We have the form partially, not exhaustively. I fail to see how admitting this is nonsense. — Dfpolis
Our experiences are complex and contextual. In fixing attention on the object, we remove notes of comprehension that are irrelevant. We do not add notes in the act of perception, but we may add them in a second movement of mind in which we use past experience to fill in gaps. In adding these supplemental notes we may create an enhanced form that is not fully justified by the current experience. — Dfpolis
Repeating the claim does not justify it. — Dfpolis
As I've said several times, evidence isn't, and needn't be, proof.
The convincingness of evidence is subjective, individual, and a matter-of-degree.
Convincingness for Terrapin Station isn't a requirement for evidence. It might not be evidence for you. that doesn't mean that it isn't evidence--Michael Ossipoff
Teleology in Reality? What else would that be other than a religious question? — Michael Ossipoff
Should I repeat what I said again, too? Would that be helpful?
Here you go:
Of course, since empirical claims can't be proved in the first place. No one is asking for proof. Just any evidence — Terrapin Station
No one is claiming that all evidence will appear to you as evidence. Evidently it's necessary to repeat to you again that the convincingness — Michael Ossipoff
For example, if someone says "there are no trees" you can point out a tree to them. That thing you're pointing at is that thing that you're calling a tree.
We can worry about people who say "I dont see any tree there" later. Let's at least do some pointing first — Terrapin Station
Again, Dfpolis said that this isnt necessarily a religious thing in his view. — Terrapin Station
To me, intentiionality, teleology, in Reality is a religious matter, by definition. I suggest that that's what is meant when people speak of God. — Michael Ossipoff
That's fine. You see it necessarily as religious. Dfpolis does not. So when Dfpolis says that in his view there is evidence of teleology, and then I ask what he considers evidence of it, I ask him to point at the stuff in question, and he doesnt doesn't bother, from our perspective, not yours, it's not a matter of getting into a religious debate or not. — Terrapin Station
Whatever you call the topic, you might have gotten discussion if you'd approached the matter with a lot more humility and modesty, and a lot less arrogant assurance that you're right. — Michael Ossipoff
The point I've been trying to make, is that the form in the mind is a different form from the one in the object. — Metaphysician Undercover
We do not have "a part" of the form in our minds, because that would require taking a part away from the object, so we do not have the form "partially" within or minds. — Metaphysician Undercover
You still continue to deny the necessary conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover
you cannot describe the act of perception as the mind taking the form of the object, and subtracting things from it. — Metaphysician Undercover
In reality, the mind is creating a form, which is a representation of the object. — Metaphysician Undercover
The form which is in the mind might be just a symbol of the object, and as in the case of words, a symbol doesn't have to have any similarity to the object represented, it just needs to represent. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, I could quote a passage to justify that claim, but I know from my experience with you, that you will just turn around and say "that's not what the author meant". — Metaphysician Undercover
So when Dfpolis says that in his view there is evidence of teleology, and then I ask what he considers evidence of it, I ask him to point at the stuff in question, and he doesn't bother, from our perspective, not yours, it's not a matter of getting into a religious debate or not. — Terrapin Station
determinate final states in physics; grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks, not oaks; Spiders building webs to catch insects to eat. — Dfpolis
determinate final states in physics; grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks, not oaks; Spiders building webs to catch insects to eat. — Dfpolis
How is any of that evidence of intentionality? — Terrapin Station
As I pointed out, there are a number of questions to be considered successively. This is evidence of teleology. The arguments for intentionality are given in my paper: (1) the discussion of logical propagators, (2) the discussion of intentionality as characterized by Brentano and (3) the recognition of intentionality by other, naturalistic authors. — Dfpolis
How does that response answer how something like "grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks" is evidence of intentionality? — Terrapin Station
By referring you to the arguments in my paper. What advantage is there to my retyping the arguments here when you can click on the link? (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution). The intro to the arguments begins on p. 4, the arguments proper begin on p. 5. — Dfpolis
It's a bunch of irrelevant stuff to read through. — Terrapin Station
I am sorry that you don't feel this discussion is worth the investment of your time. — Dfpolis
You have not argued for a necessary conclusion. If you think you have, put it in the form of a syllogism. — Dfpolis
I am not describing it hat way. "Perception" can mean either the sensory act, in which there is no separation or subtraction, or the mental act, in which we are not taking aspects away from the the form, but fixing on the object to the exclusion of its context. — Dfpolis
Still, if we form our concept of <human> from Jane, the form of that concept is Jane's humanity informing us -- acting in us. So, in knowing Jane, she partially exists within us. That is what is meant by "intentional existence." — Dfpolis
.”The (as definitionally goes without saying) subjective nature of our experience, with experience being the center and source of what we know about our physical surroundings, suggests that there’s no more reason to believe in the Materialist’s inanimate and neutral Reality than in is his objective Realist metaphysics.” — Michael Ossipoff
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As I have said before, experience is inescapably both objective and subjective. There is necessarily both an experiencing subject and an experienced object. Materialists forget this -- focusing on the experienced object to the exclusion of the experiencing subject -- thus committing Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
.”But neither what I’ve just said, nor what you said, answers the question about why Benevolence would (in some lives) put us through a pretty horrible experience. …even though it’s temporary, arguably not real, and not-itself-created.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Yes. This is a profound question. The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.
”…hence the Gnostic position, which I agree with, that God didn’t create the physical universes, or make there be them.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I see this solution as ruled out by the need for a sufficient explanation -- which must terminate in one, self-explaining source.
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You’re saying that it’s necessary to attribute (and blame) everything on the First Cause, Reality’s Intention.
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It can be shown that it’s a tautology that there is no true-and-false proposition. Likewise, there couldn’t not be the logical relations that I’ve spoken of, among abstract implications and the propositions that they’re about, and the hypothetical things that those propositions are about. …and the complex systems of them that are our life-experience stories.
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Never mind whether or not the abstract-facts, propositions and hypothetical things “exist” or are “real”. That’s irrelevant. Whether they exist or not, they have inter-referring logical relations among them, and that’s what our experience-stories consist of.
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So, just like the fact that there is no true-and-false proposition, our lives were/are inevitable too.
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So don’t blame that on God.
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The role and relation between Reality’s Intention and our lives is subtle and not obvious. You’ve heard the saying that God works in strange ways. Well, we can’t expect to understand or judge that relation that I mentioned in this paragraph. We all (Theists) agree that there’s Benevolence. As Scholastics and Apophatic Theists have said, there’s really nothing else to be said about the matter. No details or detailed explanations.
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I suggest that there’s Benevolence, meaning that things are as good as could be, given the logical inevitabilities.
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(I suggest that that includes the fact that everyone’s sequence-of-lives ends well, with final and timeless well-deserved rest with no such thing as adversity, lack, or incompletion, with increasingly deep sleep--and that, before that end, in that sequence-of-lives, there are (as you suggested) good lives.)
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Those conclusions were called heretical when the Gnostics said it, in mediaeval and earlier times, and they still aren’t welcomed by most Theists.
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.Perhaps the answer is that we see things too anthropocentrically -- as though everything needs to be judged in terms of what is good for us, instead of what is good for creation as a whole.
.[/i]”Isn’t continuation inevitable for each timeless, inevitable logical-system?” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
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No, I don't think so, for two reasons. First, from an Aristotelian perspective, the persistence of a being through time…
.… is the ongoing actualization of its potential to exist in the next instant. As it does not already exist in that instance, it can't act to actualize its own potential. From the perspective of a space-time manifold, just as existence here does not imply existence there, so existence now does not entail existence then. Thus, we need something outside of the space-time manifold to effect the continuity we observe.
Is function the basis of teleology? Perhaps, as you say, teleology assumes a non-physical ingredient. I don't know. — TheMadFool
If we don't then we can still work with limited teleology restricted to the physical. Right?
There's too much uncertainty in spiritualism and the nothing-but physical is unpalatable. — TheMadFool
We have distinguished the form as it is in the object, as different from the form in the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover
In sensation, the object might act on us, being external to us, but it is not "acting within us". — Metaphysician Undercover
if it were acting within us then the whole form of the object, not just a part, would be within us. — Metaphysician Undercover
If a part of the object were within us, this implies that the whole of the object would not exist without the mind which apprehends it, it would be missing a part. The object would be incomplete without being apprehended by a mind. — Metaphysician Undercover
If a part leaves the object to act within the mind, then the simple act of seeing an object would change that object. How would seeing the moon change the moon? — Metaphysician Undercover
P1: To take the form of the object means to have the very same form. P2: The form which exists in the mind is not the same as the form which is in the object. C:Therefore the mind does not take the form of the object. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why not accept the obvious, and simple solution, that the form in the mind is distinct from the form in the object, just like a representation is distinct from the thing represented? — Metaphysician Undercover
Are you claiming that in sense perception there is no separation, no medium, between the object perceived, and the perceiver? — Metaphysician Undercover
But you cannot form the concept of "human" from one individual, Jane, because such a concept is a generalization of many humans. — Metaphysician Undercover
And so the concept "human" extends to all human beings. Therefore even if the human beings which one has met already "partially exist within us", this does not account for intentionality, which gives one the capacity to designate a person not yet met as human. — Metaphysician Undercover
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