No, but I said "determinant actuality prior to the senses." And this is a denial of that, right?…. 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." — Count Timothy von Icarus
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? — Count Timothy von Icarus
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. — Erwin Schrodinger
There is no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else. Everything we investigate, including consciousness and its relation to the brain, resides within the horizon of consciousness. — The Blind Spot
...the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being (due to its being Idea), however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.
(Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person)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
There is something prior to or outside of any cognition of it, but it is not really ‘something’ until it is (re)cognised by a subject. (This is what I take the in-itself to mean - something is, but as it has no determinate form or features, then it can’t be understood as any kind of existent or ‘thing’).
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?
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)?
As for why we perceive colours the same way, all of us belong to a common species, and also share a common language and culture. If we were a different species with a completely different cognitive system everything might appear completely differently to what it does to h.sapiens . The evolutionary pathway gave rise to h,sapiens, not centaurs, and as a species, we share a common world (to an extent).
This is very different from how Wallace understands Plato and Hegel, because there intelligibility always refers outside itself, ultimately to the Good/One/True Infinite/Absolute. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Eriugena proceeds to list “five ways of interpreting” the manner in which things may be said to be or not to be (I would prefer 'exist or not to exist'). According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be ('exist') , whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature” transcends our faculties are said not to be (i.e. 'exist'). According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be (i.e. exist). He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam).
You're making an appeal to determinant causes prior to the first finite mind. If the two (experiencer and experienced) are rather wholly co-constituting, as a self-moving cause, this doesn't work. — Count Timothy von Icarus
These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. — Schopenhauer, WWI
Like that the universe is causal and deterministic? Yes. Could a mind evolve in any other type of world?Where did logic come from? Natural selection.
Yes, but this presupposes something prior that determined human logic. — Count Timothy von Icarus
My response is that survival is the best incentive for getting your perceptions right about the world, and to be open to new information that might be useful because you never know what part of reality might be useful to promote one's survival. That is the direction evolution seems to be headed from instinctive, hard-coded behavioral responses to general stimuli to conscious minds capable of making finer distinctions and therefore finer behavioral responses as well being able to change one's behavior based on new sensory information effectively overriding those instinctive behaviors when they are not the best response in a given situation. We can change our behavior in almost real-time compared to instinctive behaviors which can take generations to change.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 — T Clark
To everyone who thinks logic and causality were the same. They are not.
The trigger before the explosion is not a logical reason; it's a physical cause. This cause is not based upon a logical law nor is it linked with it. It's not logical that the trigger causes an explosion. This is just an empirical observation and it's not guaranteed that this effect will be the same at all times. If this were logical and the effect would change, it would be like saying: "2+2=4 has been correct until now, but in the future it may be 2+2=3." -- This is not logic. Logic is independent of space and time. — Quk
. I want to clarify: I’m not saying there is nothing at all prior to interpretation—certainly not “nothing” in a nihilistic sense. What I’m pointing to is something more like undifferentiated givenness—not sheer formless flux, but not determinately articulated being either. It’s not a thing or set of things waiting to be picked out, but a field of potential meaning that only becomes structured in relation to a subject (something like Peirce's 'firstness'). That's why I said 'neither existent nor non-existent', which is what I take the expression 'beyond being' to mean - beyond the flux of coming-to-be and passing away.
I think, and you will know this subject better than I, that Eriugena's Periphysion articulates this far better than I could. From the SEP entry:
Universals—or forms—exist, or rather, are real, not as actual entities, but as structured possibilities. As Kelley Ross puts it, they "exist where possibilities exist," and we encounter them not only in the future, but also in what he calls the "imperfect aspect"—that is, in things that are still unfolding, in process, not yet completed. This is key: the world we engage with is not made of finished essences, but of meaningful potentials that become actualised or manifested through living beings.
Bingo! Logic is about language, not about the world itself.
Logic then applies to statements we make with those abstractions, not directly to the world itself. Insofar those statements are about the world, maybe you could say it's also about the world indirectly.
That is the direction evolution seems to be headed from instinctive, hard-coded behavioral responses to general stimuli to conscious minds capable of making finer distinctions and therefore finer behavioral responses as well being able to change one's behavior based on new sensory information effectively overriding those instinctive behaviors when they are not the best response in a given situation. We can change our behavior in almost real-time compared to instinctive behaviors which can take generations to change. — Harry Hindu
There was a very long running debate over whether terms signify concepts in the mind (Aristotle) or whether they signify things (through a triadic semiotic relationship, Augustine). I've always been partial to Augustine here, but I can see the impetus in the other direction as well, and language plays a crucial role in either case. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think in either case you're right, it's about the world in at least some way. It's mediated, so "indirect." I'm not sure if anything is ever truly unmediated; that's another question. Logic and language only ceases to be "about the world," if the terms/concepts cease to be determinantly related to the world in any way. So, even on the view that signification is of concepts (usually universals), this isn't overly problematic because universals come to us from things via the senses. It becomes a difficulty only when that linkage is somehow severed.
Here, I don't really mind the Kantian interjection that what we say about things is always "things as we know them." That's fair. Surely we are not speaking about things as we don't know them. Where it gets dicey is in the idea that there is no determinant linkage between things and what is known, in which case, it doesn't even seem like the knowledge can be "of" the things. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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. — T Clark
This would be the idea that there is no squirrel or owl prior to our knowing it as such, that our knowing makes it what it is — Count Timothy von Icarus
he does not claim that the very reality of the organism’s environment is co-constructed by the organism’s patterns of functioning in it. Instead, he assumes the reality of that environment is external to, and independent of, the organism’s limited, adaptive perception of it. — Joshs
That's a fantastic quote. I'll probably reuse it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
At any rate, it misses that, in order for human culture to exist, humans have to exist. This doesn't entail that any humans ever exist without culture. It merely entails that, because humans are one thing, and not any other, this will always shape human culture.
Likewise, the realities faced by all living things, the demand to maintain homeostasis and form in the face of entropy, etc. are more general principles that will effect all cultures, human, or any other intelligent species.
More general principles explain more things, but less determinantly. So human nature explains all human cultures, but it is less definite then how cultures shape us. And thus, it can easily seem like "culture all the way down," because culture drives the particular specific details we take notice of, yet these are always against a particular background of biology, physics, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is a mortal.
Is about the words "man" and "Socrates" and not ever about men and Socrates? Wouldn't this lead to a thoroughgoing anti-realism and an inability of language to signify anything but language, such that books on botany are about words and interpretations and never about plants (only "plants")? — Count Timothy von Icarus
For some reason, I thought you are a skeptic about emergence.
Human logic is clearly not physical causality. However, logic isn't "about" anything but language? So:
[1] Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is a mortal.
Is about the words "man" and "Socrates" and not ever about men and Socrates? Wouldn't this lead to a thoroughgoing anti-realism and an inability of language to signify anything but language, such that books on botany are about words and interpretations and never about plants (only "plants") — Count Timothy von Icarus
[2] and [3] have the same logical structure as [1]. They are the same logical statements. — SophistiCat
Logic is only about something insofar as we make it to be. It can be something perfectly sensible, like [1], or frivolous, like [2], or even nothing in particular, like [3]. — SophistiCat
Logic is about language, not about the world itself. — ChatteringMonkey
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