... I didn't say they could influence each other.

My point was the "conciousness" spoken about in the context of states of our experiences and their causation is extensa.

The mistake was your equivocation of extensa with "not conciousness​" and cogitans with "conciousness." These terms don't refer to a mind/body split, but to the difference between being an existing state and a logical expression.

I don't think he has the words or concepts to state it clearly, but insofar as this topic of consciousness as an illusion goes, yes. (I mean there's more to his philosophy, but I'm not talking about that here).

Consciousness is material-- i.e. states of the world. The "illusion" is consciousness is somehow outside this, in the subject of the substance of mind, such that experiences and conscious subjects are inexplicable.

In Spinozan terms, the "consciousness" we are talking about, our experiences, the existence of experiencing entities, the causation of these things, etc., is extensa.

Cogitans refers to logical significance, about meaning, about what is understood. It's not the presence of a conscious state but the logical expression of a state or idea.

So, for example, when I experience my screen, it is an instance of extensa-- this state of consciousness exists and is caused by the interactions of many other existing things-- and also cogitans-- my experience has a logical significance or meaning, regardless of whether it exists or not.

Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). — Nagal

Here is the reasoning Dennett is trying to criticise.

There is a nasty equivocation here. Who said that consciousness was to be described in neural terms? Experience is not the brain. Colour, flavour, sound and touch are not states of brain. In describing any of these things, in having knowledge of the existence and causation of conscious state and subjects, the brain isn't even mentioned in the first place.

Right of the bat, the substance dualist beings in the reductionist equivocation of consciousness with with various other states of the world (e.g. particles, chemicals, brains) and uses it as a trustworthy account of how the description of consciousness works.

Supposedly, I can't, for example, describe the presence of an experience itself, the colour red, the existence of someone's happiness, etc.,etc. for those things can't be reduced to a description of some other state (e.g. particles, brains). According to the substance dualist, giving description of experience or conscious subject must mean talking about particles and brains.

Where does this leave us though? Well, seemingly without the ability to talk about the presence of consciousness. If, as the substance dualist speculates, description amounts to reductionism, then any account of conscious must be inadequate. Conscious subjects must be ineffable, outside any description or account of existing states, including all causality (hence the "hard problem" ), a subject of a different realm ("mind") which cannot be given by existence (body).

Substance of mind is a solution to a self-inflicted injury of the substance dualist. It's posited to fill out consciousness because, in the first instance, the substance dualist has already reduced it to other states. Since the substance dualist doesn't allow consciousness to exist or be caused on its own terms, they are left posing the illusionary (in Dennett's terms) subject of mind to account for the presence of consciousness.

If one actually reads Dennett, the "illusion" is actually the substance of mind, rather than conscious experiences themselves. What he's really trying to break down is the idea of the ineffable conscious subject, as if our presence as existing conscious beings was somehow inexplicable or nonsensical.

His point is the conscious subject, as envisioned under substance dualism, the subject that is of mind contrary to body, is an illusion. We, as conscious beings, as minds, exist and there is nothing controversial about this-- conscious states are just another state of the world, a instance of "body" (e.g. one has an arm, a leg an experience here, an experience there and so on).

What Dennett is trying to draw out is the controversy over "what is a likeness" is a red herring. There is no such thing as that substance of mind. Experiences exist, and felt as they are (i.e. have a "what is a likeness" ), but that this doesn't amount to a substance of mind and subject contrary to body. All it means is that, for example, a conscious experience of a bat exists and it among to living through a feeling.

That's all there is too it: a conscious subject existing and feeling in the world, born form various preceding states. No explanatory gap or hard problem. Conscious subjects are understood to exist.

That's reasoning is catergoy error. It treats a holistic approach as if it were a singular part of the world. It always fails because no account of a part gives the whole. No matter how many parts are known, there is always another one, another moment which has yet to happen or has not been grasped.

Under arguments like final cause, people make the mistake of thinking of the whole as a part. They try to understand it as a distinct state that can be named, that sets efficient causation in motion. People don't take the time to realise the whole must be more than this, something which cannot be grasped in terms of a part at all, extending beyond any point (including "final" ) of causation or state.

Not at all. The reaction is against the very idea-- it's unthinkable, "crazy," for it defies their idea of what is logically necessary-- not merely the act of being wrong.

Someone's shock or disgust at challenging meaning doesn't define it's right.Whether a new understanding is right or wrong always a question of itself.

Though, it is true such shock can see people not engaging with a challenging meaning that is right. To maintain the status of their idea, people will often does disregard a challenging meaning, treating it as if it's not really an idea (e.g. "I just can't understand that" "That meaning is not real. It's just a delusion or phase" ).

One sees this sort of reaction a lot in thought about gender, sex sexuality and identity, where the meaning or status of an individual is found or argued to be otherwise to what has been thought-- ontological shock, where existence is found to mean something which is impossible.

It's traumatic because it involves the undoing of how someone understanding the world to with respect to identity, status, power and worth, a loss of the ideas and narratives which one has sorted the world into-- those who they thought were men are suddenly women, women who are supposed to have vaginas sometimes have penis, those who are meant to be only attracted to the opposite sex suddenly seek the same sex, men who find their masculinity of possessing and parading their sexual partners is not love, etc.

Panpsychics have no clue how the subjectivity imputed to individual fundamental particles might combine to form the unified subjectivity of a person. I'm also slightly concerned that they might be forced to declare SuperStrings are conscious in the near future. — tom

In the form of panpsychism where each state has it own subjectivity, they don't. The subjectivity of a person is another unique subject. A state which exists in terms of itself, rather than being formed by the consciousness of fundamental particles. The "combination problem" misses the entire point of what constitutes a conscious subject-- it's just a repetition of the "hard problem," the outright rejection that consciousness itself emerges from states which are not consciousness.

This panpsychist position is actually more or less identical to the non-reducative emergence of consciousness, only instead of only particular systems generating consciousness (e.g. human bodies, animal bodies, etc.,etc. ) every state does so-- in this respect, they aren't forced to declare SuperStrings conscious, it an outright defining claim they make. As with any state, a conscious states emerge form SuperStrings, making them a conscious subject.

Ehh, I'm not sure there is much to fuss about here. The article outright points out its suggestion works through the belief of the subject:

There's some debate over whether it's a distinct state or just a form of deep relaxation, but that's pretty much just an argument over wording. You might tell my hypnosis clients, "You fools! It's all in your head!" but then we'll all roll our eyes and say, "Yeah. That's the point."

It's also a bit different to the placebo effect. With the placebo effect, there is a third element (the inert substance) which stands in for a drug which is meant to have an effect regardless of the subject's belief. With hypnosis there is no third element which is meant to achieve an effect regardless of the subject's thoughts on the matter.

Its suggestions are more like just the doctor saying: "This will have an effect on you," which actually does have an effect in causality-- if the doctor didn't say that, you wouldn't believe it and you would not respond as per that belief. The "false" aspect of the placebo effect isn't present in hypnosis because it was never contending to do something outside the belief of the subject.

The problem is that argument is it doesn't, itself, respect the primacy of consciousness. Instead of treating each conscious subject as its own experiencer, it speaks if being an experiencer is a generality, passed down generations, such that I am of the same "mind" as my parents, and their parents, and so on and so-- as if my mind belong to others and theirs mine!

Concerned about justifying "mind," it misses actually the distinction of the experiencing subject. It fails to recognise each experiencer is primary themselves. My consciousness is not given by matter. Nor is it given by any other preceding mind. It is only itself-- Willow the experiencer-- and that's all that can define it.

It sort of does. The thing about the experiencer is they don't appear in experiences of the world. Our experiences are of specific state (bowling ball, computer, rock, an instance of happiness, my understanding of a post, a thought that we are an experiencer, etc.). In these terms, the experiencer is always beyond any particular experience-- a sort of infinite which is never captured by giving an account of one particular moment of the world.

Insofar as our experience of states of the world goes, there is no experiencer. It cannot appear in experience's accounts of the world because it is an infinite. To grasp the experiencer, one's understanding has to move beyond a state of the world (e.g. the existence of a rock, bowling ball or a thought), to the expression of logic that is the being of an experiencer.

The "hard problem" is a red-herring generated by confusing particular experiences (i.e. state of experiences-- an existing thought, a feeling, a sensation, etc., ) with experiencer. It's not true. The experiencer is more than any of their experiences, more than the sum of their experiences.

Instead of recognising the experiencer as an infinite, and so outside any experience of a state of the world, the substance dualist and hard problem reduce the experiencer to particular states of experience in the world.

Here, you are advocating panpsychism. — Wayfarer

I know, my point was about it's position. Personally, I don't agree that everything has subjectivity. Though, I do like the panpsychist argument for demonstrating how deeply prejudiced towards anyone but ourselves.

Quite a few struggle with panpsychism not because of the wild speculation everything has subjectivity, but rather because it knocks our sense of superiority as the "only" conscious entities. Since everything has subjectivity, particular bodies and behaviours begin to struggle as a justification of levels of experience belonging to other lifeforms. If apparently inert rocks have subjectivity, how can we be sure higher level thinking is limited to life that behaves like humans or has some similar bodies?

I would hate to think of what a square root would feel like. — "Wayfarer

That's a starwman. The argument isn't that the thought of square root is a bodily feeling, but that a bodily sensations cause or manifest with a distinct state of understanding a square root.

The square root doesn't feel like anything. Our bodies feel before or concurrently with us thinking about a square root.

Wayfarer is more or less a substance dualist.

For bodily feelings and sensations to be involved means making mathematical thought part of causality. It means understanding or experience of mathematics must emerge out of their body. It requires bodily sensations to cause or inspire me to think of mathematics. In this context, experience because material (or body, in the context of substance dualism)-- states of my mathematical thinking emerge out of state of bodily sensation, which in turn emerged out of my body.

For many, it simply can't be true because it would mean substance dualism is false.

Why would you say that an object is not a whole? Sure it is not a whole in the perfect sense, like in the sense of a unity of everything is a the perfect whole, but by its own right as an individual unity, can't we say that it's a whole? — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't.

I said the beginning and end, or any other point of an object, was not the whole of an object. I never said an object wasn't whole. By it's own right, as an individual entity, a whole, we can say it's a whole. In other words, there are only perfect wholes and one is expressed by every single object.

How would you define "whole" then? To be a whole, doesn't it suffice just to be a unity? A unity doesn't need to be a perfect unity in order to be a whole. So numeral such as 5, 8, 12, signify wholes, but since they are each not the complete whole of all the numbers, nor the primary unity, 1, they are not perfect in their wholeness. — Metaphysician Undercover

The point is it does suffice just be a unity. Since this is the case, the problem you present is nothing more than a red-herring-- 5, 8, 12 all have their own unity, as does 1 and the set of real numbers. All are compete and indivisible. When picks out a number from the set of real numbers, it doesn't make the set of real numbers divided. When we divide 8 by 2, it doesn't undo the unity of 8. And so on. They are all perfect in their wholeness.

What you suggest as a problem is just a category error, a mistaken assumption that unity is given by other things.

Do you agree that a continuum is a whole? And do you agree that there are wholes, continua which are less than perfect in their nature? If an object which is a unity, a whole, ceases to exist, isn't that the end of that particular continuum? But if that object is described as part of a larger, more perfect whole, then that larger, more perfect continuity would persist, and the annihilation of that smaller whole, which was really just a part of the more perfect whole, would just be a slight change to that more perfect continuum. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes.

No, all wholes or continua are perfect.

No, the unity of an object does not exist in the first place and has no end, so there is no end to the particular continuum-- hence the dead and fictional are still whole, despite being broken apart or never existing.

Impossible, all wholes are perfect. "More perfect" is an oxymoron. Perfection means "the best."

Any object has a start and end... but these can only be finite states. They are never a whole in the first place.

There is a break between any object and a plan about an object. A plan, as an object, is a different finite state. I make a plan-- it's a state that begins and then ends. Then I have a created object, another state that begins and ends; a plan has ended, the planned state begun.

Niether of these objects are a whole, either of the plan or the object. The wholes are indivisble and so remain untouched. My plan doesn't suddenly become "not whole" because it began and ended. Nor does the created object. The point is starts and ends do not amount to a breaking of a contiuum. If one could break a contiuum, it not indivisible. The infinite nature of a contiuum means it must be unaffected by beginnings and ends.

Your missing the point. Under panpsychism, it's not only the entire system from which conciousness emerges. It does so from every state. Each hard drive and memory stick, for example, has their own subjectivity.

Regardless of whether replacing a hard drive or memory affects the experience of the entire system (would depend on whether either caused different experiences to emerge from the robot system), all its particular parts have their own subjectivity as well.

In the given robot, there is not one instance of an experiencing subjectivity, but billions (the entire system, each hard drive, each memory stick, each atom that makes up every part, every electron, etc.).

Indeed, which Berkeley clearly affirms-- much stuff exists without humans perceiving or knowing it. Given this position, he then poses God.

God is proposed to, according to Berkeley, give coherence to things existing without it being perceived by us. So his argument is not that it's impossible for things to exist if they aren't perceived, but rather they are impossible if no-one perceives them. It's quite a different argument than to solipsism.

Rather than trying to force everything into one entity, Berkeley is saying it must belong to others.
If we don't know something, then there is something, some significance which doesn't belong to us. Everyone must share the world with something other than themsleves.

How so? Exactly how is someone going to be aware or not aware, to perceive something or not, without knowing or not knowing it?

The problem is Berkeley already accepts that being percetible doesn't mean perception in the first instance. He accepts it's possible for stuff to be known, even if it's not present to a given individual-- that's how God can be posed. There's much to know, even if humans don't.

If Berkeley really thought possibility of knowledge was the same as the existence of knowledge, he'd have no cause to pose God at all. Possible knowledge would terminate in the present individual (and the accusation of solipsism would carry). He clearly doesn't think this though.

It's not... you lose hair, feel the person cutting, etc.

If you mean why is it that you don't feel terrible fear or pain when your experiencing hairs are lost, that question has a number of different answers.

Firstly, your mind is not that of the individual hair. Each hair has its own subjectivity.

Secondly, assuming each hair has its own subjectivity, we don't know what that entails. It might be hairs don't feel pain or are rendered unconcious by the approach of cutting tools. It might well be hairs are, in terms of a manifestation in their own experience, unaffected by being cut.

I think the better question is whether the difference is perceived. For a difference to be perceptible doesn't necessarily mean it perceived-- people have been known to make arguments that two Pepsi cans are the same due to having similar properties. Despite different identity being perceptible or knowable, people fail to notice it all the time.

If identity is always percetible, it doesn't follow identity is always perceived. God may know (this is the same Pepsi can, these are different Pepsi cans, etc.) an identity some people don't.

The whole doesn't get divided in instances where we cut up an object. In such an instance, we are destroying a particular state of the world. When we cut a carrot, we don't target the whole. The knife doesn't split a whole into two halves, such there is a division of the whole.

If I try and say: "Here is half the whole carrot," my statement is incohrent. Since the whole is indivisible, I can't split it such that I have half the whole here and the other half of the whole over there.

In a sense we could say I destroy the whole. In cutting, I take a state expressing an infinite of continuity out of the world. Where one the whole was expressed in the world in front of me, now it is only done so in logic. There's never a split in the whole though, such that we end up with seperate parts of it. We are only destroying an object which expesses the whole.

Following on, this also means particular continuities don't have a beginning or end. Yes, any given object has a start and end, but this is not the unity expressed by it. Whether we are talking about a rock, a person or bacteria, it doesn't take existence for them to be whole-- imagined objects are no less whole than existing ones. In the birth and death of states, there only presence in time, as divided moments. It is only those divided moments, expressing a whole, which are lost and formed. Wholes themsleves are neither created or destroyed.

Strictly speaking, they are just as special. Experience emerges from feet just as it does the brain-- and the same is true each atom, protons and electron, neutron, etc., In this context, there isn't just one "mind" to a body, but billions upon billions, where everything from a single electron to the whole body syestem has a mind of its own. In one person, there are more experiencing individuals than humans on Earth.

There isn't a conflict. Ideal continuity is present. Any infinite can't be divided such that it said to begin or end. We don't divide continuous things, such as objects and wholes at all. Our "cutting" of a whole is merely picking out something specific. It doesn't affect continuity. If I pick out a rock, it doesn't make the whole of the world go away. The whole remains, uncut and indivisible, no matter how many times we might suggest we separate it, an all together different object to the individual states we pick out.

A whole has or is no parts, even as parts belong to it. When we pick out a part, the whole remains and is undivided (and is indivisible).

The mistake people make is thinking wholes as defined by parts in the first instance, such selecting a part would somehow divide and destroy the whole. It hides the indivisible nature of whole from us and sees us misread the wholes we do encounter as failed continuity.

I do agree Hume is not all that interesting from a personal point of view though. He more or less only tells you what you are not-- not logic, not necessary, so he's really only interesting as a refutution of ideas you are a necessary state. He doesn't really elucidate anything about who you are or how that's important.

I think your reading performs the same reasoning Hume was breaking out of: the equivocation of logic and the world.

Hume doesn't really deny the connections of the world, just that they are given by logic or metaphysics.

It's not a denial of association, but an alteration of how we grasp it. Rather than, for example, left-handness and mental illness being connected in logic, Hume recognises they are together in the world. The connection is a result of particular people, their attributes and environment, rather than a logical or metaphysical truth that left-handness=mentally ill.

Hume recognises there is no "why." States are associated as they are only through themselves.

Really? You going to play this game of picking on typos and ignoring the criticism made? I know very well how Peirce defines a true contiuum.

The point is this is mistaken. He's failed to understand that a set or collection can be infinite, that it is not defined in a bottom-up manner as a sum of its parts. Consisting of finite members does not mean being finite.

In a sense yes-- at some point I will reject I have a car-- but what is that point? Clearly, not because it's missing a part (I get a replacement part for the car). Nor is it driving function (I get the car fixed). It's not even a question of having a working car yet (I've built the body of my car).

As a whole, the car is not defined by its parts.

You actually make the mistake of being sceptical of experience here. All our experiences are "first person." One only knows "red" thorough living their experience. In this respect, it is no different to knowing of experience-- in fact, it's a subset of it. If I know red, a computer or a mountian, it's something of my experience I know.

All instances of knowledge are "first person", a person's lived experience. Red is no less irreducible than experience. Both can only be accessed with "first person" experience.

But that's exactly the problem. Such a "real contiuum" is meaningless. It's a set without any members-- an infinite of nothing at all.

Pierce fails to grasp the nature of contiuum here. Supposedly, when finite members belong to a contiuum (e.g. a number line), it cannot be said to be a proper contiuum. He treats having finite members as if it meant a beginning and end, as if it meant the given contiuum wasn't infinte.

This isn't true. A number line is really infinite and a genuine contiuum. It doesn't begin or end. It is indivisible. (picking out a number from the line doesn't destroy the line).

Pierce makes the mistake of treating such a conntuim as if it were made, in a bottom up manner, by the finite members that belong to it. It is not. The infinite set of finite members is its own. Pierce fails to recognise it is a conntuim because he's still stuck trying to account for the infinte by the finite.

In that sense, the motor vehicle doesn't consist of parts. One doesn't have a motor vehicle when they have a wheel or dashboard. A whole is not a sum of parts. It's its own thing.

That's why one cannot use the loss or absence of parts to identify when there is no longer a car. Do I no longer have a car if I lose a door? What about a steering wheel? An engine? Most of the time those are still cars, only missing a part they are expected to have. Sometimes a car has hardly anything at all-- consider someone building a car who refers to a half finished frame as "their car".

The point is contiuum is a thing. Indivisble things made up of seperate finite states. We can cut a number line anywhere because its infinite particular members. Whether we cut at 2, 3,50,12445,9765564 or788956765677, we select a member of the contiuum.

But how does the contiuum change when we do this? It doesn't. 3 still comes after 2 in the contiuum of the number line. And so on in both directions. In selecting 3, we haven't destroyed the contiuum of the number line at all. We've just stop talking about it because we are interested in a particular member.

The notion of dividing the contiuum is a red herring. It confuses what we are talking about (3) with everything for that moment. We confuse ourselves into thinking the contiuum has been lost or divided when we are talking about one of it members. In truth, it's still there, infinite and undivided, just as it was before we were talking about one of its members.

The continuum is its own object, not merely a sum of every finite member.

More like it's unbearable to think others will be harmed, caused to suffer or forced into an unbearable (to them) world by ethical significance.

It doesn't mean people don't think anyone else is wrong-- shmik clearly accuses the shoplifter of being wrong-- but makes them hesitant to proclaim governing abstractions of "moral truth."

For better and ill, it prevents abstractions of "moral turths" being mobilised against people. If the shop owner thinks like shmik, the shoplifter may walk out of the store without being harmed or restricted. To the shop owner, stealing a few products would merely be an option that ought to occur, rather than an action demanded.

No doubt a philosophy which undercuts ethics, which makes them optional (in direct contradiction with what ethics mean), but it's a decent foil for some of the excesses of ethical philosophy, where the demand is so strong that people start thinking they can force everyone to be ethically perfect.

Panpsychism is somewhat curious because it reveals the incoherence of substance dualism that it's often born trying to defend.

In an effort to make "mind" the ubiquitous complement to body, it turns the mind material and gives it to every individuated state. For the panpsychist, minds are individual states of the world, not bodies (as many reductionist claim), which manifest out of all specific states of body in the world.

The only difference between the emergent materialism and panpsychism is that latter expects experience emerges form all bodies, rather than just a select group (e.g. humans, animals, etc.,etc.). It objectifies not the "nature" of experiences, but experiences themselves, such they are independent states of the world, destroying the separation between the mind and body-- minds are another "material" state.

It's not really a question of is/ought. That's more a distinction between ethical significance (ought) and presence of states (is). What is at stake in shmik's argument is merely the ought. Ought the person in question shoplift? By shmik's given argument, the answer is objectively, "No." shmik' outright says it:

I feel the obligation not to shoplift so you should not do it — shmik

The person is obligated not to shoplift. shmik knows or feels this even if the other person feels otherwise. It is clearly an ought argument and "objective (true even if the other person doesn't realise it)" from its inception.

The gap shmik is talking about is between what you know and what suits other people. It's a conflict generated out of a conundrum of whether it's ethical to specify what thoughts, actions and way of life is right for other people, even if that conflicts with their experience.

How can shmik, who literally doesn't understand how shoplifting ought to happen, be the person who decrees that the shoplifter be forced into a abhorrent world (to them) where they cannot shoplift? What gives shmik the power to decree the shoplifter ought to suffer a world which doesn't fit with their principles?

For shmik, it's not a question of an is/ought conflict, but rather the way an ought destroys a way of life for someone else. shmik can't fully commit to the "objective ought" because they've realised it means someone else loses their ought, trapping such a person in an abhorrent world-- and this is defined by the binding presence of moral significance.

And yet the traditional/classical conception of God is that He is absolutely simple; His attributes are not discrete in the way that you seem to be suggesting. — aleteiest

Which is exactly the problem with the traditional/classical God. There is no way an infinite of attributes can belong to such a being. Such a God is simple and empty. No thing belongs to them because it would mean owning the discrete. The continuum of God is left with other at all, merely an empty set that has nothing to do with the world.

Spinoza's point is both the continuum and it's members are discrete-- the former as the continuum itself, the latter as each particular member. To be a continuum or category is discrete, not to lack identity or discintion. The infinite is its own discrete truth-- it's the infinite itself, a set which contains endless discrete members.

With all due respect, that seems rather ... vague to me. — aleteiest

Only because you don't recognise the infinite as its own thing. It seems "vague" because you are trying understand it though a finite lens. You want us to say what is in the world or what it does to the world, how does it manifests in our observations of the world.

The point is the infinite is not vague at all. It means a set without beginning nor end, a distinction and identity all of its own, which is never any member of itself.

This seems like a case where Peirce's attempt to use generic terminology for his categories may have been misleading. They are not called 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns because they always and only come about in that order; on the contrary, my interpretation of his cosmology is that in the hierarchy of being, 3ns is primordial relative to the other two. In any case, 1ns/possibility does not "end" where 2ns/actuality "begins," they are both - along with 3ns/necessity - indispensable and irreducible ingredients of ongoing existence. — aleteiest

A hierarchy is an order. No doubt he is talking about logical terms, but hierarchy or order is an inherently a conception of the finite and time. It results in a leakage into causality (as we see in apo's argument which treat "vagueness" as the origin of the states of our reality), where 2ns (actuality) is considered to be born of 3ns (semiotics, necessity) and 1ns (possibility).

Possibility is necessary. In Peirce's terms, it is also 3ns, along with logical distinction forms (semiotics), possibility is necessary. The hierarchy collapses. Since possibility is necessary and infinite, it never begins or ceases. It is just as "primordial" as semiotics. Logical distinction has always been. Possibility has always been. Neither came first. Peirce's triad collapses into the necessary (semiotics, possibility) and the contingent (actual states).

Furthermore, the hierarchy between the necessary and contingent does not make sense. For a state to be actual, it takes more than the presence of either semiotic discintion(i.e. form, meaning) and possibility. If I say: "There is a logical form of me being the US president and the possibility of me being the US president," it doesn't birth the actual state of me as the US president. Only an actual state can do that. In terms of definition, actual state are self-defined, not given by the necessity of semiotic and possibility. Actuality becomes just as "primordial" as semiotics or possibility.

If I am to be president of the US, there can only be a concurrence of possibility, semiotics and actuality. Only when those are all at once, of themselves, am I US president. There can be no hierarchy.

That's the trick-- it is found in experience and thought... but it is not the experience and thought.

Consider the knowledge of you posting on this forum. How would anyone know about this? Well, there are only their experiences, be they of the empirical world (i.e. observations of your posts) or experiences of logical comprehension (e.g. their identity, your identity, the logical discintion of a forum and posts, etc.). We really do know objects themselves-- else we would be merely talking about ourselves rather than other things or people.

But... as apo demonstrates here, our experiences are their own. They are distinct from the thing-itself, such that, on some occasions, we make mistakes about things. Apo's experience shows these two states to be identical, even though they are not. He does not know the identity of these states itself. His experience has missed it.

The point is the difference is meaningful, no matter how much you might pretend otherwise-- a thing's identity is not found in what it is to you (i.e. your experience of it, semiotics, your "epistemic cut" ), but rather itself. There is a difference ( "This one dies, not the other" ) no matter if you care about it. Your generality is a myth, a dishonest story you tell yourself to eliminate subjects in the contexts of your "practical" concerns.

The point is you are discounting the very thing, and only thing that, from a person's point of view, makes anything worthwhile. To be pressured or moved is how we care. When one project finishes (be it competed or not), we need our minds to drive us in another (even if it is only basking in the glory of what we have already done), else we are caught in a world where nothing matters.

Take the simplest example where someone completes are project. Why do they feel like it wasn't worth the effort? Well, that's how they feel. Where they were once willed to care, they no longer do. After the project is all said and done, they only will that it was all a waste of time and there is nothing more than they could ever do in life. Their problem is they've stopped willing any project but their own failure and misery.

What they need is a new project, with its pressure to "be" something, its obstacles to overcome and (in some cases) pain and suffering which have to be endured to achieve the goal. For their misery to end, they must will and be content that such willing itself is the point.