Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.*
particular things are not really individuals but the individuated. They arise because of a hylomorphic interaction between top-down constraints (universal forms) and bottom-up constructions (material contingencies). — Apokrisis
particular things are simply ephemeral instances of the eternal forms, but in themselves, they have no actual being. Their actual being is conferred by the fact that they conform to laws (logos). So 'existence' in this sense, and I think this is the sense it was intended by the Platonic and neo-Platonic schools, is illusory. Earthly objects of perception exist, but only in a transitory and imperfect way. They are 'mortal' - perishable, never perfect, and always transient. Whereas the archetypal forms exist in the One Mind and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby things are formed. They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence.
A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. 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.
The soul's deepest parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will be slow percolation graduatlly reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities.
[materialism wants] to put formal and final cause in the realm of ideas. The only difference is that they add the word "merely" ideas. Scientism pretends that questions about observers and minds and purposes are not real (causal) questions. — Apokrisis
I mentioned that above. I think an idealist understanding of mind is basic to Peirce's general philosophy, but it's not necessary for bio-semiotics, so it is left out in that context. — Wayfarer
Universals are a class of mind-independent entities, usually contrasted with individuals (or so-called "particulars"), postulated to ground and explain relations of qualitative identity and resemblance among individuals.
Universals represent all real possibilities. Thus, what Plato would have called the Form of the Bed, really just means that 'beds are possible'.
Not only do we "know" objects though subjectivity, but objects only have significance in subjectivity. Any object is in relation with all others, no matter how distance, and is but one finite state with meaning in subjectivity. It's not only subjective all the way down, but every subjectivity is objective-- states of the world which are unaffected by going unnoticed or disagreed with.
To interact is to be something related to occasions of the experience of objects. Subjectivity is objectivity. It is to exist, whether known by someone or not. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Now, straight away I think this is incorrect. How could 'a universal' be 'an entity'? All throughout this essay, universals are posited as 'entities' - as if Plato's 'ideal form' is 'an entity' — Wayfarer
Cartesian dualism seems a fact because we are minds that seem to be able to make things happen. — apokrisis
Instead of calling out the noumenon as nonsensical full stop (i.e. not just that it cannot be known by us, but that it cannot be anything to know) — TheWillowOfDarkness
When I say the subjective is objective, I’m collapsing the subjective/objective split which drives the starry-eyed staring at the mysterious noumenon. Not only cannot we not know noumenon, but there is nothing to know in the noumenon. All knowledge of the world is of our experiences. The only objective knowledge is of the subjective. When we have experiences, we don’t just “only know our experiences,” we know the world (subjectivities) as they are. Our experiences are the means of knowledge rather than always being an inadequate attempt to grasp what is forever beyond us. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The presence of consciousness or otherwise is not important. Objectivity, for me, is any actual occasion, any state of the world (and so of subjectivity too), whether it "interacts" (appears in? causes?) experiences or not — TheWillowOfDarkness
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