A constraint cannot cause anything unless it exists. So it cannot cause its own existence because that would mean that it exists before it exists. — Metaphysician Undercover

It causes the parts that construct it to exist.

It's a feedback loop. The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole.

It causes the parts that construct it to exist. — apokrisis

"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. So the constraints do more than constrain, they actually cause the existence of the parts constrained?

It's a feedback loop. The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — apokrisis

As you commonly profess a triadic metaphysics, don't you think that you are missing something in this model? You have two dichotomous elements, the parts and the whole. You say that the whole shapes the parts. What you are missing is (to refer to the op) "the reason" why the whole shapes the parts. Or to put it in more scientific terms, "how" the whole shapes the parts. This is where we find "constraints", they exist as the third element in your triadic system, property of neither the parts nor the whole, or perhaps both.

So for example, let's suppose that in an instance of this type relation, the whole is the community, what we call "society", and the parts are the individual human beings. Now let's assume that there are some sort of "constraints", laws, mores, rules, conventions, etc., which we assume regulate the activities of the parts, making them properly parts of the whole. The individual human beings can only be said to be parts of the whole if they act accordingly, otherwise they might go off as independent agents, misfits, exercising their own free will to be reclusive as a hermit, or in some cases one might choose to be destructive and wreak havoc on the established community, possibly aligning oneself with some odd sort of "whole".

So the parts have freedom to act as they will, and they will only act as parts of the whole if they apprehend a "reason" to. But if we look from the perspective of the whole, we ask "how" does the whole constrain the parts. You can see that the question of "how" is answered with "reason", such that how the whole constrains the parts, is by giving each part a reason to behave as a member of the whole. Now we can ask what does it mean for a part to have a reason to act as a member of a whole.

This is not the same as asking the reason why a part is a member of a whole, such as why is an atom a part of a molecule, because the part (the human being) is a free agent with a free will. If it were the same, and the atom were such a free agent, it could choose (having a reason) which molecule it would be a part of. How would one molecule, as "the whole" give a free willing atom with choice, a reason to join with it, when the molecule which is produced by the joining doesn't even exist until after the atom joins up?

I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. Hence, that all life is telos driven. — javra

Here, trees are themselves telos-driven awareness, ...this instead of being telos-devoid machines. — javra

Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.

Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. That would seem to require volition. But the will is free: is telos freedom? The idea is to get telos apart from mechanical functioning, yet still be a something part of the living thing, yet, in the case of plants, not be a product of mind. Something with the capacity, at least, to choose, but that the choice in some sense is not a choice. Can you give direction here or add some light? If you're content with telos as mechanism, then we're back to the machine.

But the kiss! I remember that! And I'm old enough now to recognize that as the miracle of chemistry in action. But there were choices. Chemistry was push; I had some choice of direction. Is there a telos here?

The point is that telos is something in itself, or is just a word for things already described and named. Which way do you argue?

There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, and having made that decision constitutes knowing what that things is. However there is a difference between assigning a name to a thing, and assigning a name to a property of a thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is thin ice. Observe - name - know. You imply that the knowing is of the thing; but all this knowing is, is of the observations. To you a tree, a glorious exemplar of life, worthy of appreciation for all kinds of reasons - leave it alone! To me, firewood; its cold; chop it down! Your "no fundamental difference" becomes an abstraction.

I object too to a quality in your reduction that I'll call recursive, meaning that it - your process - always reaches back into itself, thus and thereby always secure in what it achieves because always solidly connected to its origins. And never free. Recursion never leaps. You have not allowed for the "I don't know" that enables the leap. Tree? Or firewood? Not both. Can you reconcile? I think you cannot, because both sides are based in decisions each side made. Will understanding finally tilt the scale one way or another? Maybe, through suspension of decision. The point is that when observation and analysis are done, there is always - still - a choice to be made.

Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here? — tim wood

No answer? No thought on the substance of it?

It's simply muddled. How can something that can't think, reason? How do 'lots of things reason'? — Wayfarer

Agreed. Trees do things that are describable as the result of making decisions. In so far as the thing done seems the right choice, it eo ipso seems reasonable. But if reasonable, then how so, if no mind?

And agreed. A tree is not a sewing machine or a V-8 engine. But I wasn't making an argument. I asked a question.

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

Give it a try?

"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have two dichotomous elements, the parts and the whole. — Metaphysician Undercover

Did you forget to count their interaction?

But if reasonable, then how so, if no mind? — tim wood

I think there’s a conflation here of two senses of ‘reason’. One being, ‘reason’ in the sense of ‘causation’ - the reason why plants grow towards light - and ‘reason’ in the sense of the faculty of reason - how it is we discern and abstract reasons, what the faculty of reason consists of.

As it happens, reason in the latter sense is often deployed to understand reason in the first sense. And it’s the hallmark of reason to understand the ‘why’ of things. Scientific reasoning is grounded in understanding causal links. Of course, in the history of ideas, the Aristotelian analysis of ‘four causes’, had largely been superseded in modern science, which eschewed the idea of telos

[Or did it? There’s an interesting Wikipedia article on the word teleonomy, a neologism invented to allow for the apparently purpose-directed attributes of organisms.]

Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. — tim wood

This goes back to what I was saying earlier - about the abandonment of ideas of purpose as being a hallmark of modernity [as per the Horkheimer book I mentioned]. I mean, before about the nineteenth century, it was simply obvious, it was common knowledge, that everything happened for a reason, and that natural science was concerned with discerning those reasons. But ‘reason’ in the broad sense was underwritten by the Divine Will - the Universe was animated by purpose, having been an intentional creation. One of the casualties of the ‘death of God’ was precisely that loss of that sense of cosmic purpose - hence Camus and Sartre, atheist existentialism, a ‘Free Man’s Worship’ and much else.

In any case, in Western history, there was the expectation of ‘the eschaton’ - the return of Christ, around which history was oriented. You could say that with the erosion of that expectation, the underlying purpose fell into question as well: stuff just happens. Any suggestion of ‘reason’ in the pre-modern sense of there being a ‘divine purpose’ is axiomatically rejected; that is the overwhelming feeling of many people nowadays. The remnant sense of ‘higher purpose’ is ‘getting off the planet’ - heaven as the physical conquest of space, fantasies of inter-stellar travel, ‘warp speed’.

But I want to differentiate between what surpasses reason, and what falls short of it. Hope that makes sense. — Wayfarer

Nothing surpasses reason, and what falls short of it are only attitudes.

Nothing surpasses reason, — Janus

So you think human reason is capable of omniscience?

Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.

Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. That would seem to require volition. But the will is free: is telos freedom? The idea is to get telos apart from mechanical functioning, yet still be a something part of the living thing, yet, in the case of plants, not be a product of mind. Something with the capacity, at least, to choose, but that the choice in some sense is not a choice. Can you give direction here or add some light? If you're content with telos as mechanism, then we're back to the machine. — tim wood

Difficult questions. But I’ll try to support my views as best I can (turns out not in very few words).

Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. So contemplated, and once accepted as a metaphysical possibility, it could then in simplistic terms be either applied to givens devoid of awareness or to givens endowed with awareness.

For example, inanimate matter acts entropically—and can thereby be appraised as holding absolute entropy as its telos. Entropy is an entire subject onto itself, at least for me; while I’m not ready to start a thread on it, to me absolute entropy does not entail disorder but, rather, an undifferentiated and non-quantitative order of physical being wherein the identities of individual physical entities dissipate into … well, something like energy devoid of mass, time, or space. This being a little background to this premise: entropic givens pursue paths of least resistance within their environment toward absolute entropy—such that their behaviors are all choice-devoid paths toward the telos of absolute entropy. BTW, this hypothesized telos of absolute entropy to me mirrors a hypothesized possible end-state of awareness as a non-quantitative unity devoid of otherness which severs as the zenith of awareness's potential—something that I find myself easily projecting upon concepts such as Nirvana and Moksha in the East and “the One” in Neoplatonic traditions within the west.

The dyadic opposite to entropy is negentropy, i.e. life. Rather than dwell on very ambiguous concepts such as those of “mind” or “consciousness”—which can be difficult to argue apply to all life—I’ll instead address the attribute of awareness (something upon which our self-awareness is built). The simplest known life are prokaryotic organisms (archaea and bacteria)—although gametes to me are not too far away from this when contemplating simplest forms of awareness. These simplest lifeforms hold empirically evident awareness via which their capacity to respond to environments unfolds—needless to say, this in absence of a nervous system. And there, simplistically addressed, the teloi primarily considered are no longer universal to all that is but localized within and respective to individual lifeforms.

A big downside to my perspectives is the absence of a metaphysical understanding of how entropic givens have given way to negentropic givens. What can I say, this same problem faces everyone that accepts what empirical sciences agree upon, materialists holding no exception. There must be a behavioral quantum leap from entropic givens, such as rocks, to living systems, such as bacteria. This is where I find Apo’s metaphysics alluring. Still, to me, it’s about progressive evolutions—slow, difficult, and strife-filled—toward ever greater degrees of awareness, which is where I disagree with Apo on metaphysical levels concerning final ends. Either way, nucleic acids seem to be an in-between to that which is entropy governed and that which is negentropic—as can also be said of proteins (e.g. prions).

Staying on topic as regards life and, as example, trees, it in all its instantiations is purposeful. The sperm’s motions are easy to address, but the same also applies to the egg: both hold a telos of biological conception of a zygote. When both are healthy, both will respond to obstructions standing in the way of this telos being actualized. Viewed in light of biological evolution and the need to consume prey (organic sustenance so as to maintain homeostasis) and to escape predation, prokaryotic organisms too will react to environments in response to the telos of … for simplicity, survival (granting this concept is poorly understood: e.g. survival of genes irrespective to phenotypes, survival of phenotypes via genes, some other conceptualization?). In simple terms, those prokaryotic organisms who do not act and react in accordance with this telos then become extinct and are no more.

Obviously a bacterium’s teloi will be extremely less developed than a human’s. Still, to the extent that the bacterium acts and reacts via teloi, the same bacterium will then be endowed, I believe, with a rudimentary form of volition, i.e. will, that is aimed toward some end.

Doubtless the ends which determine actions and reactions—hence teloi—of a bacterium are a genetically governed aspect of the bacterium’s behavioral phenotype. I.e., the bacterium won’t be able to choose its aims as we humans often do (this only to an extent when metaphysically appraised). These same teloi will serve as a bacterium’s proto-forethought. Say the bacterium is faced with something to eat. Its telos here is to eat. Its actions and reactions shall adjust according to—in manners caused by—this preexisting telos (in conjunction with is awareness of its environment to which it reacts). It doesn’t think what to do to best manifest its goal. But, I argue, it does chose between mutually exclusive—hence contradicting—alternatives. More precisely: With its telos being determinate and its environment of a prey ever changing, its behaviors toward this telos must then be neither perfectly deterministic nor perfectly random. The alternative to both these extremes is that of a very primitive form of freewill as to what to do in order to satisfy its determined telos.

I get that this is uncharted territory, but this is where I’m currently at.

The bacterium, then, in a very primitive way, reasons without what we term thought. Roughly speaking, it in a very limited way takes into account causes and motives—motives here being nothing more than teloi—for what the prey is most likely to do next so as to satisfy/actualize its telos of eating its prey.

Again, the taking into account of causes and motives in one's responses to context is, technically, an intrinsic aspect of what reasoning is.

OK, not all prokaryotic organisms are predatory—so this same argument cannot apply to all species of prokaryotic organisms. But I hope it suffices to illustrate that awareness, individual specific teloi, and free choice (free will) can be argued present in very primitive degrees within the most primitive forms of life. None are then applicable to entropic givens. (Although, I’m fiddling about with notions of some form of pre-awareness process from which awareness can develop as it would pertain to some type of pan-semiotic or panpsychism system—this hoping to better bridge the gap between entropic givens and negentropic givens. No fun and no luck, at least so far.)

Trees then are more developed than bacterium. Same overall process can be argued to still apply. For example, a) roots growing with a gene-determinate telos within their behavioral phenotype of finding organic-matter-resultant things to consume within earth by aligning themselves with gravity and b) being neither fully deterministic nor fully random in their reactions to obstacles in the way of actualizing this telos—i.e. endowed with some prototypic free will as to how to react so as to best satisfy its individualized teloi.

I figure making the aforementioned any more concise would be to at best make it utterly unintelligible. So I’m leaving it as is.

But the kiss! I remember that! And I'm old enough now to recognize that as the miracle of chemistry in action. But there were choices. Chemistry was push; I had some choice of direction. Is there a telos here? — tim wood

:smile: Yup, I can remember it too. Haven't found my permanent mate yet, so I’m still looking forward to it myself. As to a telos, I’m arguing that if there was motivation to the kiss (consciously apprehended or not) then there was a telos (and if not, it would have been metaphysically mechanical). I’ve never heard it being applied to psyche, but motivation to me is a form of retrocausation: the motive is the effect as existent potential that temporally precedes the all the specific causes for it becoming manifest—with these causes for one’s objective becoming physically objective being the very telos/motive-governed choices one makes. But again, we humans often get to choose which aims/motives/teloi we subsequently willfully pursue.

The point is that telos is something in itself, or is just a word for things already described and named. Which way do you argue? — tim wood

Hope this longwinded post satisfactorily addressed this question.

No, I think that everything has its reason. What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason.

Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. — javra

That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos

Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason. — Janus

Except for what has been described as 'revelation' - whether Biblical or other.

What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? — Janus

I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing, for instance science itself; philosophy of science has quite a bit to say on that. Kant wrote extensively on the limits of reason. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-)

(Away from desk for rest of day, cheers.)

This is thin ice. Observe - name - know. You imply that the knowing is of the thing; but all this knowing is, is of the observations. To you a tree, a glorious exemplar of life, worthy of appreciation for all kinds of reasons - leave it alone! To me, firewood; its cold; chop it down! Your "no fundamental difference" becomes an abstraction. — tim wood

I can't see your point. You haven't explained how knowing what something is differs from deciding what to call it. I decide to call it "tree". You decide to call it "firewood". What would make you think that one of us knows what it is but the other does not?

I object too to a quality in your reduction that I'll call recursive, meaning that it - your process - always reaches back into itself, thus and thereby always secure in what it achieves because always solidly connected to its origins. And never free. Recursion never leaps. You have not allowed for the "I don't know" that enables the leap. Tree? Or firewood? Not both. Can you reconcile? I think you cannot, because both sides are based in decisions each side made. Will understanding finally tilt the scale one way or another? Maybe, through suspension of decision. The point is that when observation and analysis are done, there is always - still - a choice to be made. — tim wood

I don't see how you can say that I haven't allowed for "I don't know what it is". Obviously, if you do not know what to call it, then you do not know what it is. Also, why can it not be both, "tree" and "firewood"? I see no reason for the claim that it cannot be both. There is no reason why we cannot both know what it is, each knowing it by different words. Further, there is no need to reconcile. I have my reason to call it "tree", and you have your reason to call it "firewood". There would need to be a further reason to make reconciliation necessary.

I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-) — Wayfarer

Of course knowledge is limited, and the degree of limitation will depend in part on what you count as knowledge. It's important to maintain a distinction between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge grows and does so within the context of human understanding. Our understanding provides the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. So we can fairly precisely define the current limits of knowledge, but we cannot define the the limits of understanding, because it is the medium we cannot 'extract' ourselves from in order to identify any supposed limit.

In any case, you have changed the subject by talking about 'knowledge", when it was reason that was under discussion. Without reason there can be neither understanding nor knowledge of any kind. What do you mean by "modes of knowing"; could you give an example of some modes of knowing and their limits?

Finally, on what grounds do you accuse me of making "ex cathedra pronouncements"? As I see it, I am just here expressing my opinions as we all are. I am prepared to argue for my views reasonably when they come under fire. Are you prepared to argue for your views reasonably when they come under fire? Your fairly characteristic defensive "ex cathedra" comment does make me wonder whether you are here to protect your opinions or to test their mettle under the flames of critique.

The assymmetry here is that firewood is merely one small possibility of tree. "Tree' is the umbrella concept under which 'firewood' becomes intelligible.

Did you forget to count their interaction? — apokrisis

I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look:

The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — apokrisis

All you have described is the activity of the whole, and the activity of the parts. There is no description of any interaction. As I said, this requires "how" or "why" the whole shapes the parts, and "how" or "why" the parts make the whole. Otherwise you have not described the interaction

Your point?

You seemed to be speaking as though it were purely arbitrary in relation to understanding whether someone referred to it as 'tree' or "firewood"

Except for what has been described as 'revelation' - whether Biblical or other. — Wayfarer

Why do you say that revelation is outside the bounds of reason?

You seemed to be speaking as though it were purely arbitrary in relation to understanding whether someone referred to it as 'tree' or "firewood" — Janus

In relation to "knowing what it is", it is arbitrary. One can know what it is as "tree", or one could know what it is as "firewood". If you think that one is more properly "knowing what it is" than the other, then you need to refer to a further reason. But that reason is something other than knowing what it is.

The point is that knowing what it is as firewood is parasitic upon knowing what it is as tree, and obviously not vice versa.

The point is that knowing what it is as firewood is parasitic upon knowing what it is as tree, and obviously not vice versa. — Janus

I don't agree. You do not need to know that it is a tree in order to know that it is firewood. In fact, the knowledge of "what it is" quite possibly began with people knowing it as "firewood", before they came to know it as "tree" because much knowledge is derived from usage.

That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos — Wayfarer

Yes, true. Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. Not only is my knowledge of Aristotle mostly second hand—although I did read portion of his De Anima—but his concept of virtue as the human telos, while I ultimately agree with it, to me is too constrictive of human nature to be of much help on its own. We can choose other teloi in our attempts to best obtain satisfaction, happiness, flourishing and the like. As one example, the mass murderer that wills to get away with the perfect crime is not motivated by virtue in seeking his optimal happiness/flourishing, and sometimes perfect crimes have been committed in one way or another—the less grave the more common, such as in cheating someone or some community. Though the ugly part of human existence, these sometimes successful ambitions need to be taken into account as well—something that I so far don’t satisfactorily find in Aristotle. Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to. Stalin comes to mind here as example. Anyway, telos as it is associated with Aristotle to my knowledge doesn’t address such choices between what could be depicted as metaphysically possible aims. And virtue often times can result in much sorrow and strife, as well as failure—again, not something which Aristotle tmk satisfactorily addresses.

I so far find this in the article you’ve liked to as well.

Though I neglected to say it this time around, I usually say “an Aristotelian-like telos”—since I agree with his notion of a first teleological cause to existence in total … for clarity, this, again, more along the lines of Neoplatonist notions of “the One” as a non-deity awareness/being of omni-benevolence, aka perfect love, to which we hold various proximities, and which in imperfect ways resides both within and without all of us, as some say. But—seeing how one thing leads to another—I’ll cut this short

I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look:
The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole. — Metaphysician Undercover

????

No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on. So firewood is necessarily connected with trees, but trees are not necessarily connected with firewood.

I think there’s a conflation here of two senses of ‘reason’. One being, ‘reason’ in the sense of ‘causation’ - the reason why plants grow towards light - and ‘reason’ in the sense of the faculty of reason - how it is we discern and abstract reasons, what the faculty of reason consists of. — Wayfarer

I think you're right. Let's set aside reason as faculty of reason. That leaves cause: the how, and maybe the why.

"Cause," however, is a not-so-easy word. I find that absurd examples sometimes are instructive, or at least illustrative. You buy some dynamite from the hardware store to blast a tree stump in your yard. (You could actually do that in my lifetime!) You blow up the stump and sure enough, the police come and arrest you for "causing" an explosion. Of course, you did nothing of the kind. Ask yourself exactly what did cause the explosion. The answer must be some chemical reaction brought about by heat in the dynamite an infinitesimal moment before the blast. That is what caused the blast. At the same time, of course, you were the agent that brought it about, and so forth. The idea here s that "cause," if taken literally, is pretty much limited to the particulars of the circumstance immediately preceding and in contact with that make the event happen. Teleology, it seems to me, is more about motive, agency, and capacity. The point is that these latter, as telos, aren't in the thing. Your motive, agency, and capacity to get dynamite to blow a stump in no way whatsoever cause the dynamite to explode.

The cause of the explosion is reasonably well understood; telos has nothing to do with it. To my way of thinking, this example carries over and applies to any circumstance where physical forces are in play. In short, physics has no need for teleology.

Whether teleology can apply to motivation, free will, choices, the things that thinking beings do, is beyond me at this moment. Possibly it does, although it seems to me it must be external to the actor. In any case, our subject is a tree, which I think we agree cannot reason in your second sense.

My question was, "But if reasonable, then how so, if no mind?" I think your answer is, reason as cause, no mind required. Doesn't that bounce us back to the biological machine? Chemistry, sunlight, water....

Why do you say that revelation is outside the bounds of reason? — Janus

That’s not my invention. 'Reason and revelation' are defined and understood as different domains in philosophy of religion. You can find extensive discussions of this in Aquinas and many other sources in traditional philosophy.

The whole point about 'revealed truth' is that we learn something from it, which you can't learn by any other means including reasoning. I'm not evangelising in saying that - I'm not saying that you should believe it. But for the purpose of the discussion, if this question is asked, 'what could be above the bounds of reason?', then 'revealed truth' is one possible answer.

What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? — Janus

That's a deep question, obviously. You could answer with Wittgenstein: 'that of which we cannot speak'. But the problem with that answer is that it indeed does leave a great deal to conjecture; as is well known, the Vienna Circle understood him to be advocating positivism on the basis of this aphorism, which he really wasn't at all. (Actually Wittgenstein was quite a religious philosopher, in a broad and non-doctrinal sense.)

Here is a paradigmatic statement of a truth beyond the scope of reason:

These are those dhammas, bhikkhus, that are deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful and sublime, beyond the sphere of reasoning, subtle, comprehensible only to the wise, which the Tathāgata, having realized for himself with direct knowledge, propounds to others; and it is concerning these that those who would rightly praise the Tathāgata in accordance with reality would speak. — The Buddha

Brahmajāla Sutta - emphasis added.

In any case, in the three philosophical traditions that I am slightly familiar with (Christian, Hindu and Buddhist), there is a place for the 'beyond reason'. Of course, they are all clothed in very different metaphors and belief-systems. But in all of them, there is acceptance of the validity of reason - logic plays a part in all of them, indeed, they are the origin of a great deal of philosophy. But they point at what is beyond logic - in the poetic Buddhist metaphor, as 'the finger points at the moon'.

So there is that which falls beneath reason and rationality - mere unreason, the denial of obvious truths. But there is also that which is beyond reason - something which is so sublime and exalted in scope, that reason cannot reach it. To push the metaphor - trying to reason your way to it, is like shooting arrows at the moon.

Finally, on what grounds do you accuse me of making "ex cathedra pronouncements"? — Janus

Hey, I did wink. But you did say:

Nothing surpasses reason, and what falls short of it are only attitudes. — Janus

;-)

"Cause," however, is a not-so-easy word. I find that absurd examples sometimes are instructive, or at least illustrative. You buy some dynamite from the hardware store to blast a tree stump in your yard. (You could actually do that in my lifetime!) You blow up the stump and sure enough, the police come and arrest you for "causing" an explosion. Of course, you did nothing of the kind. Ask yourself exactly what did cause the explosion. — tim wood

'What exactly caused the explosion' was four-fold: dynamite has the power to explode (material cause); you lighting the fuse (efficient cause); your wish to remove the tree-stump (final cause i.e. the reason it
happened); and you used an explosive, not an emollient (the formal cause). That's a rough example in terms of the Aristotelian analysis of four-fold causation. But, the dynamite wouldn't have planted itself, as it lacks agency. If you said to the cops, 'hey the dynamite brought itself here and did that'....well.....

I'm not saying it because I'm an apologist for, or an expert about, Aristotle, but because his analysis provides a starting-point which is consistent with traditional philosophy. This also addresses Javra's point:

Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. — javra

On the subject of which:

Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to — javra

But I think Aristotle himself recognised and argued against tyranny or the pursuit of power for its own sake - after all, he is the source of 'virtue ethics', the view that 'ethical action is its own reward'. I think Aristotle, though counted 'a pagan philosopher', recognised a kind of cosmic law-giver, even if not the God of Christianity.

Whether teleology can apply to motivation, free will, choices, the things that thinking beings do, is beyond me at this moment. Possibly it does, although it seems to me it must be external to the actor. In any case, our subject is a tree, which I think we agree cannot reason in your second sense. — tim wood

The point is, at the time of the scientific revolution, a great deal of Aristotelian philosophy was rejected. After all, Aristotelian physics was shown to be mostly mere supposition, based on guesses as to what matter ought to do in keeping with a priori principles - stones 'wanted' to be near the earth, and so on. Galileo completely demolished it.

But Aristotelian ideas have made something of a comeback, in that now there is a recognition that something like 'four causes' model must have some merit. And the reason is that goal-directed activity is clearly intrinsic to any kind of living organisms. Life itself is incredibly purposeful. (It's only when it evolves to being bourgeois that it entertains the possibility that life has no purpose ;-)

Doesn't that bounce us back to the biological machine? Chemistry, sunlight, water.... — tim wood

Well, that is the answer of materialism, really - what we see are molecules in motion, impelled by merely chemical necessity, from which the illusion of agency springs (or apparently springs, as there really can be no agency.) This is Daniel Dennett, Jacques Monod, and other materialists. Personally, I think their entire philosophy is self-defeating.

The problem of 'agency' is a very deep one, obviously. I think there are deep issues around theism, the idea of a 'super-agent' who created and animated the Universe. But as I said in an earlier post in this thread: before the advent of modernity, we inhabited a living universe, a universe which was the expression of a living will, the 'theatre of the divine'. Whether this was the 'one God' of monotheism, or the deities of older traditions, what it naturally provided was a sense of agency and purpose, as well the sense of an 'I-thou' relationship with the Cosmos.

Now, if you asked one of the citizens of those times, whether they saw it that way, they might not even understand the question: it's only now, when we've grown accustomed to the notion that the Cosmos is a kind of lottery, that simply exists as a consequence of physics, that the thought becomes conceivable. In this context, for us, reason has become instrumentalized; reasons are only material and efficient, and maybe formal. But there's no general 'raison d'etre' - that is practically a definition of 'secular reason', isn't it?

But in terms of the Aristotelian tradition, as preserved by it's Thomist custodians:

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.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. 1

It is precisely that which is most lacking in modern culture: the sense that overall the world makes sense, that there's a reason for it, and for us existing in it. Hence the talk in existential literature about the abyss, the void, the sense of meaninglessness and emptiness which haunts the modern world. In that context, 'reason' can only ever be utilitarian and instrumental; it lacks an anchor in the physical universe.

No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on. — Janus

I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by different words. I called it "tree", tim called it "firewood".

You are making them into two distinct things, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about knowing what a thing is. One person knows the thing as "firewood", another knows it as "tree", the same thing.

The issue was whether there is a difference between having decided what to call the thing, and knowing what the thing is.

With reference to the causes of physical (inorganic and organic) and mental processes within a data-communication-information ontology, does the following seem reasonable?

1) Syntax (structural principles and/or data constraints) is formal cause.
2) Phenomena and/or noumena are material cause.
3) Entropy is the efficient cause of inorganic energy-mass transformation (inorganic message encoding/decoding).
4) Negentropy is the efficient cause of organic energy-mass transformation (organic message encoding/decoding).
5) Conscious (aware and responsive) agency is the efficient cause of symbol transformation (mental message encoding/decoding).
6) Message reaction is final cause.

Given:
1) Data (Form): asymmetries.
2) Communication: source production/encoding and/or transmission, conveyance, destination reception/decoding, or discovery of, and reaction to, data (Form).
3) Information: communicated data (Form).
4) Message: transmitted, conveyed, and received code.
5) Code: transformed, translated, or converted data (Form).