If I understand, your hypothesis is close to Kant's, which claims that the perceived data is modified in the mind, and is therefore different from the raw data from outside the mind? But then how do you explain that when both you and I read the message "Montréal is in Québec", we both perceive the same information, such that we can have a coherent conversation about it? It seems to me that the simplest hypothesis is that we are both observing the same outer object.

I insisted that Apokrisis has this turned around, what constrains interpretation is the habits of the individual who is interpreting. In relation to interpretation, the words are just a passive thing being interpreted, and the interpretation depends on how the individual recognizes them. So all constraints on interpretation must be in the mind of the interpreter.

Apokrisis turns final cause around, such that it is not associated with the will and intent of the individual, but it is supposed to be the function of some phantom being, called "society", as if society has its own intentions and thereby constrains individuals to do what it wills. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I know what Apo had in mind. The 'pure' individual is an abstraction, just as 'pure' society is an abstraction. Yes we have (practically) distinct bodies, but we swim in a language picked up through interaction. The foundation of our interpretative software is social. That which me might associate with the 'pure' individual is something like a fresh, top 'layer' of the interpretative software. The great poet, scientist, or philosopher makes an interpretative leap that can slowly 'seep down' into to the lower, shared layers of interpretation. 'Irrational' metaphors become literal, common sense.

So the brain-mind is an individual piece of hardware running largely social software. That's why constraints are (arguably) to some degree constrained by a 'phantom being.' As I see it, the 'pure ego' is arguably just a deeply embraced interpretation of what it is to be there. IMV, meaning-being is prior, though I understand that practically it's justified in thinking the primacy of the "I" that experiences meaning-being.

But what is this thing which is called "information", which is supposed to be somehow independent from the act of informing? is it just the form itself, or is it something other than the form? — Metaphysician Undercover

Per Luciano Floridi, I don't see information as a distinction which makes a difference. That describes data. I describe data (in terms which currently make sense to me) as physical or mental variables.

Floridi calls dedomena "pure data", and describes them as that which is inferred from, and required by, experience. Depending on one's interpretation, these may correspond to the notion of Form in a Platonic and/or Aristotelian sense.

So, for me, information is relational data.

I think the everyday understanding is that information is "meaning." But what is meaning? And what is the "is" here? I suggest that we approach the irreducible with these questions. — t0m

I think that in the strictest sense, meaning is defined as "what is meant". This implies the intent of the author. In a different sense, we have "what it means to me". This implies interpretation. I believe it is important to keep these two senses separate, and not to equivocate, because the first requires an author, the second does not. So in the second sense, things have meaning to me which I do not believe have an author. Also, in communication there is often a difference between what is meant by the author, and what it means to me, due to difficulties in expressing, and difficulties in interpreting.

There are other ways in which "meaning" is used, which tend to be various different ways of conflating the two above ways, in ambiguity. Principally there is often assumed "what it means to us". Because of the separation between individuals, outlined above, I don't accept these senses as having any philosophical rigour, so I look at them as untenable principles.

The 'pure' individual is an abstraction, just as 'pure' society is an abstraction. — t0m

I do not think that "the individual" is an abstraction. I believe it is a logical principle posited for the sake of intelligibility, i.e.it is necessary to assume individuals in order to understand reality. The unit is the basis for all mathematics, and the subject is the basis for deductive logic. Each of these is an assumed individual. It may not even be correct to call "the individual" an "assumption", because it seems to just inhere within the soul, and is necessarily prior to all intelligibility.

So the "assumption" of the individual, which inheres within the soul, is a fundamental tool to the active intellect which abstracts, and creates abstractions. But I do not think that this tool is an abstraction itself, it must be something inherent within the active intellect. This is evident from the way that we perceive things with sight. We always see individual objects, as if there is a boundary between one object and another. It is inherent within that mode of perception, that we perceive such separations, and without this the world would be unintelligible. Furthermore, it is evident that in all of our senses, what is sensed is differences, but the active intellect, when it produces abstractions, does this by correlating similarities. So an abstraction is based in similarity, while "the individual" is based in difference. I believe that "the individual" is more primordial to the soul than "the abstraction".

This is why philosophers have so much difficulty with identity, and the concept of "same". There is a sense of "same" which is based in similarity, used in abstraction, such that all human beings are the same, as human beings. There is another sense of "same", which is based in difference, it is used to identify the temporal continuity of an object, such that I am the same individual as myself twenty years ago, and this is based in the assumption that I, as an object, am separate, different from everything else.

So, for me, information is relational data. — Galuchat

I haven't yet managed to grasp your distinction between information and data. Here, you imply that information is a certain type of data, and data you describe as variables. What makes a certain type of variable informational? If it is that the variable is relational, isn't this just something which a mind carries out? Anyway, isn't "relation" implied already within the concept of "variable"? So aren't all variables, by their very nature as variables, necessarily relational?

I think that in the strictest sense, meaning is defined as "what is meant". — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, but this doesn't approach the 'is' itself or what it means to mean. If meaning is what is meant, then what is this 'what' that is meant? We tend to 'move around' in a 'field' without noticing or questioning this field itself. What is intelligibility?

This implies interpretation. I believe it is important to keep these two senses separate, and not to equivocate, because the first requires an author, the second does not. So in the second sense, things have meaning to me which I do not believe have an author. Also, in communication there is often a difference between what is meant by the author, and what it means to me, due to difficulties in expressing, and difficulties in interpreting. — Metaphysician Undercover

For me this stays on the surface. I'm asking what it means for something to mean something in the first place, apart from the difficulties of communication and interpretation.

I do not think that "the individual" is an abstraction. I believe it is a logical principle posited for the sake of intelligibility, i.e.it is necessary to assume individuals in order to understand reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that the notion of the pure subject is basic to common sense. But you neglected to address the context in which I made this statement. We meet reality in terms of a language that is social, shared. So I am perhaps mostly 'us' in the way I unveil reality. Language is central here.

The unit is the basis for all mathematics — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. There is a 'primary intuition' of unity. It can't be pointed to in the environment. It's 'there' in the way the environment is interpreted as 'circles within circles.' The parts within a whole are themselves wholes which can contain parts. The 'totality' is the circle we draw around everything. It's a digression, but I contend that this largest circle (the totality) has to be 'brute fact' to the degree that explanations are understood as deductions from postulated necessary relationships between entities. This unity is connected to that unity in particular way. The unity of all these unities can be related to nothing apart from itself, since by definition there is no such thing.

If I understand, your hypothesis is close to Kant's, which claims that the perceived data is modified in the mind, and is therefore different from the raw data from outside the mind? But then how do you explain that when both you and I read the message "Montréal is in Québec", we both perceive the same information, such that we can have a coherent conversation about it? It seems to me that the simplest hypothesis is that we are both observing the same outer object. — Samuel Lacrampe

I don't think my hypothesis constitutes an ontological position, such as that held by Kant in regards to constructivism. I've simply brought forward the fact that identity is a property which can only be attributed to two different format of the same informational particulars iff the processor is capable of attributing the same meaning to each of the two instances. I.E. that the processor already know how those two
instances are related to each other, thanks to possessing another piece of information, that is, the proper interpretative rules associated to each format. As such, I think this identity does not inform us of the properties of the medium, but of properties of the processor.

Therefore there is no problem with the judgment that the information contained in two different readings of the sentence "Montréal is in Québec" is the same, because in those cases the identity is established in regards to the same result obtained from the same interpretative rules. It is because the sign restrict (to a certain degree) the range of possible meanings as interpreted by processors similarly primed that we will likely arrive to the same reading of the same sentence.

So you are saying that in order for me to acquire the message "Montréal is in Québec" from a letter and from a voicemail, I must be able to read, hear, and speak english; is that correct? And if I did not, then I may misinterpret the information and acquire a different message? But there is objectively a correct interpretation of the information, that is, a correct message, and all other interpretations would be incorrect, would it not? So objectively, it would still be the same message in both mediums, independent of the subject's ability to interpret them correctly.

Well, you must understand spoken english and written english, which for the purpose of the questionning here might as well be two different languages. And you must understand both statements to mean the same thing, and this despite the interpretation rules being different (after all, reading and understanding a sentence is not, at all, the same as listening and understanding the same sentence).

This is why I don't think that the argument you brought forth, that is, that the same information can be in two different medium suggest that information isn't physical, actually can put weight one way or another. The identity of the two messages is established only after connected interpretations take place in the same processor, and therefore belongs to process, not the information.

I'm not entirely sure the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy, anymore than the public/private dichotomy really belongs in this line of questionning. Again, objectivity and subjectivity are determined intra-lingua, so to speak, in the sense that we'll treat information differentely if we know that the state-of-affairs it refers to is subjective or objective. The information itself, the piece of data, doesn't exhibit it's objectivity or subjectivity.

I'm asking what it means for something to mean something in the first place, apart from the difficulties of communication and interpretation. — t0m

Right, that is what I was addressing, what it means for something to mean something. What I said, is that there are two distinct ways to approach this. One way is "what it means to me". The other way is to assume an author, and from this approach, what it means to mean something is viewed as the intention of the author, or creator of the thing.

Do you see the difference between these two ways? In the first sense, what it means to mean something is that the thing has been interpreted by a subject, as having some value to that subject. In the second sense, what it means to mean something is that the thing has been created by a being with intention.

My point is, that these two ways are very different, and quite distinct. But in many instances people will state what it means to mean something, as an ambiguous conflation of these two, or else by introducing other unnecessary principles. So, for example, as a variance on the first way, some will say that what it means to mean something, is "has been interpreted as having value to us", instead of "has been interpreted as having value to me". This appears to be the most common way that "information" is used, "has been evaluated by us". The problem with this is that it assumes a "common interpretation", proper to "us", when interpretation is inherently subjective. The "common interpretation" implies a value structure which is common to us, when values are inherently subjective.

What I see is two possible resolutions to this issue. We can say that meaning is inherently subjective, what it means to mean something, is to have some value to a subject. Or, we can give objectivity to meaning by saying that what it means to mean something, is to have been created with intention. In this case the thing is assumed to have one objective meaning, which corresponds with, or is, the intent of the author.

I agree that the notion of the pure subject is basic to common sense. But you neglected to address the context in which I made this statement. We meet reality in terms of a language that is social, shared. So I am perhaps mostly 'us' in the way I unveil reality. Language is central here. — t0m

I don't see how you get "I am mostly us" out of this. Yes, it's true that we are influenced by language and other human beings, but we are also influenced by everything else around us, and each person is a unique individual. By your principle, we might just as well say "I am the universe". But you cannot assign priority to the whole, in this way, because you must respect the meaning of "part". Therefore you must say "I am part of us". And by doing this you give logical priority to the individual "I". This logical priority is established because reason proceeds from the more certain toward the lesser certain. And what the term "I" refers to is much more certain than what the term "us" refers to. Therefore "I" is as the premise, and "us" is as the conclusion, when we add the premise that a collection is a whole..

There is a 'primary intuition' of unity. It can't be pointed to in the environment. It's 'there' in the way the environment is interpreted as 'circles within circles.' — t0m

But this is exactly opposite of what I am saying, and that's probably why come to the opposite conclusion, that "I am mostly us", rather than my conclusion that "us is a collection of Is". What you call the "primary intuition of unity" is actually what is pointed to in the environment. We see individual things as individual unities, surrounding us. This is why I called it a primordial "assumption", it is not proper to the active intellect, as inherent within it, it is produced by experience. So it cannot be called an intuition, it must be assumed by the active intellect. And without assuming this principle of individuality, nothing is intelligible.

The 'totality' is the circle we draw around everything. It's a digression, but I contend that this largest circle (the totality) has to be 'brute fact' to the degree that explanations are understood as deductions from postulated necessary relationships between entities. This unity is connected to that unity in particular way. The unity of all these unities can be related to nothing apart from itself, since by definition there is no such thing. — t0m

That there is a totality, a whole, the universe, is produced by a completely different process than the assumption of individuality. It is produced by a process of reason, so it is necessarily posterior to the assumption that there are individuals. Remember, we proceed from the most certain to the less certain, and we are quite certain that there are individual things around us. However, since we conceive of things as individuals, this necessitates a boundary of separation between other things, such that we cannot properly conceive of a boundless thing, infinity. So we posit a boundary which produces the whole, the universe, as an individual thing, attempting to make everything intelligible rather than infinite. But this conceived whole, "the universe" is just some vague notion, produced by our inability to conceive of things other than as individuals, just like "us" is some vague notion of a whole, which is produced by our inability to conceive of things other than as individuals, such that "us" is proposed as some sort of individual, and "the universe" is proposed as some sort of individual.

I don't see how you get "I am mostly us" out of this. Yes, it's true that we are influenced by language and other human beings, but we are also influenced by everything else around us, and each person is a unique individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

From my perspective, your're underestimating the 'power' of language here. You seem to take the subject as an absolute without understanding the subject as a sign or concept that only gets its content or meaning via its relations to other concepts. Concepts exist systematically. 'I' learn how to use the word 'I,' just as I learn to use the word 'fair' or 'good,' but I'm not so sure that there are crystalline entities that correspond the intelligibly distinct symbols. This perception of the symbols as distinct wholes is what I have in mind in the intuition of unity. If we ignore the deferment of (happening right now) meaning and just 'stare' at a sign or object, we can pluck it out from its background (circle it). Math with integers is 'certain' precisely because we work with the 'pure form' of unity. In my view, the pure subject is related to this intuition of unity. 'I' learn to understand myself as distinct, a 'crystalline' metaphysical object distinct from the not-I, itself 'enclosed' in a 'circle' and ripped out of the flow of meaning-making, meaning-being.

Therefore you must say "I am part of us". And by doing this you give logical priority to the individual "I". This logical priority is established because reason proceeds from the more certain toward the lesser certain. — Metaphysician Undercover

For me this experience of the subject as more certain than the 'us' is an inherited pre-interpretation of the situation. We start from something like the Cartesian subject without questioning it. We don't look at the 'things themselves.' It's even hard if not impossible to look at our experience 'around' what's 'encrusted' in the language we begin with. 'Phenomenology' is a good name for the thrust against our 'finitude' (our typically binding inherited mostly- invisible interpretative frameworks.)

Concepts exist systematically. 'I' learn how to use the word 'I,' just as I learn to use the word 'fair' or 'good,' but I'm not so sure that there are crystalline entities that correspond the intelligibly distinct symbols. — t0m

This is close to the heart of the matter. The question is about the reality of concepts. According to (old school) realism, it is the mind's ability to understand universals that is the basis for rational judgement; that is what is meant by 'intelligibility'; and universals are real, not simply 'in the mind'. That is what leads to all of the conundrums about 'where they are', and the sense in which they can be said to exist. Nowadays we say that what exists is 'out there somewhere'; which illustrates how we can only conceive of things that exist within space-time. Whereas, universals precede space-time.

So one solution to this problem is that universals are indeed concepts, and that concepts are purely psychological in nature; universals are said to be simply general concepts, that can be applied to whole classes, and not simply to particulars. (This is called 'conceptualism'). There's nothing corresponding to concepts in reality, it's simply the way that the mind operates. It's a natural position to take, as most people are comfortable with the idea that such things exist 'in the mind'. Then you can explain them in terms of adaption to the environment and neural architecture; in other words, in terms of evolutionary biology.

The view I favour is that universals are actually inherent in the structure of reality - they're not simply concepts, because they're predictive of features of reality that otherwise we couldn't know. And ultimately this is because things are neither 'outside' nor 'inside' the mind; it is, rather, that 'outside' and 'inside' are both fundamental mental constructs. Consequently, we can't think without the rules of logic, grammar and number; they literally 'inform our experience' of what is 'outside' us, but in the sense that they underlie or precede our knowledge and experience (per Kant).

Naively, we believe that numbers are 'in here' and we 'impose' them on the world 'out there'; but experience is not actually divided up so neatly as that. This is tied to the question of 'synthetic a priori' judgements and the 'unreasonable efficiency of mathematics'. And I think this has to do with the fact that numbers (and the like), being neither objective nor subjective, are actually transcendental; they possess a kind of inherent truth that thought must utilise, but can't explain, because it can't explain anything without assuming their truth. But there's no place that corresponds with 'transcendental' in modern empiricism; what exists has to be 'out there somewhere'. Hence the dismissal of the 'ghostly realm of Universals' (which goes right back to Aristotle).

I think my view is that our instinctive naive realism presumes that our well-adapted brain is the source of universals, but that nature is devoid of meaning, and we therefore 'impose' those meanings on nature. That is the source of subjectivism and relativism which is pretty well standard issue nowadays. So I'm trying to recover the sense in which universals are attributes of reality itself, and not simply the artifacts of a well-adapted hominid brain.

You seem to take the subject as an absolute without understanding the subject as a sign or concept that only gets its content or meaning via its relations to other concepts. — t0m

I don't understand what you're saying here. Perhaps you could explain. As far as I understand, a sign is created, and therefore there must be a subject prior to the existence of the sign, such that it is impossible for the subject to be a sign.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Perhaps you could explain. As far as I understand, a sign is created, and therefore there must be a subject prior to the existence of the sign, such that it is impossible for the subject to be a sign. — Metaphysician Undercover

Admittedly this is deep water. The Mobius strip is no joke. We are in a world that is in us that is in the world, etc.

Do you remember a time 'before language,' before being immersed in signs? Do you remember being a pure subject without access to the sign? Or was your ability to understand yourself made possible 'within' or 'with' language? But what is this language? Is it really conceivable apart from our movements in the 'primordial' world of 'being-with-others.' I don't mean the systematic nature that we learn as an abstraction. I mean learning to turn doorhandles, flush toilets, not bump into furniture, stand at the right distance from others, 'comport' ourselves appropriately.

Our pre-theoretical immersion in the world includes (some have argued) a non-theoretical sense of being-with-others. We see objects not as meaningless shapes but in terms of what they are good for and what they mean not only for us but also for others. The metaphysical-scientific tendency is to 'deworld' or rip away all of this in the pursuit of an eternal skeleton. It does the same thing with language, too, ripping concepts out of the deferment and entangledness of meaning in order to just stare at an 'atom' of meaning. It needs crisp context-independent meaning to build an timeless image of the timeless skeleton.

I understand that 'consciousness' is apparently tied a particular brain that can be located in space and time. On the other hand, 'consciousness' is 'being itself' somehow. That we survive to see the death of others suggests that there is some substratum apart from our own brain that nevertheless opens up the 'there' in which all of these concepts exist. So I believe in something like the metaphysical subject of Wittgenstein, but it does seem to be a notion that evolved historically within language. We create pointers to the 'there' that themselves only exist within the there. "Being is not a being." Any specification of the 'subject' is already saying too much. The 'subject' is is itself? But this is said within a shared field of meaning that apparently has its foundation in a substratum. Deep water. I don't pretend to have it all figured out. Just sharing a bit of my own (largely borrowed and inherited) thinking...

*I highly recommend The Concept of Time. It's the first draft of B&T, only 100 pages. By no means am I saying that Heidegger is the last word. I'm just delighted by 1920s Heidegger having previously been in a Hegel phase.

This is close to the heart of the matter. The question is about the reality of concepts. According to (old school) realism, it is the mind's ability to understand universals that is the basis for rational judgement; that is what is meant by 'intelligibility'; and universals are real, not simply 'in the mind'. That is what leads to all of the conundrums about 'where they are', and the sense in which they can be said to exist. Nowadays we say that what exists is 'out there somewhere'; which illustrates how we can only conceive of things that exist within space-time. Whereas, universals precede space-time. — Wayfarer

It does seem that we have ripped apart meaning and 'reality' for practical reasons. Dazzled by utility, we forget that this ripping-apart always already exists within a field of meaning or understanding of being. We take a useful fiction as an absolute. This useful fiction, a mere tool, is made sacred. It becomes a hardened notion of the rational itself (the 'technical interpretation of thinking.') We learn a basic notion of the world as resources to be used/conserved, dead-stuff about which we can be correct. The value-layer is something else, important perhaps but not 'theologically' real like the stuff we can be correct about. If I critique this worldview in terms of its incorrectness, however, then I slip into the essence of the paradigm. I criticize the technical interpretation thinking within the technical interpretation of thinking. For me this is like religion that learns to understand itself as an opposing scientific framework, metaphysical as opposed to physical.

I do think we can grasp universals as atoms to some degree, but the phenomenon of deference (which I learned about (or to see) in Bennington's Derrida) suggests that we usually have a 'field' of dynamic meaning. The flow of this payload semantic consider. Not atomically really operate in their employment the signs. Crystallization is both aesthetically and pragmatically justified, but there's something alluring in the in-the-faceness of the object of phenomenology.

On the other hand, we don't see how to build a gadget from it, so it's suspect. There is no such thing as experience, right? We fit what exists to the method, not the method to what exists. Philosophy asks questions that make the scientists giggle. 'Why is there someting rather than nothing' must refer to the absence of objects in the space of physics, not to the presence of the field of meaning or the there itself in which something a concept of space can exist. An anti-wonder is at work. Wonder is suspect. I even understand that. It is manly to be astonished at nothing. It's just girlish hysteria to find something surprising, uncanny. I strive for a neutrality that demonizes neither wonder nor anti-wonder. I want to see what's going on, maybe even as simply as possible but no simpler.

The view I favour is that universals are actually inherent in the structure of reality - they're not simply concepts, because they're predictive of features of reality that otherwise we couldn't know. — Wayfarer

I'd go so far to suggest that 'universals' (functioning together as the field of meaning) are the structure of reality. Reality as we experience it is deeply linguistic, conceptual, meaningful. The subject-object paradigm breaks down to some degree when we understood the revelatory/creative power of language that we are perhaps too quick to think of as sounds that buzz over an otherwise meaningless space filled with unnamed objects. This space of unnamed objects is itself revealed/created by the language it demotes. It's useful sometimes to think in terms of a values as a film that sticks to what is really there. We learn a certain practically potent way of thinking the world and forget that this thinking of the world is not the world itself. (But this 'world itself' is not to be immediately understood in terms of the in-itself of physics. 'Logical space' seems to involve a basic intuition of being-with-others in a shared world of language. If we say that the physics world is an illusion, we aren't thinking of holding it against the world of physics to see its failure to correspond. We are holding it against a presumably shared world of experience. We mean that it is false in the sense that it conceals possible experience.)

Do you remember a time 'before language,' before being immersed in signs? Do you remember being a pure subject without access to the sign? — t0m

How is my memory relevant to this point? Just because I do not remember the time before I learned how to talk doesn't mean that there wasn't a time when I didn't know how to talk. Surely you believe that I existed as a person prior to learning how to talk.

I think that you are confusing my existence as a subject, with my recognition of my existence as a subject. My existence as a subject is necessarily prior to my recognition of such existence, so it doesn't make sense for you to refer to my recognition of my existence as a subject as the starting time of my existence as a subject.

An anti-wonder is at work. Wonder is suspect — t0m

Excellent post. I was recently musing that science proceeds on the basis of ‘what we can explain’ and metaphysics with ‘what explains us’. That takes a sense of humility which ‘homo faber’ doesn’t much care for.

Thanks for your contributions in this thread, it’s helped me to see how what I’m thinking about maps against contemporary philosophical ideas.

I'd go so far to suggest that 'universals' (functioning together as the field of meaning) are the structure of reality. — t0m

This is where you and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I see the structure of reality in particular entities. The human mind understands in terms of universals, but this is the deficiency of the human mind, which makes reality so difficult to it.

I refute your argument by claiming that the information is in the container, independent of the ability of the subject to interpret it. If a letter says "Montréal is in Québec", then that is the message on the letter, regardless if people can read it or not. And if they interpret something else from reading it, due to inability to read properly, then they have obtained an incorrect message. To say that a thing is incorrect implies that a correct thing exists. And if a correct message exists, then it must exist in the container.

More on the claim that information is not physical. A physical thing cannot be stolen if it remains with its rightful owner. E.g., I logically cannot have stolen your wallet if it remains in your pocket the whole time. Yet we speak of 'stealing information' when when we make illegal copies of information like burning songs on a CD from Napster. But the original CD that contains the songs remains with its rightful owner. I.e., the atoms of my burnt CD are different atoms from the original CD, and therefore I cannot have not stolen anything physical. Ergo, the information I have stolen must be non-physical.

I see the structure of reality in particular entities. The human mind understands in terms of universals, but this is the deficiency of the human mind, — Metaphysician Undercover

..which is similar to what nominalism says, although it speaks about it in terms of concepts or names - hence, ‘nominalism’ - not necessarily a deficiency. But you are generally coming from a nominalist position in many of your comments. And hey, relax - I’m not accusing you of anything, it’s a philosophical dialogue.

Ergo, the information I have stolen must be non-physical. — Samuel Lacrampe

Right - ideas aren’t physical. But physicalists will say that ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, therefore they’re also physical - no matter what you argue.

..which is similar to what nominalism says, although it speaks about it in terms of concepts or names - hence, ‘nominalism’ - not necessarily a deficiency. But you are generally coming from a nominalist position in many of your comments. And hey, relax - I’m not accusing you of anything, it’s a philosophical dialogue. — Wayfarer

Well, I don't think it's really a nominalist position which I propose, because I respect the reality of universals.. I just say that it is more accurate to describe them as created by the human mind rather than as having independent existence, being discovered. This is the way that we can account for deficiencies and inaccuracies in our conceptualizations, by allowing that the concepts, though they have real immaterial existence within the immaterial minds of human beings, are creations of those minds.

I do allow for real independent immaterial Forms, but these are the forms of particulars, as described by the Neo-Platonists and Plato in the Timaeus. Therefore I have a duality of forms. Material existence is the medium between the independent Forms of particulars, and the forms of universals, abstractions within the human mind. This corresponds with primary and secondary substance in Aristotle. The important thing, in understanding the nature of reality is to not confuse the relation between the two types of forms and material existence. The relation between the human abstractions and material existence is an inversion of the relationship between the independent Forms and material existence, because one is prior to material existence while the other is posterior to it. I believe that this is a very important principle in understanding the nature of time.

I find that with metaphysical positions, they all have their good points and bad points, so it's not good to simply choose one over the other and support that position, because the other has some opposing principles. It's best to try and understand them all, and find the principles of consistency between them, because there always is principles of consistency.

What about cases where the information is non-factual? There's information in a song or in a melody, but the song doesn't refer to a factual state of the world. How about an order or an instruction?

Still, I think this mostly misses the point. That you could refer to one objectively correct way of interpreting the data doesn't say anything about the materiality of the data. In a way, interpreting incorrectly a statement like "Québec is in Montréal" is like applying the wrong procedure to any other data treatment. If I ask you to look at a grain of sand and you take a thousand steps back from the object, you probably won't be able to look at the grain of sand in such a way that I can communicate to you whatever it is that I want to communicate about said grain of sand. That obviously doesn't imply that the grain of sand is anything else than physical.

Right - ideas aren’t physical. But physicalists will say that ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, therefore they’re also physical - no matter what you argue. — Wayfarer

I take it you are playing devil's advocate, but I don't see how your statement refutes my argument. If ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, then by the same rationale, it is logically impossible to steal other people's ideas: Just as my brain cells are mine and not yours, ideas in my brain are mine and not yours. Yet, there is such a thing as intellectual property, which implies ideas can be stolen. How do physicalists explain this?

If ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, then by the same rationale, it is logically impossible to steal other people's ideas: — Samuel Lacrampe

You might say that 'stealing' is simply a metaphor for what is actually copying.

Anyway, I don't want to keep rehashing the arguments in this thread. I've been starting to read up the Platonic dialogues again, but it's hard work. You could study Plato for years, and still have an interpretation that nobody else understands or agrees with and with no practical outcome. They're the original Dusty Tomes.

But the basic notion I'm working on is that some kinds of ideas are real, and that they constitute the 'archetypes' or forms of existing things. Where I think there is a fundamental error, is to assert that therefore these ideas exist. They don't exist - trees and mountains and rivers exist, and animals and people exist, but the ideas are purely and only intelligible. That's why they're properly described as 'transcendental'; and here a distinction needs to be made between 'what is real' and 'what exists'. I think there's a version of that in Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena - 'noumena' means really 'the ideal object' which is I'm sure Platonic in origin. In the secondary literature I see hardly any reference to this kind of interpretation.

I think the problem is, it takes a kind of cognitive shift to understand the sense in which the ideas are real. Augustine got it, but I don't know if Aristotle did. So these are deep questions. To which end, I'm seriously considering enrolling in Reality, Being and Existence starting January.

If ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, then by the same rationale, it is logically impossible to steal other people's ideas: Just as my brain cells are mine and not yours, ideas in my brain are mine and not yours. Yet, there is such a thing as intellectual property, which implies ideas can be stolen. How do physicalists explain this? — Samuel Lacrampe

For a physicalist, an idea is a pattern of physical matter. So stealing (i.e., the illegal copying of) an idea entails the occurence of the same pattern in different physical matter, not the transfer of matter.

But the basic notion I'm working on is that some kinds of ideas are real, and that they constitute the 'archetypes' or forms of existing things. Where I think there is a fundamental error, is to assert that therefore these ideas exist. They don't exist - trees and mountains and rivers exist, and animals and people exist, but the ideas are purely and only intelligible. That's why they're properly described as 'transcendental'; and here a distinction needs to be made between 'what is real' and 'what exists'. I think there's a version of that in Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena - 'noumena' means really 'the ideal object' which is I'm sure Platonic in origin. — Wayfarer

I agree with this.

And so Aristotle's objection to Plato's Ideal Forms really applies to Kant's noumenon for the same reason. Aristotle agreed that there are ideas and that they are real. But he rejected the view that they are separable from the world of everyday experience.

They’re only realised or instantiated in the phenomenal world, but they’re the perfect archetypes towards which particulars are striving. I am trying to get a better understanding of the Platonic v Aristotelian view. It’s a deep topic. But it is heartening to have some agreement on it. ;-)

The only definition of 'real object' I can think of that isn't a circular definition and that doesn't beg-the-question of the existence of a mind-independent word, and that cannot be doubted by the skeptic, is that a 'real object' is purely a synonym for an object associated with feelings of compulsion.

Suppose Bob loses his beloved gold watch and that he imagines it in great detail as he ransacks his office for it. A skeptical colleague interrupts him and asks " what makes think that your imagined gold-watch has a bearer? After all, you cannot physically see a watch, so you are only imagining an 'idea' of a gold watch in the same way you might imagine a unicorn or a fairy" Perhaps bob in exasperation replies "my imagined watch obviously isn't my ACTUAL watch!". The skeptic of course responds "But now you are only thinking of an 'actual' watch. And what makes you think THAT has a bearer?"

The answer of course, is that "realness" has no logical justification in terms of truth-by-correspondence . For bob to say "my imagined gold-watch has an actual bearer" is only to express his motivation to search.

A realist kicks a rock and howls in pain to refute the idealist. The idealist says "there you see, i told you the rock is nothing more than your idea of it" (The idealist charges the realist with 'truth-by-correspondence'. The realist charges the idealist with denying facts).

Suppose Bob then experiences waking up and has no real memories of possessing a gold watch. If he concludes that the above scenario was all a dream, he is likely to stop searching for a watch and to conclude it wasn't real after all. But not necessarily. Perhaps he grew up in a superstitious family where dreams were interpreted literally. He might even keep searching in the spirit of wishful thinking and insist that the gold-watch might be real. But this changes nothing about our understanding of realness, for "realness" still reduces to bob's behavioural tendencies.

To say "i conclude that my gold watch isn't real" expresses a change of heart and nothing more. Logical argument and rhetoric of course *can* lead to changes of heart, hence the reason we might hope to use logic to convince the delusional. But here logic is purely a rhetorical device of persuasion that appeals to a persons sense of coherence and familiarity. Using logic here isn't qualitatively different to cajoling somebody through charm or threatening them violence.

So there is nothing essentially wrong on thinking of 'archetypes' as real, if in saying that one is expressing one's motivation.

The only definition of 'real object' I can think of that isn't a circular definition and that doesn't beg-the-question of the existence of a mind-independent word, and that cannot be doubted by the skeptic, is that a 'real object' is purely a synonym for an object associated with feelings of compulsion. — sime

That Bob is motivated to search for his (alleged) watch implies that he thinks there is a real watch. But that is not what it means for there to be a real watch.

What it means for there to be a real watch is that there is a physical state that would satisfy claims about the watch.

That does presuppose a mind-independent world and can be doubted by the skeptic.

I think there's a version of that in Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena - 'noumena' means really 'the ideal object' which is I'm sure Platonic in origin. In the secondary literature I see hardly any reference to this kind of interpretation. — Wayfarer

This is what I see as the riddle of Kant"s "Critique of Pure Reason". He refers to the noumenon as "intelligible object", yet he disallows that the intellect can apprehend noumena because our understanding is limited to phenomena. "Intelligible object" in this sense, can only be understood as of Platonic origin, and immaterial, but Kant posits the phenomenal world as a barrier to a true understanding of the intelligible world. We cannot access intelligible objects directly with our intellect because we must interpret phenomenal objects in any attempt to understand the intelligible objects which lie beneath.

Plato, on the other hand seems to allow that the human intellect can apprehend intelligible objects directly, through the means of "the good". And I tend to lean more toward Plato here because I believe that there must be a way that ideas come to us purely from the inside, without the necessity for a phenomenal medium. This is fundamental to decision making, the will, and the creative power in general. These come from within. There is a movement from within, from thinking, through the act of decision making and conception, outward towards the creation of an object.

So despite the fact that we hear and see words as sense phenomena, the intelligible object is always created within, based in an individual's own values (the good), such that the real intelligible object which we form in conception is always coming from within. We receive information from the sense world, such that information is always phenomenal, but the means for interpreting must always come from within. This is the very important problem which Wittgenstein addresses at the beginning of The Philosophical Investigations. The means for interpreting cannot be taught to us because we would always have to be able to interpret what is being taught. As he implies, we must always already know a language in order to learn a language. He goes in the wrong direction though, finding a way to avoid this issue rather than facing it.

But this little problem implies that our real access to the intelligible realm is through the internal not through the external. In this way, the intelligible realm, the noumenal, which appears as transcendental, and inaccessible to the human intellect, for Kant, due to the very nature of transcendence, becomes immanent, and therefore intelligible to the human intellect, due to the direct internal access, in this interpretation of Plato.

You might say that 'stealing' is simply a metaphor for what is actually copying. — Wayfarer

For a physicalist, an idea is a pattern of physical matter. So stealing (i.e., the illegal copying of) an idea entails the occurence of the same pattern in different physical matter, not the transfer of matter. — Andrew M

Yes, I think that you are both correct; that my argument falls apart if the term 'stealing' really means 'copying'. I see now I also made the mistake of using a song as an example in my argument, which is a kind of meaningless information, as I already conceded that meaningless information is visibly only physical; that only meaningful information has the potential of being non-physical, because only this kind of information points to concepts.

Yeah I too should read up on forms. Here are the questions I would like to solve:
(1) Are 'forms' synonymous to 'necessary entities', like the laws of logic and morality?
(2) If not just that, are they also generalizations, like apple-ness and river-ness, in which individual apples and rivers participate in?
(3) If not just that, are they also particulars, i.e., a particular apple has a particular form?

Here are my preliminary answers, until someone can tell me better:
(1) They are definitely that at least. Only this type of form can be adequate for Plato's theory of recollection, where we can dig up the truth simply by thinking hard about it. This is because if an entity is necessary, then it is literally impossible to conceive it in a different way than its necessary way, without making a rational mistake. E.g. it is impossible to conceive that "2+2=3" if only we know what the terms mean. Let's call these 'Forms' (capital F).

(2) I think these too are forms, even though they are contingent. They are acquired through Aristotle's theory of abstraction, that is, we conceive the generalization of tree-ness after observing numerous trees. Our concepts of these forms must be identical, because otherwise, how could individuals be able to communicate together? Let's call these 'forms' (lower case f).

(3) I don't think there is a particular form for each particular material thing. It seems to be an unnecessary hypothesis: What could be explained by the presence of the particular form which could not be explained by the matter?