A constraint cannot cause anything unless it exists. So it cannot cause its own existence because that would mean that it exists before it exists. — Metaphysician Undercover
It causes the parts that construct it to exist. — apokrisis
It's a feedback loop. The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — apokrisis
I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. Hence, that all life is telos driven. — javra
Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.Here, trees are themselves telos-driven awareness, ...this instead of being telos-devoid machines. — javra
This is thin ice. Observe - name - know. You imply that the knowing is of the thing; but all this knowing is, is of the observations. To you a tree, a glorious exemplar of life, worthy of appreciation for all kinds of reasons - leave it alone! To me, firewood; its cold; chop it down! Your "no fundamental difference" becomes an abstraction.There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, and having made that decision constitutes knowing what that things is. However there is a difference between assigning a name to a thing, and assigning a name to a property of a thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here? — tim wood
It's simply muddled. How can something that can't think, reason? How do 'lots of things reason'? — Wayfarer
If not biological machines, then what? The words we use are just our words, but what words can you provide that gets us closer to the tree? — tim wood
"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. — Metaphysician Undercover
You have two dichotomous elements, the parts and the whole. — Metaphysician Undercover
But if reasonable, then how so, if no mind? — tim wood
Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. — tim wood
Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.
Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. That would seem to require volition. But the will is free: is telos freedom? The idea is to get telos apart from mechanical functioning, yet still be a something part of the living thing, yet, in the case of plants, not be a product of mind. Something with the capacity, at least, to choose, but that the choice in some sense is not a choice. Can you give direction here or add some light? If you're content with telos as mechanism, then we're back to the machine. — tim wood
But the kiss! I remember that! And I'm old enough now to recognize that as the miracle of chemistry in action. But there were choices. Chemistry was push; I had some choice of direction. Is there a telos here? — tim wood
The point is that telos is something in itself, or is just a word for things already described and named. Which way do you argue? — tim wood
Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. — javra
Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason. — Janus
What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? — Janus
This is thin ice. Observe - name - know. You imply that the knowing is of the thing; but all this knowing is, is of the observations. To you a tree, a glorious exemplar of life, worthy of appreciation for all kinds of reasons - leave it alone! To me, firewood; its cold; chop it down! Your "no fundamental difference" becomes an abstraction. — tim wood
I object too to a quality in your reduction that I'll call recursive, meaning that it - your process - always reaches back into itself, thus and thereby always secure in what it achieves because always solidly connected to its origins. And never free. Recursion never leaps. You have not allowed for the "I don't know" that enables the leap. Tree? Or firewood? Not both. Can you reconcile? I think you cannot, because both sides are based in decisions each side made. Will understanding finally tilt the scale one way or another? Maybe, through suspension of decision. The point is that when observation and analysis are done, there is always - still - a choice to be made. — tim wood
I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-) — Wayfarer
Did you forget to count their interaction? — apokrisis
The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — apokrisis
You seemed to be speaking as though it were purely arbitrary in relation to understanding whether someone referred to it as 'tree' or "firewood" — Janus
The point is that knowing what it is as firewood is parasitic upon knowing what it is as tree, and obviously not vice versa. — Janus
That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos — Wayfarer
I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look:
The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think you're right. Let's set aside reason as faculty of reason. That leaves cause: the how, and maybe the why.I think there’s a conflation here of two senses of ‘reason’. One being, ‘reason’ in the sense of ‘causation’ - the reason why plants grow towards light - and ‘reason’ in the sense of the faculty of reason - how it is we discern and abstract reasons, what the faculty of reason consists of. — Wayfarer
Why do you say that revelation is outside the bounds of reason? — Janus
What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? — Janus
These are those dhammas, bhikkhus, that are deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful and sublime, beyond the sphere of reasoning, subtle, comprehensible only to the wise, which the Tathāgata, having realized for himself with direct knowledge, propounds to others; and it is concerning these that those who would rightly praise the Tathāgata in accordance with reality would speak. — The Buddha
Finally, on what grounds do you accuse me of making "ex cathedra pronouncements"? — Janus
Nothing surpasses reason, and what falls short of it are only attitudes. — Janus
"Cause," however, is a not-so-easy word. I find that absurd examples sometimes are instructive, or at least illustrative. You buy some dynamite from the hardware store to blast a tree stump in your yard. (You could actually do that in my lifetime!) You blow up the stump and sure enough, the police come and arrest you for "causing" an explosion. Of course, you did nothing of the kind. Ask yourself exactly what did cause the explosion. — tim wood
Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. — javra
Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to — javra
Whether teleology can apply to motivation, free will, choices, the things that thinking beings do, is beyond me at this moment. Possibly it does, although it seems to me it must be external to the actor. In any case, our subject is a tree, which I think we agree cannot reason in your second sense. — tim wood
Doesn't that bounce us back to the biological machine? Chemistry, sunlight, water.... — tim wood
Characterized by Forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. 1
No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on. — Janus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.