but that the ‘vision of unity’ is at the heart of true philosophy. — Wayfarer

I'm in agreement with this.

Often the matter of truth does not seem to be quite clearly distinguishable from the matter of taste. — spirit-salamander

Aside from truths and tastes, there’s also explanatory power involved. Here personal tastes lend themselves to what is deemed most in need of explaining.

As one general example that is readily apparent on this forum: The physicalist finds consciousness (by which I mean nothing more than the firsthand faculty of awareness) to be much ado about nothing, being primarily interested in maximally explaining that aspect of awareness’s environment which is equally applicable to all sentient beings, both affectively and effectively, and so which does not sway to the whims of any one being or cohort of such. This being what we term physical reality. To the non-physicalist, physicalism-grounded explanations fail to adequately account for givens that are deemed by such temperaments to be most pertinent: things like justice, beauty, meaning, reasoning, happiness - value in general - which are deemed contingent upon awareness and requisite for the evaluation of anything, including of that which we deem to be physical.

Once a system is obtained that explains that which one’s temperament deems most valuable, confirmation biases ensue. And here various truths are filtered in favor of maintaining the system of explanation that most assists oneself in making sense of existence. Thereby, that system of explanations which best helps one to live. I’m by no means any exception to this bias.

If there were to be a theory of everything in philosophy, it would need to explain everything to a t: both real and fictional, both metaphysical and physical, and so on. Thereby holding complete explanatory power for everything - for that which our own temperaments value as well as that which we find no great value in, though it be valuable to others.

Till then, if ever realizable, we can intend to better approximate this ideal. Or not. But I would not consider the latter lovers of wisdom.

Nothing for me to argue against here.

:grin:

Thanks. I'll confess to me having some fun for the time being. :blush: But, yea, you're right.

So given our history of exchanges on this thread where you've asked bogus questions of me, how do I now know that your latest statements are in fact real and not bogus?

What do you think might happen if you regularly violate your taken-for-granted moral principles?

[...]

So what do you think, moral realists? — spirit-salamander

Thinking of Buddhists whose ultimate aim is the emancipation from samsara, which is a predetermined and non-created state of being that awaits as Nirvana; or of Neoplatonists whose ultimate aim is union with “the One”, which is again a predetermined and non-created state of being that awaits; or any number of similar examples (with a potential secular example being the obtainment of a true, or absolute/complete, objectivity of awareness) wherein the ultimate end pursued is considered an uncreated absolute good, one that is universally applicable, that then establishes what ought and ought not be done so as to be attained (we are, after all, addressing moral realism):

What would necessarily happen - be it in this life, if not in the next, and so forth (here granting that nonbeing is not a predetermined ultimate end of awareness) - is that one would be furthered from that which one intends to ultimately actualize in the long term by one’s own hand, this via the actualization of short-term goals that, again, frustrate one’s pivotal intent. This furtherance from what one ultimately wants, then, would be unpleasant, this in varying degrees that are relative to one’s degree of deviation from what one ultimately desires and thereby seeks. Whereas increased proximity to what one ultimately wants results in happiness; and actualization of what one ultimately wants would be, well, bliss.

By the same token - regardless of hardships encountered - if one maintains alignment to those oughts which facilitate closer proximity to, and eventually actualization of, one’s ultimate end/aim of the absolute good, one will be closer to it than if one were not to so maintain.

I grant that this is simplistic, quite possibly to a fault. But I’ll leave it as-is for now. As a reminder, this presupposes that moral realism is.

It wasn't a real question. — Bartricks

Oh! My bad for replying, then.

Kudos for the historical facts of you last post. Agreed. But disagree that religion can only change people from good to bad (e.g., it’s not like Christian slave owners were good people prior to their discovery or indoctrination into JC’s teachings), or that atheism cannot produce bad consequences that would not occur where spiritual beliefs to be present:

I reckon that those who commit suicide after perpetrating mass shootings generally (?) do not believe in an afterlife. And, if no afterlife, why should so doing be egregious to the person in question? I likewise reckon that a good sum of the greed-is-good gurus among the economic elite also lack belief in an afterlife of any sort (despite their public pronouncements) and hold the same roundabout motives for prioritizing maximum financial profit for themselves in this life over the global community’s wellbeing (as in the repercussions upon future generations of the global warming and the planets 6th mass extinction currently unfolding, in significant part due to a pyramid-scheme global economy founded on the axioms of unlimited resources and infinite expansion). In cases such as these, lack of spirituality becomes detrimental to the actions of the individual relative to the community at large. On a different note, I’ve come across self-proclaimed “formerly bad” persons who’ve become good on grounds of “having found Jesus”. And they were indeed amiable to myself and the community for the time period I knew them—this despite my not having been spiritual at the time and our debates into these matters.

IMO, it's neither religion nor lack of religion that is the culprit. People can use either perspective to give more power to themselves in actualizing the goals which they seek. As two examples of the latter, either that of increased personal autocracy and control over all other or, else, that of an equality (siblinghood, or however else one may term it) of intrinsic worth between themselves and all who surround. One can use the same religion (such as Christianity) for either end, just as one can use irreligious physical facts (such as those regarding biological evolution) in the same ways.

You might be in need of defining "reason" for me to better answer your questions. Assuming that I could.

BTW: To be clear, my own stance is that the Good, which encapsulates the right and the correct, is an uncreated metaphysical facet of the world: not created by a monotheistic deity (be this God renamed Reason or otherwise), not by a plurality of gods, and certainly not by corporeal beings such as ourselves.

Any reason held is held with the Good in mind; this, minimally, with one's appraisals of what is good for one's own self.

... kind of thing.

I’ll try to reframe what I was previously saying in terms that you have used, humbly hoping to be more fully understood:

You are saying that Reason has reasons for Her reasoning which are themselves the self-contained creations of Reason alone as omnipotent arbitrator of these reasons. But then, if Reason is not Herself subject to reasons that are not of Reason’s creation, none of Reason’s reasons for reasoning will be based on non-arbitrary reasons, for all of Reason’s reasons will be arbitrated by Reason alone, thereby being fully arbitrary reasons without exception.

In summation, either Reason is subject to uncreated reasons that Reason Herself aspires to (in which case Reason/God does not create the Good/right/correct as reason for Her own actions) or all of Reasons’ omnipotently created reasons, including that of the Good/right/correct, are themselves created without reason by Reason and, hence, are irrationally created (in which case Reason/God creates the Good/right/correct in manners not subject to anything good, anything right, or anything correct – but instead, as you say, in manners that are fully without reason).

In short, you’re arguing for Reason Herself being fully irrational in all that She creates.

Lacking much subtlety of mind myself, I’m gonna post this.

Likewise, for moral norms and values to exist, God needs to exist (why? Because moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God). And if moral norms and values do exist, God exists. — Bartricks

This implies God to be a psyche, for prescriptions and values pertain to psyches alone. They, for example, do not pertain to Aristotelian notions of a final cause as an unmoved mover nor to Neoplatonist notions of “the One”, neither of which were deemed to be psyches (and thereby to prescribe things and to hold values).

This one supreme psyche termed “God”, then, would hold these prescriptions and values due to him/her/it being under the sway of a metaphysical good that is not of God’s creation - toward which God aspires and conforms - or, else, this supreme psyche, “God” would create prescriptions and values of the Good in a fully purposeless manner - such that they are the products of a senseless caprice which can hold no reason for manifesting in one manner rather than another.

If the former, God is not the creator of the Good - i.e., of goodness proper - but is a servant/subject of it as are all other lesser beings. There then is no reason to believe in God in order to believe in the Good, for the Good is not contingent upon God. (Here tentatively granting there being such a supreme psyche which is labeled “God”)

If the latter, God is the creator of that which is the Good, even to the extent of the Good being that which pleases God. For the sake of argument, here assuming that God being the creator of that which pleases God is not, of itself, logically incoherent … God’s creation of the Good, and of prescriptions and values regarding the Good, has then occurred for no reason, no motive, and no purpose: for these would all necessitate the correctitude of an a priori, uncreated Good toward which God aspires and conforms, and thereby intends, in the creations God brings about. In this second scenario, then, when overlooking its logical incoherencies, what was metaphysically good yesterday could be unadulterated evil tomorrow, or vice versa; bringing about a metaphysical moral relativism pivoted on the caprice of a superlatively amoral despot whose dictums are literally irrational. Here, then, there must be God in order for the Good to be.

So - if no major mistakes of reasoning have been done on my part - how does one go about demonstrating the verity of the Good being contingent upon God, rather than the Good not being contingent upon God?

In attempts to place linguistic shuffling aside: Sans the metaphysics of physicalism being a presupposed truth, what is the logical contradiction of ghosts occurring?

As to definitions, let "a ghost” be the disembodied consciousness, soul, or spirit - i.e., the disembodied psyche - of a deceased living being that interacts with this world.

Plenty of anecdotal evidence for ghosts interacting with living people both cross-culturally and historically, where this evidence again occurs cross-culturally (it can’t be physically replicable evidence because ghosts are not physical). Again, the *totality* of this evidence is to be considered hallucinatory, or else acts of charlatanism, without exception on what logical grounds when physicalism is not a presupposed truth?

---------

And to address the OP directly: None. Regardless of firsthand accounts, these can all be explained away as either hallucinations, delusions, or deceptions on grounds that the afterlife is not, or else cannot be, physical. This as per physicalism.

Ah. Got it now. As regards those who initially thought up the concept, point taken. It is expresses as applying to persons, rather than to subjective beings at large. Myself, I'm not that anthropocentric. But it is sometimes expressed as "agreement" or "mutual understanding". So I don't believe its limited to worldviews.

but those who thought up the concept of intersubjectivity seem to have done so with personhood as a bridge that's already been crossed. — TheMadFool

I'm not clear on what you mean and I'd like to better understand you. Care to elaborate?

What confuses me to no end is the word combination, inter and subjectivity. I immediately think of oxymorons like bitter-sweet and the movie True Lies. :smile:

The word "inter" suggests a group of people and the word "subjectivity" is usually associated with one person. — TheMadFool

The same can be said of “interpersonal”.

All forms of human intercourse are interpersonal – yes, sex, but also commerce and communication, and so forth - wherein two or more persons in some way or another and to some extent converge to traverse a commonly shared path in relation to their awareness, if in relation to nothing else. On a related note, “understanding” holds the etymology of “inter” – “standing”.

I so far find that the principal difference between “interpersonal” and “intersubjective” is as follows: intersubjectivity takes the personhood out of the intended concept and replaces it with the more generalized notion of subjectivity. Bees in a beehive share an intersubjectivity, such as when one bee communicates the location of pollen to others, but this communication between bees cannot be effortlessly expressed as interpersonal, since bees are not construed to be persons.

It is my understanding that young infants have to learn the difference between what is part of them and what is outside. Wouldn't that mean they are not conscious, again, in the sense we are talking about it. — T Clark

Well, yes, an infant would not hold abstracted ideas regarding their innate awareness of self via which other is discerned. And if that is how one chooses to understand what "consciousness" refers to then infants hold no consciousness.

This specified notion of consciousness is to me however very biased toward cognitively healthy adult humans as holding a metaphysically unique status. Something that goes against the grain with me. E.g.: an adult with extreme forms of mental retardation would then also hold no consciousness.

For one thing, I believe there are gradations of awareness; even when one focuses on consciousness as self-awareness, there are gradations of this among adult humans and over time in any individual adult human. On average, contemplation of the self gives greater self-awareness than does watching a movie. These gradations would hold to minimal extents even for infants. Despite an infant not having language to specify concepts of self, it does hold innate and nonverbal notions of "mine", as in what we linguistically address as my thirst, my pleasure or pain, my affinity to familiar voices, and so forth--this even if its associating these personal states of self to stimuli takes time. And, in so doing, I offer that an infant holds an ingrained awareness of self, hence a degree of self-awareness without which it (the infant) would literally perish. But if language use is considered an all-important item for consciousness, any such perspective would be mute. (side note: interesting how in English infants, lesser animals, and divine beings such as angels are termed "it" rather than "he/she", the latter being reserved only for those with whom one can linguistically converse. This isn't so, at the very least, in the Romanian language.)

Maybe more to the point, if an infant can be unconscious it would be wrong to uphold that it is not (i.e., un-) conscious when it is not unconscious. On a technical level, so affirming to me seems to be a logical contradiction.

Also, if consciousness is the holding of abstracted ideas regarding one's innate awareness of self via which other is discerned, what can be said to engage in this abstracting prior to the abstraction taking hold? I'm thinking that consciousness engages in such abstracting to begin with, but I'm open to different views.

Being a hairdryer would really suck... — bert1

Being a vacuum would suck more. :razz:

One can think of X without perceiving X e.g. "unicorns", right? — 180 Proof

Of course. As I wrote in my original reply to the OP, re: one can be aware of being content without perceiving oneself to be content.

Are we not aware of what we know ourselves to be thinking?

First off, I didn't think your discussion of "awareness" was contentious at all. — T Clark

OK. Cool. :grin:

As I noted in my OP, I did not consider it because I thought it was a general term. You're right, though, you can't be self-aware without being aware. I have no objections to keeping it in the discussion. Do you think it adds to the discussion of "consciousness" in a way that "self-aware" does not? — T Clark

Self-awareness becomes redundant it is specifies an innate distinction between self and other, an innate awareness of selfhood in this sense. An ameba will hold awareness of this distinction, but we do not say it is self-aware. Lesser vertebrates can become unconscious—e.g., due to sedatives—but when conscious we likewise don’t consider them self-aware in the senses defined in the OP. Defining consciousness by self-awareness, as self-awareness was specified in the OP, constrains “consciousness” strictly to critters that can not only conceptualize information but, additionally, can conceptualize information about (and thereby hold abstract knowledge of) their personal innate awareness of their own selfhood via which other is discerned. A conceptualization of self which young enough human children cannot do. So, in equating consciousness to self-awareness, one would be forced to state that human infants hold no consciousness. This being something I’m personally very adverse to doing. If, however, consciousness is equated to awareness, then human infants and lesser animals can all be conscious (again, in contrast to being unconscious). But, in so defining, then unicellular organisms can then be deemed conscious as well, since they hold awareness of things, including of that which is other relative to themselves—and, hence, of themselves relative to that which is other.

All this to me gives good reason to keep “awareness” rather than just “self-awareness” on the table in the discussion of what consciousness is.

So I’m curious, can anyone provide an instance where one is conscious of X without being aware of X? — javra

Gods (re: believers). Lies (re: believers). Other minds (ergo 'theory of mind'). My death.... — 180 Proof

Just checked definitions to see how “aware” can have a specialized meaning as you imply. Wiktionary provides two, one of which is “conscious or having knowledge of something”. So I so far don’t follow your examples. Could you be more specific about consciousness sans awareness?

Awareness - This is word that generally refers to perceptions of the world as a whole rather than our own internal experience. I don’t think it belongs on the list. If you disagree, do it in writing here. — T Clark

To me, "awareness" belongs in the list. I note that you’ve used “aware”/“awareness” in defining most of the other terms in the OP’s list. At least for some definitions.

For my part: If one knows oneself to be, for example, content, one knows this because one is aware of so being—i.e., due to an awareness of being content—and not due to perceptions of the world. I will add, nor due to perceptions of one own body (as one might perceive a stomachache): where there are sensory receptors whose data becomes interpreted by the aware being. To be clear, there are no known physiological sensory receptors for discerning the degree or presence of one’s own contentedness. Nevertheless, one is aware of being content when one so is. But it would be odd to say, "one perceives oneself being content".

Other examples can be offered alongside certain emotions and states of being. Awareness of value, of meaning, of concepts (i.e., generalized or abstracted ideas), and of the aesthetic come to mind. The same perceived item could hold different values, meanings, evoke different concepts, and hold different aesthetics to the same person at different times or, else, to different minds—despite being a perceptually identical item. And there are no know sensory receptors for discerning value, meaning, concepts, or beauty. Why one person discerns a sunrise as beautiful when another person doesn’t isn’t a direct product of perception—at least not when scientifically specified—though both will visually perceive an identical sunrise.

But (contentious as what I’ve so far written might be) back to the central point: My take so far is that all interpretations of “consciousness” will encompass awareness. This although certain notions of consciousness will specify only certain forms of awareness and therefore label other forms of awareness as not constituting consciousness proper. Many, for example, will believe that an ameba, despite being aware of its environment, is not conscious of its environment. (Then again, many will claim that great apes are not conscious either.)

So I’m curious, can anyone provide an instance where one is conscious of X without being aware of X?

It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. [...] But then again, they were all men. So they would be called lots of bad names. — User34x

My guess is that a certain portion of men get disliked due to holding baseless opinions such as this one that gets expressed in the OP.

Would some of these bad names be those of "cunt" and "pussy" ... expressing attributes only women are endowed with ... that are innately derogatory ... on account of being what women are biologically endowed with? The label of "dick" doesn't have the same resonance; it retains a type of respect even in the worse cases. Then again, I've never heard someone say "she was a dick".

When gender egalitarianism becomes equated to harm against men, though, those who so equate might get disliked by those who are egalitarian. Some of the latter being quite healthy men.

Just sayin'.

Gonna need some stats here or this thread gets closed. — StreetlightX

Good call.

No worries. I feel bad about this misunderstanding as well. But I'm glad to see it was much ado about nothing. :up:

The link was not by means of an explanation for that (hence "That said..."), it was just in case you were interested. — Kenosha Kid

And I was supposed to somehow mind-read your cryptic intended point? The "its not all about you" snide followed by laughter was not ... um, constructive. C'est la vie.

You asked me about my response to Gary's OP. Whatever you might have been discussing beforehand or since is irrelevant to that. It's not all about you, dude :rofl: — Kenosha Kid

Well, dude, I asked you about what on Earth your statement of backwards determinacy was supposed to mean in terms of causation. Making my two posts to you mostly about you. The vacuousness of you sending me to read your entire thread on QM as a followup reply seems to be lost on you, righteous one. But you’re not one to be bothered with explaining your extraordinary statements on a philosophy forum; in this case, that of quantum causes being fully determined by their effects; fine, got it.



Thanks for clarifying that.

That said: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9391/determinism-reversibility-decoherence-and-transaction — Kenosha Kid

You might have been better served pointing me to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser - something I've been acquainted with almost since the time of the first experiment. As it is, the wiki article is a shorter read than the thread you've linked to and, it seems to me after skimming the thread, more to the point here addressed.

All the same, the issue I was asking about regarded what causation is - its nature of being - which is an a priori, metaphysical issue that gets applied to a posteriori, empirical observations of the physical. Even Hume made ontological, i.e. metaphysical, commitments in defining what causality is prior to affirming that our knowledge of what causes what cannot be deductively obtained, but can only be inductive. Seeing how QM is a posteriori, I find that referencing QM does not address the a priori issue of causality I've previously asked about.

Given an effect (state of the world at time t) and laws of nature, the cause (state of the world at time t-1) can be *logically* derived. That may include both ontological and epistemic determination. — litewave

Its a very unique way of defining both effects and causes as "states of the world". A billiard ball's motion as cause for another billiard ball's motion as effect is not "a state of the world at time t" unless one equates the billiard ball's motion at time t to the state of the world at time t - which we don't do in practice.

But more to the point, to logically derive a cause is to epistemically determine what the cause was. To be clear about what you're saying, are you by the underlined sentence affirming that logically deriving what a particular cause was is - or at least can be - what determines (sets the limits or boundaries of) the given cause's occurrence ontologically? In other words, are you saying that our reckoning what the cause was is of itself what ontologically determines the cause's occurrence - such that an observed effect is ontologically uncaused up until the time we logically determine what its cause was?

Please keep in mind that I'm not affirming what I take causality to be but am only interested in clarifying what it is that you've stated causality to be.

Quantum mechanics *is* backwards deterministic, that is: the cause of a measurement is fully determined by the outcome. It's the other way round that's problematic: the effect is not predictable. — Kenosha Kid

Are you suggesting A) that the outcome/effect can *ontologically* determine its cause(s)? Or only B) that we can at times *epistemologically* determine cause(s) by the outcomes/effects that are observed?

If (A) - if the effect ontologically determines its cause - by what means can the notions of cause and effect retain their cogency?

I find that, here, the cause becomes synonymous to the effect just as the effect becomes synonymous to the cause. For a cause is that which determines its respective effect.

As an aside, in notions of retrocausality (regardless of their validity) this relation between cause and effect is preserved (wherein the cause determines the effect), only that they are taken to occur backwards via some universalized background of time - such that the effect is temporally antecedent to its cause.

Funny, I initially thought this thread was about the anxiety of a geocentric universe as regards sentience.

I seem to remember a line from (I think) Leonard Cohen which went something like: "Do we have the strength to be alone together?". — Janus

Yup, its from Cohen's "Waiting for the Miracle". Partial lyrics:

I dreamed about you, baby
It was just the other night
Most of you was naked
Ah but some of you was light
The sands of time were falling
From your fingers and your thumb
And you were waiting
For the miracle, for the miracle to come

Ah baby, let's get married
We've been alone too long
Let's be alone together
Let's see if we're that strong
Yeah let's do something crazy,
Something absolutely wrong
While we're waiting
For the miracle, for the miracle to come

Nice first post. :up:



My best attempt at a soundbite definition of what I take love to be: Love is a cohesion of sentient being which dissipates ego. This form of love is hence utterly different from - though at times intertwined with - intense liking. To intensely like (love, in this sense) money or ice-cream is not to love in the first sense specified. From non-egotistic/narcissistic forms of self-love, to non-obsessive love for a romantic partner (sexual as well as non-sexual), to love of family members, friends, or any other cohort of beings, love is about expanding one’s sense of self to encompass other beings such that one’s self, one’s ego - as an individual unit of being that is separated from other individual units of being - begins to vanish. It doesn’t much matter if the experience is pleasant or if it hurts, it is always an experience of ego-diminution via the widening of the intrinsic value other beings hold relative to oneself. As one consequence, when one loves, what others value become of equal worth to what one oneself values, even when others’ perspectives and one’s own perspectives differ.

Well … something along these lines.

It looks like the mind inhabits a world of its own, quite different from the world of the physical and there are regions of overlap between the two but some experiences are exclusively mental or exclusively physical. — TheMadFool

Seems like the Cartesian dualism approach, which isn't to my tastes. To each their own, though. What is an exclusively physical experience? I read it as affirming a non-mental experience - which to me is a contradictory affirmation.

How does this weigh in on the issue of real vs unreal? Well, if one subscribes to some variation of rationalism, ideas, whatever they may be, are real, as real as the apples Kant may have partaken of during one of his meals. If so, everything would be real. — TheMadFool

At least as regards ordinary language use, a dream (which is intra-personal), a language (which is interpersonal), and a physical apple (which is objective) can each be real, but in qualitatively different manners.

“Did you really dream that?” “Yes, that was a real dream I had [and not me telling you a fib]” Though more awkwardly, the same can be expressed of most any idea: “Is that your real idea of a fun time (or: of what a tree looks like), or are trying to pull my leg?”

Even when interpreting most everything to hold the potential to be real - i.e., to be actually occurring, rather than being fictitious - the type of reality implicitly referenced will often significantly differ. Thereby leading into considerations of different reality types: e.g. strictly personal realities (e.g. dreams), interpersonal realities (e.g. cultures), the empirically objective reality (physicality), and, maybe, a singular metaphysical reality (this being where the notion of God or related notions would fit it).

Then again, we implicitly most often address reality as that which is strictly objectively real. This is where we tell ourselves or others that a nightmare was not real. But here, no such thing as real ideas or real languages can occur.

I would see cultures, values and goals as arising from humanity, but they are are part of the collective unconscious. I am not sure if this is what you are saying, or asking? — Jack Cummins

I wasn't intending to offer an ontological position, but simply wanted to supplement your statements that that which is invisible is often very important - and this regardless of ontological stance.

Since you bring up the collective unconscious, and in keeping with the thread's subject, if physicality isn't to be interpreted as ultimate, or absolute, reality, would you then view physicality to of itself be a product of the collective unconscious?

I'm asking out of a curiosity to better understand your point of view. As for myself, to be forthright, my leanings are toward an objective idealism, with the ultimate/absolute reality being along the lines of the Neo-platonic "the One" - which makes me open to notions regarding the collective unconscious. I haven't read Jung in a long while, though.

I think that many philosophers are opposed to the idea of the invisible but we know that it operates in some ways, such as in electricity or Wifi, which just seem to be generated through signals. — Jack Cummins

I’ll add that cultures, goals, and values (to list just a few examples, the unconscious as just one more) are all invisible - imperceptible by the physiological senses - and hence non-empirical (in today’s understanding of the term “empirical”, which no longer signifies experiential). Most would deem each of these to be addressing immaterial givens, yet each of these will hold its own type of quite real determinacy upon us as conscious beings and, in consequence, upon how we interpret the world—including in relation to the question which the OP raises.

What then do you make of formal causation? — javra

I would describe formal causation as the restriction imposed on the possibility of change, by the actual physical conditions present at the time. So at any given time, any situation is describable in formal terms. The describable physical conditions which are present act as a constraint on the possibility of future situations, therefore this present form, is in that sense, a cause of future situations. — Metaphysician Undercover

We are oceans apart. A culture's form (imperfectly) determines the nature of the individual, constituent, human psyches it, as a culture, is composed of - language and its semantics as one example. But nowhere does a culture have "describable physical conditions".

He shows how matter itself must come to be from some type of teleological form, therefore we need to seek the Divine Will, as the cause of matter and temporal continuity. — Metaphysician Undercover

This puts a big damper on things for me. I cannot logically appraise Aristotle's teleological unmoved mover to be "Divine Will" - in part because will itself is always teleological motivated by an outcome it seeks to accomplish, and it is thus always in motion. Maybe this is a/the primary source of our disagreements - with most other issues regarding identity being derivatives.

In any case, I'm respectfully bowing out of the conversation.

But I will confess that I have downloaded many books on my Kindle. I have managed to get so many of the classics free, and a lot of the authors are not living ones. — Jack Cummins

You're in good company. Done so myself plenty of times. But, as you say, here the authors are not living ones. And their works were not pirated.

So I am left wondering how do we change a culture which expects the arts as a free extra? — Jack Cummins

I don't have any straightforward answer for this. Still, culture is constituted of individuals. The relation between the top-down effects culture has on individuals and those individuals have upon a culture is complex, to put it mildly. Bare minimum I can do, I'm thinking, is preserve my own way of valuing things as a constituent of the culture I am a part of. And of course, engage in conversations such as this. There's too much egotism that accompanies the prevailing materialist perspectives of the day, I'm thinking. Again, with this materialism being perpetuated by the overwhelming sum of (commercial) art we are exposed to. This, in turn, entailing not enough thought as regards others and what they require to produce those things that enrich our own lives. And this is a hard tide to turn, especially in the short run.

I do like your comment. — Jack Cummins

Thanks. :grin:

Most people I know who try to make money through various arts cannot make enough money to live and have to have another job, or be topped up with benefits. So, where does that leave most people wanting to pursue the arts? Does it end having to be just a hobby' — Jack Cummins

Pragmatically speaking, this seems to be the case in today's world.

All the same, there's a musician I like who makes the claim that we must out-create the dominant, corporatized creations of the day if we are to preserve our humanity. This is very loosely paraphrased - and the "corporate" part is likely my own embellishment. But I find the underlying notion - that of a competition between types of artistic creations in relation to society at large - to be quite noteworthy.

Paying the artist for the artwork one likes rather than downloading it for free is one way to support the artists one likes so that they can continue making their art. Though a majority of people prefer not to pay money for it. Which in turn suffocates the art that they would otherwise want.

This I think, is the problem evident in the hylomorphic approach to concepts. In the case of conception, such a whole is never quite complete, therefore an invalid "whole". This is the example I provided with the regress into unclarity: the concept of "Socrates" refers to "man", which refers to "mammal" which refers to "animal" which refers to "living being", and so on. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Refers" is an inadequate term here. "Socrates" refers to Socrates, and not just any man. Likewise "animal" refers to animals, and not just any living being (plants, for example).

So I would say that wholeness is what is required by the intelligible form in order to be completely and absolutely intelligible, but human conceptions lack this. This is quite evident in the most fundamental mathematical principles. The natural numbers are infinite. The spatial point is infinitely small. A line is infinitely long, etc. This is evidence that human conceptual forms, as intelligible objects, are fundamental lacking in wholeness. This is why I prefer not to call them "objects". However, as I said above, in our attempts to understand physical objects we are met with the same deficiency of wholeness. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm glad that this is evident. In short, when in search of absolutes - such as in a complete and absolute intelligibility, to paraphrase from this quote - absolute wholeness does not occur for givens, be they conceptual or physical. Nevertheless we cognize givens as bounded entireties. For example, a rock is cognized as a bounded entirety, as a whole given. Not as two or more givens; and not as an amorphous process. Even "a process" is cognized as a bounded entirety, and can thereby be discerned to be one of two or more processes.

Maybe you're looking for the absolute, fundamental nature of individual things that dwells behind our awareness of them, so to speak. Whereas I'm addressing the very nature of how we cognize givens: by cognizing each individual given to hold the attribute of oneness.

But I find that this following statement might be pivotal to our disagreements in large:

In Aristotle's hylomorphic structure, matter accounts for the temporal continuity of the object, its capacity to persist, and therefore its identity as a continuation of being the same object. — Metaphysician Undercover

What then do you make of formal causation?

I also note that while a flower is neither an unopened bud nor the stem off of which all petals have fallen, it yet remains the same (numerically identical) flower throughout the time period in-between, despite considerable changes in its matter over this span of time. Its identity nevertheless remains static in its form - again, despite the changes in its matter - such that form accounts for the temporal continuity of the object, and therefore its identity.

I am asking about the level on which art can play in addressing social and political issues. I am speaking about the role of expression of feelings in art, fiction, music and other art forms. — Jack Cummins

While maybe a bit of a tangent to the OP’s intent, I’ve been itching to say this, so I will.

Art is, and has always been, a major social force. Cave paintings weren’t just for kicks; they played a massive role in forming the institutionalized, though tribal, cultures of the past, often via initiations and rights of passage for folks that held an upper hand in how society, and its concepts of worth and of reality, were formed. Which played a significant role in politics with an upper “P” via politics with a lower “p”. And art still shapes most of our attributes as a society in total. Today, however, the vast majority of artists are the servants of corporations. Billboards are art, as one example among many. Corporations taking over the music industry and the public airways as another. To stick with advertisements, they are not made by CEOs but by the artists companies employ. An advertisement is worthless unless it captivates via some form of aesthetic, has some form of emotive appeal. And this is the artist’s job to produce. It’s just that, nowadays, the vast majority of art that shapes our minds - our perspectives and thoughts regarding values and so forth - is not done by artists pursuing the expression of truths - be these personal, universal or anything in-between. For most of these artistic productions, there’s little if anything inherently valuable to the artist in the artwork created. It’s value is mostly, if not fully, instrumental: typically, a tool for hording as much cash as one can. For the often poorly paid artist, yes, but also for the CEOs and fellows that largely determine what the vast majority of society’s artists can and cannot do. This if the artists care about sustaining themselves, if not also their loved ones. And by being a major influence upon society’s collective values, this same commercial art influences what people tend to chose in respect to elected officials and their attributes, it influences people’s judgments of what is just and unjust in respect to legal decisions, and so forth. In short, it influences politics with a small “p” and, consequently - though very much indirectly - our politics with a large “P”.

So, in my view, yes, art is a major force in forming society at large.

ps. Especially as regards today’s world, I’m obviously not talking about high art - which, imv, is today more often than not socially impotent. But the art we're exposed to on a daily basis via advertisements and the like is art all the same.

pps. Yes, artists of all stripes have been known to be rewarded for their art with money for some time now. Still, the corporatization of today’s vast majority of art stands on its own relative to humanity’s history.

Seems like we’re approaching a common ground in respect to the hylo-morphology of concepts. Cool.

BTW, to me there’s a parallel between Aristotle’s prime matter and today’s notion of zero-point energy. Both seeming to hold the properties of pure potentiality and unintelligibility while underlying all that is intelligible matter. As we were previously discussing, the intelligibility of actualized identity is always brought about by forms - including the forms of intelligible matter. And, in Aristotelian terms, the ultimate form is that of the teleological unmoved mover, which is singular as form in being devoid of constituents and, therefore, devoid of matter. Please remind me if there were any disagreements between us in the aforementioned.

What criticism would you give to the proposition that every intelligible form is, and can only be, cognized as a whole (for context, where every whole - save for the unmoved mover - is itself a hylomorphic holon). Thereby making the concept of a whole, i.e. of an entirety, and the concept of a form fully synonymous.

As background, I find this issue to be pertinent to the context of the Aristotelian category of formal causation. Which is distinct from, though entwined with, teleological causation (as might be evidenced in Aristotle’s coinage of entelechy as term for addressing actualized things).

Therefore no individual concept is a complete unity, it always refers to something outside as a source for meaning. It is a part which is not itself a whole, because it is wholly dependent on something external to it for its meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

A very informative post. Thanks for it. To let you know a little more of where I’m coming from:

There is the philosophical notion of holons: givens that are simultaneously both wholes and parts. Although my views are not identical to those addressed in the article, I do have great empathies toward the views therein expressed.

Any animal - as a whole token - is itself in part determined by its environment: from that of its ecological environment to that of the world’s natural laws as environmental givens. As one example, a mammal would not be in the absence of air it inhabits just as a fish would not be in the absence of water it inhabits; in both cases the occurrence of the former is *in part* determined by the occurrence of the latter. An individual animal can thereby be construed to be a part-holon of its environmental-holon.

It’s a complex ontological approach, but then an animal's parts, say its lungs, has an identity, just as the animal itself has an identity, just as the animal’s environment, say a particular forest, has an identity.

Using the notion of holons, then, to me each concept is itself a holon - constituted of parts that are themselves holons, and is itself a part of greater concepts that are themselves holons.

While this synopsis will not address all conceivable issues related to this approach, I get that we will likely disagree in our basic approaches. No harm in that though. Save for a few disagreements here and there. :grin: