If I understand you correctly, you mean the observer by ''knowing subject'' and you consider it different from the observed - the ''known subject''.

Why? — TheMadFool

Because, as Aristotle points out in De Anima iii, in the act of coming to know sensible objects, the knower acts as an agent, while the known is a patient. Before we come to know the object. it is intelligible, but not actually understood. We are capable of being informed, but not actually informed (wrt the object). When we turn our attention to the sensory representation, both of these potencies are actualized by a single act.

Since the object has only the potential to operated in the logical order, it is not yet operational, and so cannot operate to make itself known. Nor, for that matter, can our capacity to be informed (nous pathetikos = passive intellect). Still, there is an aspect of the subject, which Aristotle calls nous poiētikos (the agent intellect), which is operative and so capable of actualizing both potencies. If there were not, intelligibility could not become actually known, and we could not become actually informed.

If one reflects on the phenomenology, it is easy to identify the agent intellect with our awareness, for it is by turning our awareness to various objects that we come to know them.

Thus, subjects and their sensible objects are distinct and related as agent and patient.

What other concept makes you feel that way? If I understand you correctly you don't consider material (scientific) explanations adequate to explain the ''knowing subject''. — TheMadFool

You understand me correctly. Feelings are irrelevant to deciding such abstract questions. They are to be resolved by logical analysis -- which begins by noting that every instance of actual knowledge requires a knowing subject and a known object.

Why and how is the ''knowing subject'' different from the ''known subject''? — TheMadFool

I wrote "knowing subject" to make role of the subject in the subject-object relation of knowing clear. Of course, we also know the operation of the subject, or we could not discuss it.

Contrary to Gilbert Ryle's claim in the Concept of Mind, we know ourselves by introspection. How is this possible? Because every act of knowing is informative not only of its primary, typically sensible, object, but of ourselves as subjects. Let us call the known sensible thing the "objective object" and ourselves, as known concomitantly, the "subjective object." If I am aware of seeing a ball, the objective object is the ball, but the act of knowing the ball is replete with information about myself as subject. I am informed that I can see, that I can know sensible objects, etc. The powers so known are aspects of myself as subject and, jointly, these powers constitute the subjective object in seeing the ball.

No honest question needs an apology. Thank you for your interest.

What is interesting is the ''hard'' in The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Why didn't Chamlers use ''impossible''? — TheMadFool

Because he do not understand the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science and its implications.

Are you taking this a step further and claiming this is the IMPOSSIBLE problem of consciousness? — TheMadFool

Yes. I am not saying that we cannot understand consciousness, only that to do so requires primitive concepts that were projected out of natural science when it left our experience as knowing subjects on the table to fix attention on known physical objects.

There is nothing "spooky" or unnatural about being a knowing subject. It is just logically distinct from being a known object and so beyond the scope of concepts that apply only to reality as objective.

So a datum (asymmetry or symmetry) is epistemically and ontically foundational? — Galuchat

Data are the given that we seek to understand. As given they are irreducible and so fundamental. Since things a given when we interact with them they are ontologically prior to being given. Still as far as thought goes, things have to be given before we can reflect on them.

This sounds like nominalism, is that correct? — aporiap

It is Moderate Realism, which sees universal concepts grounded in the objective character of their actual and potential instances rather than in Platonic Ideas or Neoplatonic Exemplars. Nominalism and conceptualism see universals as categories arbitrarily imposed by individual fiat or social convention.

1.

Why would the program not be conscious when running the first 5 steps of the algorithm? — aporiap

If we assume that consciousness is the result of the mere presence of all the steps, then it will not be conscious for 1-5 because the minimum complexity is absent. On the other hand, if we think consciousness is a consequence of running the instructions, it can't be either. Why? Because if running only a few steps elicited consciousness, then the program we started with would not be the shortest possible, since the few steps (1-5) we ran to elicit consciousness would be shorter.

Why not it simply loose consciousness when the program has reached the missing instruction in the same way a computer program freezes if there is an error in a line of the code and simply resume running once the code is fixed? — aporiap

The program does not run into the missing instruction. It is halted and the instruction removed, then later replaced before it is executed.

The way this scenario is construed makes an issue for any kind of binary descriptor of a continually running algorithm [e.g. any sort of game, any sort of artificial sensor, any sort of continually looping program] not just specifically for ascribing consciousness to an algorithm. Eg. Say you call this algorithm an 'atmospheric sampler'. Say you take one instruction out now it is no longer an atmospheric sampler algorithm because it cannot sample, let it run until after the instructional code, now repair the instruction and it has become an atmospheric sampler seemingly a-causally. — aporiap

No. Notice that we run all the original instructions. Any program that simply runs an algorithm runs it completely. So, your 'atmospheric sampler' program does everything needed to complete its computation.

The problem is, we have no reason to assume that the generation of consciousness is algorithmic. Algorithms solve mathematical problems -- ones that can be presented by measured values or numerically encoded relations. We have no such representation of consciousness. Also, data processing operates on representations of reality, it does not operate on the reality represented. So, even if we had a representation of consciousness, we would not have consciousness.

In the computational theory of mind, consciousness is supposed to be an emergent phenomenon resulting from sufficiently complex data processing of the right sort. This emergence could be a result of actually running the program, or it could be the result of the mere presence of the code. If it is a result of running the program, it can't be the result of running only a part of the program, for if the part we ran caused consciousness, then it would be a shorter program, contradicting our assumption. So, consciousness can only occur once the program has completed -- but then it is not running, which means that an inoperative program is causes consciousness.

We are left with the far less likely scenario in which the mere presence of the code, running or not, causes consciousness. First, the presence of inoperative code is not data processing, but the specification of data processing. Second, because the code can be embodied in any number of ways, the means by which it effects consciousness cannot be physical. But, if it can't be physical, and it's not data processing, what is is the supposed cause?

The implicit assumption is that the complexity of an algorithm is what generates consciousness and that complexity is reduced by reducing the number of instructions. — aporiap

The general assumption among supporters of the computational theory is that complexity is required. I never found that assumption cogent, and do not make it myself. The argument does not relate program length to complexity. It only notes that if there is a Turing programs able to generate consciousness, one or more of them must be of minimal length. Whether is tis complex or simple is irrelevant to the argument.

This assumes data processing can only happen in a turing machine like manner — aporiap

No, not at all. It only depends on the theorem that all finite state machines can be represented by Turing machines. If we are dealing with data processing per se, the Turing model is an adequate representation. If we need more than the Turing machine model, we are not dealing with data processing alone, but with some physical property of the machine.

I agree that the brain uses parallel processing, and might not be representable as a finite state machine. Since it is continually "rewiring" itself, its number of states may change over time, and since its processing is not digital, its states may be more continuous than discrete. So, I am not arguing that the brain is a finite state machine. I am arguing against those who so model it in the computational theory of mind.

Perhaps this is why say, a neuron, which is a single processing unit is not capable of consciousness whereas a conglomerate of neurons is. — aporiap

This assumes facts not in evidence. David Chalmers calls this the "Hard Problem" because not only do we have no model in which a conglomerate of neurons operate to produce consciousness, but we have no progress toward such a model. Daniel Dennett argues at length in Consciousness Explained that no naturalistic model of consciousness is possible.

It is also clear that a single physical state can be the basis for more than one intentional state at the same time. For example, the same neural representation encodes both my seeing the cat and the cat modifying my retinal state.

Why make the dichotomy between "natural" and "psychological" objects? — aporiap

"Dichotomy" implies a clean cut, an either-or. I am not doing that. I see the mind, and the psychology that describes it, as involving two interacting subsystems: a neurophysical data processing subsystem (the brain) and an intentional subsystem which is informed by, and exerts a degree of control over, it (intellect and will). Both subsystems are fully natural.

There is, however, a polarity between objects and the subjects that are aware of them.

even in the physical sciences we don't have access to 'things in themselves' anyway, — aporiap

Please rethink this. Kant was bullheaded in his opposition to Hume's thesis that there is no intrinsic necessity to time ordered causality. As a result he sent philosophy off on a tangent from which it is yet to fully recover.

The object being known by the subject is identically the subject knowing the object. As a result of this identity there is no room for any "epistic gap." Phenomena are not separate from noumena. They are the means by which noumena reveal themselves to us.

We have access to reality. If we did not, nothing could affect us. It is just that our access is limited. All human knowledge consists in projections (dimensionally diminished mappings) of reality. We know that the object can do what it is doing to us. We do not know all the other things it can do.

We observe everything by its effects. It is just that some observations are more mediated than others.

The point is that these fall within the range of natural objects albeit of a lesser degree as opposed to something wholly different so as to involve a completely different way of knowing or learning about them. — aporiap

This is very confused. People have learn about themselves by experiencing their own subjectivity from time immemorial. How doe we know we are conscious? Surely not by observations of our physical effects. Rather we know our subjective powers because we experience ourselves knowing, willing, hoping, believing and so on.

Those words still mean what the author intended even if no one ever reads what he wrote — Harry Hindu

Yes, they do, but that only supports my point that intent is logically prior to expression. They have meaning only because they express their authors intent. Yet, when the author is gone and her language forgotten, the meaning of her words is only latent and will remain so unless and until someone is able to decode her language

Just because some effect isn't noticed, or part of some awareness, doesn't mean that the cause never happened. — Harry Hindu

I agree completely. I never claimed otherwise.

You are basically saying that meaning only arises in the relationship between matter and ideas. I'm saying there is no distinction that you have been able to coherently show between them and that they are both causal and can establish the same kind of relationships - meaningful/causal. Meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

You are confusing potential meaning, intelligibility, which is found in matter, with actual meaning, which is found only in minds.

I explained in the OP how matter and ideas differ. That both can cause effects only means that they both exists. To make your case, you must show that they cause the same kinds of effects. They do not. Ideas are formal signs and can do only one thing -- refer to their real, potential or imagined objects. Matter does many things, but intrinsically, it does not refer to anything. Of course, we can use it as evidence for its causes, but to be actual evidence minds have to understand its causal relations. So any actual meaning matter has depends on the extrinsic factor of a mind actualizing its intelligibility.

If they can't be imagined, then how do you know what they mean? How do you know that you're thinking of <indenumerable infinity> or of <existence> if they don't have any imagery that the words refer to? How do you distinguish between <indenumerable infinity> and <existence> in your mind (other than seeing the words on a screen)? — Harry Hindu

I know the meaning of abstract concepts because I grasp the notes of comprehension that define them. I may think of, or even imagine, examples, but the examples are not the meaning. I understand <indenumerable> as ruling out countability -- counting has no power to exhaust what is indenumerable. I understand <infinite> as denying limits. I understand <existence> as reflecting the power to act in some way -- but as <existence> places no limit on the kind of act, it cannot be imagined, even though I can imagine specific things doing specific acts.

Again, if words don't refer to some mental image, then what do they refer to? — Harry Hindu

Words refer to any object able to properly evoke the idea they express. "Human" refers to any being that, when encountered, can properly evoke the idea <human>. "Properly" carries a lot of weight here, but it is easy to define. An instance can properly evoke an idea if its notes of intelligibility (what can be known about it) correspond to the notes of comprehension defining the idea.

Again, yes, we typically think of an example when we think of concepts, but the example will always have specific characteristics ("accidents") not found in the concept. So, the example is not the concept.

I think your problem is that you are over-complicating things. — Harry Hindu

My problem is that I'm doing philosophy where small errors can quickly grow into ludicrous positions. So, I have to be very precise.

what does the scribbles, "unicorn" refer to? — Harry Hindu

As I said, the image thought of as existing. Harry Potter does not exist, but when we talk about him, we think of him as though he did exist. Aristotle called this "the willing suspension of disbelief."

Another contradiction! Unicorns don't exist, yet all there is to a unicorn is what we imagine! — Harry Hindu

This is not a contradiction if you accept what I said about the image thought of as existing.

What does your unicorn look like? How do you know you're thinking of a unicorn? — Harry Hindu

The minimalist idea of a unicorn is a horse with a horn between its eyes. In my imagination they are small, white, and have a spiral on the horn. Still, if an author wished to write of a variant on this, I would take no exception.

How do you know what those strings of symbols mean? — Harry Hindu

The meanings of word strings is defined by a shared social convention that we learn.

Actually, I'd go so far as to say that categories only exist in minds. Therefore the only kind of category is a mental category, (or a concept). — Harry Hindu

I would agree as long as you admit that universal ideas have a foundation in reality. E.g. each homo sapiens has the objective capacity to evoke the concept <human>.

So why place them in the category, "ideas"? — Harry Hindu

Because they have something (not everything) in common: their whole being, all they can do, is refer. — Dfpolis

And so can matter. I already went over this. — Harry Hindu

And I already explained that potential reference is not actual reference.

So you have yet to explain the difference between "matter" and "ideas". — Harry Hindu

As we are making no progress, this should be our last exchange on this topic.

how are intents different than matter if in both cases there is a constant and something that changes? — Harry Hindu

Again, because when material objects change, what remains unchanged is their matter. When intentions change, they do not remain through the change. The old one ceases to be and the new one comes to be.

Being actually predetermined is not the same as actually existing. — Dfpolis

Sure it is. It is your perception of time that makes you see the future as something that doesn't exist yet. — Harry Hindu

Baloney! It may be predetermined that rain will fall in the desert. That will not prevent dying of thirst as actual rain can.

Your mind stretches those causal relationships — Harry Hindu

I understand that this is your belief. I also understand that sometimes "time flies" and other times it seems to crawl. I do not see that this tells us anything about the objective nature of time.

First, the word, "unicorn" does not just evoke <unicorn>, the word itself is evoked by <unicorn>. As I have been saying, words and ideas are both causes and effects of each other, and each carries information about each other. — Harry Hindu

The word is indeed evoked by the idea in the author of a locution, but it must evoke the idea in the recipient if the locution is to communicate. If I look at the word "unicorn," and have no idea what a unicorn is, the string cannot signify unicorns to me. That is why unknown languages are meaningless to us -- because they are incapable of evoking the ideas their authors intended in us.

Second, I have no idea what you mean by "imagined/potential unicorns". There is the word, "unicorn", pictures of unicorns, and the idea <unicorn> (a mental image of a unicorn), and the causal relationship between them. That's it. An imagined unicorn is just another name for the mental image of a unicorn. — Harry Hindu

Universal ideas do not just apply to actual instances but to any potential instance we may encounter in the future. Even if you believe unicorns are impossible, you still want the idea <unicorn> to apply to imagined unicorns.

Ideas are not images. First, some ideas are too abstract to be imagined. What is the image of <indenumerable infinity> or of <existence>? How could we have an image of indenumerable infinity using a finite number of neurons? Second, ideas are indeterminate, while images are determinate. Is the idea <human> black, Caucasian or Asian; male or female; old or young; tall or short? None, of course, but any image will have definite characteristics.

An imagined unicorn is not the mental image of a unicorn, which is an image, not a unicorn, but a mental image thought of as existing.

While there are categories, <category> is not a fundamental concept. An instance is in a category because its objective nature, its intelligibility, is able to evoke the concept defining the category. If beagles were not able to evoke the concept <dog> they would not be categorized as dogs. So concepts are logically prior to categories -- and concepts refer to all of their potential instances, not just those that we have experienced or those that actually exist at any given time. — Dfpolis

This is just more confusing. This is just a bunch of unnecessary use of terms in a long-winded explanation. — Harry Hindu

The point is that categories are based on concepts and concepts are based on objective intelligibility being actualized by minds. So, appealing to categories does not avoid dependence on mental concepts.

All I am saying is that ideas have causal power. — Harry Hindu

I accept that.

Does an idea of a unicorn exhaust a unicorn like the idea of a horse exhausts a horse? — Harry Hindu

As unicorns don't exist, all that there is to a unicorn is what we imagine it to be. Horses, on the other hand are real, and can be studied. Over time we learn more, and it is always possible to to be surprised. So our idea <horse> does not exhaust the reality of horses.

No, that isn't an example of my restatement of your claim.
It would be more like we have 100 different things with no relationship at all. Everything would be made of a completely different element and with a different function. Using your explanation of "essences" and "existence" there is no possibility for the existence of categories. — Harry Hindu

I still don't understand your reasoning. Categories are based on common notes of intelligibility in their instances. All instances of materiality are extended and changeable. All instances of intentionality are about something.

This would mean that the idea of a horse and the idea of a unicorn have different essences because they both do different things. — Harry Hindu

Of course. The idea of a horse is not the idea of a unicorn. Still, both are ideas -- are about something -- and so are intentional realities.

So why place them in the category, "ideas"? — Harry Hindu

Because they have something (not everything) in common: their whole being, all they can do, is refer.

Can you please try to stay focused. That isn't what I asked. I don't think you're actually taking the time to read what I'm writing. You seem to only want to push your view. — Harry Hindu

I am doing my best to understand what you are saying. This should be clear from the time I spend responding to each point you make.

If two things do the same thing then they would have the same essence. Does the idea of grass eating grass have the same essence as the idea of a goat eating grass? — Harry Hindu

They would not have the same essence unless the full specification of their possible acts is the same. The fact that they share some powers is not enough. So, no, the idea grass eating grass would not have the same essence as the idea of a goat eating grass. While both are ideas because all they can do is refer, what they refer to is different. So they can't both perform the same act (refer to a goat eating grass).

And I already went over this with you where you talked about how you change your intent and I pointed out how this is no different than how an apple changes color, but you didn't respond to it. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I know. I did not respond, because I did not understand how it helped you. Say an apple changes color from green to red. The principle of continuity, what remains the same, is the apple, not the color. One color ceases to be, and the other comes to be. In the same way, if I change my intent, I, the intending subject remains, but my old intent ceases to be and my new intent comes to be. The principle of excluded middle allows no continuity between willing to go and not willing to go, or between no being red and being red.

On the other hand, matter is, itself, a principle of continuity. The mass before a physical transformation is the mass after the transformation. So, I don't see how this helps you.

No, the present state is one of the universe's actual predetermined states. — Harry Hindu

Being actually predetermined is not the same as actually existing.

I think you have this backward. Time is a measure of change, and change occurs because what was merely potential becomes actual. Determinism is irrelevant to the reality of change. — Dfpolis

Time is the stretching out of the causal relationships that make up the universe. A causal relationship is a change (cause and effect). — Harry Hindu

I have no idea what "Time is the stretching out of the causal relationships that make up the universe," means. I have a very good idea of what "Time is the measure of change according to before and after means." We have no power to stretch causal relations. We do have the power to measure change.

Dfpolis, thank you for the excellent post! — aporiap

You are welcome. I thank you for your thoughtful consideration and wish you and yours a joyful Christmas.

You explicitly state in the previous sentence the separation is [by substance?] mental. How would you categorize 'mental separation' if not as an ontological separation? — aporiap

The basis for logically distinct concepts need not be separate, or ontologically independent, objects. In looking at a ball, I might abstract <sphere> and <rubber> concepts without spheres existing separately from matter, or matter existing formlessly. Thus, by ontological separation, I mean existing independently or apart. By logical distinction, I mean having different notes of comprehension.

Further, while concepts may have, as their foundation in reality, the instances that can properly evoke them, they are not those instances. The concept <rubber> is not made of the sap of Hevea brasiliensis. Natural rubber typically its. So, generally, in contrasting logical and ontological I am contrasting concepts with their foundation in reality.

Finally, concepts are not things, but reified activities. <Rubber> is just a subject thinking of rubber.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. ....

Well I think this is a bit 'low resolution'/unspecific. It's definitively clear neurophysiological data alone isn't sufficient for awareness but that doesn't mean that a certain kind of neurophysiological processing is not sufficient - this is the bigger argument here. — aporiap

It is low resolution. My purpose was to convince the reader that we need more than mere "data processing" to explain awareness -- to open minds to the search for further factors.

In my book, I offer the following:

The missing-instruction argument shows that software cannot make a Turing machine conscious. If software-based con­­­scious is possible, there exists one or more programs complex enough to generate consciousness. Let’s take one with the fewest possible instructions, and remove an instruction that will not be used for, say, ten steps. Then the Turing machine will run the same as if the removed instruction were there for the first nine steps.

Start the machine and let it run five steps. Since the program is below minimum complexity, it is not conscious. Then stop the machine, put back the missing instruction, and let it continue. Even though it has not executed the instruction we replaced, the Turing machine is conscious for steps 6-9, because now it is complex enough. So, even though nothing the Turing machine actually does is any different with or without the instruction we removed and replaced, its mere presence makes the machine conscious.

This violates all ideas of causality. How can something that does nothing create consciousness by its mere presence? Not by any natural means – especially since its presence has no defined physical incarnation. The instruction could be on a disk, a punch card, or in semiconductor memory. So, the instruction can’t cause consciousness by a specific physical mech­anism. Its presence has to have an immaterial efficacy independent of its physical encoding.

One counterargument might be that the whole program needs to run before there is consciousness. That idea fails. Con­sciousness is continuous. What kind of consciousness is unaware the entire time contents are being proces­sed, but becomes aware when processing has terminated? None.

Perhaps the program has a loop that has to be run though a certain number of times for consciousness to occur. If that is the case, take the same program and load it with one change – set the machine to the state it will have after the requisite number of iterations. Now we need not run through the loop to get to the con­scious state. We then remove an instruction further into the loop just as we did in the original example. Once again, the presence of an inoperative instruction creates consciousness. — Dennis F. Polis -- God, Sceince and Mind, p. 196

Thus, we can eliminate data processing, no matter how complex, as a cause of consciousness.

John Searle points us in a different direction, suggesting that it may not be abstract, but embodied, data processing that gives rise to consciousness. In other words, that some cryptic property of the physical brain, and not its mere data processing, causes consciousness. I am happy to agree that consciousness is unexpectedly (from the perspective of physics) found in humans. Still, the claim of emergence from cryptic (aka "occult") properties of matter is not an explanation, but a belief.

In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness....

I don't think the first sentence ... leads to the conclusion in the second sentence.

Empiricism starts with defining a phenomenon -any phenomenon. Phemonema can be mental or physical or can even be some interaction between mental and physical ... — aporiap

I have no problem with empiricism. I see the role of philosophy as providing a consistent framework for understanding of all human experience. My observation is directed specifically at natural science, which I think is rightly described as focused on physical objects, or if you prefer, physical phenomena.

Aristotle, who I think has made as much progress as anyone on understanding the nature of consciousness, based his work on experience, but treated our experience as subjects on an equally footing with our experience of physical objects.

So connections are in fact being attempted between what's traditionally been considered a 'mental field' e.g. psychology and 'physical' fields e.g. biophysics. — aporiap

Yes, they have. I am not disputing this, nor do I have a problem with holistic explanation. I am merely pointing out that physicalist approaches, and those naturalistic approaches founded on physicalism or materialism, are logically incapable of explaining consciousness, and that, as a consequence, the "Hard Problem" is a chimera.

To be orthogonal is to be completely independent of the other [for one to not be able to directly influence the other]. — aporiap

That is not what I explained that I mean by concepts being orthogonal. I explicitly said, "... logically orthogonal. That is to say, that,though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes." Having non-overlapping sets of defining notes makes concepts orthogonal -- not the consideration of interactions in their instances, which is a contingent matter to be resolved by reflecting on experience.

Concepts are abstractions and do not "interact." All that concepts do (their whole being) is refer to their actual and potential instances. Still, it is clear to all but the most obdurate ideologues, that intentionality can inform material states. Whenever we voice a concept, when we speak of our intentions, our speech acts are informed by intentional states. Conversely, in our awareness of sensory contents, material states inform the resulting intentional states. So, the fact that intentional and material abstractions are orthogonal does not prevnt material and intentional states from interacting.

What reflecting on the orthogonality of materiality and intentionality does, is force us to look for bridging dynamics. Whatever dynamics allows intentions to inform material states, in describing it, we must employ both material and intentional concepts. Whatever dynamics allows material states to inform our consciousness, in describing it, we also must employ both material and intentional concepts. If we did not, then there would be no "middle terms," no connections, leading us from one kind of state to another.

... the fact that this is a unidirectional interaction [i.e. that only physical objects can result in changes to mental states and not the other way around without some sort of physical mediator] gives serious reason to doubt an fundamentality to the mental field - at least to me it's clear its an emergent phenomenon out of fundamental material interactions. — aporiap

This misses the fact that intentional states do inform material states. That we are writing about and discussing intentionality shows that intentional states can modify physical objects (texts, pressure waves, etc.)

Think of the intention to go to the store. The resulting process is unlike a ballistic trajectory, which is fully determined by the initial physical state and the laws of nature. I go to the garage, and find my car will not start. This was unknown at decision time, and so can't be part of my initial state, but, if I am commited, I will find other means. I planned on a certain route, encoded in my initial state, but as I turn the corner, I find my way blocked by construction. I find an alternate route to effect my intended end. In all of this, the explanatory invariant (which can revealed by controlled experiments) is not my initial physical state, but my intended final state. Clearly, intentional states can produce physical events.

I'm unsure why intentions [my understanding of what you mean by intention is: the object of a mental act - judgement, perception, etc] are always considered without parts. I think, for example, a 'hope' is deconstruct-able, and [at least partly] composed of a valence component, an cognitive attitude of anticipation, a 'desire' or 'wanting' for a certain end to come about, the 'state of affairs' that defines the 'end'. and sometimes a feeling of 'confidence'. I can also imagine how this is biophysically instantiated [i.e. this intentional state is defined by a circuit interaction between certain parts of the reward system, cognitive system, and memory system]. So what you have is some emergent state [the mental state] composed of interacting elements. — aporiap

To say that intentions have "no parts outside of parts" does not mean that they are simple (unanalyzable). It means that they do not have one part here and another part there (outside of "here"). My intention to to go to the store is analyzable, say, into a commitment and a target of commitment (what if is about, viz. arriving at the store.) But, my commitment and the specification of my commitment are not in different places and so are not parts outside of other parts.

Of course my intention to go to the store has biophysical support. My claim is that its biophysical support alone is inadequate to fully explain it.

First, as explained in the scenario above, the invariance of the intended end in the face of physical obstacles shows that this is not a case covered by the usual paradigm of physical explanation -- one in which an initial state evolves deterministically under the laws of nature. Unlike a cannon ball, I do not stop when I encounter an obstacle. I find, or at least search for, other means. What remains constant is not the sum of my potential and kine

Second, you are assuming, without making a case, that many of the factors you mention are purely biophysical. How is the "valance component," as subjective value, grounded in biophysics? Especially when biophysics is solely concerned with objective phenomena? Again to have a "cognitive attitude" (as opposed to a neural data representation) requires that we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. What biophysical process is capable of making what was merely intelligible actually known -- especially given that knowledge is a subject-object relation and biophysics has no <subject> concept in its conceptual space?

Third, how is a circuit interaction, which is fully specified by the circuit's configuration and dynamics, "about" anything? Since it is not, it cannot be the explanation of an intentional state.

I'm still forming my thoughts on this and this part of your post but I'll give you a response when I think of one. — aporiap

I await your reflections.

Data being asymmetries, are you referring to anything other than symmetry? — Galuchat

I am sorry, I do not understand this, as it seems to me that symmetry is as much a datum as asymmetry. A priori, we could have either.

Thank you.

So, I consider the related general definitions of information, message, communication, code, and data to constitute a foundational concept which applies to both material (physical) and intentional (mental) domains. — Galuchat

If that were so, we could not define them in terms of more fundamental concepts, but I think we agree that we can.

Okay, the string, "unicorn" represents, or symbolizes (both are synonyms of "express") the idea <unicorn>. You seemed to contradict yourself by saying that universals refer to potential instances. — Harry Hindu

To express an idea is to instantiate a sign capable of evoking it. So, "unicorn" is an expression because can evoke <unicorn>. Still, it is not a symbol for the idea, because it is not the idea <unicorn>, but imagined/potential unicorns (animals) that both the word and the idea refer to.

Instead of "potential instances" - which seems like a loaded term, I'd use the term "category". Unicorns, cats, dogs and planets are categories. We put things (Uni) in mental boxes, or categories (unicorns) - Uni the unicorn. — Harry Hindu

While there are categories, <category> is not a fundamental concept. An instance is in a category because its objective nature, its intelligibility, is able to evoke the concept defining the category. If beagles were not able to evoke the concept <dog> they would not be categorized as dogs. So concepts are logically prior to categories -- and concepts refer to all of their potential instances, not just those that we have experienced or those that actually exist at any given time.

You said they have different essences because they can do different things. Every thing does something different, which means that each idea is a different essence, and each material thing is a different essence. — Harry Hindu

No, as I explained in my last response to this same issue, things are not essences. Essences are specifications of possible acts, but specifications do not entail that what is specified actually exists -- that it is operational.

Ideas are not things, but subjects thinking of things. Further, ideas are abstractions. The do not exhaust what we are thinking of. Since ideas are abstractions, they can leave individuating characteristics behind, and so the same idea can be evoked by many individuals. That is why many concepts are universal.

There is no distinction between what is ideas and what is matter if everything is different from each other. — Harry Hindu

This is a complete non sequitur, and I can't think of how you came to this conclusion. The fact that we have 100 different plastic toy cars does not mean that there is no difference between the idea of plastic and the idea of a toy car.

Goats eat grass, but grass doesn't eat grass, so they would be different essences. — Harry Hindu

Yes, goats and grass have (not are) different essences. Goats can eat grass , but not photosynthesize sugar. Grass can photosynthesize, but not eat grass.

But wait a second, can you imagine grass eating grass (the idea of grass eating grass)? Would that then make it the same essence as the idea of the goat eating grass? — Harry Hindu

We can imagine many things, but that does not make them exist. Grass that ate grass would have a different essence than actual grass.

Every thing has a different essence and existence. — Harry Hindu

Yes.

ach idea would have a different existence and essence. So what? What does that have to do with the difference between what an idea is and what matter is? You've simply explained the difference between things, not the difference between the category "idea" and "matter" — Harry Hindu

That is because the distinction of essence and existence is metaphysical (an observation about being as being) and applies to all finite beings. I explained it to deal with your misunderstanding my use of "essence," not to explain the difference between the concepts of materiality and intentionality, which I already explained in the OP.

To distinguish materiality and intentionality, we need to reflect on more than the fact that they both exist and have an essential character. We need to reflect on our contingent experience to see their essential differences -- what things in each category can do that things in the other category cannot.

It seems to me that one's essence defines one's existence. It seems to me that they are inseparable, as one's essence/existence is a relationship with everything else, so in a sense you did redefine "thing" as "essence/existence". In a deterministic world, that relationship would be deterministic, with no potentialities. — Harry Hindu

Yes, the relation of essence and existence is transcendental -- all beings have both and they are ontologically inseparable. Still, we can distinguish them mentally -- think of them separately.

Determinism alone does not eliminate the distinction between actual and potential. Even if the time-development of the universe were fully determined by its initial state at one time the present state was not the universe's actual state, but only a fully determined potential state.

"Potentialities" are the result of our perception of time, as if the future is yet to happen and still isn't determined. — Harry Hindu

I think you have this backward. Time is a measure of change, and change occurs because what was merely potential becomes actual. Determinism is irrelevant to the reality of change.

You still haven't addressed the differences between "idea" and "matter". — Harry Hindu

Reread the OP.

Sort of like how one has to select from a set of possible options. But there is only one meaning to the message - the source's intent. What did the sender intend when they wrote the message? How you interpret the message depends upon your experiences. Try to understand a message in a different language. How could you ever hope to come up with even a set of possible messages when looking at a different language? You'd have to learn the language, just as you have to learn the language of your sensory impressions. — Harry Hindu

Yes, there is more to semantic communication than the accurate reception of the physical message. That reception is only a preliminary step in a complex, semiotic process -- one that you have begun to sketch.

While semiotics is an important area of understanding, it is a tangent that would take us far from the topic of my OP.

Now you say that we ought to distinguish intentional from non-intentional, using the method of physics, which has no capacity to even recognize the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not my claim. While mathematical physics only considers objective physical reality as measurable, philosophy spans all reality. We can look at what physicists actually do, at the abstraction(s) and methods they employ, to see what physics is competent to discuss. So, I am using the method of physics materially, not formally. In other words, I'm not employing that method as my method, but looking at it as an object of study.

Now you say that we ought to distinguish intentional from non-intentional, using the method of physics, which has no capacity to even recognize the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Reality has a wide span. Physics deals with a subset of it. We can only decide which subset by looking at what physics actually does. I am not saying that whatever is left is intentional, because there could be "more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of" in our philosophy. I'm only saying that intentionality is not part of the subset dealt with by physics.

In doing that, I'm not defining the intentional as the complement of the physical -- that would beg the question in the OP. Rather, I am defining intentionality a posteriori, by looking at its nature and standing on the shoulders of those, such as Brentano, who've done so.

How are you going to convince a physicalist, who believes that there is no aspect of reality outside this physical part of reality, without referring to this part of reality which is outside. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't, nor have I tried to do so. If you look my arguments in the OP, they explicitly involve the intentional reality left on the table by the Fundamental Abstraction.

You cannot assume that the physicalist will accept your assumption that there is something outside the purview of physics, because this contradicts the physicalist premise, fundamentally. — Metaphysician Undercover

I assume only that physicalists experience more than their theory can account for. My task, then, is to induce them to reflect on the unexplained data.

As I already pointed out, it is you that is equivocating - using terms like, "matter", "ideas", "being" and "essences" without any clear explanation of what those things are. — Harry Hindu

In the course of the thread, I have explained what each of these terms means. You did not ask for further clarification when I did so. However, even if I were unclear, that is not equivocation, which requires the same term to to be used with different meanings in different instances.

So when you use the string of scribbles, "unicorn", what do those scribbles refer to? If it refers to your idea of a unicorn, then "unicorn" is an idea of a unicorn. — Harry Hindu

The string, "unicorn" expresses, but does not refer to, the idea <unicorn>. Except when we're considering ideas, universals do not refer to ideas, but to potential instances -- to potential realities that could evoke the idea when and if we experience them. Because of ideas' potential and contingent nature, the existence of an idea has no implications for extramental reality.

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. — Dfpolis

Then the grass would be a different essence than the goat. All you have done is redefine "thing" as "essence", and that throws a wrench into your explanation of "matter" and "ideas". — Harry Hindu

I am unsure what line of thought led you to this conclusion.

Things, beings, are characterized by an unspecified capacity to act. They are operational -- have "causal power" in your turn of phrase. That unspecified capacity is what is intended by the concept of <existence>.

We know from experience, however, that things can not only act, but act in specific ways. They can do these acts, but not those. Goats can eat grass. The idea of a goat can't. So, a thing being able to act in unspecified ways does not exhaust its reality. The specification of each thing's possible acts, which is its essence, resolves this indeterminacy.

In sum, essence is a specification, but an abstract specification does not entail that any operational thing has that specification. Existence reflects operational capability of what essence specifies.

So, I haven't redefined "thing" as essence. Every real thing has both essence (specification) and existence (operational capability).

Each idea does different things and would therefore be a different essence. How would you know that you have an idea of a horse as opposed to a unicorn, if those ideas didn't do different things? — Harry Hindu

I never said that the ideas <unicorn> and <horse> do the same things. <Unicorn> refers to actual and potential unicorns while <horse> refers to actual and potential horses. Contingently, there are no actual unicorns, but there are actual horses.

However, thanks for your clarification. From that, it appears we agree on the nature of Shannon information. Where we disagree, is that your original comment was "considering the message materially, as Shannon did". — Galuchat

I think I was by arguing from the bit-by-bit reception of the message instead of from its meaning.

Nonetheless, I was not entirely satisfied with my reply, as it did not close the loop bake to a mental foundation in the case of non-semantic "messages" such as DNA sequences. I left them with the reduction of ontological rather than logical possibility. That left open the possibility of understanding information without reference to a knowing subject.

As a result, I have further reflected on the reduction of ontological possibility . I have come to see that it is convertible with the specification of intelligibility, and, as a potency, intelligibility cannot be understood without reference to its actualization by a knowing subject. Thus, while the reduction of ontological possibility (something being formed) is not logical possibility, it is at the nexus of the logical and logical orders. It is the foundation in reality for our understanding of what is so formed.

Shannon defined information as communicated code (which can apply to physical, biological, and semantic processing), not as "the reduction of logical possibility" (which can only apply to semantic processing). — Galuchat

Shannon wrote:

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages (Italics added). — Claude Shannon -- A Mathematical Theory of Communication

Shannon then gives three reasons for using logarithms of the number of possible messages to measure information. So, it is clear that Shannon saw information as the reduction of possibility.

In support of your second point, he also says "These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem." However, he is not denying a semantic aspect -- only saying that any semantic aspect is irrelevant to communications engineering. In other words, communications engineering does not deal with information holistically, but in abstraction from its meaning.

That said, I think you're confused about what I am saying -- about what possibility is reduced in Shannon's definition. Messages can be considered formally or materially -- in terms of their meaning, or in terms of their physical character. While related, these are distinct concepts. Shannon, as an engineer, is concerned with the message's physical character, not specifically, but in abstraction as a way of encoding, say, bits.

If we take bits as an example, the engineering problem is that of receiving the bits properly. That problem conceives of the message materially, not formally. We care what the bits are, not what they mean. So far, I think we agree.

Where we disagree is how logical possibility relates to this. You have brought in semantics, pointing out that not all codes communicate meaning to minds. However, that is not what I meant in saying that the the possibility in Shannon's definition is logical. I am considering the message materially, as Shannon did -- not formally (as meaning something) as you are.

Thinking of messages materially, what is logically possible before a bit is received is that the bit can be an a or a b. What each state means semantically, or even in terms of 0s and 1s, is irrelevant to the engineering problem. So, the logic of this logical possibility relates only indirectly to the meaning a bit may evoke (its semantics). It relates to what the bits of the message might be before they are received.

So, as I have said, once the bits are transmitted, they are physically determined and it is no longer physically possible that they be other than they are. What is open before each bit is received, is the logical possibility of what it will be. Even if no mind is informed as each bit is received, the intelligibility of the received message is further determined (its possibilities are reduced). Intelligibility belongs to the logical order, or, perhaps, the ontological order.

Now consider a non-semantic "message," say a DNA sequence. If we are determinists with respect to purely physical processes, as I am, then every purely physical state, together with the laws of nature, determines the subsequent states. As there is only one physical possibility, information cannot reduce the set of physical possibilities. All the execution of the DNA code can do is inform the resulting structure -- reducing what is ontologically possible to what is physically actual.

So, in such cases we are not dealing with the reduction of physical possibilities (because there is only one), or with the reduction of logical possibilities (ignorance), because no one is being informed, but with the reduction of ontological possibility, because being can take many forms beyond that actualized by the DNA code.

I meant the general resurrection. The idea being that the end of man cannot result in an incomplete realization of human nature.

I sent you a message on the immortality thread idea.

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.