So after the Big Bang, the bath of radiation cools enough and massive, slower than light, particles emerge. A lucky asymmetry means that nearly all of the negative anti-protons have gone, likewise nearll all of the positive anti-electrons. That lets you have some persistent basic ingredients - oppositely charged electrons and protons. From there, you can get stellar physics and planetary chemisty.

So the emergence of complex materiality - stuff with properties - is no big deal at all. What is a big deal is getting behind that to the story of how anything could emerge to start the story in the first place. — apokrisis

The problem I see with this is that it still doesn't prove anything about universals, because you use universals in the description. Or, to be precise, you use natural kinds like anti-protons, anti-electrons, radiation. Or you use descriptions without a subject, like "symmetry" or "asymmetry" but these must be predicated of something in order to be even coherent.

You said yourself that there are some persistent basic ingredients (these can endure but complex structures can't, I guess?), yet what makes these basic ingredients what they are? Properties. And we're back to square one: how do we see the property of negative charge of an electron as? A universal, a trope, what?

The nominalist is going to argue that the fact that we use universals in our scientific language descriptions doesn't prove jack shit about the actual reality of properties.

People call Whitehead a process philosopher. I don't. I am arguing pansemiotics, not panpsychism. — apokrisis

Then what would you consider him to be? He is basically univocally seen as a process philosopher. You can't just assert that he's not.

And you don't need a middle ground between substance and process as the argument is that substantial being is a process. — apokrisis

Yet this becomes a monism. You reduce substance to process, in the same way Aristotle would reduce process to substance.

There problem is there are no answers that we are able to rationally demonstrate to be wrong (other than out and out contradictions) when it comes to beauty, goodness and truth. Such a thing is possible only in logic, math or, more controversially, science.

So, the fact that you think beauty, goodness and truth can best be modeled in physicalist terms (personally I am far from convinced that they can be coherently modeled in physicalist terms at all, but I am allowing that they can for the sake of being generous towards your argument) cannot ever be more than a person belief that is not demonstrably true. Whatever reasons you might favour for thinking it is true will be rejected by another, and you can have no independent criteria to support them.

So, the fact that you think beauty, goodness and truth can best be modeled in physicalist terms ... cannot ever be more than a person belief that is not demonstrably true. — John

Well that's hardly a problem given that universal scepticism is no longer an issue once you have already given up the pipedream of "demonstrable truth".

I happy with states of belief that are open to falsification while demonstrably minimising uncertainty. We seem to be uncovering the secrets of existence at an exponential rate doing that.

You said yourself that there are some persistent basic ingredients — darthbarracuda

Well, only the one. Apeiron. Or however we would best understand that appeal to material principle in our best physicalist theories.

I agree there is an issue here. I'm the first to point it out when ontic structural realism is raised, for example. String theory and quantum field theory have precisely that problem - the material action to breath life into the formal descriptions (of symmetries and symmetry breakings) do still have to be inserted by hand.

But the whole point - following triadic hylomorphism - is that whatever the material principle is, it can't be itself substantial in the kind of sense you have in mind. It can't already possess properties, as positive properties are the product of formal causes, or constraints.

Then what would you consider him to be? — darthbarracuda

A mystic. A pseudo philosopher.

Yet this becomes a monism. You reduce substance to process, in the same way Aristotle would reduce process to substance. — darthbarracuda

A "monism" that is irreducibly complex in being a triadic process.

Well, only the one. Apeiron. Or however we would best understand that appeal to material principle in our best physicalist theories. — apokrisis

A "monism" that is irreducibly complex in being a triadic process. — apokrisis

Which is it?

But the whole point - following triadic hylomorphism - is that whatever the material principle is, it can't be itself substantial in the kind of sense you have in mind. It can't already possess properties, as positive properties are the product of formal causes, or constraints. — apokrisis

Then what exactly is it?

Why can't we say that there are some properties that exist thanks to a history and some properties just are, brute fact? Saying that a "principle" exists and yet denying that abstract transcendental properties exist seems like word play.

A mystic. A pseudo philosopher. — apokrisis

You realize this is, as of now, an unjustified opinion?

Why can't we say that there are some properties that exist thanks to a history and some properties just are, brute fact? Saying that a "principle" exists and yet denying that abstract transcendental properties exist seems like word play. — darthbarracuda

Good job I don't say principles "exist". Or that they are "brute facts".

And saying that about properties would be inconsistent too.

You realize this is, as of now, an unjustified opinion? — darthbarracuda

Sigh...

Good job I don't say principles "exist". Or that they are "brute facts".

And saying that about properties would be inconsistent too. — apokrisis

Then I can safely disregard anything you say about principles, since they do not exist and are thus irrelevant.

Of course directly shared experience might be nonsense, but experience is obviously shared via language or we would be unable to communicate effectively about anything. — John

Ok. now you introduce a thing called language, and language is related to ideas and universals, as well as the experiences of individuals. But language is not experience, nor is it ideas. or universals. So you introduce all these different terms as if one is supposed to resolve the meaning of the other, but the way you introduce them is just mumbo jumbo.

Personally I think your analyses are anything but true, but if you are happy with them, that's up to you. — John

What do you mean by a "true" analysis? Analysis is to break something down into its composite elements. If the thing is simple, and cannot be broken down, then the attempted analysis is misguided. But to claim that things like inter-subjectivity, and shared experience, are fundamental and cannot be broken down for analysis is simply ridiculous.

OK, fair enough, man.

Then I can safely disregard anything you say about principles, since they do not exist and are thus irrelevant. — darthbarracuda

You believe that nothing is real unless it exists - i.e., that there are only material/efficient causes and brute facts?

You believe that nothing is real unless it exists - i.e., that there are only material/efficient causes and brute facts? — aletheist

No, I think they exist but they have be predicate-able. To me, it doesn't even make any sense to talk of something that has no discernible nature but somehow is causally relevant.

No, I think they exist but they have be predicate-able. To me, it doesn't even make any sense to talk of something that has no discernible nature but somehow is causally relevant. — darthbarracuda

So you don't think that things can be predicated of formal and final causes?

And the Peircean distinction between real and existence seems to have gone over your head.

Peirce says:

"I myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of “react with the other like things in the environment.”

"I define the real as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched."

So to exist covers the usual material case of substantial being. And to be real covers the usual notion of universals.

So you don't think that things can be predicated of formal and final causes? — apokrisis

No, I think they can, I just don't think causes "exist" as some kind of ephemeral entity of sorts. I'm more into dispositionalism. Causal nets based upon thresh-hold dispositional properties, not too dissimilar to Scholastic realist conceptions of causality.

"I myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of “react with the other like things in the environment.”

"I define the real as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched." — apokrisis

So, noumenon?

A consequence of the influence of materialism is that whole classes of ideas - including many of the kinds of ideas associated with theology, which in Western thinking includes a broad sweep - are ruled out a priori. That illustrates well the sense in which science has displaced religion as the 'arbiter of truth' and as the yardstick by which respectable people make normative judgement. So this is just another facet of 'science as religion' - hence the visceral reaction to anything that suggests religion.

I said that

Naturalism assumes order, or takes it for granted - once it begins to try and explain that order, then it's dealing with a problem of a different kind.

And the problem of universals is just such a problem. But If you interpret universals in the general sense of including logical principles and natural number, and the like, then any kind of science depends on such universals.

In pre-modern thinking, universals were nearer to the source of being, namely, the divine intellect - they are woven into the fabric of the cosmos (a sentiment still echoed by Peirce with his 'matter as effette mind'); whereas for modern thinking, ideas are the product of material evolution and are ultimately explicable as such. They're very late, and very junior in the scheme of things. That is the sense in which Darwinism inverts idealism - mind is a product of matter, rather than matter being the passive recipient and medium for expression of ideas.

The ontology of mathematics is controversial for empiricism, for the same reason. In an argument about 'the indispensability arguments for mathematics', we read:

Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.

So here, even philosophical rationalism is dismissed on the same grounds - that if numbers are real, then it undermines physicalism. So we can't have that! Whatever account we provide, must be, in principle, grounded in the objects of experience - hence, immanent, 'within nature', something explicable in terms of empirical principles.