Do you think it would follow from that definition of intelligibility that nothing can ever be intelligible (in that specific Platonic sense) because, to whatever explanation is provided, one can always ask 'Why?' — "AndrewK
But the traditionalist account of intelligibility was such that it conveyed the sense of a complete, (if you like illuminated) understanding, in the sense of there no longer being any shortcoming or gap between the understanding and the thing understood. — Wayfarer
Can you explain what that completer expression is, and how it matches up to the definition of intelligibility you gave in your earlier post as being a complete understanding. Does human understanding of anything satisfy that completer expression? If so, of what?No, because I think within Platonism there is, I think, a terminus of explanation or a vision of the intelligibility of the Cosmos, which originated with Plato, and found completer expression by later Platonism (and neo-Platonism). — Wayfarer
Against whom are you arguing here? Has anybody in this thread accused ancient philosophies of using slogans or resting upon 'God did it'? Where?And to say that the ancient religious philosophies simply constitute a sticker saying 'God did it - ask no further!' betrays a basic misunderstanding of such accounts. .............
such understandings are embedded in a realm of discourse - taking them out of that, and referring to them as kind of formulae or slogans, can't convey anything meaningful about them.
Do you think it is possible that that understanding could ever be achieved?Understand final cause and we will know why the world has to exist the way it does. It's about making the world by reason, rather than existing states. — Willow
And science is a deeply metaphysical exerercise, explicit in making ontic commitments to get its games going. — apokrisis
"Thermodynamic self-organization". That sounds like some speculative notion, without any real science. Why do you call it "fact"?But now - through science and maths - we have discovered how structure in fact arises quite naturally in nature through fundamental principles of thermodynamic self-organisation. Disorder itself must fall into regular patterns for basic geometric reasons to do with symmetries and symmetry-breakings. — apokrisis
Here's a definition of self-organization I came across at BusinessDictionary.com: "Ability of a system to spontaneously arrange its components or elements in a purposeful (non-random) manner, under appropriate conditions without the help of an external agency."
There are a number of questionable issues here. — Metaphysician Undercover
Can you explain what that completer expression (in later Platonism) is, and how it matches up to the definition of intelligibility you gave in your earlier post as being a complete understanding. Does human understanding of anything satisfy that completer expression? If so, of what? — AndrewK
If you think that this demystifies the metaphysics of intention and purpose, you're in a dream. How does a vague explanation full of ambiguities, equivocation, and contradiction, demystify?So this is an example of how science does think through its metaphysics. As already said to you in other threads where you have rabbited on about the nature of purpose, a naturalistic systems view demystifies it by talking about final cause in terms of specific gradations of semiosis.
{teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.
Or in more regular language, {propensity {function {purpose}}}. — apokrisis
I don't think that this makes any sense at all, to think that "the world" could be unintelligible, yet local structures are intelligible? Are you disassociating local structures from the world, such that they are intelligible but the wold is not? How would you support such a separation?This doesn't automatically mean that 'the world' is or isn't intelligible - 'the world' may not be an object of intelligibility at all. But things 'in' the world, local structures, as it were, of which we make sense of everyday in our interactions with them - perhaps sometimes because of our interactions with them - means at the least that if it doesn't make sense to speak of an 'intelligible world', there is at least a suffusion of intelligibility - sense - throughout it. — StreetlightX
I don't think that this makes any sense at all, to think that "the world" could be unintelligible, yet local structures are intelligible? Are you disassociating local structures from the world, such that they are intelligible but the wold is not? How would you support such a separation? — Metaphysician Undercover
It is a faulty binary to go about saying science is empirical, philosophy is rational, therefore the two are mutually exclusive. Sure, you can advance that theory of the world in a way that makes it intelligible for you. But measurement should demonstrate the faultiness of such reason.
You yourself just said Schopenhauer was a rather empirical chap. And science is a deeply metaphysical exerercise, explicit in making ontic commitments to get its games going.
So you are applying the method by which we attempt to achieve intelligibility - trying to force through some LEM based account of the world. But you are failing to support it with evidence. — apokrisis
...there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. — darthbarracuda
I'm not trying to separate philosophy and science per se, merely point out that there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. — darthbarracuda
In other words, what I'm trying to access here is a systematic understanding of how we come to understand the world in the first place. — darthbarracuda
There's different methods within this broad "scientific" account you presented. If you're an astronomer, you'll use a telescope. If you're a microbiologist, you'll use a microscope. If you're a chemist, you'll use a thermometer and a plethora of other expensive equipment; same goes for practically any scientific field. — darthbarracuda
The point being made, though, is what exactly is the subject matter of philosophy, in particular metaphysics, that makes it a legitimate attempt to understand the world, and why this subject matter is usually unable to be studied by more..."mainstream" science. — darthbarracuda
There aren't really any "discoveries" within metaphysics, just explanations of what we already see on a day-to-day basis. — darthbarracuda
So everything reason does, Romanticism would want to do the opposite. — apokrisis
Yes, the business of measurement is various.
But I thought you were saying there are other methods of seeking intelligibility itself - methods that aren't just the general method of scientific reasoning. — apokrisis
Nope. That seems an utterly random statement to me. Do you have an example of current metaphysics papers of this kind? — apokrisis
It occurs to me that an additional necessary condition of something being a story (additional to the conscious teller and conscious listener) is that the sentences be in the indicative mode of speech, not the imperative or interrogative.Yet we don't need to talk about the computer telling the story. For all its of-then statements are programmed consciously by a programmer, and realized consciously by a user. — IVoyager
I don't really understand what you have in mind when you say "romanticism" or "PoMo". Do you not appreciate Spinoza, Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, etc? Only some? Only those who aren't easily fitted into your pragmatism? — darthbarracuda
Well, yes and no. If measurement is the only way of understanding the world (what I see as empiricism), then either is must be shown how philosophy utilizes measurement, or it must be seen with skepticism. — darthbarracuda
Usually philosophy utilizes things like counterfactual reasoning, thought experiments, etc. Other fields use these as well. These are generally "fuzzy" in their nature, though. When a philosopher thinks up something like, let's say, Neo-Platonism, it's extremely abstract and fuzzy. — darthbarracuda
In other words, a constraint is a totally different kind of thing from a zebra. The latter is studied by biologists, the former (as it is-itself) the metaphysician. — darthbarracuda
I'm referring to contemporary realist analytic metaphysics. — darthbarracuda
But yes, I am saying something much stronger than merely that romanticism does not fit easily with rationalism. I'm saying it is the maximally confused "other" of rationalism. — apokrisis
WTF? Have you ever taken a biology class? Are you so completely unaware of the impact that science's understanding of constraints has had on metaphysics? Next you will be saying Newton and Darwin told us a lot about falling apples and finch beaks, and contemporary philosophy shrugged its shoulders and said "nah, nothing to see here folks". — apokrisis
It's true that those employed in philosophy departments struggle to produce anything much that feels new these days. The real metaphysics of this kind is being done within the theoretical circles of science itself. The people involved would be paid as scientists. — apokrisis
I think you may just have an idea that science is somehow basically off track and you need a metaphysical revolution led by philosophers to rescue it. — apokrisis
What legitimate differences are there between your conception of metaphysics and theoretical physics? — darthbarracuda
Nobody pays you to think about the world, they pay you for results that can be applied to the economy in some way, and everyone's gotta pay the bills. — darthbarracuda
As I've already said, I see metaphysics and science as united by a common method of reasoning - the presumption the world is intelligible because it is actually rationally structured in a particular way. — apokrisis
And I am afraid we do see that other showing its Bizzaro head and claiming to be doing Bizzaro metaphysics (and also crackpot science, of course). — apokrisis
But still, if we are talking about who is best equipped to do metaphysical-strength thinking these days, that is a different conversation. — apokrisis
What is this particular way? The semiotic trifold? — darthbarracuda
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