Jaegwon Kim has a series of monographs that are widely considered devastating for the idea of strong emergence given certain presuppositions (roughly a supervenience substance metaphysics where things just are what they are made of, e.g. things as ensembles of particles). This doesn't make me skeptical of emergence though, quite the opposite, it makes me skeptical of the metaphysics that seems to imply that emergence is impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I remember now. After you mentioned Kim’s article, I downloaded it and started reading it. I only got about a quarter of the way through and I wasn’t impressed. I should probably go back and finish. There are certain ways of thinking that are really important to me, and I don’t think I do enough to find skeptical views to put my own to the test.

Right, so is this "undifferentiated giveness" first in the order of being or in the order of our experience? It seems obvious that it comes first in our particular experience, yet the ontological priority of something wholly undifferentiated would seem to cause problems in terms of what follows from what is truly undifferentiated as a cause (which would seem to be, nothing, or nothing in particular). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This might be a point where we’re crossing conceptual wires a bit—because I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ontological and temporal priority.

When you ask whether “undifferentiated givenness” is first in the order of being or in the order of experience, I wonder whether that’s still considering the question from a temporal perspective. The eternal is not temporally prior, because it’s outside of time—so it can be said to be ontologically prior, as the ground or condition of temporal existence. But treating it as temporally prior still risks a kind of reductionism.

So perhaps we’re better off thinking in terms of dependence relations, rather than temporal or linear sequences. The structured world depends on this givenness to be disclosed; but the givenness itself depends on deeper conditions—what might traditionally be called the Logos or the Good—not as temporal precursors, but as metaphysical grounds. Which is why cognition is constrained by the forms through which the One manifests.

This connects with something I’ve been reflecting on in terms of the distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes of being.

The horizontal axis is what we ordinarily think of as “the order of experience”: time, causality, physical phenomena, the unfolding of events—everything science deals with. It’s the world as it appears, structured into before and after, subject and object. When we talk about whether something comes “first” in this order, we’re already inside a temporal sequence.

But the vertical axis isn’t about temporal sequence—it’s about ontological dependence, or what grounds the very possibility of appearance. It’s what makes the horizontal axis intelligible at all. This includes not only the subject as knower, but also what precedes and grounds both subject and object: what Kant might call the noumenal, or the in-itself. It also includes the metaphysical principles that shape intelligibility—form, the Good, intelligible structure—not as things that happen within time, but as conditions for time and experience to arise at all. But we can't know that as object or in an objective sense (which is precisely why positivism rejects it as 'meaningless'.)

I think this is where a reference to Plotinus is pertinent. For Plotinus, the One is not a being among beings—not even the highest or most perfect being. The one is beyond existence—not because it’s less real, but because it is more real than anything that can be said to exist (i.e. what is coming-to-be and passing away). The source of existence is not something that exists! That means it does not ‘exist’ in the same way anything else does—it's not simply a very special thing among other things. It’s beyond existence, not any thing (which is also what Eriugena says.)

This is also what I take “beyond existence” to mean—not nothingness, not a void, but that which grounds existence without itself being an existent. It’s not non-existent, but it doesn’t exist the way things do. It’s “no thing,” but not nothing. Any statement that attributes existence to the One, as if it were a definable entity, risks collapsing that distinction. As Paul Tillich put it, “To say that God exists is to deny him”—because what is ultimate cannot be reduced to the category of an existent.

Whose the knower? An individual man, or mankind? It seems to me that the natural numbers must be prior to individuals, since they are already around and known by others before we are born.

Now, if mankind is the only species with the capacity for intellectual knowledge, I think there might be a sense in which the natural numbers could be said to be posterior to man, but they also seem obviously prior in another sense.

The sense in which the natural numbers are prior lies in the fact that there were discrete organisms, organic wholes with a principle of unity, long before man existed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, the question is the sense in which numbers are prior. Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. So they are not temporally prior, even though there were obviously numbers of things that existed before anyone was around to count them.

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. — Richard Tieszen, Phenomenology, Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, p13

So, what consciousness are they constituted in, if it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions of them or awareness of them? I'd be wary about entering an answer to that question. Suffice to say they are real possiblities that can only be apprehended by a rational intelligence - not neccessarily yours or mine (definitely not mine, as I'm bad at math.)

But bad at it or not, maths deals in necessary truths. And it’s precisely this sense of necessity that makes the question “where does logic come from?” so important. We’re not just talking about how humans happen to reason, or how nature happens to behave, but about the conditions that make truth, structure, and intelligibility possible at all - how reason is imposed upon us.

Sorry. I don't get it. In the context of the question at hand, why does it matter whether human cognitive systems evolved in response to the environment or coevolved in concert with the environment? — T Clark

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction. — Joshs

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that.

Jaegwon Kim has a series of monographs that are widely considered devastating for the idea of strong emergence given certain presuppositions (roughly a supervenience substance metaphysics where things just are what they are made of, e.g. things as ensembles of particles). This doesn't make me skeptical of emergence though, quite the opposite, it makes me skeptical of the metaphysics that seems to imply that emergence is impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

After my last post, I went back to Kim's paper. I immediately remembered why I disliked it so much. He seems to have missed the point. He focuses on causation between hierarchical levels of scale, especially causation from above. In past discussions on the forum, in particular by Apokrisis, as well as my own reading, it is not causation from above that is central to emergence, it's constraint from above.

Another thing that undermined the credibility of the paper for me is the fact that he never mentioned Anderson's "More is Different," a paper, written in 1972, which is still considered important today.

This was written more than 100 years ago, but it is consistent with other things I have read that are more recent. — T Clark

I would prefer that you provide links to those other things because the language used in your quote is unwieldy.

Instincts are useful or else they would not have been selected. They are like a general purpose tool for handling a variety of situations or situations that rarely change. Conscious behavior allows an organism to adapt one's behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. This is why humans have been able to spread into all sorts of environments, including space.

"Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home in every continent."
Jacob Bronowski

This also speaks to our curiosity. We always want to know what is over the horizon. We are natural explorers. It is in our nature to see the world more openly - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations - to boldly go where no man has gone before, because you never know what part of reality might be useful for something.

This might be a point where we’re crossing conceptual wires a bit—because I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ontological and temporal priority.

We probably did. An important distinction is efficient causes as contingent, temporal linear series versus as hierarchical causal series. The former is something like a chain of dominoes knocking each other down. The first domino knocked over is prior to the last in a contingent linear ordering. But we also have hierarchical causal series of efficient causes, like a book sitting on a table. The table needs to be there for the book to be sitting on it, but the table can be there without the book sitting on it. One is dependent on the other, but they aren't mutually dependent. The dependence is there at every moment, not in some linear sequence.

This is a common source of misunderstanding in St. Thomas' Second Way, BTW. People understand it as "the universe must have a temporal begining," but actually he thought reason and observation alone (at least what he had access to) couldn't decide if the cosmos was eternal. He merely thought that Aristotle had failed to demonstrate that it was definitively eternal. But even if the cosmos is eternal, we still need a first cause in a hierarchical causal series.

I guess this would be relevant in a few ways. Substantial form doesn't exist outside substances or the intellect. There is the form "cat" 'in' cats themselves and 'in' the intellect of knowers. But the form has to be to be to be informing these things in the same way a table must exist for a book to rest on it. Yet it seems possible for there to be cats but not creatures with intellects. The existence of the form vis-á-vis cats is not dependent on the existence of the form in finite intellects.

Of course, we might say the reverse is true. However, in terms of a temporal linear ordering, it does seem that cats had to exist before people could sense them and abstract their form.

This is obviously a framing in terms of Aristotleian metaphysics but I think the concepts at play are isomorphic to many other systems.

When you ask whether “undifferentiated givenness” is first in the order of being or in the order of experience, I wonder whether that’s still considering the question from a temporal perspective. The eternal is not temporally prior, because it’s outside of time—so it can be said to be ontologically prior, as the ground or condition of temporal existence. But treating it as temporally prior still risks a kind of reductionism.

I may have misunderstood you. I didn't think “undifferentiated givenness” meant to refer to anything eternal, but rather the immediacy of sense certainty without any mediation. So I was thinking in the order of experience. In the order of created, changing (physical) being, my thoughts would be that for anything to be anything at all, it has to have some sort of actuality. So the temporal priority of an entirely undifferentiated being that is then actualized by consciousness strikes me as somewhat like the Platonic demiurge, giving form to nothingness. The example of consciousness causes collapse is sort of apt here, but not really, because that doesn't presuppose sheer potency prior to collapse, but rather a delimited sort of indeterminacy.

Again, the question is the sense in which numbers are prior. Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. So they are not temporally prior, even though there were obviously numbers of things that existed before anyone was around to count them.

Wouldn't their existence in the intellect be on the phenomenal plane?

But if numbers of things existed temporaly prior, and the natural numbers come to be in the intellect by abstracting the form of magnitude and multitude, how is that not temporal priority?

That's at least the idea behind the abstraction of form. Things exist in one mode in material beings and another in the intellect of finite beings. But then finite beings don't create the form, but rather abstract it. We could say there is a generation of the intellectual mode (a reception of form by potency) but not a creation (something new).

So, what consciousness are they constituted in, if it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions of them or awareness of them? I'd be wary about entering an answer to that question. Suffice to say they are real possiblities that can only be apprehended by a rational intelligence - not neccessarily yours or mine (definitely not mine, as I'm bad at math.)

It's a tough question, but I would object to the idea that mathematical objects are "mind independent." If they have no intelligibility, no quiddity, no eidos, then they are nothing at all, but to possess these is to have intellectual content. I don't think anything is "mind independent" in the sense this is commonly meant, a sort of Kantianesque "noumena" of being devoid of intelligible content.

So, I guess I would try to explain this the way David Bentley Hart does in All Things Are Full of Gods, that the notion of bare noumenal "material" existence is a mistake, an inversion of the proper order.

But bad at it or not, maths deals in necessary truths. And it’s precisely this sense of necessity that makes the question “where does logic come from?” so important. We’re not just talking about how humans happen to reason, or how nature happens to behave, but about the conditions that make truth, structure, and intelligibility possible at all - how reason is imposed upon us.

Yes, that makes sense to me.

I would prefer that you provide links to those other things because the language used in your quote is unwieldy. — Harry Hindu

The quote seems clear and fully wieldy to me. I don't know of any other source who expresses it's point as well as it does.

Instincts are useful or else they would not have been selected. They are like a general purpose tool for handling a variety of situations or situations that rarely change. Conscious behavior allows an organism to adapt one's behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. This is why humans have been able to spread into all sorts of environments, including space. — Harry Hindu

Going back to the quote from James, humans are just as instinctual as other animals and sentient animals learn from experience just as much as humans. Animals also adapt their behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. That is the whole point of the quote.

"Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home in every continent."
Jacob Bronowski — Harry Hindu

Animals; and plants, fungi, bacteria and all other living organisms for that matter; shape the landscape. Beavers build dams that create lakes that provide habitat for fish that provide food for eagles. Grasses prevent erosion and create prairies. They are are also explorers of nature and have migrated to every continent.

This also speaks to our curiosity. We always want to know what is over the horizon. We are natural explorers. It is in our nature to see the world more openly - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations - to boldly go where no man has gone before, because you never know what part of reality might be useful for something

Or simply because "men by nature desire to know," or because they desire the glory of achieving the difficult.

Logic is about language, not about the world itself. — ChatteringMonkey


Since you disagreed with the person who disagreed with this thesis, I am assuming that you affirm the thesis. Please correct me if you do not affirm the thesis. — Leontiskos

I was only disputing the idea that logic is about the world, which is to say, that there is some kind of inherent correspondence between logical statements and "things out there."

That's not to say that there isn't a connection between logic and the world at some level. But what sort of connection? That question gets back to the issue that I have with this whole discussion thread: it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together.

it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together. — SophistiCat

This is not an uncommon problem here on the forum, and I assume in philosophy in general. In this case in particular, we’re not talking metaphysics or language. We’re talking about the facts of how human cognition and evolutionactually work.

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.
— Joshs

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that. — T Clark

@Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have.

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction. If perception just reflects the world, then reality exists independently of the organism; but if perception enacts reality, then the organism and environment co-create what is real. This distinction must have significant implications in how we understand knowledge, life, and what we dub 'reality' particularly academic subjects such as biology, psychology, and philosophy.

men by nature desire to know — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you think non-human sentient animals don’t also desire to know? Some of them certainly do.

Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have. — Tom Storm

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against @Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue.

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue. — T Clark

No worries. I added a bit where I have tried to interpret the point as best I can. Pretty sure I have missed something.

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction. — Tom Storm

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions.

If you go back to the original Lorenz quote I posted, he definitely thinks that the world represented in our minds is real. I don’t necessarily agree with him. Deciding what is real and what’s not is a metaphysical process, not a scientific one.

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions. — T Clark

I'm not pursuing the Lorenz connection, I'm focusing on enactivist accounts of co-creation. I read Lorenz a generation ago and have forgotten it.

I'm currently more interested in postmodern thought, phenomenology, and other non-essentialist accounts of experience. I’m also aware that you align with Collingwood’s view of metaphysics as a historical/conceptual framework and not true or false as such. Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one: the assumption that the world is intelligible. And yes, science can perform some remarkable tricks. But the implication of @Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding?

"Curiosity killed the cat," right? There is a sort of anthropological/metaphysical question of if animals can "know" as in, intellection, but obviously they can know in different ways, e.g. "sense knowledge," memory, etc. Both sensing and knowing involve a sort of union with the known.

But the quote is from Slick Ari at the opening of the Metaphysics and he only mentions man because that's his focus.

. Substantial form doesn't exist outside substances or the intellect. There is the form "cat" 'in' cats themselves and 'in' the intellect of knowers. But the form has to be to be to be informing these things in the same way a table must exist for a book to rest on it. Yet it seems possible for there to be cats but not creatures with intellects. The existence of the form vis-á-vis cats is not dependent on the existence of the form in finite intellects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree that from an empirical perspective we encounter particulars first, and then abstract the form. But I wonder whether that perspective risks treating the form as derivative —something we derive from the object. In the Platonic (and arguably Aristotelian) sense, form is not something posterior to the object, but that in virtue of which the object is what it is.

That is, form isn’t just a feature we discover by experience—it’s the condition that makes experience possible. It's because of the reality of the form that we can identify the particular. It’s ontologically prior, even if not temporally so. This is where I’d place form in a “vertical” rather than horizontal order—closer to what Neoplatonism or even certain strains of phenomenology suggest.

I wonder whether framing form as something abstracted from sensible experience is more of an empiricist perspective (e.g. J S Mill) than Aristotelian.

I didn't think “undifferentiated givenness” meant to refer to anything eternal, but rather the immediacy of sense certainty without any mediation. So I was thinking in the order of experience. In the order of created, changing (physical) being, my thoughts would be that for anything to be anything at all, it has to have some sort of actuality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I speak of “undifferentiated givenness” or the in-itself, I don’t mean it as some kind of vague or latent actuality, waiting to be identified. To say it must have “some sort of actuality” is already to try to give it form—to insert it into the order of knowable, nameable things, to say what it is. But the point is: we can’t do that without distorting what we’re trying to indicate. Here is where 'apophatic silence' is precisely correct.

That’s why I describe it as “neither existent nor non-existent.” It’s not an actualised thing, but it’s also not mere nothingness. This is something I’ve taken primarily from the Madhyamaka tradition in Buddhist philosophy, which insists on the middle way (hence the name) - between reification (it is something!) and nihilism (it doesn't exist). In that framework, we are dealing with what is empty of intrinsic existence, but not therefore non-existent. It’s not a substance, but nor is it nothing. It’s a kind of ontological openness. That is the meaning of śūnyatā.

So yes, it’s a very difficult conceptual point—one that sits uneasily in the categories of Greek metaphysics, which are more comfortable with ousia and actuality. But I’d argue that the in-itself is precisely what resists actualisation, and that’s why we can’t approach it as “some kind of actuality” without losing what the idea was trying to preserve in the first place. This review of The Silence of the Buddha by Raimon Panikkar may be of interest. It’s a remarkably careful attempt to think through how the Buddhist idea of the Unconditioned—which is beyond being and non-being—can speak to theological and metaphysical questions in the West, including the issue of God and Being. It also addresses some of the points we’ve been discussing, particularly about ultimate ground, causation, and the intelligibility of existence.

I would object to the idea that mathematical objects are "mind independent." If they have no intelligibility, no quiddity, no eidos, then they are nothing at all, but to possess these is to have intellectual content. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That seems right to me. I’d say mathematical and logical truths are independent of any particular mind—they aren’t invented by us or dependent on individual thought—but they’re also only accessible through mind. So in that sense, they’re not “mind-dependent” in the subjective or psychological sense, but they are only perceptible to the mind (the pre-Kantian meaning of 'noumenal').

I think this is where Plato’s notion of metaxy is relevant—that humans occupy a kind of in-between status, as participants in both the sensible world of becoming and the intelligible world of being. We’re the bridge between the two, and it's in this role that we encounter things like numbers and forms: not as physical entities, but as realities that can only be grasped from within the horizon of intelligibility.

This “in-between” condition—neither purely empirical nor purely intelligible—is what makes the Platonic view so compelling in discussions like this. It avoids collapsing ideas into mere mental projections, while also refusing to treat them as physical facts. They’re real, but their reality is of a different order—something we participate in rather than simply observe.

Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one: — Tom Storm

That is exactly what Collingwood was saying - not that science is metaphysics, but that metaphysics provides the foundation for science.

But the implication of Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding? — Tom Storm

I’ll say it again, and then leave it alone. I just don’t get it. I don’t see what the big deal is about the fact that living organisms and the environment co-evolve. Of course they do. I guess what annoyed me about Josh’s statement is that it claims somehow Lorenz missed that. Of course he didn’t, it just isn’t particularly relevant to the specific issue he was discussing.

I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work. But this isn’t my area.

There is a sort of anthropological/metaphysical question of if animals can "know" as in, intellection, but obviously they can know in different ways, e.g. "sense knowledge," memory, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I understand it, there is no controversy about the fact that sentient non-human animals can learn from experience and act based on that learning. How is that not knowledge? Just because they can’t put it into words doesn't mean they can’t use it in effective, and perhaps even self-aware, ways in their everyday lives. Perhaps our differences only reflect a difference in our understanding of the definitions of “knowledge” and “intellect.”

↪T Clark I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work. — Tom Storm

Did I mention that I don’t get it?

I guess it would mean that his assumptions are less fully developed and his conclusion missing important information. But let’s leave it there.

Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. — Wayfarer

What's your definition of counting? Is counting an act outside the phenomenal plane?

When I'm experiencing a 400 Hz tone, does this particular tone-quale express the number 400 in a phenomenal way? I would say, yes. I think, this phenomenon refers to the counting of 400 eardrum deflections per second. Eardrum deflections are separated by a forward and backward motion.

When I see two things, I have counted to 2 because I noticed a separation between them. This separation is based on different phenomenal forms and qualities. How slow must a counting be in order to define it as a counting rather than a quale corresponding to a number of light or sound waves per time?

("quale" = singular of "qualia")

If this thread is about the logical question why there is logic, then this thread is attempting an infinite regress, I think.

If this thread is about the cause of logic's birth, then this thread considers logic a physical thing, and that's a misconception in my view.

Logic is a supergoddess. There's no further background.
She's mightier than the abrahamic god -- for logical reasons.

That's my conclusion as an agnostic.

Do you think non-human sentient animals don’t also desire to know? Some of them certainly do. — T Clark

Absolutely. Every brain owner is curious. Humans are not the only brain owners. Curiosity is the motor of brain development. No curiosity, no brain.

What's your definition of counting? Is counting an act outside the phenomenal plane? — Quk

Phenomena are what appears. The act of counting is performed by the subject to whom phenomena appear.

That question gets back to the issue that I have with this whole discussion thread: it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together. — SophistiCat

But that's just characteristic of the plight of modernity - the collision of all of these different and in some ways incommensurable perspectives. We've inherited all of that and are trying to make sense of it.

In terms of philosophy, I think the disconnect between physical causation and logical relationships can be traced back to Hume.

Hume famously argued that our idea of causation—that one event necessarily brings about another—is not grounded in either rational insight or logical necessity. Instead, it arises from habit or custom: we observe that event A is regularly followed by event B, and we come to expect B after A. But this expectation is psychological, not logical.

There is no contradiction in imagining A occurring without B. This means causal connections are not logically necessary. They’re not like mathematical truths, where denying the conclusion entails contradiction.

Hume distinguishes sharply between:

• Relations of ideas (necessary truths, a priori, such as mathematics and logic), and
• Matters of fact (empirical, contingent truths, such as causation in the natural world).

The upshot: causation is observational, not rational. It’s a habit of mind, not a structure of reality. Combine that with the division of the world into the primary (measurable) and secondary (subjective) domains, and the Cartesian division of mind from world, and the rupture is complete.

Hume’s Famous Verdict

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XII

This isn’t just upstart empiricism. It’s a rejection of the entire Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition, where formal and final causes underpinned the intelligibility of the cosmos.

(And never mind that Hume’s treatise falls by those same criteria!)

Before and After Hume:

In pre-modern thought—especially in Aristotelian and Scholastic realism —causation was metaphysically grounded. Causes had real powers or essences, and effects flowed from them necessarily. Causal necessity was built into the intelligibility of nature itself.

After Hume, this conception collapses. Causation is no longer a rational structure but a pattern of observed regularities. This shift paves the way for positivism, empiricism, and the modern view that physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive: they summarize what happens, but don’t explain why. This is the basis for the charge that modernism is in some sense irrational (despite its constant appeals to science).

The Broader Consequences:

Scientific laws come to be seen as contingent, not expressions of an intelligible order.

The gap between rational necessity (in logic and mathematics) and physical causation (in nature) becomes unbridgeable. Hence Wittgenstein says in TLP "The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Why an illusion? Because we mistake description for explanation. We observe regularities, formulate laws (e.g., Newton’s laws, or later, field equations), and then treat those laws as if they explain what they describe.

Hume's message, in effect: you think causation is rational, but you're just projecting your expectations onto the world. And how often do we see this sentiment echoed in debates on the Forum?

The act of counting is performed by the subject to whom phenomena appear. — Wayfarer

[off-topic]
I think the subject is embedded within the phenomena; i.e. the subject is not an evacuated cinema visitor.
[/off-topic]

Perhaps our differences only reflect a difference in our understanding of the definitions of “knowledge” and “intellect.

Yes, we are. Intellect in the older faculty psychology refers specifically to the understanding of universals, of form. It's not the same thing as memory or what gets called the estimate/cogitative power that allows for problem solving and inductive pattern recognition. There is a whole big literature on this and if animals can "use language" in the ways that even young toddlers can.

I agree that from an empirical perspective we encounter particulars first, and then abstract the form. But I wonder whether that perspective risks treating the form as derivative —something we derive from the object. In the Platonic (and arguably Aristotelian) sense, form is not something posterior to the object, but that in virtue of which the object is what it is.

That is, form isn’t just a feature we discover by experience—it’s the condition that makes experience possible. It's because of the reality of the form that we can identify the particular. It’s ontologically prior, even if not temporally so. This is where I’d place form in a “vertical” rather than horizontal order—closer to what Neoplatonism or even certain strains of phenomenology suggest.

I wonder whether framing form as something abstracted from sensible experience is more of an empiricist perspective (e.g. J S Mill) than Aristotelian.

I think the bolded is very important to keep in mind. And yes, I'd agree that the form that has been abstracted by the intellect has to be posterior to the form in what is known. The empiricists are copying Aristotle so they do sound similar, but for them "abstraction" has become a sort of inductive pattern recognition, whereas for Aristotle it's the active/agent intellect making the form of what has been sensed (form being communicated through the senses) come to be present in the intellect.

When I speak of “undifferentiated givenness” or the in-itself, I don’t mean it as some kind of vague or latent actuality, waiting to be identified. To say it must have “some sort of actuality” is already to try to give it form—to insert it into the order of knowable, nameable things, to say what it is. But the point is: we can’t do that without distorting what we’re trying to indicate. Here is where 'apophatic silence' is precisely correct.

That’s why I describe it as “neither existent nor non-existent.” It’s not an actualised thing, but it’s also not mere nothingness. This is something I’ve taken primarily from the Madhyamaka tradition in Buddhist philosophy, which insists on the middle way (hence the name) - between reification (it is something!) and nihilism (it doesn't exist). In that framework, we are dealing with what is empty of intrinsic existence, but not therefore non-existent. It’s not a substance, but nor is it nothing. It’s a kind of ontological openness. That is the meaning of śūnyatā.

Interesting stuff. I am not familiar with it. It reminds me of the chora in the Timaeus or some versions of matter. Eriugena has the distinction of nothing through privation and nothing on account of excellence. But then latter would in some sense be the fullness or all possibility, total actuality. One image I like is a sound wave of infinite amplitude and frequency, which of course leads to every infinite peak and trough canceling each other out. The result is a silence, but a pregnant silence. I mean, it's an imperfect example. Dionysius and Eriugena don't think God is a sound wave. It's more about the fullness defying finite description.

This “in-between” condition—neither purely empirical nor purely intelligible—is what makes the Platonic view so compelling in discussions like this. It avoids collapsing ideas into mere mental projections, while also refusing to treat them as physical facts. They’re real, but their reality is of a different order—something we participate in rather than simply observe.

:up: