I'd still like to know what you think are examples of bad metaphysics.

You mistake me - I didn't say that 'the world is unintelligible'; I said that it may well be the case that something as abstract as 'the world' doesn't submit to the criteria of intelligibility at all - that it may well be neither intelligible or unintelligible; the very notion of intelligibility may not even apply to something as strange as 'the world' - whatever that even means. Put it this way - I know what it means to 'make sense' of this or that phenomenon: 'how does that work?', 'what contributes to function of that process?'; but when you ask these questions of 'the world', the questions themselves start to lose any cogency. — StreetlightX

Yes, I see your point, but now we're not talking about the meaning of "intelligibility", we're talking about the meaning of "the world". I don't think "the world" is a strange concept at all. It implies a unity of all that is. Of course it has been mostly replaced by "the universe", and now the reality of this unity has been called into question by some, with concepts such as "multiverse". But to deny the reality of the universe, is not to question the intelligibility of "the universe", it is to deny that this concept represents anything real. Sometimes it is the case that a highly useful, and therefore intelligible concept, doesn't represent anything real, like the circle evidently doesn't represent anything real, it's conceptual only. But this ideal, is a very useful standard, for judging real things, with respect to how closely they approximate the ideal circle.

I happen to believe that "the world", or "the universe", as an expression of the oneness, or unity of being, is highly intelligible. So when we ask about "the world", we are not asking about this or that phenomenon, we are asking about the totality of phenomena, as a whole. Does it make sense to talk about the totality of phenomena? Can they all be classed together, as one category? Sure it makes sense, because I've already classed it together, as the "phenomena".

But what if we knew of something which could not be classed with the other phenomena? How could we establish consistency, saying that the world is a unity of all, yet there is something which cannot be classed with the others?

For one thing, to make something intelligible is always to do so against the background of a certain (set of) interests - for whom, for what purpose, to what end is the intelligibility of the thing sought? Things and phenomena are not simply 'intelligible' tout court; there is no intelligibility-in-itself; it is always a question of relevance - in what context and under what circumstances does intelligibility come into question? — StreetlightX

This is just like Plato's "the good". The good, as described in The Republic, is what makes intelligible objects intelligible, like the sun makes visible objects visible. It is as you say, that background set of interests, the purpose, which directs the intellect toward understanding this, and not toward that Whatever it is which becomes intelligible to an individual intellect, is dependent on one's interests

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

Right, measurement must be viewed with skepticism. All forms of measurement are methods of comparing one thing to another. The validity of such comparisons must be analyzed. This means that all forms of measurement should be scrutinized.

But calling measurement objective is a little ironic given that it is so completely subjective now in being dependent on understanding the world only in terms of dial readings. Science says, well, if in the end there is only our phenomenology, our structure of experience, then lets make even measurement something consciously a phenomenological act. — apokrisis

Measurement need not be subjective. It gains objectivity through an understanding of what the "dial readings" mean. The dial reading may mean something to you, and something different to me, depending on our purpose, what we are using it for. But if we look at how the dial reading was produced, what it actually signifies, here we find objectivity.

Also, contemporary realist metaphysics is largely concerned with ontology and not with the broader metaphysical stories. It's far more conservative than your version of metaphysics, with the only notable things I can think of being discussions of supervenience, grounding, causality and semantic meaning. And perhaps time.

I'd still like to know what you think are examples of bad metaphysics. — darthbarracuda

It's hard to be particular because the ways of expressing the generalised confusion of romanticism are so various. But anything panpsychic like Whitehead, or aesthetic like SX cites. I don't mind theistic approaches because they stick to a Greek framework of simplicity and so can deal with the interesting scholarly issues - right up to the point where God finally has to click in.

Also, contemporary realist metaphysics is largely concerned with ontology and not with the broader metaphysical stories. — darthbarracuda

Again, who are you talking about in particular?

It's far more conservative than your version of metaphysics, with the only notable things I can think of being discussions of supervenience, grounding, causality and semantic meaning. — darthbarracuda

What you might be talking about just keeps getting muddier to me.

What you might be talking about just keeps getting muddier to me. — apokrisis

The late E.J. Lowe, Jonathan Schaffer, Tuomas Tahko, Ted Sider, Susan Haack, Michael J. Loux, the late David Lewis, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy Williamson, Amie Thomasson, Sally Haslanger, David Chalmers, Kit Fine, D. M. Armstrong, Trenton Merricks, Eli Hirsch, Ernest Sosa, Daniel Korman, Kathrin Koslicki, Jaegwon Kim, etc.

The analytics.

It's hard to be particular because the ways of expressing the generalised confusion of romanticism are so various. But anything panpsychic like Whitehead, or aesthetic like SX cites. I don't mind theistic approaches because they stick to a Greek framework of simplicity and so can deal with the interesting scholarly issues - right up to the point where God finally has to click in. — apokrisis

You read Heidegger, Husserl, the idealists?

In my experience, apo targets any metaphysic which places itself outside causality-- those which identify logical relationships are not an action of causality.

This encompasses everything from realist (particularly direct ones), anti-realist (e.g. post-modern accounts of identity and meaning) and probably idealistic ones which view the world as a question a brute experience.

But causality itself is not something that can be affected by cause and affect. It's a metaphysical term.

The late E.J. Lowe, Jonathan Schaffer, Tuomas Tahko, Ted Sider, Susan Haack, Michael J. Loux, the late David Lewis, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy Williamson, Amie Thomasson, Sally Haslanger, David Chalmers, Kit Fine, D. M. Armstrong, Trenton Merricks, Eli Hirsch, Ernest Sosa, Daniel Korman, Jaegwon Kim, etc.

The analytics. — darthbarracuda

Yep. Most of those I would be in deep disagreement with. But now because they represent the reductionist and dualistic tendency rather than the romantically confused.

That is why I am a Pragmatist. As I said, reductionism tries to make metaphysics too simple by arriving at a dichotomy and then sailing on past it in pursuit of monism. The result is then a conscious or unwitting dualism - because the other pole of being still exists despite attempts to deny it.

You read Heidegger, Husserl, the idealists? — darthbarracuda

Not with any great energy. I'm quite happy to admit that from a systems science standpoint, it is quite clear that the three guys to focus on are Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce. Others like Kant and Hegel are important, but the ground slopes away sharply in terms of what actually matters to my interests.

I mean that apo views metaphysics as casual-- the logical expressions of semiotics act to form the constraint of the world, to constitute which states are caused.

So any metaphysics which deny this, such as the realist who argues the object-in-itself or the post-modernist who argues discourse in-itself, are (supposedly) missing the truth that are world is caused through metaphysics, that logic (supposedly) means our world.

Yep. Most of those I would be in deep disagreement with. But now because they represent the reductionist and dualistic tendency rather than the romantically confused.

That is why I am a Pragmatist. As I said, reductionism tries to make metaphysics too simple by arriving at a dichotomy and then sailing on past it in pursuit of monism. The result is then a conscious or unwitting dualism - because the other pole of being still exists despite attempts to deny it. — apokrisis

Why is this reductionism a bad thing, what is this dichotomy, and what kind of monism do you suppose they are attempting to find?

Not with any great energy. I'm quite happy to admit that from a systems science standpoint, it is quite clear that the three guys to focus on are Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce. Others like Kant and Hegel are important, but the ground slopes away sharply in terms of what actually matters to my interests. — apokrisis

Heidegger is extremely important, yo. He owes so much to Aristotle and yet also diverges from him fundamentally. Outside of philosophy he is also very influential in cognitive science programs, particularly those focusing on attention and perception.

What I don't understand is why this view hasn't been brought to the table more often, if it is indeed worthy of discussion.

Also, I think you might find interest in at least some of what the analytics have to say, particularly Koslicki, Loux, Lowe and Tahko (hard-core hylomorphist neo-Aristotelians).

Apo's?

It conflicts with the popular sides of the metaphysical divide. The materialists don't like it because it denies their separation of logic and the world. On the other hand, many immaterialists and anti-realists don't like it because it subsumes logical meaning into the world.

On the other hand, many immaterialists and anti-realists don't like it because it subsumes logical meaning into the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

How about that it is constantly pointing to a map and not the terrain? If the logic was the terrain.. then please let me know how logic magically turns into sensation and internal experience. I know, I know..it's just my piddly dualistic thinking..

I'll sort of defend apo here, if only for a moment and because mind/body dualism is terrible.

I'd say you are strawmanning. No-one said logic turned into sensation and experience. Under an argument which considers logic a constraining force of causality, it's always consider to be within the world. Sensation and experience were never separate to logic or the world in the first place. They don't need to turn into anything to be there. If logic has always been the terrain, it doesn't need to shift from a map to terrain.

Sensation and experience were never separate to logic or the world in the first place. They don't need to turn into anything to be there. If logic has always been the terrain, it doesn't need to shift from a map to terrain. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't get how logic is sensation then. I'm all ears.

Also, I think you might find interest in at least some of what the analytics have to say, particularly Koslicki, Loux, Lowe and Tahko (hard-core hylomorphist neo-Aristotelians). — darthbarracuda

Any secondary literature that talks about my primary interests - Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce - is going to be interesting to me. And the secondary literature around Aristotle is of course vast. He is the context for metaphysics, so every camp has to have something to say on that.

But we have strayed away from the OP.

The speculative/contentious point that I make there is the one that is represented by Anaximander and Peirce, rather than Aristotle. And that is that the Cosmos is intelligible because it itself represents a creative process that can be understood as the bootstrapping development of intelligibility.

So as a metaphysical position, it is "way out there". :)

But also, it is a holistic way of thinking about existence which is pretty scientific now.

So systems science or natural philosophy is an Aristotelean four causes tradition that indeed detours through German idealist philosophers like Schelling. And then Peirce makes the connection between symbol and matter as the way to operationalise the four causes in the way modern science can recognise. Formal and final purpose become top-down constraints that shape bottom-up material and effective freedoms. And constraints become the symbolised part of nature - the information that is the memory of a system or dissipative structure.

So the intelligibility of nature is a consequence of nature itself being a fundamentally semiotic or "mind-like" process. That is why Peirce described existence as the generalised growth in reasonableness.

But calling it mind-like is really only to stress how far out of Kansas we are when it comes to standard issue reductionist realism which only wants to acknowledge a reality born of material and efficient cause. So calling it mind-like isn't to invoke a phenomenological notion or mind, nor the dualist notion of mind, but instead semiotics own idea of mindfulness, which is quite different in its own way metaphysically.

I don't get how logic is sensation then. I'm all ears. — schopenhauer1

It is the structure of sensation. And sensation without structure feels like nothing (well, like vagueness to be more accurate).

So if the world is logically structured, then that is the structure sensation needs to develop to be aware of the world.

And the world itself must be logically structured as how else could it arrive at an organisation that was persistent and self-stable enough for there to be "a world", as opposed to a vague chaos of disorganised fluctuations?

So if the world is logically structured, then that is the structure sensation needs to develop to be aware of the world.

And the world itself must be logically structured as how else could it arrive at an organisation that was persistent and self-stable enough for there to be "a world", as opposed to a vague chaos of disorganised fluctuations? — apokrisis

I notice you self-justified "Logic" with "logic" and moved the topic away from sensation. You said: "So if the world is logically 'structured' then that is the structure sensation needs to develop to be aware of the world'. Well, that is not sensation, that is the structure in which sensation works within, not the sensation itself.

Strictly speaking, sensation isn't logic exactly, but rather dependent on logic. Our experiences and feelings are the result of many systems constraining in a symbolic way. Sensation has a structure of logic.

Sensation "just is" part of the same realm of logic and everything else, rather than being "just not" of the same realm under mind/body dualism. Sensations aren't separate to the world and logic. They are all part of the same system.

Strictly speaking, sensation isn't logic exactly, but rather dependent on logic. Our experiences and feelings are the result of many systems constraining in a symbolic way. Sensation has a structure of logic. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Then same response as Apo.

Sensation "just is" part of the same realm of logic and everything else, rather than being "just not" of the same realm under mind/body dualism. Sensations aren't separate to the world and logic. They are all part of the same system. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sensation and logic are what then? The same part of what system?

Well, I was arguing his metaphysics.

Sensation and logic are what then? The same part of what system? — schopenhauer1

Logical realm-- things of the same type which are connected and interact. Sort of like either "mind" or "body" in substance dualism. Or "material" under materialism. Only it has a triform--logic (semiotics, symbols), body (objects) and mind (experiences).

Well, that is not sensation, that is the structure in which sensation works within, not the sensation itself. — schopenhauer1

So you say. But good luck with a psychology which is not focused on a structure of distinctions as opposed to your panpsychic pixels.

Logical realm-- things of the same type which are connected and interact. Sort of like either "mind" or "body" in substance dualism. Or "material" under materialism. Only it has a triform--logic (semiotics, symbols), body (objects) and mind (experiences). — TheWillowOfDarkness

But these three things are given as brute facts then, and are not explained except as "just there" and essentially this conflates to panpsychism but apparently a panpsychic trinity instead of a strict monism or dualism. Either way, if panpsychists say that matter is mind, and that this can be logically configured and measured using semiotic methods, how is the panpsychist different from the pragmatic semiotic theorist?

So you say. But good luck with a psychology which is not focused on a structure of distinctions as opposed to your panpsychic pixels. — apokrisis

I guess I will give a similar response to Willow.. How is the panpyschist that different from a pragmatic semiotic theorist if both take experience as a brute fact? Or does Willow describe your position incorrectly? Semiotics, body, and mind are not the brute triad facts that interact and make reality?

Panpsychism doesn't say matter is mind (that would make it entirely idealism). It says any matter has mind (experience). This distinction is sort of important. It considers mind and body as distinct. All matter has some sort of experience, rather than all matter being experience.

The semiotic theorist doesn't agree with this. A symbol is not a mind. The pixels on the screen might by symbolic, but they are not conscious beings. Experience might be a brute fact, but it's not a brute fact everywhere (and most critically, for the semiotic theorist, these brute facts have a logical structure; there can't be these facts without the first having the logic).

The distinction between panpsychism and non-reductionist realism is also similar. Such a realism understands experience to be brute fact, it just doesn't say it's given with all matter.

Panpsychism doesn't say matter is mind (that would make it entirely idealism). It says any matter has mind (experience). This distinction is sort of important. It considers mind and body as distinct. All matter has some sort of experience, rather than all matter being experience. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is a really thin distinction if any.. But I'll go along with your pseudo-distinction if that makes you feel better or to have a better grasp on the issue..

The semiotic theorist doesn't agree with this. A symbol is not a mind. The pixels on the screen might by symbolic, but they are not conscious beings. Experience might be a brute fact, but it's not a brute fact everywhere (and most critically, for the semiotic theorist, these brute facts have a logical structure; there can't be these facts without the first having the logic). — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is giving short thrift to panpsychists like (presumably) Whitehead, who clearly had a logic for his bits of "occasions of experience". Panpsychists aren't just 'free for allists'. Rather, they too probably think that the occasions of experience that are fundamental (matter/experience bits) and then are shaped by logical structures to form various types of experiential structures.

How is the panpyschist that different from a pragmatic semiotic theorist if both take experience as a brute fact? — schopenhauer1

I would put "experience" in quote marks to show that even to talk about it is already to turn it into a measurable posited within a theoretical structure.

So the main difference is that you are taking experience as a brute fact. Essentially you are being a naive realist about your phenomenological access. Qualia are real things to you.

I would take qualia as being the kinds of facts we can talk about - given a suitable structure of ideas is in place.

Your approach is illogical. Either it is homuncular in requiring a self that stands outside "the realm of brute experience" to do the experiencing of the qualia. Or the qualia simply are "experiential", whatever the heck that could mean in the absence of an experiencer.

My way is logical. It is the global structure of observation that shapes up the appearance of local observables. And these observables have the nature of signs. They are symbols that anchor the habits of interpretation.

So in talking about qualia - the colour red, the smell of a rose - this is simply how pixellating talk goes. It is something we can learn to do by applying a particular idea of experience to the business of shaping up experience's structure. If I focus hard in the right way, I can sort of imagine redness or a rose scent in a disembodied, elemental, isolated, fashion as the qualia social script requires. I can perform that measurement in terms of that theory and - ignoring the issues - go off believing that a panpsychic pixels tale of mind is phenomenologically supported.