There are abstract if-then facts. Who says there has to be concrete, objectively-existent objects and "stuff" for them to be about? — Michael Ossipoff

So what are the if-then facts about? About "hypothetical" objects rather than about "objectively-existent" objects? If so, what is the difference between "hypothetical" and "objectively-existent"?

If all Slitheytoves are (or were) brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are (or were) Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are (or would be) brillig.

That if-then fact about hypotheticals is true, even if there aren't any Slitheyitoves or Jaberwockeys. — Michael Ossipoff

Unless the objects you have named "Slitheytoves", "brillig" etc. are inconsistently defined they exist. They exist in the most general sense of "exist", which means "be consistent".

I was hoping it would come to you, but it is the Greek definition of man as the rational animal. And in this case, it is a difference that really makes a difference. — Wayfarer

All animals behave rationally. The fact is that you aren't privy to all the reasons some animal does some thing, so it can appear as if some animal is behaving irrationally (even a human) when you don't understand it's motives or reasoning for doing it. Animals are able to distinguish between food, predator, and mate and behave accordingly when encountering these things in their environment.

It's not that we are more rational. The difference is that we have an imagination.

" the scientific approach is predicated on the objective analysis of quantifiable entities and relationships."

I dont know what a scientific approach is, in general terms. I do know what a scientific approach is if you give me a concrete example of the work of a self-described scientist. Of course, I'd also accept the narrative of scientific approach provided by a community of scientists, in a given field, in a given era, as valid for that group.
Just so I dont appear to nit-picky, I'd even go so far as to accept as representative of a historical period(Enlightenment science, modern and neo-Kantian science, postmodern science) the writings of philosophers of science.

What I'm getting at is 2 points:
1) This reminds me of the attempt to nail down 'objectively' the difference between masculine and feminine behavior. I find nothing in the history of what we today call science that limits how it approaches its subject matter in relation to philosophy(or vice versa) in absolute terms, such that we could claim, for instance, that science asks what but not how, or that it does not answer ethical question, or that it only deals with the objective. Yes, such claims would be true for certain ears, but not as blanket statement about science in general.

2)If we agree that the understanding of terms like objective, subjective and quantitative have undergone constant redefinition in the history of philosophy, then they have gone comparable redefinition in the history of science. Look up Shaun Gallagher in Wiki or academia dot com, He has written about hermeneutics, phenomenology, postmodern philosophy and Kant. He is also a cognitive researcher. The community of scientists he works with would take issue with the old understanding of scientific objectivity, as well as the idea that science isnt an inherently valuative enterprise..


"Whenever anything is interpreted, then you're already outside the domain of the strictly physical. Interpretive processes always entail qualitative judgements, and they're different in kind to quantitative analysis. Or so I would have thought."

When something is interpreted, you're outside of the domain of a certain presuppositoin of what the physical consists of. You can always change that supposition(I promise I wont tell anybody). DItheyan hermeneutics assumed that only human sciences were an interpretive enterprise, whereas Gadamer recognized that the natural sciences were also to some extent hermeneutic, at least in terms of the design of experiments. I would arge that as some point physics could be refigured as a qualitative science without losing its ability to do the things for us that we expect of it. Its a strange notion, that a qualitatve physical account could be more precise than a quantitative one, but thats another discussion.
Lets say you want to build a machine that feels, that is , makes qualitative judgements. Up till now, the best we've been able to do is give it the capacity for a limited randomness.
Francisco Varela created the beginnings of a neurophenomenological model of brain functioning
that limits quantitative description in favor of a holistic dynamic.
Eventually we will arrive at wetware machines whose subpersonal architecture uses an overwhelmingly qualtiative language.

"This view solves the hard problem of consciousness by killing two birds with one stone".
What it does is kill any chance at understanding the origin of the problem, which is separating the world into relations and non-relations. Once you do that you end up with ridiculous concepts like Qualia.
Try this: Imagine that what youve always thought of as an object, a thing that self-persists , is self-identical and is assigned attributes, is an illusion. Imagine that there is no such thing, anywhere, as an object understood in this way. Instead, there are interaction of interactions, changes that change other changes, a world of dynamic self-organizing process, with no stasis, no 'things' that are not already ahead of themselves. There's your qualia, not some 'thing' , like a photon, in a consciousness, but the very fact of the world that nothing persists as simply 'itself' moment to moment. You have to learn to translate your notion of a thing into a process of change before you can see the fundamental basis of experienced reality as already 'affective'

I didnt mean to imply (although that's what I wrote) that the 'feeling of what it is like to be', is something that is intrinsic to the world, I agree that makes it sound like consciousness is to be found in quarks. What I did mean was that the qualitative is intrinsic to all experience and thus underlies all physical models.

i agree with Derrida on this. When he talks about the mark, the trace, iterability, he is referring not just to language but to the possibility of the experience of any entity. Watch what he does here and see how he inserts qualitatativeness into the very basis of an entity, in the form of otherness.

Derrida writes, "...an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces"(P29). He adds:

The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and hence that it bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between "elements", because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence; it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence..(LI53).

Through the possibility of repeating every mark as the same, [iterability] makes way for an idealization that seems to deliver the full presence of ideal objects..., but this repeatability itself ensures that the full presence of a singularity thus repeated comports in itself the reference to something else, thus rending the full presence that it nevertheless announces"(LI29)).
...the possibility of its being repeated another time-breaches, divides, expropriates the "ideal" plenitude or self-presence of intention,...of all adequation between meaning and saying. Iterability alters...leaves us no room but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say) (Limited, Inc,p.61)." "The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition(p.53)."

This is what I mean when I say that the qualitative is inherent in any entitiy, that it is impossible to envision any sort of thing in the world without the idea of qualitiativness being 'built into' our thinking of it. Again, keep in mind Derrida is not simply talking about language, representing a world that could be conceived under any circumstances outside of the economy of the mark. This otherness is far from a consciousness, a mind, a qualia, a substance of any kind. But it is the origin of concepts like affectivity.

IT leaves you with the ability to determine the basis of varied physical process using whatever forms of descriptions are pragmatically useful, but challenges you if you want to insist that there could be an occasion to justify a form of physical description ontologically via idealized presences(that includes a particle or force with assigned mathematical properties).

Now, although I agree with him,Derrida may be a bit too out there for most. But let me ask you this. Would you agree that there is already an overarching ontology of sorts in place uniting at least the physical sciences, and that this is a different ontology from what one would have found in the thinking of the West 800 years ago?
Would you also agree that the metaphysical presuppositions guiding current natural scientific models will change eventually? Could you entertain the possiblity that something like Derrida's differance , that is, an ontology that places qualitative otherness squarely at the heart of entities, may be on the horizon?

What it does is kill any chance at understanding the origin of the problem, which is separating the world into relations and non-relations. — Joshs

Why would it be a problem? If there are two things with certain properties then there are certain relations between those things based on those properties. Seems perfectly natural to me.

You have to learn to translate your notion of a thing into a process of change before you can see the fundamental basis of experienced reality as already 'affective' — Joshs

No problem. A process is a thing extended in time. This thing consists of shorter processes and ultimately of things that are not extended in time at all (it is a sequence of these things).

"The "affective turn" is hardly revolutionary in the history of psychology and neurology. " How would you want to define revolutionary? As far as I can tell, psychological science is only playing catchup with phenomenology, which is still pretty revolutionary in relation to where most of philosophy still stands. As far as the history of psychological theory, where have you seen accounts integrating the affective and the cognitive before 10 years ago, outside of a few fringe writers?

As far as your comments on panpsychism and qualia, see my response to Streetlight. I misspoke in making it sound that I wanted to build a tiny consciousness into the things of the world. Far from it.

You might be interested in literature(most of this falls into the category of 'poststructuralism' ) that runs directly counter to the presupppositions that you are depending on here.
You may not agree with their arguments, but at least you'd get a sense of what they are objecting to.
For instance, if you extend a thing in time, you are not producing a qualitative transformation, just a quantitative one. Qualitaitive has to do with what a thing means intrinsically. Think of the notion of an object and a series of attributes associated with it. If we qualitatively change the meaning of the object, the associated attributes no longer apply . Notice that the kind of thinking that defines objects and their attributes is an atomistic one, starting from the parts and then to the whole, but there is another kind of thinking that begins always from the whole and the parts emerge from it. Not something you'll find in physics models, but you will in newer pschological accounts, and increasingly in biological ones too.

Qualitaitive has to do with what a thing means intrinsically. — Joshs

Yes, it is what the thing is in itself, rather than its relations to other things.

Notice that the kind of thinking that defines objects and their attributes is an atomistic one, starting from the parts and then to the whole, but there is another kind of thinking that begins always from the whole and the parts emerge from it. — Joshs

If you can coherently describe what it means that a whole "emerges" from parts or parts "emerge" from a whole, I have no problem with either of these descriptions.

For instance, if you extend a thing in time, you are not producing a qualitative transformation, just a quantitative one. — Joshs

Not sure I understand this. A thing that is not extended in time is a different thing than a thing that is extended in time and that consists of things that are not extended in time. Different things have a different intrinsic identity (quality).

Now, although I agree with him,Derrida may be a bit too out there for most. But let me ask you this. Would you agree that there is already an overarching ontology of sorts in place uniting at least the physical sciences, and that this is a different ontology from what one would have found in the thinking of the West 800 years ago? Would you also agree that the metaphysical presuppositions guiding current natural scientific models will change eventually? Could you entertain the possiblity that something like Derrida's differance , that is, an ontology that places qualitative otherness squarely at the heart of entities, may be on the horizon? — Joshs

You're speaking to an almost dyed-in-the-wool Derridian, so yes, I can totally entertain the possibility. My issue with Derridian analysis, insofar as I have one, is that it remains ultimately too formalist. Yes, the trace pervades everything, yes all presence is riven with différance which displaces it from within, etc, etc, and yes, this means that 'qualitativeness' is similarly 'intrinsic' to things, but one must be careful not to make the all-too-quick assimilation of differance to a feeling or 'consciousness' of what-it-is-like (not forgetting that 'consciousness' in Derrida is among the foremost names of Presence in the history of philosophy).

Insofar as there is something like 'feeling' or 'consciousness', I think it'd be more accurate to understand it as a qualified quality, a quality that, at a rough and minimal approximation, is recognized as a quality of itself in a self-reflexive way, and correlatively, what is not 'itself' (a minimal self-other distinction in other words). Regardless of how to think the specific qualification of quality that consciousness or feeling is however, what Derrida does not provide - in my opinion - is any way to think these kinds of second-order quality. He doesn't, in the words of John Protevi, provide any way to conduct any material analysis of forces which specify the kinds of 'quality' at work in any one system. Derrida always remains at the level of a formal 'there is quality' ('il y a quality', if you will): this going hand in hand with Derrida's strange ahistoricism (there is 'historicity' in Derrida, but not, ironically, history; this also being the crux of his (non-)debate with Foucault regarding the cogito).

Granted, Derrida had a hard time getting people to recognize even the basic operation of différance (it's still barely acknowledged!), but the issue isn't that Derrida is 'too out there' - it's that he's not out there enough. There still remains alot to be learned from him, but there is no less a need to attend to what cannot be found in Derrida (hence why I'm more drawn to those who I would consider post-Derridian thinkers like Deleuze, Agamben, or Catherine Malabou)

I wanted to build a tiny consciousness into the things of the world — Joshs

Ultimately, it will be very hard to get away from this. Even the deadest of matter, still had a "spark" or impulse within it that creates changed (e.g. decay), until there is nothing left except the fundamental fabric from which belongs. It is like a wave dying and becoming at one with the all encompassing ocean. Science recognizes this phenomenon by inventing the all pervasive "Laws of Nature" as a place holder. Some sort of "panpsychism" exists in all philosophies, even it is hidden within some nomenclature, though, given what happens to anyone who dares take this stand in academia, I said not surprised that placeholder phrases are invented as substitutions.

Once one recognizes qualia (the ability to create and interpret waveforms and vibrations), there is no way to separate the big from the small in quality.

"Doyou really think rationality characterizes our species?" — Michael Ossipoff


It seems simply obvious to me - rationality, language
— Wayfarer

I didn't say we aren't different from the other animals. Language is one such difference.

As for "rationality", I don't think it's present as much as you do. It's the exception with humans. Overall, as a species, there's nothing rational about "H. Sapiens".

That very name is a pompous chauvinistic vanity.

Humans do think that they're rational, but that isn't quite the same thing. In fact it just worsens things.

Humanity is a quagmire, for itself, and really bad news for the other life on the planet.

, story-telling

Yes, storytelling is encountered whenever the "news" comes on. But humans didn't invent lying. Chimpanzees in the wild have been observed lying to eachother.

, meaning-seeking

You mean like the endless blather of academic philosophers?

, technology and science

Rational on the part of the scientists, but then disastrously irrationally misused by the population &/or their herders.

Things got bad in a hurry as soon as agriculture started.

Anyway, humans are not only animals, or not simply animals, but animals who have either attained or been thrust into the ability to wonder about the meaning of existence.

Did your cat tell you that it doesn't wonder about the meaning of existence?

I don't think we know much about what the other animals are thinking, because they don't talk.

I never denied that humans are different from all the other animals. But you seem to be implying more than that, You seem be be implying that, as a species, humans are somehow better than the other animals. There are lots of humans who aren't nearly as good as a dog, cat, deer, rabbit, etc.

I suggest that other animal species have an incomparably higher percentage of good individuals than the human species does.

I don't think we really disagree. It's just a matter of how it's said.

I think there can be something good about being human. It offers unique potential.

If there's reincarnation (and there probably is), then I want to be a human again, in the remainder of my subsequent lives. So I'm not disparaging human-ness. I'm just disparaging most humans.

Well, among those who speak of reincarnation, there seems to be a consensus that humans reincarnate as humans (though some suggest that extraordinary barbarity and abuse can result otherwise).

Our human world is "The Land of the Lost", and there's no point trying to defend it.

Michael Ossipoff

Let's talk a little about Protevi.
From waht I've read, he believes in a Pinker-like evolutionary psychology supporting a cognitive-behavioral framework. Biochemically mediated reflexes and socially imposed patterns organize
intentional consciousness for Protevi. I don’t go along with Protevi’s account of the behavior of the Columbine killers in terms of biologically and socially conditioned reflexes. He misses the more holistic role of intentional MEANING , however socially and biologically
mediated or produced, in directing personal actions. Protevi reads Deluze/Guattari in semi-
conditioning terms, speaking of human motivation in terms of jolts, thrills and rushes, of
desensitizations and disinhibitions, of emotion as physiological arousal, of reward and
punishment systems in the brain, and relying on ethological constructs like “fight-flight’ and
“dominance-submission”, (even though he is opposed to genetic reductionism). He approvingly
cites Damasio, Panksepp and LeDoux, but is his account of affectivity as inter-relational as
Damasio’s?
Protevi says his ‘body politic’ notion, using the idea of self-organizing material systems to
explain and originate subjectivizing practices of bodies, is
“a third-person account, a genealogy of subjectivity, rather than the mutual constraints proposed
by Francisco Varela’s “neurophenomenology”. It doesn’t attempt to reduce subjectivity in the
sense of accounting for its contents in a third person explanatory framework, but it does try to
understand subjectivity as originating in a body shaped by political practice: a “body politic”.
This approach is both post-structuralist and post-phenomenological in that it focuses on the
historical formation of bodies rather than on universal unconscious structures as well as focusing
on the gaps and shortfalls of consciousness.” (Columbine paper).

But what about Merleau-Ponty’s reading of phenomenology and affectivity via a chiasmatic touching-touched?
And what about the central import of language in understanding intersubjective origins of
subjectivity? Could one claim that Ken Gergen, Merleau-Ponty , Heidegger and Derrida all recognize this more effectively than Protevi? Protevi says he supports the idea of a ‘rage module’ in the brain,
although he does not go so far as to believe in modules for all kinds of higher-order behaviors in
the way that Dawkins is tempted to do. Protevi says that his account of social neuroscience is
closely compatible with that of John Cacioppo, which is a revealing remark, given that Cacioppo
is a cognitive neuroscientist in the classic information processing tradition of computational
representationalism, who approvingly cites authors like Osgood, Shiffrin, Miller,etc. In sum, it
appears that Protevi is a cognitive-behaviorist who falls short of the radicality of
Varela, Gallagher, Gergen, Merleau-Ponty, Heiegger, Derrida and perhaps Husserl.

It is essential to get beyond the idea of affect as modules in the brain, as reward centers and arousal mechanisms, and see it instead in terms of the meaning-making attempts of a person always already situated concernfully in a world. As Matthew Ratcliffe(2002) puts it, “moods are no longer a subjective window-dressing on privileged theoretical perspectives but a background that constitutes the sense of all intentionalities, whether theoretical or practical”(p.290). In affecting reason, feeling affects itself.

I've focused on Protevi here because I see Deleuze's work on affect as consonant with Protevi's.

I dont know that Derrida's ideas(or at least my reading of him) can be understood effectively starting from Deleuze and Protevi, without first effectively submitting them to critical transformation via Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, as well as those within the cognitive science community who have embraced aspects of phenomenological thought, such as Shaun Gallagher and Matthew Ratcliffe. I'd include in this list Eugene Gendlin and George Kelly. There is a radical integrity to meaning-making that is missed in Deleuze's( or at least and Protevi's) account.

Let's say a grand unification theory (Theory of Everything) is achieved and Hawking's dream of running the whole damn thing on a computer can finally be realized. Lets say that all the necessary initial conditions are known and we run the simulation of the history of the universe, one big, beautiful deterministic unfolding. If we stop the simulation at a given point, would you say that the history that has revealed up to that point in the simulation involves qualitative change?
I would say that there has been no real change, even though an unfolding of a process in nominal time has occurred. I say this because the conclusions of the computer are being cranked out from initial premises. The results are pre-figured by the premises, so the only real qualitative meaning is in the premises. The unfolding deterministic history is itself lifeless and meaningless. Real qualitative meaning is always contingent, contextual and unreproducible as exactly itself . This is what William James meant by the stream of consciousness. Experienced meaning never doubles back on itself.
I think what is true for consciousness is also true for what we refer to as the physical world.
This is what thinkers like Ilya Prigogine and Lee Smolen are aiming for when they want to bring unidirectional time to the core of physics metatheory, and along with it a shift from deterministic to probabilistic description.

The results are pre-figured by the premises, so the only real qualitative meaning is in the premises. — Joshs

Well, there is a difference between being conscious of premises and being conscious of their implications. The former consciousness seems relatively general and vague while the latter more specific. Similarly, a deterministic unfolding of a universe may be a substantive change. But anyway, our world is not completely deterministic; there is also quantum-mechanical indeterminism that precludes exact derivation of future events from the past.

You said:
.

What about inorganic process? IF these are not purpose-driven processes, then I assume you are arguing that beings with purposes emerge out of processes without purposes

.
You know they do. …in the physical story.
.

, Is this a gradual development?

.
I don’ t know. Doesn’t it seem as if the first reproducing organism, and its natural-selection-designed offsprings, could be considered an abrupt new thing?
.
But afterwards, the subsequent development was gradual of course.
.

Also, If purpose is an evolutionary adaptation, is it formed in the way that Dawkins and Dennett believe, by a blind watchmaker? In other words, selective processes act on dumb matter to create organisms like humans who have the illusion of purpose, a mere intentional 'stance' that at its core is nothing but good old fashioned efficient causation?

.
In the physical story, sure. …except that I’d say “purpose” instead of “illusion of purpose”. The purposefulness of purposefully-responsive devices is genuine.
.

Are alleged purposeful humans just meme generators?

.
I think we’re purposeful, not just allegedly purposeful.
.

I'm not saying this hypothesis is wrong, but it is unsatisfying to some who think that it doesn’t do justice to the richness of the structure of phenomenal experience.

.
Of course. They’re right.
.
It’s the physical story, and it’s valid as far as it goes, but it certainly isn’t the whole truth. That’s the difference between me and a Materialist. Dawkins is a Materialist; I’m not. Materialists believe the Material world is what’s fundamentally-existent, and that it has objective existence. I don’t. I’m a Subjective Idealist.
.

For me the larger problem with this account is that I think there is a more satisfying account available for the explanation of the origin of purpose and intention

.
Yes. I say that you’re in a life because you’re the protagonist of one of the infinitely-many hypothetical life-experience possibility-stories. …complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals.
.
That’s where your purpose and intentions started.
.
What I call “the physical story” is the self-consistent system of logical relations constituting the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.
.

, which comes out of an alternative to Dawkins'
idea of evolutionary adaptation Stephen Rose is a biologist who is among those who argue that adaptation is not simply gene-driven, but argue for a kind of neo-Lamarkianism.

.
I, too, have read that Lamarkianism has been vindicated.
.

The organism alters its internal and external environment through its functioning and in this way shapes its own adaptive transformation. Rather than viewing purpose as emergent out of non-purpose, this account views adaptation as involving purposiveness via the self-reflexive , self-organizing tendencies of all living things. Piaget was one of the first to model biological change in this way.

.
Then the old Darwinian evolutionary scenario isn’t complete, and evolution happened/happens differently.
.
But I say that Materialism is wrong, and our origin isn’t physical (except in the physical-story). Ultimately, first there was (timelessly is) the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories. You and the life-experience possibility-story of which you’re the protagonist are metaphysically prior to the physical world.
.
Michael Ossipoff

"There are abstract if-then facts. Who says there has to be concrete, objectively-existent objects and "stuff" for them to be about?" — Michael Ossipoff


So what are the if-then facts about? About "hypothetical" objects rather than about "objectively-existent" objects? — litewave

Yes.

If so, what is the difference between "hypothetical" and "objectively-existent"?

Good question. I guess "objectively-existent" is something made-up by the Materialist. He'd have to be the one to say what he means by it. After all, he's the one who's claiming that "hypothetical" isn't enough, and that the physical world is something more than that.

Maybe one meaning for "objectively-existent" is "somehow more than hypothetical."

Whatever "objectively-existent" means, I'm saying that there's no need to say it.

Physical reality and metaphysical reality can be explained by a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. The hypothetical premises and conclusions of the if-then facts are about hypothetical objects.

The if-then facts are true, and there's no need for their premises or conclusions to be true, or be about something with meaning or "existence" other than hypothetical.

You're the last person here with whom I expected to disagree about Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism vs Materialism, because I thought we agreed on that matter, in conversations around the time when I first joined this forum.

Michael Ossipoff

"If all Slitheytoves are (or were) brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are (or were) Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are (or would be) brillig.

"That if-then fact about hypotheticals is true, even if there aren't any Slitheyitoves or Jaberwockeys". — Michael Ossipoff

Unless the objects you have named "Slitheytoves", "brillig" etc. are inconsistently defined they exist. They exist in the most general sense of "exist", which means "be consistent". — litewave

True. I just meant that it isn't necessary for anyone to actually find and hold up a Slitheytove or Jaberwockey, in order for the if-then fact to be true.

...and, by that meaning of "exist", which I have no disagreement with, what objection is there to the Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism that I've been proposing?

Michael Ossipoff

Physical reality and metaphysical reality can be explained by a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. The hypothetical premises and conclusions of the if-then facts are about hypothetical objects. — Michael Ossipoff

But the objects (hypothetical or whatever) are not relations, at least not all of them. That's why I'm saying that in addition to relations there must also be "stuff" (non-relation) that stands in those relations.

You're the last person here with whom I expected to disagsre about Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism vs Materialism, because I thought we agreed on that matter, in conversations around the time when I first joined this forum. — Michael Ossipoff

We share the liberal metaphysical view that all possibilities constitute reality, which goes far beyond not only materialism but also religions. But since I've been in this forum I have always claimed that these possibilities include not only relations but also objects that are not relations.

Here's a third option. Take a look at the development of theories of affect/emotion in relation to cognition and you will find that the progress in understanding the subject-object relation is intimately tied to that of the thought-feeling binary. — Joshs

Affectivity arises with form. There is no formless matter, and with form comes affect; both quantitative and qualitative. This realization is inherent in Peirce's understanding of the primordiality of the sign-relation, and its culmination in the idea of pan-semiosis. A similar idea is found in Whitehead, with the understanding that entities in-fect the environment, and the correlative idea of pan-experientialism. Neither of these ideas are to be understood, I believe, as supporting any metaphysical thesis of pervasive mind in the sense of consciousness, as panpsychist theories commonly tend to.

"Physical reality and metaphysical reality can be explained by a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. The hypothetical premises and conclusions of the if-then facts are about hypothetical objects." — Michael Ossipoff


But the objects (hypothetical or whatever) are not relations, at least not all of them. That's why I'm saying that in addition to relations there must also be "stuff" (non-relation) that stands in those relations. — litewave

Of course, but those objects, that stuff needn't be other than hypothetical. ...nothing more than part of the if-then fact, whose "objects" needn't "be", in any sense other than the non-contradiction sense that you referred to.

What I was emphasizing about the if-then facts was that the "objects" that they're about needn't have any existence other than the non-contradiction that you referred to.

All that the true if-then fact is saying about the existence of Jaberwokeys is "if there were Jaberwockeys, and if all Jaberwockeys were Slitheytoves..."

So I'm not positing "objects" anything like the physical things that Materialism believes in.

We share the liberal metaphysical view that all possibilities constitute reality, which goes far beyond not only materialism but also religions.

Sometimes "religion" just refers to Literalist allegories. I don't agree with the Literalist allegories, but most likely many of the people who accept them also have meta-metaphysical feelings too.

I don't believe that all of Reality is discussable, describable or arguable. Metaphysics is the limit of what's discussable, describable and arguable.

I'm not saying that meta-metaphysics, what's not discussable, describable or arguable, has to be called religion. I'm just saying that some of what's called religion is meta-metaphysical feeling or impression.

But since I've been in this forum I have always claimed that these possibilities include not only relations but also objects that are not relations.

Sure, but those objects needn't be claimed to exist, other than in the sense of not being contradictorily or inconsistently defined.

The truth of the if-then facts doesn't depend on what they're about existing other than in that sense.

Michael Ossipoff

One other comment:

We share the liberal metaphysical view that all possibilities constitute reality, which goes far beyond not only materialism but also religions.

I want to emphasize that I claim that metaphysics doesn't cover, describe, explain or govern all of Reality. Metaphysics is the limit of what's discussable, describable and arguable, and not all of Reality is discussable, describable or arguable.

There's physical reality, and metaphysical reality. ...and there's Reality which physics and metaphysics don't cover, describe or explain.

Michael Ossipoff

Sure, but those objects needn't be claimed to exist, other than in the sense of not being contradictorily or inconsistently defined. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't require more than non-contradiction for existence. (But it is not as simple as it may seem, because since there can be no inconsistency in reality, every existing object must be defined consistently with all other objects.)

I don't require more than non-contradiction for existence. (But it is not as simple as it may seem, because since there can be no inconsistency in reality, every existing object must be defined consistently with all other objects.) — litewave

Sure, within a particular logical system, I don't think we disagree on anything.

Michael Ossipoff

Sure, within a particular logical system, I don't think we disagree on anything. — Michael Ossipoff

I recently had an argument in another thread about ontological relevance of paraconsistent logic. Paraconsistent logic admits contradictory objects - objects that are not what they are, or that don't have the properties they have - but that's just language games to me and even such language games must be played on some consistent basis, otherwise they would invalidate all claims they make.

Yes, any discussion of things that aren't what they are, facts that are both true and false, might be a fun wordgame for some, but contradictory "facts" aren't facts, and add up to just nonsense.

One hard question that someone asked me was, "And why is your life-experience possibility-story self-consistent? What keeps it self-consistent?"

I'd been a bit troubled about that too. But I think that can be answered by saying that a person's life-experience possibility-story consists of a system of abstract if-then facts, and there's no such thing as mutually inconsistent or contradictory facts.

Michael Ossipoff

One hard question that someone asked me was, "And why is your life-experience possibility-story self-consistent? What keeps it self-consistent?"

I'd been a bit troubled about that too. But I think that can be answered by saying that a person's life-experience possibility-story consists of a system of abstract if-then facts, and there's no such thing as mutually inconsistent or contradictory facts. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, inconsistent facts don't exist.

As far as the history of psychological theory, where have you seen accounts integrating the affective and the cognitive before 10 years ago, outside of a few fringe writers? — Joshs

Well my view is shaped by having being deeply concerned with the research into the question 30 years ago. So yes, there was a cogsci representationalism that was the mainstream at the time. And I was interested in the counter history of the more embodied and affective approaches.

There were plenty around, I found. For instance the Soviet work on orienting responses that followed on from Pavlovian conditioning was very influential on me. But also, it would be fair to characterise it as fringe through the 1980s. And personally I was a little annoyed when a second rate hack like Damasio came along at the right moment to catch the eventual mainstream backlash against good old fashioned symbolic AI. :)

But that aside, I’m finding your OP - especially given its contentious title and liberal name dropping - rather confused. If you have some particular thesis, it is lost on me.

Perhaps you can have a go at clarifying how a physicalist conception of qualities says something about a physicalist conception of qualia. I fear that there is only some sleight of tongue at work here.

You see, in my view, qualities are the general essences that science would name - the basic categories of substantial being like gravity, time, energy, entropy, work, etc. And then what makes that naming of entities actually scientific is they are able to be quantified in terms of measurements. We can relate time and energy as physical qualities because we also know how to measure them in terms of seconds and joules.

So the dichotomy (or binary) of quality~quantity is about the general vs the particular, the general theoretical essence and the particular measurement framework which deals with its extension in a world (of time and spatial dimensionality).

But qualia, from philosophy of mind, is something else. It is the atomisation of experience that just wants to reduce that general quality - experience - to a named variety of particular kinds or forms of experience. It builds in a Cartesian dualism by design. It is a way of talking meant to forever frustrate a deflationary neurocognitive approach to “the mind”.

So really, it is a bit of a fraud. A cunning ruse. If you get folk talking seriously about qualia, they have already lost the battle against dualism. The whole Chalmerian enterprise was a rhetorical trick that derailed philosophy of mind in the mid 1990s (in my view).

The better answer was the embodied cognition movement that then followed. But as I say, for me personally, that had already happened. Even early cog sci had an enactivist flavour with folk like Ulric Neisser. And you couldn’t get more mainstream than the “father of cog sci”. ;)

Anyway, again you seem to be making some play on the notion of qualities and qualia. To me, this is where a general physicalist monism and a lingering Cartesian dualism are in fact in direct opposition to each other, and so not a point at which they could be joined. Perhaps you can clarify your thesis in this light.