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.
.
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.

If telos characterizes everything in existence, simply in virtue of the definition that you give it, then it is a vacuous concept — SophistiCat

I am not discussing it as a concept, but as a mode of explanation -- and that makes its great extension very useful. The fact that every existent is involved in efficient causality makes efficient causality an equally useful tool of understanding.

Your analysis of teleology is wholly inadequate, or rather it is wholly absent. Once again, I recommend that you actually read something on the subject — SophistiCat

If you look at my article, "Mind or Randomness in Evolution" (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution) you'll find it well-referenced. If you read my book, God, Science and Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism, you'll find hundreds of detailed citations. So, I have read "something" on the subject. The positions I "rail" against are specific and documented.

Of course, there is always more to learn. So, if you'd care to make a substantive criticism, or point me in a direction I've missed, that would be appreciated.

Have you heard of teleonomy? It is teleology evolved. Teleology was left — VoidDetector

Have you heard of teleonomy? It is teleology evolved. Teleology was left behind after the scientific revolution. — VoidDetector

Yes, I have. Wayfarer brought it up in the 6th post of this tread and we discussed it. I suggest you read that discussion so that I don't have to go over the same ground again.

That teleology was left behind by the scientific revolution is a historical observation of no probative value.

Wikipedia Teleonomy vs Teleology: "Teleonomy is sometimes contrasted with teleology, where the latter is understood as a purposeful goal-directedness brought about through human or divine intention." — VoidDetector

While "teleology" may be used in that restricted sense by proponents of teleonomy, that is not the general definition of the term, nor is it the definition I used in the OP. For example:

Teleology, (from Greek telos, “end,” and logos, “reason”), explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function. Traditionally, it was also described as final causality, in contrast with explanation solely in terms of efficient causes (the origin of a change or a state of rest in something). — The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Teleology concerns religious endeavour. — VoidDetector

In your mind, perhaps. To me this is a discussion about one of Aristotle's four "causes." I do not recall any previous mention of religion in this thread. So, perhaps you have missed the secular aspects of teleology.

So we know religion is obsolete — VoidDetector

Thank you for sharing your faith position so clearly.

if everything is perception (in Kant's sense, which is not as simple as here represented), then how do you get beyond or outside of it? — tim wood

As I've pointed out, everything can't be perceptions because a perception is always perception of an object by a subject. To say "everything is a perception" is like saying "everything is higher." Both "perception" and "higher" are relational terms and can't be instantiated absent the correlative relata.

To answer you question, because I'm informed by perceptions/appearances/phenomena, I can conclude with apodictic certainty that whatever I am perceiving has the power to so inform me. What does that tell me? Following Plato's suggestion in the Sophist, I think we can agree that whatever can act in any way exists. So, anything that acts to inform me exists. Further, as I have argued previously, what an object is (its individual essence) is convertible with the specification of its possible acts. If it informs me thusly, it must be able to inform me thusly -- giving me some minimal knowledge of its essence.

Thus, perception invariably informs me about the existence and essence of its object. I may add to this actual information a lot of constructive filler and wind up thinking a pink elephant is an Indian elephant, but that error is in judgement, not in the data of experience.

The question amounts to asking how we can pierce the barrier that perception interposes between us and out there. Kant's answer: we cannot. — tim wood

And Kant, like Locke before him, was dead wrong! There is no barrier to be pierced, no gap to be bridged. Had they only read De Anima iii, this whole debate would not be happening. 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.

You refuse. And it would seem the reason for your refusal - which I find sophistic - is that you define "perception" differently, as "relational." — tim wood

OK, you define a perception in a way that does not implicitly or explicitly include a subject and an object. Alternately, give me an example of a perception that is not a perception of something. You can speak of perceptions in abstraction from their subjects and objects, but there cannot be a perception without an actual subject and object. To forget this is to commit Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

What, exactly, do you mean by "relational"? — tim wood

When I say that a term is relational, mean that it cannot be instantiated without appropriate relata -- without additional existents that it links in some way. For example, "greater than" can be understood in the abstract without reference to concrete values, but any instance of "greater than" is a link between such values.

If it's relational, then it's "out there." Out there invokes the Humean problem. — tim wood

I don't know what you mean by "the Humean problem" here, or even what you mean my "out there." Relations occur in reality, and we form abstract ideas of them by abstracting away individualizing characteristics.

That's just as I said: your ideas about science and the PSR are idiosyncratic, and I expect that you will find few allies, regardless of their position on naturalism. And when you add boasts like this, you, frankly, sound like a crank. — SophistiCat

I was telling what happened, not boasting. The facts are what they are. It doesn't bother me that I am "idiosyncratic." It would bother me if I contradicted the data of experience or if my reasoning were unsound. If you find errors of that sort, please point them out. If you're merely saying that not many people agree with me, I don't consider that a problem.

If you want to make a persuasive case, you don't want to explicitly hinge it on extreme foundational positions that few are likely to accept as an unconditional ultimatum. — SophistiCat

Again, I'm not running for office. I'm trying to be logical and consistent with the facts.

It depends on what you mean by "supernatural and theological explanations." — Dfpolis

I mean the kind of explanations that hinge on the existence of a powerful and largely inscrutable personal agent. — SophistiCat

It would be a philosophical error to begin by positing the existence of God. On the other hand, it is utterly prejudicial to exclude certain kinds of conclusions a priori, as you seem to be doing. We need to follow the facts where they lead, not exclude conclusions before investigating the relevant issues.

Any system that exhibits any regularity has "telos" in this sense, but so what? Any connection to intelligence is far from obvious. — SophistiCat

I am glad that we agree. But, if biological systems do tend toward determinant ends and there is no immediate implication of intelligence, why do naturalists insist that their students say "turtles come ashore and lay eggs," rather than "turtles come ashore to lay eggs"? Isn't this irrational thought control? Clearly, coming ashore is a required step, a means, toward the end of testudine reproduction.

As Emrys Westacott says, it is simply an observation about the conditional nature of knowledge - that all human knowledge is in some sense constructed and mediated - we're not 'all-knowing', even in respect of those things that we seem to know exactly. And that actually is quite in keeping with what you then go onto say about Aquinas. I think from the perspective of Christian philosophy, we only see 'through a glass darkly' - that this is an inevitable consequence of the human condition. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with this as a view of reality. My problem lies with the claim that we have no knowledge of noumena -- and that is a widely held interpretation of Kant. (As illustrated by a number of quotations I posted yesterday.) As I also observed, this seems to reflect Locke's view that we only know our ideas -- and the concomitant failure to see that ideas are primarily the means, rather than the object, of knowledge. (I'm not saying that Kant follows Locke in other respects.)

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ it as an object from the raw material of perception — Wayfarer

Yes. In daily life, we take what is given and typically fill in a lot of gaps with constructs. If we're careful, we can sort data from constructs, but usually we don't.

... That is the background to the question 'what is the real X' and the distinction between reality and appearance - a distinction which manifests in Kant as the difference between the noumenal and phenomenal domains. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with your historical thumbnail. My problem is that Kant has put together an incoherent and even parochial system. I think I understand his goals and even his outlook, and obviously he has thought deeply, but he seems to have researched no further back than Descartes, Wolff and Locke. The abandonment of historical research in philosophy, of learning "the state of the question," began with Descartes and continues in Kant -- which is what I mean in saying they're parochial.

Thanks for the reference.

Your question is, why there is anything other than the phenomenal chair? I do not think anyone claims that there is any thing other than the phenomenal chair. What separate chair would there be? The only chair is the phenomenal chair. But let's try a quick thought experiment. As it happens, the chair is red. But we turn out the lights. What color is the chair now? And we might as well ask, what makes it a chair? Is it a chair, in its own self? — tim wood

As I read Kant, the noumenal chair cannot be the phenomenal chair because in knowing the phenomenal chair, we know nothing of the noumenal chair. If they were the same being, in knowing one, we would necessarily know the other. So, why add a noumenal chair, when, ex hypothesis, we have no way of knowing it?

As to your specific question: To say "the chair is red" means that the identical percept that evokes the concept <chair> evokes the concept <red>. It does not mean that every percept that evokes the concept <chair> will evoke the concept <red>. That is why Aristotle classed red is an accident, but chairs as substances.

We know, scientifically, that if we illuminate an object that appears red in normal light with pure green light, it will be black. Does this mean that our perception of color tells us nothing of the of the chair in itself? Of course not. It is just that what it tells us is a bit more complex than naive realists think. Both the red and black colors have the same foundation in reality: They are different manifestations of the chair's spectral response (what percentage of each wave length of light is absorbed and what percentage is scattered back). So our perception of color adds to our knowledge of the chair in itself, just not in the way we may have thought naively. The same applies to a number of the chairs other Aristotelian accidents. E.g. its dimensions and mass change with our frame of reference. This does not make them ill-defined in themselves, just more complex than we used to think.

Still, in all light conditions and frames of reference, the chair remains a chair. It is still a piece of furniture designed and built to be sat upon. That's because being a particular kind of substance does not depend on the conditions of observation. We know what kind of thing it is from experience, and so appearances can and do tell us about the substantial nature of things -- although not exhaustively.

Lewis White Beck, in a preface to one of his translations of one of Kant's Critiques makes an illuminating point. His (Kant's) more frequent phrase is not ding an sich, but rather ding an sich selbst, translated as "thing in itself as it is in itself." Distinguishing it from what our perception renders it to our consciousness. — tim wood

Distinguishing object coram intuiti intellectuali (before intellectual perception -- a phase Kant uses) and the object in the act of perception is hardly a Kantian innovation. Aristotle goes on at length on the distinction between sensibility, measurability and intelligibility one the one hand, and actual sensations, measure numbers and concepts on the other. These distinctions were well-known to Aquinas and continue to be used in the Aristotelian-Thomistic community today.

The difference is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition recognizes that when we actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility we are informed about reality, but the Kantian tradition misses this obvious point. So, how can it be that phenomena, which actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility, are incapable of informing us of the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of reality?

Now try to say something, anything, about the chair that is not in any way conditioned and informed by (your) perception. I think Kant would argue that you can't. That is to say that science, which has in itself no perception, can say nothing about the chair. What do you say? — tim wood

There is no reason why I should avoid what is "conditioned and informed by ... perception." What your formulation abstracts away is that perception is relational. We never have abstract perceptions. our perceptions are always perceptions of ..., which is to say perceptions are relational. They relate subjects to their objects. So, my question back to you is what right to I have to speak of anything I have never encountered? As doing so is utterly ridiculous, so, your question is equally absurd.

Let me put it in a different way, perception, in actualizing the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of objects, is our standard way of knowing reality. So, your question question seems to assume that we can know reality without employing the standard means of knowing reality. That is why my question, "How do we know noumena?" is critical -- because it must be some non-standard way of knowing, if it is knowing at all.

Finally, how can it be knowing at all unless it actualizes the intelligibility of the noumenon? For doesn't knowing require making what was merely intelligible actually known?

Thank you, but you still did not explain why there is anything other than the phenomenological chair. Why should there be a separate, unknowable, chair in itself and how do we know that there is?

my question is, if noumena can't be know scientifically, how can they be known? — Dfpolis

Now there's a big statement. You're aware that Coppleson, in his chapter on modern philosophy, says that the attitude that 'all that can be known, can be known by means of science', is the essential meaning of positivism. When I first read that, forty years ago, it inspired me to enroll in philosophy to articulate what's wrong with it - I've been working on it ever since. — Wayfarer

It was a question, not a statement. I'm not a positivist. We can know some things with more certitude than the hypothetico-deductive method can ever provide. Yet, Kant denies the efficacy of any experience-based approach to noumena. So, again, how can they be known, not postulated?

we can't perceive any object as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us, as it is 'given to us in appearances'. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with this claim in isolation if it is taken to mean that we cannot know objects exhaustively, as God knows them. Aquinas is also quite firm on this point, saying that we do not know essences directly, but via accidents (forms of appearance). The problem is that, as I and many others read Kant, he is not only denying God-like knowledge in humans, but any true knowledge of things in themselves. Yet, if noumena stand behind phenomena, 'affecting' us (as Kant says), then we certainly know that they have the power to so affect is -- to induce our experience of their correlative phenomena. So, while I sympathize with much of what Kant seems to be struggling toward, I think he has it wrong -- and disastrously so.

knowledge is limited to appearances, given to us by the senses, judged according to the categories. — Wayfarer

This is where Locke got it wrong, saying we only know our ideas. As I have explained previously, this confuses formal and instrumental signs. We first know things via ideas, then, in a second movement of thought, realize that our means of knowing things are ideas. Ideas are thus formal signs -- existents that only do one thing: signify. Locke, and Kant after him, conceived of ideas as instrumental signs -- as things that must first must be discerned in themselves before they can signify -- just has we need to make out the form of letters before we can know what a word means.

So, it is not that phenomena/appearances/ideas stand between us and the ting in its self. Rather they are the means whereby we know the ding an sich.

when we passively experience the “external” world, what comes to us immediately is already merely an “appearance” rather than the thing in itself.

This is either-or thinking. We don't experience either the thing in itself, or the appearance. Rather, the appearance is the thing in itself as revealed to us. As I have also said previously, the sensible object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. Thus, the thing in itself existentially penetrates me -- the same neural content is both the object's action on me and my sensory image of the object.

this leaves perfectly open to us to think the same objects as things in themselves, though we cannot know them.

Yes, it does, but it gives us no more reason to believe in their reality than we have to believe in the reality of Harry Potter. On the other hand, Aristotle's insight that the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object eliminates the epistic gap that so troubled Locke and Kant.

I don't see how anything that has been subsequently been discovered by physics or any form of science, can undermine that essential understanding. — Wayfarer

It can't. But, it can confirm the analysis showing that it was ill-conceive ab initio. Appearances are not obstacles but means of knowing. Ideas do not stand in the way of knowing, they are the instruments of knowledge. There is no epistic gap, there is a partial identity of knower and known in the act of knowing.

While the world is mysterious, it also reveals itself to us -- often in surprising ways.

Read Physics Bk.4, Ch. 11, 219a:
"Time then is a kind of number (Number we must note is used in two senses--both of what is counted or the countable, and also of that with which we count. Time obviously is what is counted, not that with which we count: these are different kinds of things)" — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you for the reference, but note that it is not the conclusion, only a step in a two chapter analysis of the nature of time. The conclusion at the end of ch, 11, is: "It is clear, then, that time is 'number of movement in respect of the before and after', and is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous." "Number of movement" is "measure of change" in other translations.

. What these clocks are measuring is the passing of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite. Since we cannot see time, we can't measure it. We can see change, so that is what we measure to determine the passage of time.

What he denied was that it could be known scientifically. — tim wood

I do not pretend to be an expert on Kant. I read the Prolegomena, notThe Critique of Pure Reason, so I rely on secondary sources.

The contradictoriness of the Kantian doctrine of things in themselves is indubitable... — T. I. Oizerman, I. Kant's Doctrine of the 'Things in Themselves' and Noumena

Since the thing in itself (Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm. — The Philosophy Pages by Garth Kemerling

Though the noumenal holds the contents of the intelligible world, Kant claimed that man’s speculative reason can only know phenomena and can never penetrate to the noumenon. Man, however, is not altogether excluded from the noumenal because practical reason—i.e., the capacity for acting as a moral agent—makes no sense unless a noumenal world is postulated in which freedom, God, and immortality abide. — The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

I note that what is merely postulated is not in any sense known. So, my question is, if noumena can't be know scientifically, how can they be known?

I'm not saying that Kant doubted the self-consistency of phenomenal reality -- upon which practical reason relies. I 'm saying that Kant invents noumena that necessarily stand behind appearances, while, contradictorily, are not what appears. The theory is utterly incoherent.

Whether or not Kant's physics is now entirely exploded is more than I know. I'm guessing that it has a Newtonian aspect, in that whatever precision it may have seemed to have then, is now at best approximation — tim wood

The question is not one of accuracy. It is one of substantial misunderstanding. Time is supposed to be a form imposed by the mind. Surely the time Kant thought so imposed was not something that could develop a spatial component. Yet, that is precisely what Special Relativity tells us happens when we change frames of reference. So, the form of time Kant believed to be imposed on experience is not really imposed on experience. Experience has shown us that time is at least partially convertable with space.

Given that your ideas of what constitutes foundations of science are rather idiosyncratic, I suspect that what you interpret as patent irrationality in the service of "maintaining faith positions" is simply a case of disagreement over those matters — SophistiCat

The point in question was special pleading by naturalists on the principle of sufficient reason. My position, stated by Freud in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, is that if you allow any exception to the principle, you undermine the whole structure of science. For example, suppose that Becquerel announces his discovery of radioactivity at a conference, describing the observations that support his conclusion. Everyone is impressed, except for a naturalist who stands up in the back of the rooms and says, "My dear Professor Becquerel, that is all very impressive, but you forget that your observation may simply be a brute fact -- one of those phenomena requiring no explanation." What is Becquerel to say, but, "Every phenomenon has a sufficient cause"?

I am not surprised at the hostile reception from self-professed naturalists who engage with you in Youtube comments. — SophistiCat

Actually, the explicit renunciation was in the late 1990s on a discussion board sponsored by Victor J. Stenger. It occurred after no one could rebut my argument for the existence of God in a manner consistent with the foundations of science.

Teleology, rightly or wrongly, is commonly associated with intelligent agency, making it a poor fit for anything that doesn't have to do with human psychology, except in the context of supernatural and theological explanations. — SophistiCat

It depends on what you mean by "supernatural and theological explanations." If you mean faith-based explanations, they do not belong in philosophy, and I do not propose to put them there. If you mean to exclude "theology" in the sense used by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, I see no reason to exclude, a priori, any rational reflection on human experience. Do you?

It is clear from physics, chemistry and biology that many systems have a potential to a determinate end. That is all it means to have a telos. It is a separate question whether the existence of teloi implies the existence of an originating mind. Of course the safe, but intellectually dishonest, move is to deny the existence of teloi, so that one need never face the origin question.

If you're a naturalist, then you see no clear demarcation between rational beings and any other being. They are all simply points on a scale of increasing complexity. So, there is no rationale for allowing goals for humans while denying them to other natural systems.

in epistemology I favor pluralism — SophistiCat

I do as well with my Projection Paradigm, seeing all human knowledge as dimensionally diminished maps of reality. We each have a standpoint from which we experience and one or more conceptual spaces onto which we project our experience. We can enrich our model of reality by seeking diverse projections in an effort to overcome our cultural and historical limitations.

Why would a naturalist have an issue with a complex systems analysis of teleology, for example? — SophistiCat

It is a contingent fact of experience that they generally do. I strongly suspect it is because they see telloi as strong evidence of intelligence -- which they reject on a priori grounds.

My point was that if you want to engage those whom you want to convince, you don't want to open the discussion by poisoning the well with such an obnoxious and unfair accusation. — SophistiCat

I am sorry for offending you. My remark was not personal. It was based on my experience of discussions with naturalists. Some have even rejected the foundations of science in order to maintain their faith positions.

you don't appear to be familiar with secular thought on this subject. — SophistiCat

I suppose time will tell. Have I made some specific error of biological fact, or ignored some obvious rejoinder? If so, I welcome your correction.

You may, of course, engage with whom you wish.

Don't forget though, Aristotle also said that in another sense, time is that which is measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't recall such a statement, which seems very unaristotelian. Do you have a reference?

I don't think it is appropriate to say that the thing which is measured is "time-like" because as the thing measured, it is the real thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, what is measured is some change, like the apparent motion of the heavens, the flow of sand, or atomic oscillations. If we stay in one place and measure only the time between two events, a different observer, moving with respect to us, will see the same two events as separated by space and by a different time interval. So, time is not a fixed thing, but depends on the relation between observers and events.

"Space-like" and "time-like" are terms of art in physics which characterize space-time intervals.

I think the thrust of this comment is not directed at Aristotelian realism, but at the then-emerging modern empiricists, for whom the 'mind-independence' of phenomena was (and remains) an axiom. — Wayfarer

That makes a lot of sense. I think there are strains of modern thought that reject this "axiom" -- such as the "collapse on awareness" interpretation of quantum theory.

Both relativity and quantum theory tell us that measure numbers depend jointly on the prior state of the system and the type of measurement being made. — Dfpolis

Why then did Einstein famously ask the question, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' — Wayfarer

Because for something to be measurable, it must exist. There are no abstract potencies. Rather potencies are latent in actual beings. That is why Aristotle was able to avoid Parmenides' argument against change: The new aspect that emerges from change neither comes from nothing, nor is it fully formed before the change. It is potential in actual being.

I don't think that Platonic realism has much to do with that particular problem — Wayfarer

Yes, it does. Plato, following the Pythagorean tradition, believed that the world was made of mathematical objects -- actual numbers and/or regular polyhedrons. The importance of Aristotle's insight is that, because measure numbers only result from measurements, one must reflect on measuring operations to fully understand them.

what is being called into question by quantum physics is whether particles exist before they're observed, and these particles had been presumed to be the 'fundamental constituents of reality'. — Wayfarer

These are two important but different problems.

As a physicist, I see absolutely no evidence that there are any particles in the sense of point masses or something that can be reasonably modeled by a point mass. Just as Young's experiment falsified Newton's corpuscular theory of light, so the Davisson-Germer experiment, inspired by A. C Lunn's wave model of the hydrogen spectrum and independently confirmed by George Paget Thomson's thin metal diffraction experiment, falsified the particulate theory of electrons.

Following up on the idea that one must understand the measurement process if one is to understand the results, remember that all detectors are made of bulk matter, composed of aggregations of atoms. Atomic electrons are localized by the attraction of the nucleus. Detection events occur when an atomic electron makes a certain kind of transition -- typically an ionization event. Because the atoms are localized, so are ionization events. As a result, the detection of electrons is localized, and they appear to have particulate properties. They do not. They are, however, quantized by some unknown mechanism, perhaps involving Mobius-like topology.

The idea that there are "fundamental constituents of reality" goes back to the Greek atomists, and seems unsupported by evidence. Rather, as we increase the energy of our experiments, we encounter higher and higher energy resonances. Empirically, these resonances are entirely wave-like; nevertheless, they are conventionally called "particles." There are mathematical models, such as the Regge pole model, that suggest that there are an unbounded number of such resonances.

Kant introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. — Emrys Westacott

No, the idea of a reality prior to sensation was clearly spelled out by the Greeks, and definitively by Aristotle (especially in De Anima iii). What Kant did was to maintain the existence of noumenal reality while denying that it could be known -- thus staking a fundamentally irrational position.

As for a more sympathetic reading, Kant was born into a family that followed a mystical religious tradition. It is a common place in the mystical tradition that the object of mystical experience (God, Brahman, the Transcendent) is more real than the world of empirical experience. I have no problem with that view, but the greater reality of Ultimate Being does not mean that empirical reality is either illusory or obscured by our means of knowing -- as Kant proposed.

First, as regard Kant's text, Aristotelian moderate realists do not fit the straw man definition of "transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." Aristotle says:

Things are 'relative' (1) as double to half, and treble to a third, and in general that which contains something else many times to that which is contained many times in something else, and that which exceeds to that which is exceeded; (2) as that which can heat to that which can be heated, and that which can cut to that which can be cut, and in general the active to the passive; (3) as the measurable to the measure, and the knowable to knowledge, and the perceptible to perception. — Metaphysics, Delta, 15

Thus, Aristotle never considers actual appearances "as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." For him, being perceptible is not a stand-alone feature. It exists only relative to a perceiving subject. Specifically, space and time do not exist independently of being measured. Aristotle famously defines time as "the measure of change according to before and after." So, space and time are not independent existents (a la Newton), but the result of measuring space-like and time-like measurability, in conformity with Aristotle's general understanding of quantity:

'Quantity' means that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts of which each is by nature a 'one' and a 'this'. A quantity is a plurality if it is numerable, a magnitude if it is a measurable. — Metaphysics, Delta, 13

It is exactly the 'mind-independence of sensible objects' which has been called into question by physics - which is why I think Kant's basic thesis is still directly relevant. — Wayfarer

Not at all. What is called into question is the Platonic notion that numbers exist prior to counting and measuring operations. Rather, they are the result of measuring and counting operations. Measure numbers in particular are the result of an interaction between the measurable and the measuring operation. Both relativity and quantum theory tell us that measure numbers depend jointly on the prior state of the system and the type of measurement being made.

Specifically, with regard to quantum measurements, it is often forgotten that the measure number is the result of an interaction between an unknown system state, and a detector whose precise quantum state is equally unknown. Obviously, one measure number is inadequate to determine two unknowns.

I pretty much agree with your closing observations.

The entire structure of Kantian philosophy has been rebutted by modern physics. — Dfpolis

I'm sorry, but I think that is entirely mistaken — Wayfarer

Then you will not mind explaining how what Kant thought to be literally unthinkable (alternate views of space, time and causality) were thought and accepted in light of empirical discoveries. To say that advances in physics falsified Kant's conjectures is not to say that everyone realizes that it did so.

I do not know the philosophy of all the luminaries you mention, but i have read enough of Heisenberg and Bohr to know that their views on observation are Aristotelian, not Kantian. Heisenberg even wrote a paper in which he proposed that energy was Aristotelian prime matter.

Because of what methodological naturalism deals with. Its job is to consider causal relationships evident in empirical experience, not to seek first principles or ultimate causes. — Wayfarer

Yes, science is not concerned with metaphysical first principles, but in reviewing the work of his predecessors in Metaphysics A, 3-7, Aristotle is not considering transcendent matters, but the work of the physikoi -- those who sought to understand nature. So, material, formal, efficient and final modes of explanation are approaches to the understanding of empirical reality in terms of immanent, not transcendent, principles. Thus, there is no reason to exclude them when we observe them on a daily basis in the lived world.

We see material modes of explanation in the atomic theory of chemistry, in nuclear and high-energy physics, and in DNA-based genetics. We see formal modes of explanation in the equations of mathematical physics, in the biological role of the geometric structure of compounds and in the dynamics of gene expression. Efficient causality plays a role in every branch of science. Still the role of final causality, though real, is denied.

For example, I wrote my dissertation on the S-Matrix Formulation of the Neutral Kaon System. S-Matrices are mathematical structures that link initial and final states directly, without explicit consideration of the intervening dynamics. Thus, they are the mathematical expression of final causality -- telling us that this initial state is, immanently, that final state.

I have already given simpler, but equally empirical, examples involving spider webs and the determinate potential of seeds. Let me expand a bit on the modeling of neurophysical processes. We know for a fact that the response of neurons to stimuli is nonlinear. So, the mathematical models of neural processes puts us in the realm of chaos theory, and its concomitant unpredictability. As confirmation of this, we have chaotic models of epileptic seizures. This means that not only can we not now predict the behavior of spiders' neural systems via efficient or formal causality, we have no expectation of doing so in the future. Still, we can predict using final causality. It is utterly irrational to refuse to do so because it offends naturalists' belief system.

it is not at all clear to me that the seed has any potential anywhere (or, where is it?). In other words, the potential is all ours. — tim wood

As Aristotle points out, potencies are known by analogy. We don't see the potential. If we did it would not be potential, but actual. Still, we've seen that tomato seeds sprout into totato plants, grains of wheat into wheat stalks, and acorns into oak trees. So when we see another tomato seed, grain of wheat or acorn we know, by analogy, that it has a determinate potential to grow into a certain kind of plant. That is how all scientific knowledge is applied -- by analogy. We've never seen the exact new case before, but we've seen cases very like it, and, in analogy with those cases, we know what to expect.

So, the potential is not ours. It is immanent in the seed. Given the the structure of the seed and the laws of nature (which are also immanent), the seed will, under the proper conditions, germinate and grow into a plant.