[R]eason is just another weapon of control. ...the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human, is greener and more recent than humans suspect." — tim wood
Page 132. "Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." — tim wood
Reasoning: the provision of causes, motives, and explanations for what is, i.e. for being per se whether in whole or in part. — javra
I’m again reminded of the pre-Socratic notion of logos, the reasoning pertaining both to the physical cosmos and to individuals which are aspects of it. — javra
With these musings in mind—which I don’t deny are themselves one individual's reasoning—I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself — javra
And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.” — javra
The problem is not reason - I think it's the insistence that reason must always be validated by, and in that sense subordinated to, human sensory capacities (which is what 'empiricism' amounts to). — Wayfarer
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. [...] So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. [...] And from that prosaic truth, you can always continue on to the exciting ontic implications. — apokrisis
The presence of being is itself arational (as here contrasted to irrational, or “error-endowed reasoning”)—the presence of being eludes the very principle of sufficient reason, and so is beyond the very purview of reason. — javra
I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, — javra
I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, and not the reasoning we use to best hold onto that which is both immediately and metaphysically true. — javra
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. The Ancient Greeks knew that as well. Empiricism is simply the formalising of this semiotic business - the production of the signs by which we construct an orderly representation of the world as it suits us to understand it.
So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. We don't have to hide behind direct realism. It is OK to admit that reality is a pragmatic interpretation. — apokrisis
I dunno. Hit a Swiss watch with a hammer and likely it's destroyed. Hit a man with hammer, and unless you hit him pretty hard, he might just hit you back. Particular life as a kind of "strange attractor" seems persistent.But life as a phenomenon is a fruitful combination of material dynamics at its most unstable or volatile, — apokrisis
Deux et machina? If there's a hand, it must be the various physical laws and a lot of combining and recombining. If not that, then what is the hand?So life certainly answers to reason in the sense that there must be a stabilising hand that forms some bunch of unstable material potentials into a persisting organismic identity. — apokrisis
Isn’t that how we respond to trees? They are nature’s greatest living sculptures. They impose a form on the life that lives within their forest. — apokrisis
Otherwise, reason is an indispensable faculty of the intelligence. — Wayfarer
I dunno. Hit a Swiss watch with a hammer and likely it's destroyed. Hit a man with hammer, and unless you hit him pretty hard, he might just hit you back. — tim wood
Deux et machina? If there's a hand, it must be the various physical laws and a lot of combining and recombining. If not that, then what is the hand? — tim wood
Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms. — tim wood
Can there be reason without intelligence, without a brain? — tim wood
But it would be a narrow definition of reasoning to identify it with just something people pursue as a method of inquiry. — apokrisis
The primary datum of experience is that nature itself appears intelligible, or rationally structured. — apokrisis
And the principle of sufficient reason/principle of locality might speak to atomistic patterns of causal action. But physics also needs its matching holistic principles - of least action and cosmological homogeneity - for a complete description of nature's causal structure. It must see form and purpose as part of the total picture that would be a generalised Logos. — apokrisis
I think a distinction can be made between 'transrational', 'non-rational', and 'irrational'. Reason doesn't have to be omniscient in order to be effective - in other words, it can be effective without being all-knowing. — Wayfarer
With me approaching the issue from this state of contemplation, can you better clarity the differences between “transrational” and “non-rational”? — javra
"[R]eason is just another weapon of control. ...the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human, is greener and more recent than humans suspect." — tim wood
Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms. See two books, The Secret Life of Trees, The Hidden Life of Trees. — tim wood
Where I feel compelled to question that, is because in the overall story, the human brain is a novelty, something that has only come to exist in the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms. — Wayfarer
And this all quickly becomes a rabbit-hole. It leads to a more fundamental question: do we decide what things are? Or do we come to understand what things are? Or is this latter question simply unfathomable?
We can decide what things are, in some sense, but that doesn't mean reality has to care about the decision. — fdrake
Is reason more accessible? For present purpose and as preliminary, let's set two criteria for reason, the presence of either being sufficient as evidence for the presence of reason - this subject to change. First, if a living thing can respond to a threat and protect itself and warn other to protect themselves (which trees apparently can do), then that thing reasons. Second, if a living thing appears to manifest self-awareness, then that thing reasons.
Trees reason (lots of things reason). But I do not think trees are self-aware. After some thought, I'm forced toward thinking this approach is a dead end. Not a dead end as a product of thinking toward some end or for some purpose, but a dead end in terms of grasp of the essential.
I don't think trees think. More likely they're biological machines. But not even machines with a telos, unless by telos is meant an accident. — tim wood
It makes a difference. If we decide what things are, then we can reasonably differ. If on the other hand we know what something is, then we cannot reasonably differ. — tim wood
Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here? — tim wood
So again, the same semiotic story of self organising constraints. — apokrisis
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
Trees reason (lots of things reason). But I do not think trees are self-aware. After some thought, I'm forced toward thinking this approach is a dead end. Not a dead end as a product of thinking toward some end or for some purpose, but a dead end in terms of grasp of the essential.
I don't think trees think. More likely they're biological machines. But not even machines with a telos, unless by telos is meant an accident.
And this all quickly becomes a rabbit-hole — tim wood
Consider what constitutes "deciding what things are". — Metaphysician Undercover
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