Stage 4: Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

Thoughts? — tom111

I love your explication of logic by way of your 4 stages. My only problem with it is that the very first stage already relies on an unrealized supposition concerning what being and reality are. Where do we get the notion of a being as that which is identical with itself? From ‘reality’ , or as the result of a human construction, an abstraction which idealizes experience in such as way as to invent the notion of pure self-identity? As Merleau-Ponty puts it:

“...the identity of the thing with itself, that sort of established position of its own, of rest in itself, that plenitude and that positivity that we have recognized in it already exceed the experience, are already a second interpretation of the experience...we arrive at the thing-object, at the In Itself, at the thing identical with itself, only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores”(The Visible and the Invisible)

There was a thread on this a while back you might find interesting: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14593/what-is-logic/p1

Stage 3: Even pure being implies logic Even if we take the concept of pure being, logic still arises. We are gesturing to a concept, being, and automatically differentiating it from its negation; the idea of nothingness. As we did earlier with the chair, we are taking a concept (pure being), differentiating it from something else (nothingness)< and from here emerges the fundamental laws of logic. If being is A, then we now know that A=A, A != not A, etc.

Or, as Hegel has it, it also "implies" much else, since sheer, indeterminant being ends up being indistinguishable from nothingness and collapses into its opposite. Houlgate's commentary is excellent here. For Hegel, this necessitates the sublation of nothing by being, leading to becoming, whereby being is constantly passing into nothingness.

You can describe this in information theoretic terms too (as Floridi has done). An infinite stream of just 1s, or the same 1 measured again and again, ad infinitum, is incapable of conveying information. Indeed, it can only "be a 1" as compared against some background that serves as a 0. Spencer Brown's Law's of Form are another way to get at this. Likewise, you can imagine a soundwave of infinite amplitude and frequency (the sheer fullness of being). All the waves will cancel out, due to the infinite frequency and amplitude, with each peak being offset by an identical trough, and the result will be silence (albeit a pregnant silence, the silence of the Pleroma if you will).

Stage 4: Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

I think this is another thing that can be formulated quite well in information theory, although I have a suspicions that all these different ways of looking at it are isomorphic in a way.



Right, Stage 1 reminded me of the opening of the Phenomenology of Spirit, where sheer sense certainty collapses into contentless sheer abstraction. Of course here, it is experience that is most abstract (for Hegel at least). As Hegel quipped, "gossip is abstract, my philosophy is not." That the particular individual (or particular individual interval of experience) is less abstract (more real) is itself a sort of presupposition (one C.S. Peirce goes as far as to label satanic, lol).

And note that Hegel is not idiosyncratic here, but is following the classical tradition he drew so much from. This ordering would hold true for Plato, Neo-Platonism, Augustine, Aquinas, high scholasticism, much Islamic thought, and arguably Aristotle. It's worth considering here then that the inversion of this tendency in modern thought (the preferencing of immediate experience and the particular) was first only countenanced on epistemic grounds. That is, it applied to the order of knowing. But this already applied to the order of knowing in the classical thought, according to the Aristotlian dictum that "what is known best to us" (concrete particulars) is not "what is known best in itself" (principles). Yet materialism turned this epistemic stance into a full blown metaphysical dogma. Robert M. Wallace is pretty good on this sort of thing (i.e. the greater reality of form), at least in Hegel and Plato.

Still, something must account for why experience is one way and not any other. And this suggests a prior, determinant actuality, which must include difference.

I'll also note that I disagree here:

Now, you probably recognise that when we talk about separate objects like "chairs" and "tables," the mind is arbitrarily cutting up reality into conceptual pieces - these aren't necessarily fundamental divisions within nature itself. BUT the key point is that there must still be genuine differences between one part of reality and another, rather than complete uniformity. Even if our specific conceptual boundaries are arbitrary, there's still real distinctness and differentiation in the fabric of reality itself.

Strictly speaking, an entirely arbitrary relationship between reality and appearances destroys the very notion of a reality/appearance dichotomy. If the relationship were such, then "reality" doesn't really have anything to do with appearances, since it "effects" it completely randomly (and so doesn't really effect it at all). We could never have access to "reality" if it was arbitrarily related to appearances. Yet, if all we have is appearances, and it is all we can ever have, by what grounds do we posit this separate, arbitrarily related "reality?"

However, if there is only appearances, then appearances just are reality.

That said, I don't think we have any good reason to think appearances are arbitrarily related to reality. That there is being prior to our experiences, and that it is determinant, is implied by the regularity of experience and the very possibility of intelligibility.

Still, there is a difficulty in calling "logic," as relates to human practices, by the same term as the "logic" of being. The two would seem to be related analogously. I am not sure what term to use here. I have considered "logos" for the "logic of being," with "logoi" for the discrete principles (in line with Patristic/Scholastic Greek usage). I actually think the Book of Causes (which no one reads anymore because it is an anonymous "rip-off" of Proclus' Elements) is a decent lens for explaining this. Maybe.

IMO logic arose from observing the relationships between physical entities. Cause and effect and so on. But I admit to being very shallow on the origins of logic, and avoid "being"and other vague concepts.

You might be interested in Robert Sokolowski's framing of how predication emerges from the phenomenology of human experience. It doesn't really go against anything you've said, since everything we know suggests the dependence of experience on what is prior to it, but it does show how predication is grounded in experience itself.

[Husserl] tries to show how the formal, logical structures of thinking arise from perception; the subtitle of Experience and Judgment is Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. The “genealogy” of logic is to be located not in something we are born with but in the way experience becomes transformed. Husserl describes the origin of syntactic form as follows.

When we perceive an object, we run through a manifold of aspects and profiles: we see the thing first from this side and then from that; we concentrate on the color; we pay attention to the hardness or softness; we turn the thing around and see other sides and aspects, and so on. In this manifold of appearances, however, we continuously experience all the aspects and profiles, all the views, as being “of” one and the same object. The multiple appearances are not single separate beads following one another; they are “threaded” by the identity continuing within them all. As Husserl puts it, “Each single percept in this series is already a percept of the thing. Whether I look at this book from above or below, from inside or outside, I always see this book. It is always one and the same thing.” The identity of the thing is implicitly presented in and through the manifold. We do not focus on this identity; rather, we focus on some aspects or profiles, but all of them are experienced, not as isolated flashes or pressures, but as belonging to a single entity. As Husserl puts it, “An identification is performed, but no identity is meant.” The identity itself never shows up as one of these aspects or profiles; its way of being present is more implicit, but it does truly present itself. We do not have just color patches succeeding one another, but the blue and the gray of the object as we perceive it continuously. In fact, if we run into dissonances in the course of our experience – I saw the thing as green, and now the same area is showing up as blue – we recognize them as dissonant precisely because we assume that all the appearances belong to one and the same thing and that it cannot show up in such divergent ways if it is to remain identifiable as itself. [It's worth noting the experiments on animals show they are sensitive to these same sorts of dissonances].

[Such experience is pre-syntactical, nevertheless] such continuous perception can, however, become a platform for the constitution of syntax and logic. What happens, according to Husserl, is that the continuous perception can come to an arrest as one particular feature of the thing attracts our attention and holds it. We focus, say, on the color of the thing. When we do this, the identity of the object, as well as the totality of the other aspects and profiles, still remain in the background. At this point of arrest, we have not yet moved into categoriality and logic, but we are on the verge of doing so; we are balanced between perception and thinking. This is a philosophically interesting state. We feel the form about to come into play, but it is not there yet. Thinking is about to be born, and an assertion is about to be made…

We, therefore, in our experience and thoughtful activity, have moved from a perception to an articulated opinion or position; we have reached something that enters into logic and the space of reasons. We achieve a proposition or a meaning, something that can be communicated and shared as the very same with other people (in contrast with a perception, which cannot be conveyed to others). We achieve something that can be confirmed, disconfirmed, adjusted, brought to greater distinctness, shown to be vague and contradictory, and the like. All the issues that logic deals with now come into play. According to Husserl, therefore, the proposition or the state of affairs, as a categorial object, does not come about when we impose an a priori form on experience; rather, it emerges from and within experience as a formal structure of parts and wholes...

This is how Husserl describes the genealogy of logic and logical form. He shows how logical and syntactic structures arise when things are presented to us. We are relatively passive when we perceive – but even in perception there is an active dimension, since we have to be alert, direct our attention this way and that, and perceive carefully. Just “being awake (Wachsein)” is a cognitive accomplishment of the ego. We are much more active, however, and active in a new way, when we rise to the level of categoriality, where we articulate a subject and predicate and state them publicly in a sentence. We are more engaged. We constitute something more energetically, and we take a position in the human conversation, a position for which we are responsible. At this point, a higher-level objectivity is established, which can remain an “abiding possession (ein bleibender Besitz).” It can be detached from this situation and made present again in others. It becomes something like a piece of property or real estate, which can be transferred from one owner to another. Correlatively, I become more actualized in my cognitive life and hence more real. I become something like a property owner (I was not elevated to that status by mere perception); I now have my own opinions and have been able to document the way things are, and these opinions can be communicated to others. This higher status is reached through “the active position-takings of the ego [die aktiven Stellungnahmen des Ich] in the act of predicative judgment.”

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind. It arises through an enhancement of perception, a lifting of perception into thought, by a new way of making things present to us. Of course, neurological structures are necessary as a condition for this to happen, but these neural structures do not simply provide a template that we impose on the thing we are experiencing...

-Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth. The only required feature is some amount of difference within reality. Again, even if minds do not exist, reality is still implicitly following the laws of logic through the fact that there are differentiated properties and things such as the gravitational force, electromagnetism, protons, higgs bosons, etc. — tom111

I would question the assumption in this passage. They are genuine distinctions as discerned through empirical inquiry, and they form the backbone of modern physics. But whether those distinctions entail that reality “follows the laws of logic” independently of any interpreting subject is far from settled.

As @Joshs quoted from Merleau-Ponty:

“...the identity of the thing with itself... is already a second interpretation of the experience... we arrive at the thing-object... only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores” (The Visible and the Invisible).

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic. — tom111

I'd go even further and claim, in a Spinozist sense, that logic IS being and that the law of non-contradiction (LNC) entails differentiations (i.e. multiplicities, or discontinua (à la 'atoms flowing in void')). Though 'systems of logic' are invented (i.e. derived), my guess is the applicability to being of such inventions is discovered as any given landscape of modalities (i.e. phase space) is explored.

Are you happy with that answer, or are you looking for alternative views?

Your question, for example, "Where does logic come from?", supposes that logic is a thing that comes from somewhere. If you presume such an ontological status at the get go, it should come as no surprise when you find that logic has just such an ontological status...

Have you presumed your conclusion?

Or take a look at this:

When you point at anything and say "this is a chair," you're automatically doing several things: identifying the chair as itself (law of identity), implicitly distinguishing it from everything else in the room (negation - "not-chair"), and treating it as definitely either a chair or not-a-chair with no middle ground (non-contradiction and excluded middle). — tom111

All good stuff. But notice that these are all things you do. Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find?

We can pursue these ideas further, if you like. Just don't reply, if you are not intersted in thinking criticaly about your OP.

Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find? — Banno

Could it not be something we do in response to something we find? Counting is something we do, but the rules governing it are imposed on us by necessity.

Interesting topic. Does logic have any empiricity anyway?

On one hand, I assume that logic wasn't invented; it was discovered. Just like math, logic is a set of rules beyond physical and mental things. Even God, if one believes in him, is subject to logic.

On the other hand, quantum mechanics and their fuzzy superpositions require a special logic that adds a third state between true and false. That seems to indicate that logic does imply a certain empiricity. But there's no final answer to that.

On the middle hand, why should logic emerge from experience and not vice versa? Experience may emerge from logic! I guess logic is a superpower that is mightier than anything else; in other words: Logic is the basis of all basics, the root of all roots.

Doesn't Merleau-Ponty's point only hold in cases where one intentionally seeks to "get behind" judgement—to attempt to enter something like Hegel's analysis of sense certainty? In everyday experience, we walk through forests full of trees and squirrels, rooms with tables and chairs, etc., nor streams of unmediated sense data. When we see an angry dog, we do not have to abstract from sense data and think: "ah, that sense data incoming from over there can conform to a large, angry dog, I better run away."

Rather, this sort of understanding is automatic, and people can recognize objects about as quickly as they can provide any other sort of motor reaction to stimuli. It takes serious additional extra mental effort to enter the world of unmediated sense data where each moment of the same object can be judged distinct and not part of a preexisting whole (and this move is often unsuccessful), which arguably makes that more abstract. Animals seem to do the same thing. The sheep does not seem to require any process of induction to recognize the whole of the wolf from its "sense data," and to act.

I am not sure if the sort of assumptions underpinning empiricists like Locke might not be in play here. Or at least, there is a presupposition that elevated the many over the one.

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

Right, but if there is no logos, no determinant actuality prior to the senses or intellection, then why is experience and intellection one way and not any other? If the relationship between appearances and reality were arbitrary, then there is effectively only appearances (we have no grounds to posit reality, and it makes no difference to us). But if there is only appearances, appearances just are reality.

Logic comes from predictability. What works consistently over what doesn't that generally offers tangible benefit, usually life saving circumstance. Don't touch fire, or you'll get burned. Don't go into the wilderness by yourself, or you'll get eaten (never return). Etc. Logic, actually, came, or perhaps rather was passed down from, folk stories. Whether true or not, they ended up being the basis of many truths we hold today. Truths that if ignored often result in tragedy.

Fables are a prime example. The average person, whether they realize it or not, base their actions on "fables" or "hypothetics" ie. "constructed scenarios" they make in their head and in a way, live out, in the context of the thought process. So, for example, let's say I haven't changed my tires in a few years. I will imagine, an unfortunate tale of what could happen (yet hasn't) to me if I continue not to do so. This will often result in actual action of the individual into something that, hopefully, prevents such. It's all really fascinating. Truly.

The plight of the thinking man.

"I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened"
- Mark Twain

So I believe logic (by which I'm generally referring to the fundamental laws of logic such as identity, non-contradiction, etc) necessarily emerges from the concept of being itself (or at the very least, emerge from any amount of differentiation within reality). — tom111

Before I make specific comments on your post, I'll lay out my own understanding of what logic is and how it works. This understanding comes from two primary sources 1) intuition and introspection and 2) my readings in cognitive science and psychology. That being said, although I might claim to be a half-assed philosopher, I make no claim to be anywhere close to even a half-assed logician.

What we call logic is a formalization of one form of human thought. Thought itself is a complicated mix of various mental processes which, at some level, are a representation of neurological processes in the human nervous system. (No, I'm not making a claim about the hard problem of consciousness.) Another way of saying this is that the structure and function of human mental processes, our minds, is a function of our biological, neurological, and psychological human nature. As such, it has evolved along with our bodies as a capability that helps us survive and reproduce.

Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic. — tom111

So...No. Logic is not inherent in existence itself, whatever that means. To the extent it is a discovery, it is a discovery about the way our minds work, not about anything in the world outside ourselves. This brings us to the fundamental problem with the premise of your OP. Your argument is fundamentally circular.

When you point at anything and say "this is a chair," you're automatically doing several things: identifying the chair as itself (law of identity), implicitly distinguishing it from everything else in the room (negation - "not-chair"), and treating it as definitely either a chair or not-a-chair with no middle ground (non-contradiction and excluded middle). The very act of singling something out of the wider tapestry of reality forces logical structure into play. — tom111

This requires differentiated being For this to work, things must exist as distinct entities. Now, you probably recognise that when we talk about separate objects like "chairs" and "tables," the mind is arbitrarily cutting up reality into conceptual pieces - these aren't necessarily fundamental divisions within nature itself. — tom111

This seems contradictory - differentiation is logical, but it's also arbitrary. It seems as if you're saying the arbitrariness of it is what makes it logical. In fact, the way we break up reality is not arbitrary at all. We do it in such a way that we can deal effectively with the world. As I noted, I believe we can do that because our minds have evolved along with our bodies to keep us alive.

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth. — tom111

Again, this seems contradictory. You say that the properties of mass and charge exist. How can we say they exist if the difference between them is arbitrary. Does everything that can be differentiated by the human mind exist? I guess I would look at it the other way round - only things that can be differentiated exist. That makes existence the function of the human mind.

Even if we take the concept of pure being, logic still arises. We are gesturing to a concept, being, and automatically differentiating it from its negation; the idea of nothingness. — tom111

Are you saying that pure being itself is arbitrary? Are you saying this is true even if there's no one around to think it, to apply logic to it. But that's what you're trying to demonstrate, isn't it?

Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic. — tom111

Where there's being, there's logic. But being is a concept, an arbitrary distinction.

Stage 2: This requires differentiated being — tom111

This is something like what I've said before in that mathematics is based on the idea that there are categories of things. For there to more than one of anything means that you have established some sort of categorical system where similar objects are part of the same group to say that there is a multitude of those things. If everything were unique the we would have no basis to claim that there is two or more of anything. There would only be one of everything. How can one do math if there was only one of everything?

Logic also involves causation. Logic is a type of thought process that we were born with. We take in information, integrate it with our current knowledge and produce meaningful outputs. We reason our way to conclusions. Conclusions must logically follow the premises to be considered proper thinking. We were also born with emotions and start from a place of almost complete ignorance - with very little experience to base our first perceptions of the world on. As we get older we begin to understand what good thinking entails - what thought processes produce the best results - and we call those thought processes "logic" to help us distinguish between logical fallacies and logical thought processes.

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

Ask AI how did logic evolve and you something like this:
"In evolutionary psychology, logic is understood to have emerged as a cognitive adaptation to solve adaptive problems in ancestral environments. It's not a single, isolated trait, but rather a set of cognitive mechanisms that allow for effective problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning, ultimately contributing to survival and reproduction."
-Google AI

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

Yes, but this presupposes something prior that determined human logic.



So does:

Logic comes from predictability. What works consistently over what doesn't that generally offers tangible benefit, usually life saving circumstance.

I get what you're saying, but I don't not think meant to conflate human logic, e.g. predicate logic, the writing of the Prior and Posterior Analytics, etc., with the "logic" that is intrinsic to being. As I took it, he is saying the former (human formal systems and patterns of speech/thought) depend on something that is prior to them. Indeed, human logic has to depend on something prior to it in some way, else it would be uncaused and would have to spring out of the aether as is. So I guess the question would rather be whether there is a similitude between the human forms and what lies prior to them, and I think the point is "there must be such a similitude in some sense for anything to be 'anything at all.'" Which is also to say that the human mind doesn't create the logical intelligibility of the world as a sort of sui generis feature of reality.

However, supposing an isomorphism (or some sort of morphism) between this prior logic and human logic doesn't require that the two are one and the same thing.

Where did logic come from? Natural selection. — Harry Hindu

This is what Konrad Lorenz had to say:

This is the basis of our conviction that whatever our cognitive faculty communicates to us corresponds to something real. The 'spectacles' of our modes of thought and perception, such as causality, substance, quality, time and place, are functions of a neurosensory organization that has evolved in the service of survival. When we look through these 'spectacles', therefore, we do not see, as transcendental idealists assume, some unpredictable distortion of reality which does not correspond in the least with things as they really are, and therefore cannot be regarded as an image of the outer world. What we experience is indeed a real image of reality - albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed 'organs' only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account, so that selection pressure produced this particular cognitive apparatus...what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it. as far as it goes. For we must assume that reality also has many other aspects which are not vital for us.... to know, and for which we have no 'organ', because we have not been compelled in the course of our evolution to develop means of adapting to them.
— Konrad Lorenz - Behind the Mirror

What we experience is indeed a real image of reality - albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed 'organs' only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account, so that selection pressure produced this particular cognitive apparatus...what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it. as far as it goes — T Clark

What’s missing from Lorenz’a account is the more recent appreciation on the part of biologists of the reciprocal nature of the construction of the real. It is not simply a matter of the organism adapting itself to the facts of its environment, but of those very facts being a product of reciprocal alterations that go back and forth between organism and the world that it sets up for itself. What the reality of an organism’s environment is is just as much a product of the organism’s actions on it as it is the environment’s effects on the organism. Put differently, the perception of reality isnt a matter of representation or imaging of a static outside, but of patterns of activity which modify the outside in specific ways , producing feedback which in turn modifies the organism.

Doesn't Merleau-Ponty's point only hold in cases where one intentionally seeks to "get behind" judgement—to attempt to enter something like Hegel's analysis of sense certainty? In everyday experience, we walk through forests full of trees and squirrels, rooms with tables and chairs, etc., nor streams of unmediated sense data. When we see an angry dog, we do not have to abstract from sense data and think: "ah, that sense data incoming from over there can conform to a large, angry dog, I better run away — Count Timothy von Icarus

For the phenomenologist, there is no ready-made world of objects. To perceive trees, squirrels and rooms with tables and chairs is to constitute them through the interplay between expectation and response.

“We must now show that its intellectualist [idealist] antithesis is on the same level as empiricism itself. Both take the objective world as the object of their analysis, when this comes first neither in time nor in virtue of its meaning; and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in which perceptual consciousness constitutes its object. Both keep their distance in relation to perception, instead of sticking closely to it.

For some phenomenologists. Phenomenology could hardly have become so influential in Catholic thought (winning over two saints and a pope) if it was inextricable from the idea that man is the measure of beings, or that subsistent being was not prior to created being.

To perceive trees, squirrels and rooms with tables and chairs is to constitute them through the interplay between expectation and response. — Joshs

An expectation of what is the defining question here? There is the question of ontological priority, what causes experience to be one way and not any other.

But that wasn't really my point. My point was that the phenomenological perspective is not the default. I think the overwhelming number of readers would agree that Husserl or Marion provide far more abstract descriptions of experience than common narratives about what one sees in the woods.

The idea that the immediate is less abstract assumes a certain sort of framing. That's the point of Hegel's quip at least. To assume that the most general theories or philosophy, the universal, the higher principles, etc. are necessarily "more abstract," is to have already abstracted parts of reality from the whole, and decided the part is more fundamental. A focus on the specific over the general is itself the result of abstraction. It's still in the mold of materialism and reductionism, the smallism that developed in reaction to the overarching bigism of classical metaphysics. Now maybe one really is more warranted than the other, that's another question.

My point was that the phenomenological perspective is not the default. I think the overwhelming number of readers would agree that Husserl or Marion provide far more abstract descriptions of experience than common narratives about what one sees in the woods. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting that you would use the word abstract to describe an approach whose aim is precisely to bracket and see beneath the abstractions that are commonly used to think about everyday objects. In doing so, one does not privilege the part over the whole. On the contrary, one arrives at an enriched understanding of the whole. I certainly agree that empirical reduction relies on abstraction, which is why Husserl warned against what Evan Thompson in his recent book called the blind spot of science, the tendency to forget that its idealizations are convenient simplifications derived from the actually experienced lifeworld (is temperature nothing but the kinetic motion of molecules? Is color simply wavelengths of light?).

I think Neoplatonism would be the paradigmatic example of the opposite orientation, although the idea is central in Scholastic thought, "Golden Age" Islamic thought, and some Hindu thought. I think Shankara's Advaita Vedanta would qualify, since phenomenon is maya ("illusion"). The idea is that the higher principle is more real than the particular. What is most properly knowledge is the co-identity of form in the intellect. The idea is that the experience of particulars is always incomplete and refers outside the particulars and sense experience. These are not wholly intelligible in themselves (and so not wholly themselves), both the experience of particulars (or experience itself) and even physical particulars themselves. Experiences are incomplete. They only "exist" as a sort of "abstraction," a pulling away from the whole that is not wholly real, in that the separation is an affectation (the creature having no real existence outside the One, God, Brahman, etc.).

Now obviously, if "abstract" is defined as "separation from experience of particulars (or matter)," this won't be the case. But in a broader sense abstraction is often taken to mean a separation from reality or unity. That is, abstractions are "less real." They are ens rationis, interpretive creations of the mind that are ontologically posterior to experience. We "construct" them. Yet any metaphysical realism is going to reverse this to at least some degree, because the forms grasped by the intellect will be prior to experience. They will be ontologically prior, while experience will be merely epistemically prior to a grasp of the universal/form.

Plotinus' undescended intellect is probably the best example I can think of, but that's likely unfamiliar. I'll share Wallace below just in case you're interested because he makes Plato and Hegel fairly Neoplatonic. It's sort of an ancillary objection, I know. It just occurred to me in my reading that what is considered "abstract" is in a sense inverted in the early modern period.

By calling what we experience with our senses less real than the Forms, Plato is not saying that what we experience with our senses is simply illusion. The “reality” that the Forms have more of is not simply their not being illusions. If that’s not what their extra reality is, what is it? The easiest place to see how one could suppose that something that isn’t an illusion, is nevertheless less real than something else, is in our experience of ourselves.

In Republic book iv, Plato’s examination of the different "parts of the soul” leads him to the conclusion that only the rational part can integrate the soul into one, and thus make it truly “just.” Here is his description of the effect of a person’s being governed by his rational part, and therefore “just”:

Justice . . . is concerned with what is truly himself and his own. . . . [The person who is just] binds together [his] parts . . . and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate, and harmonious. Only then does he act. (Republic 443d-e)

Our interest here (I’ll discuss the “justice” issue later) is that by “binding together his parts” and “becoming entirely one,” this person is “truly himself.” That is, as I put it in earlier chapters, a person who is governed by his rational part is real not merely as a collection of various ingredients or “parts,” but as himself. A person who acts purely out of appetite, without any examination of whether that appetite is for something that will actually be “good,” is enacting his appetite, rather than anything that can appropriately be called “himself.” Likewise for a person who acts purely out of anger, without examining whether the anger is justified by what’s genuinely good. Whereas a person who thinks about these issues before acting “becomes entirely one” and acts, therefore, in a way that expresses something that can appropriately be called “himself.”

In this way, rational self-governance brings into being an additional kind of reality, which we might describe as more fully real than what was there before, because it integrates those parts in a way that the parts themselves are not integrated. A person who acts “as one,” is more real as himself than a person who merely enacts some part or parts of himself. He is present and functioning as himself, rather than just as a collection of ingredients or inputs.

We all from time to time experience periods of distraction, absence of mind, or depression, in which we aren’t fully present as ourselves. Considering these periods from a vantage point at which we are fully present and functioning as ourselves, we can see what Plato means by saying that some non-illusory things are more real than other non-illusory things. There are times when we ourselves are more real as ourselves than we are at other times.

Indeed, we can see nature as a whole as illustrating this issue of how fully integrated and “real as itself ” a being can be. Plants are more integrated than rocks, in that they’re able to process nutrients and reproduce themselves, and thus they’re less at the mercy of their environment. So we could say that plants are more effectively focused on being themselves than rocks are, and in that sense they’re more real as themselves. Rocks may be less vulnerable than plants are, but what’s the use of invulnerability if what’s invulnerable isn’t you?

Animals, in turn, are more integrated than plants are, in that animals’ senses allow them to learn about their environment and navigate through it in ways that plants can’t. So animals are still more effectively focused on being themselves than plants are, and thus more real as themselves.

Humans, in turn, can be more effectively focused on being themselves than many animals are, insofar as humans can determine for themselves what’s good, rather than having this be determined for them by their genetic heritage and their environment. Nutrition and reproduction, motility and sensation, and a thinking pursuit of the Good each bring into being a more intensive reality as oneself than is present without them.

Now, what all of this has to do with the Forms and their supposedly greater reality than our sense experience is that it’s by virtue of its pursuit of knowledge of what’s really good, that the rational part of the soul distinguishes itself from the soul’s appetites and anger and so forth. The Form of the Good is the embodiment of what’s really good. So pursuing knowledge of the Form of the Good is what enables the rational part of the soul to govern us, and thus makes us fully present, fully real, as ourselves. In this way, the Form of the Good is a precondition of our being fully real, as ourselves.

But presumably something that’s a precondition of our being fully real must be at least as real as we are when we are fully real. It’s at least as real as we are, because we can’t deny its reality without denying our own functioning as creatures who are guided by it or are trying to be guided by it.13 And since it’s at least as real as we are, it’s more (fully) real than the material things that aren’t guided by it and thus aren’t real as themselves.

From Robert M. Wallace - Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present

The key thing here is "self-determination." But this can be taken to be "self-determination" in a more abstract, metaphysical sense as well.

[Hegel] thinks he has demonstrated, in the chapter on “Quality,” that the ordinary conceptions of quality, reality, or finitude are not systematically defensible, by themselves, but can only be properly employed within a context of negativity or true infinity...

Note: For instance, one cannot understand “red” atomically, but rather it depends on other notions such as “color” and the things (substances) that can be red, etc. to be intelligible. This notion is similar to how the Patristics (e.g., St. Maximus) developed Aristotle in light of the apparent truth that even "proper beings" (e.g., a horse) are not fully intelligible in terms of themselves. For instance, try explaining what a horse *is* without any reference to any other plant, animal, or thing. This has ramifications for freedom as the ability to transcend “what one already is,”—the “given”—which relies on our relation to a transcendent absolute Good—a Good not unrelated to how unity generates (relatively) discrete/self-determining beings/things.

[Hegel] has now shown, through his analysis of “diversity” and opposition, that within such a context of negativity or true infinity, the reality that is described by apparently merely “contrary” concepts will turn out to be better described, at a fundamental level, by contradictory concepts. The fundamental reality will be contradictory, rather than merely contrary. It’s not that nothing will be neither black nor white, but rather that qualities such as black, white, and colorless are less real (less able to be what they are by virtue of [only] themselves) than self-transcending finitude (true infinity) is…

From Robert M. Wallace - Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God

Logic is not inherent in existence itself, whatever that means. To the extent it is a discovery, it is a discovery about the way our minds work, not about anything in the world outside ourselves. — T Clark

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance. Maybe it's how you've expressed your point, T Clark, that doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I'll go on: my point – maybe not quite the OP's – is not that "logic is inherent in existence" but, parsimoniously, that logic is existence (i.e. 'universes' themselves are logico-computable processes ~Spinoza ... Deutsch, Wolfram, Tegmark) about / from which we (can) derive abbreviated syntaxes & formulae (which are, in effect, maps yet often mistaken for terrain (e.g. Plato-Aristotle, Kant-Husserl, Russell-Carnap)). :chin:

@jgill @Banno

Logic comes from us, human beings. To do logic is to perform a human activity, although crows are capable of primitive logic acts. To me it’s just an activity of sentient beings. It didn’t come from anywhere but us.

What’s missing from Lorenz’a account is the more recent appreciation on the part of biologists of the reciprocal nature of the construction of the real. It is not simply a matter of the organism adapting itself to the facts of its environment, but of those very facts being a product of reciprocal alterations that go back and forth between organism and the world that it sets up for itself. — Joshs

So... living organisms, including humans, affect the environment and organisms and environments evolve together. Agreed. That's not "missing from Lorenz's account." It's just not particularly relevant to the specific point he, and I, are trying to make which is - human minds, including our intellectual capacities, evolved in the same manner that our physical bodies did. Logic is something we brought to the world.

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance. — 180 Proof

@tom111's whole argument is based on distinctions between aspects of the world, i.e. separate Cartesian substances. If you're going to forbid their use, the entire thread dissolves. Yes, there is a place where you and I can stand and see that all these distinctions are arbitrary. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable for us to pick a different perspective, one from which the distinction between what's inside me and what's outside me is useful. There is an interesting difference between a rock and the pain I feel when I drop it on my foot.

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance. — 180 Proof

I just realized my first response missed your point. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't recognize Descartes' thinking vs. extended substances as any different from any other kind of distinction.

Right, but if there is no logos, no determinant actuality prior to the senses or intellection, then why is experience and intellection one way and not any other? If the relationship between appearances and reality were arbitrary, then there is effectively only appearances (we have no grounds to posit reality, and it makes no difference to us). But if there is only appearances, appearances just are reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't say, nor imply, that there isn't a determinant, that there is no external world. The relationship between world and mind is not arbitrary. The term that I believe is common to both phenomenology and Buddhism is that the world is 'co-arising'. This tends to subvert the whole question of whether logic or order are 'in the mind' or 'in the world'. Answer is: neither, or both.

Merleau-Ponty ...writes in Phenomenology of Perception: “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism). Instead of these two extremes, Merleau-Ponty proposes that each one of the two terms, the conscious subject and the world, makes the other one what it is, and thus they inseparably form a larger whole. In philosophical terms, their relationship is dialectical. — The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson.

The world Merleau-Ponty is talking about is the life-world, the world we’re able to perceive, investigate, and act in. The subject projects the world because it brings forth the world as a space of meaning and relevance. But the subject can project the world only because the subject inheres in a body already oriented to and engaged with a world that surpasses it. The bodily subject is not just in the world but also of the world. The bodily subject is a project of the world, a way the world locally self-organizes and self-individuates to constitute a living being.

You may want to say that the universe—the whole cosmos or all of nature—subsumes the life-world, so the strange loop pertains only to us and our life-world, not to us and the universe altogether. But quarantining the strange loop this way won’t work. It’s true that our life-world is a minuscule part of an immensely vaster cosmos. The cosmos contains our life-world. But it’s also true that the life-world contains the universe. What we mean is that the universe is always disclosed to us from within life

Excerpt from
The Blind Spot
Adam Frank;Marcelo Gleiser;Evan Thompson; Chapter 8: Consciousness.

tom111's whole argument is based on distinctions between aspects of the world, i.e. separate Cartesian substances. — T Clark

Ok - but isn't making that distinction an application of logic? So it can't server as the justification for logic...

I didn't say, nor imply, that there isn't a determinant, that there is no external world.

No, but I said "determinant actuality prior to the senses." And this is a denial of that, right?

The term that I believe is common to both phenomenology and Buddhism is that the world is 'co-arising'. This tends to subvert the whole question of whether logic or order are 'in the mind' or 'in the world'. Answer is: neither, or both.

If both, it would be saying that the things we know are both prior and posterior to our knowing them, which is arguably a contradiction. That is, our knowledge of things would be both dependent and not dependent on their prior existence.

To say neither is to say that the knowledge of the knower is not dependent on or caused by the known. This seems problematic too.

Hence, the "both" option seems more promising, but now we have a cause that is posterior (and prior) to its effect. A self-moving cause. But why would a wholly self-moving cause (a spontaneous move from potency to act) have one effect and not any other? Whereas , if the process isn't wholly self moving (i.e. randomly generating) then something is prior and determining the process, and so there is some "prior actuality," which was my only point.

This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism)

I mean, given these quite unattractive framings of both idealism and realism, of course we want a via media. I am not sure if "human thought and the physical world are both (and neither) prior nor/and posterior to one another" is the only option though, or one without difficulties.

I take it that here "experience" means "our experience." So the Earth becomes what it is because we experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple?

There seems to me to be a crucial difference between acknowledging that the experience of finite creatures is always filtered through their cognitive apparatus and denying the actuality of being as such prior to creatures' finite conscious awareness of it. The latter move puts potency prior to act if the idea is that the two (finite mind and world ) are the result of self-generation, with nothing outside this process. The world becomes the result of a self-moving process which, having nothing prior to it, is random. That is, sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself" into determinant actuality ex nihilo (or eternally I suppose, but the eternal framing doesn't make the question of quiddity, why being is one way and not another, any less acute). It's the same sort of issue you get with the physicalist claim that being and quiddity are "brute facts."

Another difficulty is that if things' actuality is not prior to their being known, then it's hard to see how they could have any essence. All predication would be accidental (or essential, the difference is collapsed) and so there would be no pre se predication. Rather, things change what they essentially are when known differently. You get all the issues of Heraclitus, without the Logos as an ad hoc backstop. Presumably, there might be ways to iron this out, but it comes to mind.

Now, the idea that there is only flux prior to our "constructions" mentioned earlier strikes me as different. Here, flux is prior. But this still seems to me to be heading towards the idea of man as the source of the world, if not in the role of God, then at least a demiurge. Are the principles of things contained in the flux (say, virtually), or is the flux a sort of prime matter on which man imposes form and makes everything what it is? And if the latter, from whence this form?

But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

For instance, here I'd like to ask "interpretations of what?" If things do not have any determinant identity before we "interpret" them then the interpretations would seem to be of "nothing in particular." But then I wouldn't even want to call them interpretations, since they aren't "of" anything. They would be more like "generations," in that we would be imposing extrinsic form on them (which begs the question, how does this informing faculty work and what determines it)? The contrast to "things-in-themselves" and "mind-independent" reality make sense, given philosophy's continued focus on the Cartesian/Kantian dilemma, but I'm increasingly thinking that these are dragged out to be shot down as a sort of comparison case at least as often as they are actually embraced though.

The analogy I'd want to make is that just because we must always see a light after it passes through a tinted window doesn't mean that light isn't a light before it passes through the glass. But neither does it mean that there is anything to see without the light ("mind independent being") or that one can "see the light before it emits any light" (the sterile thing-in-itself).

Ok - but isn't making that distinction an application of logic? So it can't server as the justification for logic... — Banno

Is this response aimed at my position or his? I don’t see how it’s relevant to mine.