What I was driving at in the passage you weren't sure about was the [potential] priority of something other than concept and propositional truth when it comes to religion. — macrosoft

Yes, I think you are right. I think that is what Augustine was expressing in defining theology as "faith seeking understanding" (fide quaerens intellectum).

I can conceive an 'atheist' and a 'theist' being tuned in to the same hazy thing, merely with different words for it. — macrosoft

Agreed. I think what a lot of atheists reject is not what I understand by "God." When they tell me what they reject, I often agree with them.

I like this approach to the spiritual. It exists 'within.' — macrosoft

Thank you.

Right. And the 'object' of this knowledge and reflection might just be a 'how' of living, a way that cannot be fully formalized or publicly confirmed like the reading of a thermometer. — macrosoft

Right. Certainly not something measurable.

Where we might differ is that I don't see how God apart from this 'how' is central. — macrosoft

I am not sure exactly what you are driving at in this paragraph. I think what is of interest varies from person to person, and there is nothing wrong or regrettable in that. I do not see God as in any way apart from us. We are divine activities. (God holding us in being is identically us being held in being by God.) And, in mystical encounters, we become aware of this union. In the Eastern tradition, if is expressed in the central insight that Atman (the True Self) is Brahman (the Transcendent). We are all and only what God holds open to us. Still, we do not exhaust the reality that is God.

I think we need to reflect on what is meant by "spiritual." Despite B-movies and the scoffing of naturalists, I don't think that most people mean some ectoplasmic form of matter when they speak of being "spiritual." They are taking about the kind of intentionality a person has. So, I see the spiritual realm as the intentional realm.

That means that is is not completely mysterious. Even though intentionality is deeply subjective, it is something all humans experience. While it does not belong to the realm of physical objects, it can be and is an object of knowledge and reflection.

So, teleology, in pointing to a deep intentionality in nature (at the level of its operative laws), shows that nature is not exhausted by its material states, but also has an intentional, and so a spiritual, aspect. That does not end the story, but is a fact requiring further reflection.

No apologies are required.

The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.

I said it, but that answer didn’t entirely satisfy me.
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Can major injury, misery and horror, followed by early death be “made up for”? — Michael Ossipoff

If you believe in some form of eternal bliss.

But would it even mean anything to say that what’s happening to those people is somehow later (if there’s reincarnation) “outweighed” or “cancelled-out”? How does that change anything when it’s happening to them? When it’s there, it’s there, and that isn’t a good thing. — Michael Ossipoff

I have never understood how reincarnation makes sense. How can one be the same person/being, when there is no physical or intentional continuity between the old and the new self?

What does make moral sense to me is the idea that death is not the end, so that this life is the birth pain of a new stage of existence.

Do you mean “Tough luck for the unfortunate war-maimed civilians, because what matters is the greatest good for the greatest number?” That doesn’t sound like a situation that Benevolence made there be. — Michael Ossipoff

No, that is not what i mean. What I mean is that each kind of being has its own good, and we need to bear that in mind if we are thinking objectively. As a matter of belief, supported by probable reason, I think that the good are rewarded and the evil punished, not by divine fiat, but by the ontological structure of reality.

What do I mean by that? In a context in which love means willing the good of the beloved, morally good acts are loving acts, and morally evil acts are unloving acts. As God necessarily wills the good of His creatures, God is identically love. Those who live a life of love, necessarily have an intentionality that will lead them to a life of bliss (a life intentionally linked to God). Those who live an unloving life will also find what they have chosen: a life of eternal alienation and frustration of their natural end. These final states trivialize any suffering that has come before.

It isn’t about anthropocentricity, because the same misfortunes happen to the other animals too. — Michael Ossipoff

I take the unpopular view that the reactions of creatures without intellect and will are fully explained by their mechanics and they are aware of nothing. In saying this, I am not saying that humans are the only creatures with intellect and will, even on this planet.

Time is only within a physical world, a property of a physical world. — Michael Ossipoff

Agreed.

I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes. I missed that. I responded too quickly. My apologies.

Logical relations have no actual existence apart from the minds that think them. Independently of such minds, they are only possible, not actual. So, they have no being of their own to persist.

So, within this physical universe, there are a number of laws that require the continuations that you referred to. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, there are. I address this exact question in my paper. These laws are not self-conserving. For example, the law of conservation of mass-energy conserves mass-energy, not itself. So there has to be a meta-law conserving it. To avoid an infinite regress of meta-meta-meta-...laws, we must come to a self-conserving law, God.

Those relations and inter-reference in those logical systems are inevitable in the same way as it’s an inevitable tautology that there’s no true-and-false proposition. — Michael Ossipoff

The fact that we use observed data to decide questions shows that this in not the case.

We have distinguished the form as it is in the object, as different from the form in the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're confused here. Forms are not material objects that can be different because they are in different places. They are what informs matter. That information can be entire, as it is with the the material object, or partial, as it is in the mind of the knowing subject.

In sensation, the object might act on us, being external to us, but it is not "acting within us". — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course it is. It acts on my retina to form the image by which I see it. It acts on my eardrum so that I hear it, etc. These lines of action continue in the neural signals distributing the information to the brain's various processing centers which present the information of which I am aware.

if it were acting within us then the whole form of the object, not just a part, would be within us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why? When I mow the lawn, are all my capabilities revealed? Of course not. I am much more than a lawn mower. When things act, they reveal only part of the actuality, and forms are the actuality of a being.

If a part of the object were within us, this implies that the whole of the object would not exist without the mind which apprehends it, it would be missing a part. The object would be incomplete without being apprehended by a mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is quite true. As Aristotle notes, the object would have an unactualized potential -- its intelligibility.

If a part leaves the object to act within the mind, then the simple act of seeing an object would change that object. How would seeing the moon change the moon? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is the reason I said you were confused above. There is no "part" that leaves. There is a form that informs both within the sphere we draw around the moon and with in us.

Objects do change when we observe them. All observations are interactions, with action and reaction. We can usually ignore that fact because the changes to the object are negligible, but occasionally, as in quantum observations, they become pivotal. We could not see the moon were light not scattered off it. That light changes the moon, but in a small way we can ignore from a practical point of view.

P1: To take the form of the object means to have the very same form. P2: The form which exists in the mind is not the same as the form which is in the object. C:Therefore the mind does not take the form of the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

P1 is ambiguous. "Very same" can mean numerical identity, which is present in experiential cognition, or it can mean having the identical set of properties, which is not the case when only some notes of intelligibility are apprehended.

P2 is true if you mean that we do not apprehend all the notes of the object's intelligibility, but false if you mean that we are not informed by the numerically identical form that informs the object. We could not possibly know anything if one form informed the object, and a numerically different form informed our mind -- for then we would know the second form, not the from of the object.

C is a non sequitur.

Why not accept the obvious, and simple solution, that the form in the mind is distinct from the form in the object, just like a representation is distinct from the thing represented? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because a representation is informed by the artist, while my perception is informed by the object perceived.

Are you claiming that in sense perception there is no separation, no medium, between the object perceived, and the perceiver? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, actions can be mediated; nonetheless, mediated acts are still their agent's acts.

But you cannot form the concept of "human" from one individual, Jane, because such a concept is a generalization of many humans. — Metaphysician Undercover

Abstractions are not generalizations. For example, there are deep ocean species that have only been seen once. Still, if another individual were observed, we would recognize that it was the same kind of creature as the first. Thus, only one individual is needed to abstract a universal concept.

And so the concept "human" extends to all human beings. Therefore even if the human beings which one has met already "partially exist within us", this does not account for intentionality, which gives one the capacity to designate a person not yet met as human. — Metaphysician Undercover

What accounts for the universality of concepts is the objective capacity (intelligibility) of many individuals to elicit the same concept.

It's a bunch of irrelevant stuff to read through. — Terrapin Station

I am sorry that you don't feel this discussion is worth the investment of your time. Given that you are unwilling to commit time to the discussion, there is no point in me committing time to further responses.

How does that response answer how something like "grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks" is evidence of intentionality? — Terrapin Station

By referring you to the arguments in my paper. What advantage is there to my retyping the arguments here when you can click on the link? (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution). The intro to the arguments begins on p. 4, the arguments proper begin on p. 5.

determinate final states in physics; grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks, not oaks; Spiders building webs to catch insects to eat. — Dfpolis


How is any of that evidence of intentionality? — Terrapin Station

As I pointed out, there are a number of questions to be considered successively. This is evidence of teleology. The arguments for intentionality are given in my paper: (1) the discussion of logical propagators, (2) the discussion of intentionality as characterized by Brentano and (3) the recognition of intentionality by other, naturalistic authors.

So when Dfpolis says that in his view there is evidence of teleology, and then I ask what he considers evidence of it, I ask him to point at the stuff in question, and he doesn't bother, from our perspective, not yours, it's not a matter of getting into a religious debate or not. — Terrapin Station

I am sorry, did I not provide you with evidence on some point? I thought I did: determinate final states in physics; grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks, not oaks; spiders building webs to catch insects to eat. In my article I also point to the preferred (end) forms revealed by convergent evolution, punctuated equilibrium showing that evolution does not drift aimlessly, and refractory toolkit genes evolving before there is any pressure to fully express them as evidence of means preceding ends.

The point I've been trying to make, is that the form in the mind is a different form from the one in the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is different in the sense that the part is different from the whole.is different from the part. It is not different in the sense of having a separate existence for in so far as it is the object acting within us, the form in our mind is part of the form of the object.

We do not have "a part" of the form in our minds, because that would require taking a part away from the object, so we do not have the form "partially" within or minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

We do not have a "part" in the sense of a physical part, but in the sense of an aspect, which is to say limited notes of intelligibility belonging jointly to the knower and known. This does not require taking the part away form the object, as things are where they act.

Aristotle was well aware of this issue, and points out that experiential knowledge involves shared existence. This is why he points out that the actualization of the object's intelligibility is the same as the actualization of the subject's capacity to be informed. As they are one and the same act, these actualizations share a common existence. So, while we may think of these actualizations separately, thye are ontologically inseparable.

Thus, no part of the object's form is taken away. In fact, as the form is not material, but the object's actuality, it has no parts outside of parts that would allow for such a division. The only possible division is mental -- apprehending this note of intelligibility, but not that.

You still continue to deny the necessary conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have not argued for a necessary conclusion. If you think you have, put it in the form of a syllogism.

you cannot describe the act of perception as the mind taking the form of the object, and subtracting things from it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not describing it hat way. "Perception" can mean either the sensory act, in which there is no separation or subtraction, or the mental act, in which we are not taking aspects away from the the form, but fixing on the object to the exclusion of its context. In doing that we apprehend, we are aware of, the individual object as something that can be distinguished form its context. So far we have taken nothing away from the form, we have only ignored the contextual noise.

It is when we go on to form a universal concept that we start taking away notes of comprehension. What we take away are the notes that individuate the the object, e.g. the time and place of our experience, the exact size, color, etc. We see, for example, that though Jane is freckled, a person does not have to be freckled to be human. Still, if we form our concept of <human> from Jane, the form of that concept is Jane's humanity informing us -- acting in us. So, in knowing Jane, she partially exists within us. That is what is meant by "intentional existence."

In reality, the mind is creating a form, which is a representation of the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already acknowledged that as part of experience, there is a final, constructive phase. In it, we take elements from previous experiences, and add them to the intention existence of Jane within us. Aristotle likens this to the formation of a military unit: as each soldier assumes position, the formation emerges. We have seen Jane before, and so know that her ears are pierced, even though we cant see them now. We have seen other women before, and so we know what they look like naked, even though Jane is clothed. It is this constructive phase that can lead to errors. Perhaps Jane is a pre-operative trans-woman and her anatomy does not conform to our construct. If so, our construct has failed us.

The form which is in the mind might be just a symbol of the object, and as in the case of words, a symbol doesn't have to have any similarity to the object represented, it just needs to represent. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I have pointed out before, thoughts are formal signs, while words are instrumental signs. So, they do not signify in the same way. In the present case, our perception of Jane is identically Jane operating within us to inform our mind. The word "Jane" has not such ontological connection. It indicates Jane by convention, not by its intrinsic nature as our perceptual awareness does.

Well, I could quote a passage to justify that claim, but I know from my experience with you, that you will just turn around and say "that's not what the author meant". — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't usually rest arguments on what an author meant, but on the reality the author was considering. Of course, sometimes an author is misunderstood, but that then the issue is interpretation, not reality. Here we are concerned with facts, not texts.

That does not make sense. If the "individuating notes" are left behind, then the form in the mind is not the same as the form in the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right! As I have said many times, it is a projection of the object's form in two senses: (!) it is a projection in the sense of an existential penetration and (2) it is a projection in the sense of a dimensionally diminished map. In other words, it is the object as acting on our cognitive system, not the object in its entirety.

Whether the process subtracts or adds, or does some of both, is actually nonsensical, because the mind never has the proper form of the object within, it has something different. So it cannot use this as a base to add or subtract from. It must create the form, using whatever information it has, but the created form is clearly in no way the same form as that which is in the object, it is created separate from the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

We have the form partially, not exhaustively. I fail to see how admitting this is nonsense.

Information is the reduction of possibility. We are informed because prior to our experience, it was possible that the object could not at on us as it does. Once we have experienced how it acts on us, that possibility is eliminated. So we do not create the form in the mind. We only add awareness.

Our experiences are complex and contextual. In fixing attention on the object, we remove notes of comprehension that are irrelevant. We do not add notes in the act of perception, but we may add them in a second movement of mind in which we use past experience to fill in gaps. In adding these supplemental notes we may create an enhanced form that is not fully justified by the current experience.

If you read Kant's Critique of Pure reason, you will see that time and space are intuitions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have not read more than selections from the Critique. I have only read the Prolegomena and secondary sources. That said, "intuitions" is such a vague term, I have no idea what it means. I do know what it means to impose a form on experience, and that is what Kant says we do with the forms of space, time and causality.

These intuitions are not derived from our experience of change, but necessary conditions for the possibility of experiencing change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Repeating the claim does not justify it.

Is this necessarily a religious idea, by the way? — Terrapin Station

No. There are three related issues.
1. Are there observable instances of teleology:
a. Do natural processes tend to determinate ends?
b. Are there means-ends relations in nature?
2. If there are observable instances of teleology, can they reasonably be called "intentional"?
3. If there is intentionality in nature, is it reasonable to see God as its source?

Each of these is a philosophical, not a religious question. Religion comes into play when, after affirming the existence of some god or one God, one relates to it with more than bare assent.

I don't think this is the thread to discuss the soundness of proofs for the existence of God, which is a huge question. I will simply say that in my considered opinion there are sound proofs for the existence of a self-explaining being capable of doing any logically possible act, and that this being concurrently holds all others in being.

As for the nature of good, I think we're in general agreement. Following Aquinas, I see "good" as an analogous, not as a univocal term. It means different, but analogous, things in different contexts. What makes automotive grease "good" is not what makes non-slip flooring "good." What makes anything "good" is suitability to its correlative end. This makes the issue of teleology fundamental to ethics. Teleology allows us to bridge the is-ought gap. It nullifies arguments for a "naturalistic fallacy."

The (as definitionally goes without saying) subjective nature of our experience, with experience being the center and source of what we know about our physical surroundings, suggests that there’s no more reason to believe in the Materialist’s inanimate and neutral Reality than in is his objective Realist metaphysics. — Michael Ossipoff

As I have said before, experience is inescapably both objective and subjective. There is necessarily both an experiencing subject and an experienced object. Materialists forget this -- focusing on the experienced object to the exclusion of the experiencing subject -- thus committing Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

But neither what I’ve just said, nor what you said, answers the question about why Benevolence would (in some lives) put us through a pretty horrible experience. …even though it’s temporary, arguably not real, and not-itself-created. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes. This is a profound question. The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.

…hence the Gnostic position, which I agree with, that God didn’t create the physical universes, or make there be them. — Michael Ossipoff

I see this solution as ruled out by the need for a sufficient explanation -- which must terminate in one, self-explaining source. Perhaps the answer is that we see things too anthropocentrically -- as though everything needs to be judged in terms of what is goof for us, instead of what is good for creation as a whole.

Isn’t continuation inevitable for each timeless, inevitable logical-system? — Michael Ossipoff

No, I don't think so, for two reasons. First, from an Aristotelian perspective, the persistence of a being through time is the ongoing actualization of its potential to exist in the next instant. As it does not already exist in that instance, it can't act to actualize its own potential. From the perspective of a space-time manifold, just as existence here does not imply existence there, so existence now does not entail existence then. Thus, we need something outside of the space-time manifold to effect the continuity we observe.

Thank you for the kind words.

I think we can both reason by analogy and make strict deductions leading us to an understanding of the existence and general character of God. Of course, a finite mind can't know an infinite being in any proportionate way. — Dfpolis

Cart before the horse?
One day it's "greatest", another "infinite", the next "simplest", the day after that "triune", ... One for each occasion. What gives?
How'd you came up with "infinite being" anyway?
"Simplest" is typically an assertion in response to an infinite regress (sometimes humorously called "simpleton").
It's almost like anything goes.
Personification fallacy. — jorndoe

Not giving the details of an argument does not mean that there is no argument. Clearly, I was asserting there are arguments, and referenced my paper in which I give some of them. You are welcome to read and criticize the arguments I give. Judging them before reading them is not reasonable.

We had best stop as we do not have a common understanding of the nature of evidence and the role of logic.

Thank you.

Obviously, the arguments are based on empirical evidence. Also, evidence without reasoned analysis can teach us nothing.

Mind in nature is a conclusion drawn from the data of teleological processes, not a premise in deriving them. Thus, the “mentalistic” objection is question begging. Rather than engaging the evidence, it uses an a priori denial of the conclusion to reject data. — Dfpolis

No, that response is what's question-begging. — Terrapin Station

No, I am assuming nothing. Read my paper. I give detailed arguments for the origin of the operative laws of nature and their intentional character. If you wish to criticize those arguments, I would be glad to respond.

So the question of teleology comes down to whether there is intelligence driving evolution. — EnPassant

Yes. You might want to read my paper: "Mind or Randomness in Evolution (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).

The form which is united with matter, complete with accidentals, in the case of individual, particular things, cannot be the same form as that which occurs in the mind through abstraction, because this form is the thing's essence, without the accidentals. — Metaphysician Undercover

Abstraction is a subtractive process. It adds nothing to sense data but awareness. So, the universal, abstracted form in the mind is just the individual form in the object of perception with the individuating notes of intelligibility left behind.

So the form which appears in the mind, in knowing the object through its essence, is not an aspect of the object itself because it is not the actual form which the material object has. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no evidence that we know forms through essences. We can explain everything we know about abstract forms in terms of selective awareness of sense perceptions.

For Kant we can't give any identity to noumena, because that is unknowable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which is precisely why noumena need to be rejected as unparsimonious constructs.

And for Kant time is an intuition required as a condition for the apprehension of phenomena. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is clearly an error. The concept of time is not prior to (not intuited as a condition for) our perceptions of the changing world, but one deriving from our experience of change. Babies have no <time> concept, but they do recognize change.

To be the person that you are, it is necessary that you had the exact same properties as you had, this morning, yesterday, the day before, the day before, the month before, the year before, and when you were a child as well — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand your claim. I simply disagree with it.

“Nature” is an unfortunate word to use, because, to many, it refers to this physical universe (…and you’ve used it that way). I don’t think that teleology is always meant in that way, in that context, on that scale.
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Intent as the basis of how things are—Yes. — Michael Ossipoff

As I said before, there is the fact of processes tending to determinate ends, and there is the conclusion that tending to a determinate implies a mind intending that end. There is a tendency to confuse these, but they are separate issues. Clearly, there are ends in nature: physical processes tend to well-defined final states; grains of wheat sprout wheat stalks, not oaks; spiders build webs to catch insects. These processes are part of nature, even if they point beyond nature.

Of course such matters, on the scale of how things are, overall—the matter of the nature or character of Reality--aren’t provable or meaningfully assertable or debatable. — Michael Ossipoff

I must disagree. I think we can both reason by analogy and make strict deductions leading us to an understanding of the existence and general character of God. Of course, a finite mind can't know an infinite being in any proportionate way.

I define faith as trust without or in addition to evidence. The convincingness of reasons or justifications for faith are at least as subjective and individual as is the convincingness of evidence. — Michael Ossipoff

I agree in a general way. I see faith as justified by worthiness, not evidence. To be worth of belief, a doctrine cannot contradict what we know for a fact, it needs to resonate within us, and it must issue in virtuous behavior.

Likewise, a metaphysical “mechanism” (such as I propose) for there being our lives this physical world, as inevitable and metaphysically-self-generating, is NOT in conflict with Theism. — Michael Ossipoff

Of course.

One thing that the Atheists are right about is their “Argument from Evil”. — Michael Ossipoff

I disagree. The problem of evil has great emotional, but not logical, impact.

But what about those bad parts, temporary though they may be? Do you really think that Benevolence would make there be those? — Michael Ossipoff

Without responding in depth, evil, like darkness, has no positive existence. That does not mean we don't encounter it. It only means that it is a void where there should be some good. So, it is uncreated.

I’ve been proposing a metaphysics that uncontroversially explains our lives and this physical universe as inevitable and self-generated …but things are still as good as they can be, given that inevitable system’s inevitable bad-parts. — Michael Ossipoff

The problem is not how the universe originated, but that it's continuing existence is not self-explaining.

In Kantian metaphysics though, "the object perceived" is the phenomenon — Metaphysician Undercover

This is an argument from authority, and does not respond to the arguments I gave rebutting the notion of an epistic gap,

just like in Aristotle's epistemology, the knower becomes one with the abstracted form, but the matter, or thing in itself remains separate — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not at all like Aristotle's insight that in knowing, there is a joint actualization of the knower's and known's potential, and a partial unity of knower and known. Aristotle sees that for change to occur, bodies must not only be what they are now (have a form), but must also have the potential to become other (have hyle, "matter"). Of course, we can only directly know what a thing is now -- what it can do now. We can only know its potential, what it is not yet, indirectly, by analogy with similar cases.

Our inability to know matter directly is not at all like Kant's claim that we can never know the noumenon. Why? (1) Because what we know is not something separate from the object, but an aspect of what it is now. If we could now nothing of the noumenon, this would be impossible. (2) We do know object's potential to change by analogy with similar cases. Again this is impossible for Kantian noumena.

Finally, the knower does not become one with an abstraction, but with the known substance via the process of abstraction. These are very different statements.

We hand identity to the abstracted form, the perception, so the perception, the abstracted form, has an identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is exactly backward. We don't hand identity to the form. The object's form informs us of the object's identity.

Now, as Aristotle insists, we need to go beyond this, and allow that material things, what Kant calls noumena, also have an identity in themselves. — Metaphysician Undercover

I know no Kantian text in which noumena are restricted to material things. Rather, there is widely held that Kantian noumena, like the shadow-casting realities of Plato's cave, are immaterial. They have no intrinsic space or time, and so are very unlike the material objects of nature.

Do you understand the need for this separation, or do you deny the need for it. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is nothing separable here. There is only the intelligible whole, and our direct, but limited knowledge of that whole.

Only at one instant in time. As I noted, over time many properties can change without a loss of dynamic identity. That is why some aspects, such as life, are essential, while others, such as hair color, are accidental. — Dfpolis

No, it's not a case of "only at one instant in time". That's the whole point, a thing, or object, has necessarily, temporal extension. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, this is a very strange claim for a Kantian. In Kant's view, time is not a noumenal property, but a "form" imposed by the mind.

Second, in saying that many properties change over time, I am not denying dynamic continuity over time. I am only saying that that continuity does not guarantee the persistence of all properties, so many are not "essential" in identifying the kind of thing, or even the individual thing, we know.

to be the thing that it is, any thing, or object, must have the exact same properties that it has, at every moment in time, or else it would not be that thing, it would be something else. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already given counter examples. I do not have the same properties I had as a child, but I am still the same person.

As energy is not identifiable, but simply a conserved quantity, the level of which changes in any individual over time, it has little to do with identity. We knew identities long before energy was ever defined.

In response to your second comment, as logic is justified by the reality of its objects, there is no reason that logic cannot be applied to logical objects, which have intentional reality.

We do not "know" an object, rather we "know" (perceive) some of its properties in some epistemic context. — Relativist

If you mean we do not know the object exhaustively, I agree completely.

The ontological identity between Phosphorous and Hesperus is not identical to the epistemic stance because the epistemic context is different. — Relativist

Of course.

That's broadly the disjunctive conception of perceptual experience (and knowledge) defended by John McDowell, among others. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks for the reference.

Do you see the separation between identity by essence, and identity by accidentals? — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh. I see. I use "separation" to mean physical distance and "distinction" to mean logical difference. What you are calling "separation" I would call "distinction."

if the properties are judged to be the same we say that it is the same object. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see this. There is no reason we can't have two different objects with identical properties, say two atoms or two molecules.

Do you see the difference between this and numerical identity, which identifies the self-same object, through temporal continuity? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Would you explain how separation can flow out of identity? — Dfpolis

You apprehend that there are two forms of identity. Why do you not see this as a separation? Do you see the difference between a logical subject, being identified by it's properties, and an ontological object, being identified by temporal continuity? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but distinguishing the meanings of identity is not the same as physical separation.

Sorry Df, I somehow missed this part of your reply. — Metaphysician Undercover

No problem.

This is the Kantian distinction. the properties are not of the thing itself, they are how we perceive the thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a result of not understanding that there can be no sensation or cognition without the ding an sich being sensible or intelligible. In sensation and cognition we become one with the object perceived and known because of the joint actualization of sensible or intelligible and of the subject's capacity to sense or to be informed.

Everything which could be identified as a property, of any existing thing, is essential to making that thing, the thing which it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only at one instant in time. As I noted, over time many properties can change without a loss of dynamic identity. That is why some aspects, such as life, are essential, while others, such as hair color, are accidental.

Their evolutionary consequences cross-over to the time frame of phylogeny because, while the sorting action of natural selection is, in a sense, blind to the organisms' strivings, the raw material that it is selecting amongst doesn't merely consist in variations in genotype but rather in variations in effectiveness of the (teleologically structured) phenotypes for achieving whatever it is that the organisms already are striving for. — Pierre-Normand

Good.

Physical systems therefore are of special interest to physicists but aren't ontologically fundamental. — Pierre-Normand

Yes. They are abstractions with a wide range of application.

No one questions that perceptions are caused by something. But you jump from the fact of a cause to knowledge of the cause. — tim wood

I only "jump" to the metaphysically certain knowledge that whatever the cause actually does, it is capable of doing. Since it informs me in the way I am informed, it is necessarily capable of informing me in that way. Further, the capacity to inform is called "intelligibility," so when I am so informed I have actualized the correlative intelligibility.

Let be clear about what intelligibility is not. It is not an actuality existing prior to informing a subject. It is only a potential -- the potential to inform a knowing subject. If it never informs a subject, it will never be actual. So I do not know the object as a non-interacting abstraction, but only as it interacts with me. Hopefully that is a token of the type of interactions it can have with other humans.

Still, with all due respect to Leibnitz, nothing is an abstract, non-interacting monad. So, in knowing the object as interacting, we know it as it is in the world. Thinking of the object as an isolated ding an sich verges on Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. As I discussed recently, the being of objects is not contained in some enclosing figure, but extends outward in a radiance of action. This radiance existentially penetrates other beings. Things are where they act. Aristotle recognized this when he called action an accident inhering in the acting substance. The moon's eccentric gravitational effect on the oceans is identically the oceans' lunar tide.

Kant's answer is that knowledge is partly constructed by mind — tim wood

I have no doubt that the content of knowledge defined as "(causally) justified true belief" is partly constricted by the mind. Still, I disagree with Kant's view of how this construction occurs. I see no reason to thing that the mind imposes the forms of space, time and causality. I think if it did, alternate understandings of space, time and causality would be literally unthinkable. 20th century physics' revision of these concepts shows them not be imposed a priori, but empirically derived. So, what I see is that the brain fills a lot of perceptual gaps with activated neural concepts that are not usually distinguished from sensory data.

On the other hand, if we define "knowledge" more narrowly as "awareness of present intelligibility," then there is no filler. There is just the object acting on us, and us being aware of the object acting. I am not saying that we typically distinguish the two ways of "knowing," but we can -- and we must if we are to think rigorously and analytically.

how do you get beyond the mind? Kant's answer: you don't. You say you do, but you give no account of how, except by resorting to practical knowledge in ever more fantastical forms. — tim wood

I think this is unfair to my account. If anything, it is too theoretical -- relying as it does on the identity of action and passion and the indivisibility of the act that actualizes the objects intelligibility from that that actualizes the subject's capacity to be informed. Surely, such considerations make no specific appeal to practical knowledge. Further, the difference between practical and theoretical knowledge is not intrinsic, but in the end two which they are directed. Intrinsically, both practical and theoretical knowledge are actualizations of intelligibility. What else could they be?

And the foundation is that Aristotle sez so. — tim wood

Again, this is unfair. I give credit where credit is due. It is not that "Aristotle sez so," but that he authored the arguments I'm using. Mine is not an argument from authority. The arguments I'm giving stand or fall on their own merits. It is the genetic fallacy to attack the arguments because of their source. If you want to reject them, show how they fail.

The point is that the representation is not the tree — tim wood

I agree that the representation is not the whole tree. It is not the tree abstractly considered -- as though it were a Leibnitzian monad. It is the tree as acting on me. It is part of the radiance of action of the tree.

Let me ask, what you think knowledge is? How can humans know without interacting with the objects of knowledge? How can we have knowledge without representation? It seems to me that you want something that that not only does not exist, but cannot exist. What would it mean to "know," as opposed to being, noumenal reality? If you cannot say, then it is effectively meaningless to claim that noumenal reality is "unknowable."

My answer is that representations derived from perception are not separate from their objects, but part of the objects' radiance of action -- their on-going dynamical effects.

What does Aristotle say in response to Kant? — tim wood

That Kant has missed the identity of knower and known in the act of knowing: the subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject. This is the point that you continue to ignore -- discussing peripheral issues instead.

You see a tree. Is what you're seeing a perception of the tree? Or the tree itself? — tim wood

It is the tree as acting on me. So, it is the tree itself, not exhaustively, but partially.

If of the tree itself, how did the tree get into your perception? — tim wood

In the way I described previously: The tree's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the tree. So, this one reality belongs equally to the tree and to me. It is because this reality is shared that I know the tree itself -- just not in its entirety.

These two were the expressions of both sides of a dilemma. Kant resolved it. — tim wood

No, Kant decoupled mind and reality making knowledge impossible.

Are you familiar with the two forms of identity? You'll find them on SEP referred to as qualitative and numerical. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I know the difference.

Qualitative, what logicians use, implies that a thing is identified by what it is, but this really refers to a logical subject rather than an object. — Metaphysician Undercover

The distinction does not depend on who uses "identity," but what they mean in using it. Numerically identity refers to the selfsame object. Qualitative identity means distinct individuals have the same properties.

The thing's identity is what we hand to it, what we say it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is yet a third meaning of identity. It is the thing as understood. For example, when we speak of gender identity, we mean what gender a person understands themself to be. If it is self-assigned, the result of self understanding, it is an intrinsic property. If it is "handed" to something, it is not intrinsic, but relational: the thing as understood by us.

Having temporal extension is what gives existence to a "thing". — Metaphysician Undercover

Dynamic continuity allows us to know that we are dealing with the selfsame thing, but it is not the source of the thing's existence. We know this because a thing must exist before it can have dynamic continuity.

Every aspect of the thing itself is essential to it, making it the unique, particular thing that it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not quite right. As you point out, dynamical continuity allows me to say that I am the same individual at different times, yet many of my aspects have changed. I am no longer the same height and weight, nor is what hair I have left the same color, as when I was a child. So, some properties are "accidental" -- changing them does not make me a different individual or a different kind of thing.

So, we return to my question:

Aristotle on the other hand provided us with a law of identity which identifies the thing itself. His law of identity states that a thing is the same as itself. What this does is create a separation between the individuation and identity which we hand to reality (we individuate and identify "a chair" for example), and the identity which things have, in themselves. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand what you are saying here. Would you explain how separation can flow out of identity? — Dfpolis

Well, it seems to me that this is a defense of naive realism. I'm sorry to say that I think the first sentence verges on the nonsensical, as it implies that you are whatever you are looking at - chair, tree, or whatever. — Wayfarer

The first sentence is simply an example of the well-known identity of action and passion -- which differ not in their being, but only in how we conceive them. Of course it applies to every instance of sensation. That is what it is intended to do. It does not entail naive realism.

Putting aside your negative feelings, what logical objection, if any, do you have with this this identity? If you have none, we must conclude that there is no epistic gap between subject and object.

As I tried to argue several pages back, the act of cognition is a complex, whereby a whole range of different kinds of stimuli and judgements are integrated into a whole. And in that act there is also plenty of scope for error. — Wayfarer

And, I agreed with you. I said that in addition to the bare the act of perception wherein the object informs the subject, there is typically a great deal of constructive gap filling that can lead to erroneous judgements. Then I pointed out that the error was not in the bare informing of the subject, but in our judgement's reliance on the constructive rather than the informative elements. That is why this is not a defense of naive realism.

So they're all looking at the same paddock but seeing different things; and furthermore, their differing perspectives don't really conflict - it's not as if the real estate developer's view is the right view, and the farmer's the wrong one. — Wayfarer

Exactly. This is what I mean by "projections." Each person has a different projection of the paddock -- not merely because each has a different physical standpoint, but because each projects his or her perception into a different conceptual space. I wrote about this almost thirty years ago in my Metaphilosophy paper, "Paradigms for an Open Philosophy."

if you go right back into the origins of the 'dialectic of being and becoming' with the Parmenides, then we will see that the Greek philosophers really are questioning our instinctive sense of the reality of sense-perception. — Wayfarer

Yes, and if you read Aristotle, who took all of these concerns quite seriously, you will find them analyzed and resolved. Yet here we are, going over the same old ground because few bother to read Aristotle anymore.

Plato, et al, really did distrust the testimony of the senses; in that, he was more like the Vedic sage who sees the world of sensory experience as 'maya', — Wayfarer

Yes, and the Aristotelian tradition, including Aquinas, generally under-values the mystical tradition. I was also undervalued it until I read W. T. Stace's work in the late 80s. If you look back at the ways in which I sympathize with Kant, you'll see that I now appreciate it as an important aspect of human experience even though it is inadequately valued in modern philosophy.

I think the 'ultimate reality' is the only subject of interest for philosophy — Wayfarer

I see understanding ultimate reality as a goal devoutly to be desired, but it can hardly be the starting point. For me, philosophy aims to provide a consistent framework for understanding all human experience. So that people can start where they are and progress in understanding.

hatred, greed and delusion ... condition our every perception, so we don't 'see things truly'. — Wayfarer

I don't see the great mass of people nearly so negatively.

Thank you for your perspective.

You are welcome.

Thank you for reflecting on my position.

Here is what I think you mean: that there is a one-to-one correspondence between your neural representation of the tree, and the particular tree you see, and not any other tree or anything else. — tim wood

No, I said what I mean. I am not discussing mappings, but dynamics. The tree acts on me by scattering light into my eye, pushing back when I touch it, etc. Each of these actions modifies my neural state. That modification is both my sensory representation of the tree and the tree's action on me. So, my sensory representation is identically the tree acting on me. Because this identity bespeaks joint existence, there is no epistic gap.

Of course, the dynamics justifies the mapping you're discussing, but the mapping is derivative on the dynamics.

inasmuch as your representation of the tree is a representation, then the - your - representation is not the tree itself. — tim wood

It is not the tree in its full existence. It is the tree as acting on my sensory system. So, it is a projection of the tree in two senses: (1) It is the tree existentially or dynamically penetrating me. The tree is literally acting within me, modifying my neural state for as long as I am sensing it. (2) It is also a projection in the mathematical sense of a dimensionally diminished mapping. The dimensions here are the logically independent things the tree is capable of doing. Of all the possible things it can do, it does a very few in acting on my senses. So, what I get is not a full mapping -- I am not exhaustively informed about the nature of the tree, about all that it can do. Still, what I am informed of is a subset of things the tree can actually do.

Also inasmuch as it is not the tree itself, it differs entirely. — tim wood

This of course is where we differ. Think about the moon. It is dynamically active in the earth's oceans, causing the tides. If you enclose the moon in a tight spherical shall, and restrict your attention to what is inside the shell, you are not considering everything the moon can do, and so you're under-describing the moon. To fully describe it, you have to include its radiance of action, because much of what the moon does, it does outside the circumscribing shell. In the same way, much of what the tree does, it does outside of its circumscribing shell. It not only acts on animal senses as we have been discussing, it changes the ecology both locally and, in a small way, globally. So, if you neglect the tree's radiance of action, you are not giving a full account of what it is to be a tree.

Our sensory representation is not something apart from the tree, but part of the tree's radiance of action. Further, a tree's radiance of action is not separate from the matter of the tree. Rather, it is part of what that matter is -- because it is what that matter, organized as a tree, actually does. Remove it, and you don't have the actual matter of the tree. All you have is something you think of as matter, but which does not act like real matter, and so is not real matter. It is only an abstraction. Part of being real matter is having a radiance of action.

You seem to be completely dismissive, of Kant, and apparently of the problems he perceived. — tim wood

Look at the part of my response to Wayfarer earlier today, beginning with "Let me give some of the ways I agree with Kant's objectives." You'll see that I've thought about why he did what he did. Even though I don't agree with his solution, I appreciate the problems he perceived.

The question is this: you have a representation that manifestly differs from the tree, in particulars and in its entirety. — tim wood

I agree that my representation is not the tree in its entirety. Still, it is a projection of the tree in the two senses I outlined earlier. So, I am informed about the tree: it can do what it is doing to me. If the essence of the tree is the specification of all of its possible acts, then I am informed, in a small way, about the tree's essence. That is the theoretical side.

The practical side, since I am human, I know, in part, how the tree interacts with humans. Since I, and other humans, will always interact with things as humans, all I need to know from a practical point of view is how it interacts with humans.

The question is about knowledge. — tim wood

Yes! And what is knowledge other than the actualization of object's intelligibility?

No, it's not that. In your mind, you are arguing for a rational conclusion from a theistic perspective. — Wayfarer

Theism does not enter into grasping that any perception is the perception of some object by some subject. Atheists can understand that as easily as theists. If you think perception is not relational, please provide an example of perception that does not involve both a perceiver and a perceived.

Aquinas says that faith is a prerequisite, independently of what can be established by reason. — Wayfarer

Yes, to the acceptance of the Christian faith. It is not a prerequisite to rational understanding. If it were, Aquinas would have rejected any conclusion by a pagan such as Aristotle.

Given that one accepts the articles of faith, then certainly reason and revelation are not in conflict. — Wayfarer

That is a non sequitur. Many people accept on faith what reason tell us is nonsense. For example, that the two conflicting accounts of creation in Genesis are both literally true..

I think the element provided by faith is implicit in what you're saying — Wayfarer

What element is that? Please be specific and cite some faith-based premise I used.

If you look at the 'Analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic, then there are different levels or kinds of knowledge (from here): — Wayfarer

I have no problem with the range of "knowledge/belief" in the diagram, but in the accounts of mystical experience I have read (I've read Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, pagan and atheist reports) no one has recounted the experience of any noumenal object other than transcendent being. Do you know some account in which someone claims to have encountered the noumenal counterpart of a phenomenal object?

Also, while I agree with the range presented, I don't see the enumeration as complete or adequate. Experience is immediate and certain, but is not included. By "experience" here, I mean what is immediately present to awareness, not the consequent embellishments and judgements we may have about what we are aware of.

But the main point is that there is an hierarchy of understanding. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with this concept. I only object to how Kant articulates it. I also agree with you on the biases of so-called "scientific" thought.

o the general idea is that we don't 'see things as they truly are' - the philosopher has to 'ascend' to that through the refinement of the understanding. — Wayfarer

I also agree here, provided that you admit that the little we do see can be quite real, even though it may not be the ultimate reality.

Utterly incoherent? Really? Light doesn't have anything to do with it? — tim wood

Of course light is an essential means of seeing the tree -- but means facilitate, rather than being a barrier to, the end of seeing the tree. The objection here is like saying that laying bricks is a barrier to having a brick house.

Physical interactions between separate points are always mediated. A and B being at different points does not mean that A does not act on B. The tree acts on my sensory system by scattering incident light into my eyes. Does that mean that the resultant modification of my sensory system, which is my sensory representation, is not simultaneously the tree's action? Of course not! So, the action belonging to the tree is identically my representation.

Physical separation does not imply dynamic decoupling. If it did, the solar system would not hold together -- in fact, nothing would. Since information is borne by a system's dynamics, in looking at the flow of information, we need to fix our attention on dynamic coupling, not physical separation. When we do, we discover that the tree's action on me, mediated by light, is identically my neural representation of the tree.

I note, with regret, that you have chosen not to respond to the arguments I specifically asked you to comment upon. — Dfpolis

You mean these? ... — Wayfarer

No, it was late, and I confused you with Tim Wood. (Mea culpa!) I meant these:

I ask that you carefully consider and respond to the following:
(1) The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object. Because of this identity, there is never a gap to be bridged. I have put this in neurophysiological terms by pointing out that, in any act of perception, the object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. In other words, the one modification of my neural state belongs both to the object (as its action) and to me (as my state). There is shared existence here, or, if you will, existential or dynamical penetration of me by the object of perception. There is no room for a gap and no barrier given this identity.
(2) A second way of grasping the unity here, is to consider the actualization the relevant potentials in the object and subject. The object is sensible/intelligible. The subject able to sense/know. The one act of sensation actualizes both the object's sensibility (making it actually sensed) and the subject's power to sense (making it actually sensing). Similarly, one act of cognition actualizes both the object's intelligibility (making it actually known) and the subject's ability to be informed (making in actually informed). Thus, in each case, the subject and object are joined by a single act -- leaving no space for a barrier or epistic gap.
The fundamental error here is reifying the act of perception. Phenomena are not things to be known, but means of knowing noumena. — Dfpolis

I am favouring that sympathetic reading, and furthermore I am confident that these criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of what Kant was trying to say. — Wayfarer

I do not think that the more sympathetic reading, which I am willing to entertain, resolves the issue that I have, viz. that phenomena do not pose a barrier to understanding noumena, but are the very means by which humans know noumena.

Let me give some of the ways I agree with Kant's objectives.
(1) I see Kant as an heir to the the mystical tradition via his family's Pietism. This justifies, to some degree, his tendency to see the physical world as less than fully real. I sympathize with this, but see it as poorly articulated by Kant.
(2) God grasps noumenal existence directly and completely, while we grasp it only indirectly and via phenomena. So, our knowledge does not even begin to approximate divine knowledge, still it is knowledge of the thing in itself, because we know part of what it can do.
(3) From the divine perspective, the whole space-time continuum is laid out in complete immediacy. I think this motivated Kant to see space, time, and Hume's time-sequenced causality as somehow dependent on the conditions of human existence. Again, I think his articulation of this tension between the human and divine views of reality is wholly inadequate.
(4) Understanding the difference between the divine and human views of causality and temporal sequence is essential to understanding how we can have free will in the face of divine omniscience. Once more, I disagree with his solution.
So, I sympathize with Kant's problematic while rejecting his solution.

All of our concepts of what it means to be a chair, as well as other things, are based in phenomena. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly! So, the whole idea of an unknowable noumenal reality is not only superfluous, but literally meaningless.

Aristotle on the other hand provided us with a law of identity which identifies the thing itself. His law of identity states that a thing is the same as itself. What this does is create a separation between the individuation and identity which we hand to reality (we individuate and identify "a chair" for example), and the identity which things have, in themselves. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand what you are saying here. Would you explain how separation can flow out of identity?

So it allows that there are actual individual things in reality, and each has an identity, a "whatness" (what it is) which is proper to it and it alone, regardless of whether human minds have properly individuated and identified the things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with your conclusion.

Ok. You see a tree, You tell me: what, exactly, do you see? Hint. It's not, never was, never will be, the tree. In the light of that, care to give an account of how what you see is what you see? — tim wood

I find your claim utterly incoherent. If I see this tree, necessarily, I see this tree. What I do not see is the exhaustive nature of the tree.

I have already explained several times, and you have totally ignored, several times, why there is no epistic gap between me and the tree I see. I will not repeat the same argument yet again, to have it ignored yet again.

Alternatively, you could argue that Kant recognised and responded to issues that are particular to the advent of modernity, which the ancients could have had no conceivable way of understanding, given the vast difference in worldviews. — Wayfarer

If the ancients had nothing to say on the issues we're discussing, I wouldn't be citing them.

He recognised and was responding to implications of modern scientific method, in a way that the medievals could not. — Wayfarer

Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) explicitly laid out the scientific method as we have it today, including controlled experiments. The problem medieval science faced was not poor methodology, but the lack of a critical mass of findings. That said, I don't see Kant's philosophy as depending, in any critical way, on scientific discoveries. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

The difference is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition recognizes that when we actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility we are informed about reality. — Dfpolis

How then is it possible that there is such deep conflict in modern culture about the nature of ultimate reality? — Wayfarer

I am not sure I understand your question, but perhaps the answer is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic view is, as SophistiCat said, seen as "idiosyncratic."

I note, with regret, that you have chosen not to respond to the arguments I specifically asked you to comment upon.

And doesn't the Thomistic tradition also emphasise the importance of revelation? — Wayfarer

No, not in philosophy, though he does consider philosophy to be a "handmaiden" to theology.

Aquinas posits a “twofold mode of truth concerning what we profess about God” (SCG 1.3.2). First, we may come to know things about God through rational demonstration. By demonstration Aquinas means a form of reasoning that yields conclusions that are necessary and certain for those who know the truth of the demonstration’s premises. Reasoning of this sort will enable us to know, for example, that God exists. It can also demonstrate many of God’s essential attributes, such as his oneness, immateriality, eternality, and so forth (SCG 1.3.3). Aquinas is not claiming that our demonstrative efforts will give us complete knowledge of God’s nature. He does think, however, that human reasoning can illuminate some of what the Christian faith professes (SCG 1.2.4; 1.7). Those aspects of the divine life which reason can demonstrate comprise what is called natural theology — Shawn Floyd, Aquinas: Philosophical Theology

In other words, there is a requirement to believe certain articles of faith which are themselves not established on the basis of reason, nor of direct perception, but by way of belief in the Bible. — Wayfarer

This is true of his theology, but not of his philosophy. I am not using faith-based premises in this forum.

I see the goal of philosophy as developing a true and consistent framework for understanding the full rang of human experience, not persuading people.