Well, in order for an acorn to have the potential to become a tree, it first needs to exist, doesn't it? Potency is contained in act - it's capacity to change. At least in nature.

Take another example: In order for you to climb a mountain safely, you will need equipment that can get to the top -- otherwise that climb is impossible. That equipment needs to exist.

Generally, potentialities are going to describe the intrinsic capacity of any being such of what it can become or what it does strive towards. An acorn has the potential to become a tree, a lighter does not. Therefore, both exist, but all have certain restrictions of what they can become. Potency is a constrained version of possibility due to Aristotle being an essentialist.

No, the world in Aristotlean-Thomstic metaphysics is such that nature contains both potency and act. So, in order for something to have potency it must also exist (be actual).

"It's no place for charity - obviously!"

:-}

That's just not charitable at all.


Not sure if Feser ever puts it that way, but I haven't read that book in particularly, because...

I think something's a miss in these steps:
6.) Things can only exist, however, if it has the potential to exist which is actualized.
7.) Therefore there must be a purely actual actualizer of everything that exists.

I'm not sure why it follows there must be a pure actualizer. It could be the case that the world contains potency and act from the beginning to the end (or in other terms needs both product and productivity in its mix). Product because we see the conclusion of forces at play reaching a temporary state of equilibrium in which we see trees, plants, grass, mountains reach an end product. Productivity, because we need a fundamental striving-towards those ends. So the change is intrinsic to the world instead instead of relying on something outside of it.

“A learned society of our day, no doubt with the loftiest of intentions, has proposed the question, “Which people, in history, might have been the happiest?” If I properly understand the question, and if it is not altogether beyond the scope of a human answer, I can think of nothing to say except that at a certain time and under certain circumstances every people must have experienced such a moment or else it never was [a people]. Then again, human nature is no vessel for an absolute, independent, immutable happiness, as defined by the philosopher; rather, she everywhere draws as much happiness towards herself as she can: a supple clay that will conform to the most different situations, needs, and depressions. Even the image of happiness changes with every condition and location (for what is it ever but the sum of “the satisfaction of desire, the fulfillment of purpose, and the gentle overcoming of needs,” all of which are shaped by land, time, and place?). Basically, then, all comparison becomes futile. As soon as the inner meaning of happiness, the inclination has changed; as soon as external opportunities and needs develop and solidify the other meaning—who could compare the different satisfaction of different meanings in different worlds? Who could compare the shepherd and father of the Orient, the ploughman and the artisan, the seaman, runner, conqueror of the world? It is not the laurel wreath that matters, nor the sight of the blessed flock, neither the merchant vessels nor the conquered armies’ standards—but the soul that needed this, strove for it, finally attained it and wanted to attain nothing else. Every nation has its center of happiness within itself, as every ball has its center of gravity!”

― Johann Gottfried Herder, Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings

Cool. I'm actually struggling with this one a bit. Glad to know there's another one to turn to. Either that or I might have to start over.

Since I'm bad at finishing books, I read books here and there, particularly focused on these:

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by Vincent B. Leitch
Schelling's Idealism And Philosophy Of Nature by Joseph L. Esposito
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant
John McDowell by Tim Thornton
The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology by Hans Jonas
The Wholeness of Nature : Goethe's Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature by Henri Bortoft

Ah, I was recently reading Schelling on this issue with the productive intuition. Thought you meant something more along over with German Idealism, but phenomenology and Augustine might tackle the issue other ways. Never read Augustine, though.

Right on, though. (Y)

I think I know what you mean, but can you elaborate?

There is an "external world" in the sense that when one considers the mind as a discrete, individual property that's enclosed, but then this gets into a sort of problematic philosophy - where you'll have free-standing beliefs, a type of rampant cartesianism, or a problem with interpretation because meaning becomes a private affair. It just seems like you have a heavy type of externalism with respect to experiences - they are already constitutive of elements that one might find external.

(Y)

Some essences are probably fine:

The ability to use language, the ability to forgo oneself in one's future possibilities, being social creatures that build ourselves in a relationship with others, some persisting identity throughout time, use of reason, etc.

The anti-essentialist needs some coherent way to explain unities, and the apparent persisting identity of any subject/object.

Can't opt out for conventionalism because ulimately the mind would be a product of convention, but that seems like an absurd conclusion since the mind comes before convention.

Likewise, opting out for a form of family resemblances as an explanation doesn't seem to work as that leads to an infinite regression.

"The Germans think everybody is the same, while the French think everybody is different.

Hah - that's probably adequate.

The German Idealists never had a problem with the aspect of there being a "mind-independent world" in terms of a world that precedes human consciousnesses. Consciousness causing wave-function collapse is just a relatively new phenomenon.

The entire point of later German Idealism was how consciousness arose out of the world itself. What were the preconditions for consciousness at all? Reversing the Kantian turn.

And where did any of the German Idealists say this within any of their work? That the world was "in our mind?" German Idealism has been the struggle against subjectivism.

Out of curiosity: How do you generally feel about holistic systems like Hegel's, Schelling's, or Goethe's? Mostly organicism, naturaphiloshopie - the world as a macroanthropos.

That's pretty interesting.

I've recently been bogged down with simple refutations like those to top-down systems. Do you have any books that recommend solutions to these kinds of problems in favor of top-down systems?

Honestly, I don't understand how emergence works in physical states, either. Why not opt out for wholes instead where you have top-down systems. Nothing 'emerges' from the bottom because there would be an explanatory gap between how something greater comes from something lesser.

The entire world would instead operate instead as a totum, to where it determines it's parts as a relationship with itself - as oppose to a composite.

So meaning and value is imposed on the world? Sounds Humean. :-|

Look, my view is inspired by McDowell's sensibility theory. In order to get at what we mean by 'subjective', 'real', 'objective', it'll be best if we define these with some clarity, as to get to the notion that by 'objective' we do not mean completely mind-independent, but nor do we mean free-standing values that arise completely within the subject. They are real insofar as they are externally provide content to the subject. They are mind-dependent as far as they can only be real to subjects witnessing them, but nonetheless, they are real.

It seems like mere scientism to presuppose that the only qualities that can exist are ones that're material things (and suggest only primary qualities are real - you'll have to provide proof). It also seems to advocate that the only things that are real are things that exist mind-independently, but this seems misguided. Minds themselves are real, and don't of course exist mind-independently. Certain beliefs about the world are true, and their form (or idea) is manifest of the world itself. So I'm not sure what the problem is other than you haven't read metaphysics that are sympathetic to alternative views than materialism.

If this isn't something you "get", and you just want to reduce everything down to material properties then you'll run into other problems, I believe. Particularly the issue of agency, meaning, truth - all of which seem immaterial. If you reject them, you'll ulimately run into a reductio ad absurdism. Since in order to believe in materialism, you'll need meaning and truth... I don't mind a form of naturalized Platonism to solve this issue.

I think responding to all your problems won't do much good. Your foundations are unsympathetic to types of philosophy that espouse anything other than the world is a dead object without purpose and meaning.

As long as Idealism isn't the idea that phenomenon exists "in the mind", then I'm probably an idealist. But I ulimately don't really see this oppose to a type of realism.

I'd say that values develop out of our goals. It isn't the values that motivate us, it is the intent itself that motivates us and values develop from our intent as any thing is only valuable to achieving some goal. To say that any thing is valuable is to say that it helps us achieve our goal(s).

But then what is the intention? It seems to be generated by reasons. These reasons are supplied by external content.

I don't see how it doesn't. If you agree that it changes our intent, then you seem to be agreeing that it changes the fundamental source of our choices.

To be clear though: There is no 'intent' that's subjectively locked away in our minds, that then "changes" by external conditions. Rather, it's constitutive of external content. But when I said that it's not "over-determined" by mechanical/efficient causes, I mean that the relationship we have with values doesn't seem to make use of these causes. I can have external stimuli like a wave push my body, but I still intend to push through them for-the-sake-of, say, a competition because I value winning a competition.

Notice how the terms, "physical", "material", "mental", "normative", and any other loaded term, are left out, not needed. The general idea is simply one of causation. So to reject a mechanistic world view as I have defined it is to reject causation in general. To say that some state-of-affairs is responsible for another state-of-affairs is to say that it was caused by the latter state-of-affairs.

The question is: What type of cause is it? I don't see a need to be reductionistic w.r.t causes.

As for these causes "not being needed", I'd just say look at the definitions I'm using. If they are not in conflict with your definitions of mechanism, then we're just using a different scheme. There's no right or wrong there. It's just how we setup our philosophy.

I don't see how the value of a cake can be external. The cake is external. It's value changes as our intent changes. The cake is less valuable when you are full and more valuable when you are hungry. Values reside internally and are intimately tied to our intent, or current goal.

Perhaps you lack creativity? Surely the desirability of a cake cannot be something projected on it via introspection; rather the cake is meaningful already, has content to it that attracts me, makes sense of the cake, etc. If we took a Humean view, and the desirability is merely projected, then I think this makes agency problematic.

And of course the value of a cake changes.

The cake doesn't serve as a motivation. It is our hunger that is the motivation. When hungry, any food, not just a cake, can be valuable.

I don't see why this matters. Yeah, hunger is a casual disposition. It'll serve as a motivation to eat. But hunger alone wont get me to eat a cake. I need reasons to eat a cake, and the reasons are supplied by external content. Certain values. Like the desirability of the cake.

We try to remove ambiguity in philosophical writing because otherwise we go around and around, talking about everything, and nothing, until the original issues we meant to actually address are long forgotten.

Ambiguity leads to misinterpretation and equivocation, and life is too short for good philosophers to have their ideas lost in transition...

That just proves to be untrue, since we've had a dozen interpretation of Plato by now. They don't seem to be talking about nothing.

How about meaningful discussions with satisfying conclusions where clarity is a standard and utility is high? I don't care about endless interpretation, I care about useful and relevant ones.

That's just a false-dilemma.

Being ubiquitous or often misinterpreted probably indicates some degree of ambiguity, but these thinkers didn't become great because their writing was obscure or rife with double meaning, Generally it's because they were able to clearly communicate complex ideas that actually had merit of their own, which is something you just cannot see through a stubbornly post-modern lens.

Well, indicating its a misinterpretation indicates that the author's intent is exclusively the one way of reading a text. But its not.

And I didn't say obscurity is good, I said ambiguity is good. I'm not sure if ambiguity is always intentionally placed. Its just that the terminology ends up being ambiguous as a result of history.

My point is that or intentions (it doesn't matter if they are known to us or not) are determined by external factors, as they change as the state-of-affairs around us change, which includes the states of our own bodies like in being hungry, needing to urinate, or simply being bored.

Right, because the values that we experience change. In that sense the values motivate us different ways. This has nothing to do with material/efficient conditions, though.

I agree that circumstances change our evaluations of scenarios and our intent. I'm not sure how this means they are over-determined by mechanical/efficient (essential material) causes, though.

You also have to address how our intentions can have a causal influence on the world and vice versa. To acknowledge that is to acknowledge that there really isn't any distinction to be made about the kind of substance one part of the world is and what kind another is (physical vs. mental or mechanistic vs normative). We would simply be talking about causation and can dispense with terms like, "physical", "mental", "mechanistic" and "normative", as that turns to dualism and makes things more complicated unnecessarily.

Well, I'd reject a mechanistic world view. That's what the entire point of the thread is about. And I'm not saying the mental and physical are reducible to each other.

As far as they both partake in being, yes - they are two aspects of the same world. The mental is not however a subset of the physical.

How can intentions be stopped by external factors if they are not of the same "material", "substance", or follow the same causal laws?

External factors - such as the value of a cake, for example - don't have to be attributed to the material. It just serves a motivation (reason) for our actions, and are constitutive of our intentions. I'm just holding an externalist model of intentionality. That is, the content of our intentions is supplied by external motivations.

If we're to get anywhere meaningful in a discussion, we need to understand each other. That means removing ambiguity and being clear about the things we reference.

Right, but I disagreed. I'm not talking about poetry, necessarily. But I scarcely see why that's removed from philosophy. Why is poetry an exception? Because its just a subjective and aesthetic interpretation of being?

If I can interpret Aristotle a hundred different ways, how do I know which interpretation is the original and intended meaning?

You don't. Since interpretation is ulimately bottomless.

Not to mention, the authors intent doesn't even determine the sole meaning of a text. That's why there's a multiplicity of ways of determining the issue.

"Really ambiguous thinkers and texts" don't seem to hold a special place in timelessness.

Which is probably wrong considering that Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle - of which are ambiguous - have survived the longest.

If you want to create a world of ideological disarray and disagreement and watch as your good ideas are bastardized into one thousand scare-crows and herrings, then ambiguity is the way to go.

The death of philosophy is when we're in agreement.

I'm not sure. Talk of essences are used quite colloquially, even. As if its intutive for people to know exactly what it means to talk about the essence of a thing. I think Plato and Aristotle in general can use quite clear images to speak about it.

And honestly, really ambiguous thinkers and text are the ones that survive time and are the most interesting. I'm not one to buy into the idea that things need to be concise, clear, offer particular definitions.

Well, I guess I'm surprised in the level of confidence you have in some of these major continental thinkers. But I guess you read a lot of unusual secondary sources, and thinkers.

Sorry, I don't see the difference between what you and I said. Yes, I realize you're invoking conceptual differences for the same word. I know you're not arguing semantics.

Well, see, I'm not sure if that really answers my question? Take for example, how Heidegger and Hegel speak about nothing could be seen as problematic by analytic philosophers? It might have a use-value, or say something interesting, but for a lot of people it ends up being incoherent, and then it to be repudiated for a better system. Not accepted as a system among other systems that all work in their own light.



Well yeah, I'm actually an eliminativist about qualia - at least in most contexts. But I'm not sure its completely vacuous since it generally talks about the subjective sensations - the "what is it like?" This isn't merely about nothing, though it is about no-thing in general.

It would be over-determined if our actions are in some way completely reducible to external mechanisms. However, a mechanical world is completely run on material/efficient causes, while our decisions are done through formal-final causes as well, which of course presuppose normativity. Since mechanical causes aren't normative, but merely blind, then I don't see how they could in principle over-determine the facts of formal-final causes since they cannot fail.

Now, you can deny that our actions are formal-final, but I don't see how that makes sense since our own intentions are known to us prior to making the actions, which then use a type of "pull-causality". Via the intentions we have, our body would efficiently move along with them.

Final causes seem to imply that some cause in the future influences the present. But that makes no sense. We often experience where a purpose we have doesn't come to fruition no matter how much work we put into it. Sometimes we fail in achieving our purposes and goals. Things happen that we don't anticipate that prevent us from accomplishing our goals and purposes. Goals and purposes are simply ideas in the present driving behavior forward in order to bring the goal to fruition. In other words, purpose isn't a final cause. It is just another cause, like every other kind of cause - that precedes an effect

Right, it might be the case our intentions are stopped by external factors, but that's what distinguishes them from mechanical states - that even if they fail, we know that we intended to do otherwise.

I shared this intuition after reading enough Heidegger -- mostly due to the idea of the ontological difference, which invoked multiple different ways of interpreting being. And that ulimately lead to a type of ontological pluralism for me,... but I'm sure not, man.

I'm skeptical because there's always people who just reject being, essences, substances, and fundamentally want to monopolize philosophy within their own system. I'm not one of those people, but certainly what's at stake in any philosophical debate isn't going to be accepting that any system works according to its own intrinsic system, but showing how certain terms are often incoherent. Take for example Schelling and Hegel, or Heidegger and Carnap.

I don't think so.

Like, just advocating for a form of pluralism? I suppose that is interesting, Streetlight. Although, I'm just skeptical of it.

I'm not espousing a form of pragmatism, no. I've honestly never been able to make much sense of that. It seems evidently clear that the world around us has being, that being reveals itself to me as being meaningful, it has a particular ordering and form to it. We probably don't impose these forms, or ordering. I start with fairly basic beginnings - that is, if there even are beginnings at all in philosophy that aren't always-already developed.

I was thinking this, but then it would be strange because truth would be determined by how one chooses to begin philosophy, and at the bottom there would be a fundamental incommensurability, no?

And I'm not sure, man. Being is generally used pretty vacuously. A rather indeterminate notion that can't be conceptualized. We say Being is, but nothing more about it.

How is it irrelevant? Presumably, you place all those things into the category of physical because you understand what the physical is. But now you claim that the physical doesn't mean anything? So in what sense are they similar? Vacuously similar?

Star-formation was required in order for the body to be created. Does that mean the facts of bodies can be determined exclusively by the facts pertaining to stars?

Are you espousing a type of reductionism or eliminativism? The latter is completely incoherent, and the prior is, I think, easily refutable since physical facts largely underdetermine the mental ones.

Spinoza offered a pretty solid demonstration of how two substances are impossible.

A substance cannot be determined outside of it's attributes and modes, and those are logically dependent on the substance. However, that's exactly what the Cartesian is doing: they believe they can conceptualize a attribute outside its substance, and give it somehow a separate identity. It'd be easier to conceive of matter/mind as two aspects or attributes of the same infinite substance.

Look, I've been on these forums since they've been built. And then I read the post on the ones prior to this before this one was built. I know the environment, I know people generally like content, but I'm asking a question; I'm not trying to debate anyone as of yet.

The question I think is fine. It's interesting in the sense of the ambiguity of the terms. So I'm interested in how people dissolve that ambiguity. If nobody posts that fine too - I'm not gonna lose my mind over it.

Look are you gonna answer the question of what the physical/matter is, or are you gonna avoid that question? Because all that seems to be irrelevant until I know what the physical is from you. I didn't ask what physics is.

The non-physical is generally constitutive of things like: intentionality, beliefs, meaning, desires, motivations, concepts, etc. But again, if you're extending the concept of physical to include those - if its all encompassing - then of course everything is going to be physical but that claim begins to get vacuous.

Information is matter and energy yes? Therefore is physical right?

The question is whether meaning is material. Its probably not. If it is for you, then I'm not sure how far you're extending the meaning of material to be. If everything is 'material', then your statement ends up being vacuous.

Each though is made up of electro-chemicals, and electricity; along with a pattern of nueral pathways. They have short lifespans, I don't see any part of the thought thats not physical.

That's just begging the question.

How can something exist without being physical, if God exists as a sentient being, then he would have to be physical(wether made of matter, energy, or plasma); otherwise there would only be thoughts of god — XanderTheGrey

He would exist immaterially, or a combination of the two, or hypothetically an infinite set of modes of God.

I'm not asking for disagreement. Though I had a friend recently give me his spin on it:

Being is. [Ontology]
Reality is a qualitative determination of being (e.g. real as opposed to unreal; the category you use to differentiate from negative qualities of a being). [Ontology]
Existence is the being of essence (i.e. if all conditions for a thing are met, a being can come into existence). [Metaphysics]
Actuality is absolutely necessary being (e.g. as opposed to possible or contingent or mere necessary being). [Metaphysics]

Mechanism" can simply refer to causation. We know that our intention/will has a causal influence on other things and itself is influenced by other things. There really doesn't need to make a distinction between "physical" or "mental" here.

The point isn't whether or not our decisions are motivated (influenced) by the world, the point is whether our decisions are over-determined by external mechanisms. Historically mechanism has been defined as working with material and efficient causes, and ignoring intentionality (formal-final causes).