaning would lack an existential referent. Clearly, each of us is a continuing subject of experience. So, while 'I' is a sign, its referent is not.

My question is whether we can ever have pure information? Clearly we have the concept of information that is able to be 'encoded in any number of physical forms' via a 'shared convention.' But is this a merely theoretical sundering of a primordial unity? We might also ask if we ever experience the present as an instant or whether this too attaches a mathematical concept to something that is not a point. — sign

I think this is a very good question, and one that is difficult to articulate. If we take Claude Shannon's definition of information as the reduction of possibility, then information is essentially limiting and complete limitation results in non-being -- nothingness. But, we have a contrary notion of information, one about intelligibility, about being aware of reality. As opposed to Shannon's notion, this kind of information grows as our awareness increases, and reaches its ultimate realization in the awareness of Pure Being -- God.

We might also ask if we ever experience the present as an instant or whether this too attaches a mathematical concept to something that is not a point. — sign

I think mystical awareness might be what you are thinking of. If you're religious you might read St. John of the Cross. If you want a more philosophical account, W. T. Stace and D.T. Suzuki are good starting points. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness is an atheist perspective.

Forgetting this is a prime example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (thinking what exists only in abstraction is the concrete reality in its fullness). — Dfpolis

This seems important to me. I get a similar idea from Hegel. Do you have an opinion on Hegel? — sign

I'm not well-read in 19th century German philosophy, so any opinion I have would be ill-informed.

At the beginning of natural science, we abstract the object from the subject — Dfpolis

Would you not say that this happened even before natural science? The division of subject and object just seems so useful that it's hard to imagine it not being in play long before science as we know it. Along with it I'd expect there to be the 'ur-science' of unthematized induction. — sign

I am not talking about when the distinction came to be. It has a long history. You can find it in early Vedic works. I am talking about a conscious decision to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. This exclusion is not present in Aristotle, for example. In thinking about the mind, he includes both objective and subjective data. His analysis of intentional operations is paralleled with physical hypotheses about the mechanisms of sensation and first-hand anatomical work. The fact that he thought that the blood vessels were data conduits and the heart the central processing organ is incidental to the fact that he saw the need to understand physical and intentional data equally important.

This is great. What is maybe not addressed is the metaphoricity of language. While some meaning can be represented as a stream of bits, it's not obvious to me that meaning in general can be. — sign

Of course. We can only look at so much at any one time. In chapter 4 of my book, I deal with the rules of evidence and have a long discussion of analogical reasoning, of which metaphoric reasoning is a type.

I take consciousness to be awareness of present, typically neurophysiologically encoded, intelligibility. — Dfpolis

How do you differentiate this view from materialism or ‘brain-mind’ identity theory? — Wayfarer

It is different because those theories do not see the need for an intentional subsystem in their theory of mind. The brain clearly encodes and processes information. But, as discussed by Aristotle in De Anima iii, encoded information, while intelligible is not actually known. For actual knowing to occur we need more than the presence of intelligibility, we need the simultaneous actualization of two potencies: the object's intelligibility (as neurally encoded) needs to become actually known, and the subject's capacity to be informed (Aristotle calls it nous pathetikos = "passive intellect," because it is receptive) needs to be actually informed.

Until this dual actualization happens, we have a mere physical state -- something fully describable in terms of its intrinsic material properties. After the actualization, we have an intentional state -- one about the encoded contents.

This operation, the conversion of materially encoded intelligibility to a specific act of awareness, is not a physical operation, for such operations can only change the intrinsic form of states, they cannot make them directed to something else, as intentional states are. So, we need a subsystem of mind that is not describable by physics.

This view is fully compatible with all that we know from neuroscience. For example, it tells us why defective processing leads to defective thinking. (Awareness is presented with defectively encoded contents.) So, it represents no rejection of scientific understanding. It just says that to be aware we need not only contents to be aware of, but a subjective component aware of those contents.

I think the causality can run in either direction. As the placebo effect shows, what we think can affect our physical health. As neurophysical processing affects the contents we are aware of, defective processing can lead to defective thinking. — Dfpolis

How does one make sense of this? A causes B and B causes A? — Noah Te Stroete

The causality is not circular because it is not in the same act. In perception, material states inform intentional states (not as agents, but as formal causes). In volition, intentional states actualize possible material states as efficient and formal causes.

No question is dumb if it aids understanding.

The problem with "to specify a desire", or "to specify an intention", is as Tim woods alludes to above. Intentions and desires are derived from, and based in, something general and very unspecified, just like angst. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here, we need to apply the definition of an intentional state as one whose nature points beyond itself -- Brentano's "aboutness" criterion. If, as I've been discussing with Tim Wood, we understand "angst" to mean a purely neurophysiological condition, fully defined by objective symptoms, then it it is a material and not an intentional state. If we we define "angst" to include the awareness of such a material state, then angst, like many human conditions, is an integral effect involving both materiality and intentionality -- with our awareness being intentional because it is about the material condition.

Consider "hunger" for example. It might start as a strange feeling inside. Then the person may specify it from this general feeling, so as to associate the feeling with the stomach. Then one might further specify it as a want for food. From here the individual might consider possible food sources, and specify a particular food desired. Then the person might develop the very specific intention of getting a particular thing which is thought of, to eat. So intention's "intrinsic nature", is for something very general, and unspecific, but when we derive a specific intention, we go "beyond its intrinsic nature" (as you say) because intention is based in a general feeling. — Metaphysician Undercover

I made a similar point in the previous thread ("Fallacies of Strawson's Argument vs. Free Will"). Physical desires begin with a natural deficit signaled, neurally and/or endocrinologically, to the brain. There the response can be purely physical (not involving awareness and so not rising to the level of intentionality), or we can be aware of the signaled state, in which case intentionality enters.

Being aware of the state does not mean that we immediately know how to correct it. As you point out, over time we may come to know more clearly what object or kind of object will allow us to meet the deficit. That, then, is the object of the engendered desire -- and obtaining it is the thing we "ought" to do. Thus, "ought" is not divorced from "is," but is based on our nature, its end (telos), and the resulting hierarchy of needs described by Maslow.

I mean does your view of intentionality separate it out from the external stimuli that may have caused it? — Noah Te Stroete

No, an act of awareness is typically about the sensory contents that inform it.

Alternatively, information and matter make a pretty sound modern naturalism. What can be dubbed the pan-semiotic approach. — apokrisis

Naturalism is a vaguely defined and, in my considered and elaborated view, irrational movement motivated by an a priori prejudice against what its proponents call "spooky" realities. The invocation of such deprecatory language in its definition should be enough to place rational minds on high alert. Further, as I point out in my book, it is a Zombie theory -- no matter how many times it is killed, it keeps coming back to life. So, I am not one to judge what would or would not be a "sound" form of naturalism.

I can only ask what is a good and consistent framework for understanding the full range of human experience? Providing such a framework, rather than justifying prejudices, is my vision for philosophy. It seems to me that since experience is continually surprising us, no approach that begins with a priori exclusions can be such a framework. Rather we must examine human experience in many complementary projections to see if we've covered all the bases.

Semiotics has to do with signs, which are relational structures linking sign and meaning. Empirically meaning is found only in human thought. So, a semiotic theory that does not rest on a deep understanding of human thought is necessarily incomplete. While a perfectly fine field of study, it is necessarily limited by various abstractions. Thus, it cannot be the basis of a framework spanning the full range of experience.

Where we make a huge ontological mistake is to abstract the "mental" as a simple. A basic kind of substance or stuff. — apokrisis

Empirically, the human mind is limited in the number of "chunks" of information it can consider at one time. We must, then, choose to focus on some aspects of reality to the exclusion of others. Abstraction is the "stupid human trick" for dealing with this limitation. As far as I can tell, there is no intrinsic problem with this as long as we realize we are dealing with abstractions and so avoid Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

Reifying abstractions, as Descartes did, is an example of this fallacy. That we can separate mind in our thought, does not justify thinking that it is separate in reality. So, I agree with you. Further, he drew the line in the wrong place. How can we imagine extension, if at least part of the mind were not extended? So, there is not a line between matter and mind, but between material and intentional realities. The mind involves an interaction of matter and intentionality.

So while it is commonplace to set up physicalism in strawman fashion as a brute materialism, in fact science has moved on to a systems understanding of materiality in which information plays the role of developmental constraints. — apokrisis

I've argued previously that the laws of nature, intrinsic to physical operations, are in the same genus (Logical Propagators) as human committed intentions. So, in a way I agree, but I do not see science as having done more than abstract information as a kind of object to be processed. Intentionality, with its ontological dependence on an intending subject, goes beyond considering information as an object. It points to its intrinsically relational structure.

Information and matter produce this kind of composite ontology if materiality is understood as a radical instability. — apokrisis

But, information is an abstraction that leaves out the necessity of an informed intellect for its actualization. A sign (sema) is only informative when it actually informs an intellect to reduce logical possibility -- for that is the definition of information. So, intellect has logical and ontological priority over information, and therefore over signs as carriers of information. Consequently, semiotics in abstraction cannot be the ultimate foundation for a comprehensive framework -- even if we add matter.

So it is time to dump the theistic metaphysics. — apokrisis

This is a complete non sequitur, even on your premises. Taking matter and information as principles does not imply that they exist without further explanation. Indeed, assuming that some phenomena need no explanation undermines the whole structure of science, the logic of which will fail if anything is a brute, unexplained, fact.

To still speak of the material aspect of being as a stuff with inherent properties is the strawman. It fails to keep up with modern physics. We now take a structural approach to particle physics where particles are stabilities only to the degree that instabilities have been contextually suppressed or thermally decohered. — apokrisis

As a physicist, I do not see how the fact that quanta are dynamic instead of static atoma does anything to support your case or undermine my position.

Is F=ma part of the explanation for why billiard ball B moved in vector v or not? — Terrapin Station

Materially considered, which is to say as a piece of text, it has nothing to do with the motion of billiard balls. Formally considered, which is to say as indicating relevant the physics, rather than the proposition as a text, yes, it partly explains the motion.

On your view of LFW and intentionality, wouldn’t you say that the depressive thoughts cause a neurochemical imbalance? — Noah Te Stroete

I think the causality can run in either direction. As the placebo effect shows, what we think can affect our physical health. As neurophysical processing affects the contents we are aware of, defective processing can lead to defective thinking.

No, it is not about psychological satisfaction, even though that is usually involved. It is about having a logical structure in which the premises entail the datum to be explained. — Dfpolis

Aside from the fact that we'd still be talking about psychological satisfaction in response to some set of words, equations, etc. — Terrapin Station

Logical satisfaction need not reference human psychology. So, any psychological satisfaction is only related per accidens to an explanation being logically satisfactory.

in this case, what you're saying is kind of ridiculous, because all we'd have to do for anything, then--in order to have an explanation for it--would be to forward two modus ponens to the effect of:

If x is F, then x is G (premise 1).
X is F (premise 2)
X is G (modus ponens a)
If x is G, then F is G (premise 3)
F is G. (modus ponens b) — Terrapin Station

I find this line of thought puzzling. For an explanation to be satisfactory, it has to be sound, not merely valid. Being sound requires that the premises be either true, or at least believed to be true. To be true means that they are adequate to reality. Thus, the hypotheticals you posit need to be grounded in reality by sufficient evidence to warrant their actual or plausible truth. So, positing an abstract structure is not "all we'd have to do."

Are you separating intentionality from the rest of experience (outside stimuli specifically)? Wouldn’t that be a fallacy? — Noah Te Stroete

No, I am not. I am talking about the conceptual space spanned by concepts and how they relate logically. I am not saying that there is no relation between intentional and material operations. Experientially, we know that committed intentions can issue in actions that affect material states.

Thanks for the clarification and reference.

I really have no idea what "explanatory invariant" is supposed to amount to. — Terrapin Station

It amounts to the basis of scientific understanding. Every branch of science has unchanging principles, their explanatory invariants, in terms of which its phenomena are understood. For example, we understand physical processes in terms of invariant physical laws. In controlled experiments, we vary only one factor at a time, so we can isolate the invariant explanation from other factors. In evolution the invariant principles are unpredictable variation, inheritability, and natural selection.

Explanations are not the sorts of things that are invariant. Explanations are about language usage and especially how people interpret the same. So how would it make sense to attach the word "invariant" to "explanatory"? — Terrapin Station

That we use language to express explanations does not mean the explanations are about language (unless we are lingusits). Explanations are logical structures that we typically express in language.

I have just explained the role of invariance in theories.

All knowledge is a subject-object relation. — Dfpolis

There, I'd want to clear up if he's doing some sort of ontological analysis or propositional analysis. — Terrapin Station

I am discussing the ontological nature of knowledge, not how that knowledge may or may not be expressed propositionally.

The material and intentional aspects of reality are logically orthogonal. — Dfpolis


I understand at least some of the common definitions of "othogonal" in mathematics and physics. But as with "explanatory" and "invariant," I have no idea how things can be "logically orthogonal," especially not when we're talking about "aspects of reality," or really, empirical stuff in general, since that's not the purview of logic. — Terrapin Station

To be orthogonal is to have no basis vectors in common. Here I am following Carnap in thinking of independent judgements as spanning the space of human knowledge. In it, orthogonal subspaces do not overlap, and so cannot imply each other's elements.

The purview of logic, defined as the science of correct thinking, is the soundness of thought about reality, and reality is known empirically.

I hope this makes my meaning clearer to you.

Whatever coffee you're drinking this morning, please keep drinking it. — tim wood

Thank you. It's Kirkland Colombian.

Do you think this is why we have the current break between Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics and the strangeness of QM? — Harry Hindu

I think the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness plays a pivotal role in the confusion surrounding quantum theory, but explaining this would take us far afield. An outline of my position is at https://www.researchgate.net/project/A-Manifest-Varaibles-Approach-to-Quanum-Theory, and I have explained a lot of points in comments to my YouTube videos on quantum topics. (Dfpolis channel)

If you change your intent, you no longer the same intention, but a different intention. — Dfpolis

What do you mean by "no longer the same intention"? Wouldn't it just be the same intention that changed, just like everything else does, like "matter"? Everything changes. Change is the essence of time. — Harry Hindu

I meant to write "you no longer have the same intent." I have edited the post to correct this.

No, it would not be the same intention. In a physical change, the material in the initial state, which is an aspect of that state, is found, in different form, in the final state. In a change of intention, what is the same is not part of the original intention, but the intending subject. We simply stop believing in Santa, and start not believing in Santa. The Principle of Excluded Middle forbids a continuous transformation as in the physical case. Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous.

Matter's appearance of having parts outside of parts is a result of how our minds categorize space. — Harry Hindu

If there were no parts outside of parts in reality, the mind would have no reason to separate them in thought.

A transmission takes time. You are talking about a causal relationship. All effects carry information about their causes. The tree rings in a tree stump still refers to the age of the tree even if no one is there to look at it. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

I am not denying the role of cause and effect. I am saying that matter is logically orthogonal to intent.

Information surely has causes, many of which are material. In my message example, the transmission process is described by physics, but the apprehension of information is not. Nothing described by physics involves awareness per se.

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology. — Terrapin Station

That is your belief. What is your justification?

"Explanatory invariant"? What's that? — Terrapin Station

The one principle explaining many cases. For example, the laws of nature are explanatory invariants because they, while unchanging, explain many, variable phenomena. It is by seeing what remains the same while the details vary that we come to an understanding of causality.