Right! I mean, the idea that your statements 'correspond to reality' seems intuitively obvious, but when you actually consider what such 'correspondence' entails, then it gets interesting. What I'm saying is that even there, there is an implicit ability to grasp abstractions - 'this must mean that' - prior to an empirical claim. — Wayfarer

I think you've misunderstood: I was actually saying that it is the questioning of the reality of the shared world which is constitutes a performative contradiction.

Also, when you say "an implicit ability to grasp abstractions" it depends on what you mean to imply by that. At its least tendentious of course it just means that we have to know what we are saying when we make empirical claims; and that obviously just means that we know the meanings of the words we use to make the claim, that we know what those words refer to.

So we exist because of the development of constraints. And to understand that history of symmetry-breakings, we have to melt the rather frozen block of constraints that now compose the structure of a Cosmos which is only a few fractions from its ultimate Heat Death — apokrisis

You say you accept a ‘four-causes’ cosmology - material, efficient, formal and final - but here the ‘ultimate Heat Death’ represents ‘the final cause’, in the sense of ‘that to which all things are directed’. Does it not?

//ps// After I wrote that, I thought ‘it looks awfully heavy’ - like, inquisitorial. I really didn’t mean it to come across like that. But I think it’s important in the context, just to orientate the discussion.//

Also, when you say "an implicit ability to grasp abstractions" it depends on what you mean to imply by that. — Janus

Language, mathematics, and the other intellectual operations uniquely characteristic of h. Sapiens.

Isn't it possible that spirit (a different domain) is somehow part of the mind-body equation which determines the behaviour of a human organism (a neutral monist substance)? — Galuchat

A big question in its own right. There are many possible responses, but the Mahayana Buddhist analysis is instructive in this regard. — Wayfarer

Right. My point is that mind-body dualism should be based on a scientific, not religious (or theological), argument; and that it would be proven to be unsound on that account.

Aristotle sufficiently refuted Pythagorean idealism, and the form of Platonic idealism which is basically the same as modern Platonic realism. This did not prevent the Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians from developing a form of dualism which was immune to such refutation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Case in point: the re-definition of soul to mean mind instead of form, per Thomas Aquinas.

Language, mathematics, and the other intellectual operations uniquely characteristic of h. Sapiens. — Wayfarer

It is obvious what you were referring to by "grasping abstractions", it is regarding the implications of that ability that the controversy is in play.

You say you accept a ‘four-causes’ cosmology - material, efficient, formal and final - but here the ‘ultimate Heat Death’ represents ‘the final cause’, in the sense of ‘that to which all things are directed’. Does it not? — Wayfarer

Yes. I’ve said exactly that plenty of times surely? That is the most fundamental global cosmic tendency.

That doesn’t stop complexity arising along the way. But it is the final game that underlies all others.

Well, that’s where I think your philosophy tends towards nihilism. [No offence.]

My point is that mind-body dualism should be based on a scientific, not religious (or theological), argument; and that it would be proven to be unsound on that account. — Galuchat

To say that it must be a scientific matter, locates the issue in the phenomenal domain, which already presumes an implicit metaphysic.

Mind-body interactions are a matter of empirical fact, not metaphysics.

Surely it must be the opposite to believe nature is imbued with an over arching purpose?

Actually - and I know we've discussed this quite a few times - what I'm starting to understand through research, is that the 'hylomorphic' (matter~form) dualism of Aristotle is what was incorporated into Thomas Aquinas. Now, Lloyd Gerson, whom as you probably know of, says that in his view, despite their differences, Aristotle remained broadly speaking Platonist and that regardless of their differences, Aristotle is still broadly Platonist. — Wayfarer

I agree that Aristotle was, broadly speaking, Platonist. But through the terms of his dualism, matter and form, which are associated with "potential" and "actual" respectively, he manages to refute Pythagorean idealism, and what he refers to in my translation as "some Platonists". This can be found in book nine of the Metaphysics.

Plato himself turned against this form of idealism, commonly called Platonic realism today. I've seen it argued that he actually refutes this idealism (Pythagorean idealism, or Platonic realism) in the Parmenides. And, in the Timaeus, which is of his latest works, he offers a completely different form of idealism, which relies on a divine mind, similar to Berkeley.

The key problem which arises in Plato's extensive expose is the nature of the separation between the ideas which you and I have, and the proposed separate "Idea", which is represented by Parmenides as eternal unchanging truth. In his earlier works, such as the Symposium, you can find Plato describing and explaining the concept of "participation". We come to apprehend the reality of independent Ideas in this way. As individuals we form an idea of "beauty" (the example in The Symposium) from observing things which are said to be beautiful. But to validate this subjective notion of beauty we must assume that the things actually partake in an independent "Idea of Beauty" in order that there is any truth to saying that they are beautiful.

Notice the extremely subjective nature of the example, "beauty". This is intentional to expose the difficulties of the independent Idea. Since all ideas, concepts are essentially the same, the example holds right through to the most certain and "objective" of the mathematical ideas. So Plato uses an extremely subjective idea, to demonstrate that even the most objective ideas, such as the ones utilized in mathematics, receive their objectivity in the same way that an extremely subjective idea could receive objectivity. This is by means of the assumption of the independent "Idea". Mathematics receives its objectivity through the assumption of independent mathematical objects, "Ideas".

Having exposed this principle in his early works, Plato moves along to analyze the problems which develop from this assumption, the assumption of independent Ideas. The first logical consequent, which is already accepted by Parmenides and the Pythagoreans is that these ideas, independent from the changing human mind, must be eternal. If we remove the forces of change to the Idea, the human mind, the Idea cannot change.

This eternal uinchangingness becomes a very serious difficulty for Plato. It is basically the "epistemological problem" which Uber points to. These eternal Ideas are necessarily passive, being actively "participated in", or "partaken of" by the activities of material things. You can see that Plato gets a glimpse of this issue in The Republic with his introduction of "the good". "The good" can be understood as the inclination to act. What causes a person to act is a perceived "good". So "the good" becomes representative of the cause of activity, the cause of actuality. Now Plato has the principle whereby he can move "Ideas" from the category of eternally passive, to the category of active in causation. Under "the good", ideas are associated with the will to act, as having causal relevance. The problem of giving causal power to independent Ideas is resolved by allowing for an independent will. In theology this becomes the will of God. God created the material world because he saw that it was good.

You can see in the Parmenides that Plato is still trying to cling to the notion of participation, in which material things actively participate in the passive, independent Ideas, but it is not working out. Socrates gives a very heartfelt defence of the Parmenidean Ideas, arguing that the Idea is like the day. No matter how many different places partake of the day, it changes nothing of the day itself. But we can see through this, knowing that in reality the day is actively passing. So while the day appears to be passive, and partaken of, it is actually active, actively imparting itself to the places that partake.. And while it appears like the physical things are actively taking part in the passive day, and this constitutes the passing of the day, what is really occurring is that the passing of the day is the activity which imparts itself, as the cause of all the apparent activities of the passive things.

So this is the principle that is present in the Timaeus which is key to understanding dualism and getting beyond the objections of Aristotle, and the "epistemological problem". The independent Forms are active, as necessitated by the above discussion, and Aristotle's cosmological argument. It is the human misconception of "time" which renders the Forms as passive, non causal, outside of time, eternal. When our conception of time excludes the possibility that something non-physical (Forms), may be active (being impossible because the conception of time leaves them outside time, therefore inactive), then these Forms are necessarily eternal, therefore passive and non causal. This misconception of "time", as a premise, produces the conclusion that immaterial Forms are necessarily outside of time, therefore inactive and non-causal. This is Uber's epistemic problem. But the epistemic problem does not refute dualism as Uber claims, what it does is serve as evidence of the human misconception of time.

At issue is wholly and solely the reality of abstracts, as far as I'm concerned, and that is where Platonists of whatever stripe have a case to make. — Wayfarer

The point then, in a nutshell (if the above is too rambling) is this. When we conceive of Forms, mathematical objects, laws of physics, and this type of constraint, as outside of time, eternal, our principles are subject to this "epistemic problem". "Outside of time", eternal, renders the Forms as inactive, passive, and necessarily non-causal. So we are forced to either reject the independent Forms as the materialists and physicalists choose to do, or reconceive the relationship between the Forms and time, such that the Forms may be active, as the theologians have done. If we choose the latter, then it becomes immediately evident that we cannot have a conception of time which is derived from the motions of material objects. This will place the activities of the immaterial Forms as outside of time, incomprehensible, unintelligible, contradictory, as time is required for activity.

In a normal world, the assertion that reason permeates the "rational operations of the mind" would be considered circular nonsense, equivalent to saying that "reason permeates reason." But in the fairy tale that Wayfarer has imagined in this thread, reason has been artificially detached from the rational operations of the mind. So instead of it being nonsense, it pretends to be something deep and profound.

To get a better sense of this philosophical sophistry, let's try to explain emotion. On the dualist explanation, emotion permeates the emotional states of the mind, and thus precedes all feelings. So instead of emotion being a general indicator for the various feelings that arise naturally in human beings, emotion instead becomes a transcendent realm onto itself, the foundational source and wellspring for actual human emotions in the real world. Naturalism would fail to describe anything here as well, because the use of emotional states to explain human emotion presupposes the existence of an external emotional source, which conveniently lies very much outside of natural explanation. But why stop at reason or emotion? There are a million arguments that can be made against naturalism just on this way of thinking. Take sensation. To explain any sensation, like sight or touch, requires the prior existence of sensation separate from human experience. But since all we have to work with are sensations in the realm of experience, none of these can be an explanation for sensation itself, which obviously precedes the senses.

They will argue that emotions and sensations very much require experience and cannot be thought of as a priori. But I would argue that experience can merely explain why people become sad or happy. It cannot explain the general feeling of sadness through material causation, and hence emotion too must exist on a magical Platonic realm, ready to "permeate our feelings" with meaning.

You see how easy it all is? To reach absurd conclusions when you totally detach metaphysics from empirical reality.

We already know what makes us more intelligent than other primates or hominids: 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex arranged in very special ways. That's the reason why we have language, abstract thoughts, and can waste time on silly philosophical debates online. We do not need to invent magical realms to help explain why humans are different. We know it's because we had a unique evolutionary history, which primed us to have certain traits and abilities but not others.

Your attempted argument against the correspondence theory fails, because it does not follow that a belief about reality is the same thing as having knowledge of reality. Your objection would also be laughable to a direct realist, who would turn this battle exclusively into a fight between philosophy vs. neuroscience. I won't go there myself, but you get my point. Nor does the correspondence theory need to stand alone, without other epistemic support. For example, one can believe in this theory and still be a kind of structuralist, where the truth value of logical and mathematical statements is understood by relation to the wider systems in which they exist. At the same time, one can also believe that those systems approximate important features of reality, even without fully approaching an absolute description.

Suppose I have the general belief that the mind exists independently from external reality. In other words, the existence of the mind and all of its operations do not require the existence of an external reality. One way to test this hypothesis is to permanently cut off our oxygen supply and see what happens to the conscious mind. Having seen the consequences, we have then moved on from belief to something more closely resembling knowledge. Our belief in this case acted as a kind of prediction about what could happen to the mind. The falsification of the prediction necessarily requires some kind of adjustment to the original belief. Thus our predictions can be updated in the face of empirical evidence. If they hold up well, we would say they correspond. Against correspondence theories, we have essentially a bunch of competitors where truth amounts to various versions of relativism.

Nothing written about the epistemological problem actually addressed the problem itself. You spend a few paragraphs whining and complaining about how neurobiology cannot explain mathematical reasoning. Of course that's false, because I just demonstrated in my last post how gradual acts of inference across different fields led to the development of foundational logic. You will then interpret this as a kind of rational miracle, the human mind discovering timeless truths after hundreds of thousands of years in the dark. You can indulge and decorate these fairy tales all you wish, but you did not explain how your magical realms inform our mathematical intuition. You just assume the existence of "innate ideas" and "intuition," but you yourself have no idea how they actually work or why they are required, without the usual fantasies that roam your mind.

Apart from the fact that our causal theories have moved on from Aristotle and we are no longer stuck in a philosophical time warp like certain people here, you yourself acknowledged that naturalism could allow for "final causes" when you mention the passing of genes. More broadly, here is a candidate final cause or physical objective for all life, not just humans: to avoid thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the natural environment by continuously dissipating away energy to that environment. The real issue for you isn't final or material or efficient causes. Those are just words that you use to fill space. It's that you don't like the specific causes being invoked to explain the world, because they do not require the prior existence of your magical realm.

The last paragraph is just false. The vast majority of physicists are naturalists, in the ontological sense of the word. Dualism is not taken seriously in any of the hard sciences, because it's inherently contradictory.

To Undercover:

You sound like a broken record. I have already admitted that we don't always know what does the constraining. I certainly don't think it's a matter of writing down an equation. At best that can accurately describe what is being constrained, but cannot always conclude what did the constraining. Under certain theories of quantum gravity, entangled states give rise to space and time, and hence you can see these exotic motions as constraining the possibilities of emergent motions. But then you will ask what constrains the entangled states. The honest answer is I don't know. I could invent fairy tales like you and Wayfarer, but I have too much self-respect.

I kind of like the answer that apokrisis gave in the previous page, seeing constraints through an eternal cycle of development. I don't know if this view is right or even I fully agree with it, but there is opportunity through this line of thinking for metaphysical development of what constraints mean and where they come from.

Having said all that, it is abundantly clear to me that the definition I gave for physical stuff is at least empirically reliable, even though it has outstanding metaphysical questions...as any definition for anything would!

You sound like a broken record. — Uber

That's the idea, I keep harping away at inadequacies, contradictions and hypocrisy, until the professors of said inadequacies admit to the inadequacy. Do you admit that the principles you espouse fall victim to very same epistemic problem that you cite against dualism, as I described? If you do, then you should look into a true dualism, like the one I profess, which avoids this epistemic problem.

No obviously they do not contain the same problem, for the reasons that apokrisis explained and for the reasons that I mentioned: namely that we know about constraints on larger states of motion emerging from more fundamental states of motion. There could be some kind of metaphysical resolution there. The epistemological problem only exists when you divide reality into multiple realms and then pick and choose which causal rules apply in one realm but not the other.

Nor does your attempted resolution of the epistemological problem above work for dualism. First because it assumes that "Forms" exist when there is no evidence for them. But more fundamentally, because you assume that any conception of time can exist separately from space, which is a categorical no in modern physics. So your fairy tales cannot simply be "active" in time and then go on vacation. They would have to exist in spacetime, meaning they should be located somewhere. That would make them physical in a fundamental sense, even if you don't accept my definition. Naturalism remains the correct position.

You keep harping and repeating your own delusions. If that sounds like an achievement to you, then you just might be a dualist.

Nothing I have read so far warrants throwing Platonism out with Dualism.

To clarify, on your view:
1) Forms (both General and Particular) are not physical, mental, or spiritual?
2) It is only information which may be intelligible (pure) or substance (empirical)?
3) How does your "true dualism" address the mind-body problem?

No obviously they do not contain the same problem, for the reasons that apokrisis explained and for the reasons that I mentioned: namely that we know about constraints on larger states of motion emerging from more fundamental states of motion. There could be some kind of metaphysical resolution there. The epistemological problem only exists when you divide reality into multiple realms and then pick and choose which causal rules apply in one realm but not the other. — Uber

By your own definition of "physical" you have divided reality into multiple realms. You say that the physical is "any system subject to energetic constraints". By this definition you divide reality into the physical (that which is subject to constraints), and the constraints themselves.

Apokrisis does not provide a solution to this problem, as we've discussed this before. There is no logical way that the non-physical, the constraints, can emerge from the physical, that which is constrained. Emergence of constraints implies a time of no constraints prior to the existence of constraints. But it is illogical to think that that which is fundamentally unconstrained (prior to constraints) could produce its own constraints. If constraints have always existed, then the "fundamental states of motion" already had constraints, and "emergence" is denied as inapplicable to this situation. But this makes constraints prior to motion, as constraining all motions, and therefore eternal. Now we have the epistemological problem. How does something prior to time and motion (constraints) have causal efficacy in the physical world?

Having said all that, it is abundantly clear to me that the definition I gave for physical stuff is at least empirically reliable, even though it has outstanding metaphysical questions...as any definition for anything would! — Uber

Your reliance on "empirical reality" is what is misleading. Empirical reality is based in sensation, and sensation is fallible. That's why we turn to logic, to lead us out of the mistaken assumptions of empirical reality. Our sense observation lead us astray because of the limited capacities of the senses, while reason and logic allow us to identify the mistakes which the senses lead us into, and rectify them. Ultimately the "logical reality" must be given priority over the "empirical reality", in order that the intellect can overcome the problems given to it by the senses. You, like apokrisis, appear to believe that we must depreciate our logical principles, because our senses give us an "empirical reality" of vagueness which logic cannot grasp. Logical principles must be adapted to empirical evidence even if the senses give us illogical confusion. Instead of realizing that this is a deficiency of our senses, you would insist that it is a deficiency of logic, suggesting as apokrisis does, that logical principles be degraded to allow that the confusion which the senses hand us is a real aspect of the universe rather than a deficiency of the human being's ability to apprehend. As you give priority to the "empirical reality" rather than the intelligible reality.

Nothing written about the epistemological problem actually addressed the problem itself. — Uber

Have you read how I have addressed the epistemological problem. The same problem was really addressed thousands of years ago by Plato. Ancient dualist metaphysics has progressed far beyond that problem.

First because it assumes that "Forms" exist when there is no evidence for them. — Uber

The evidence is logical. The active Forms are implicated by logical necessity. Their existence is demonstrated by logical necessity. Your reliance on "the empirical" misleads you into thinking that all evidence is sensual.

But more fundamentally, because you assume that any conception of time can exist separately from space, which is a categorical no in modern physics. — Uber

Quite obviously a conception of time which is different from that of modern physics is going to be a "categorical no in modern physics". That is tautological. But this does nothing to demonstrate that the conception of time employed by modern physics is better. And please, don't turn to your "empirical evidence". When dealing with the non-physical, as space and time clearly are, it is imperative that we rely on the intellect, and logic, for our understanding, not the senses.

Nothing I have read so far warrants throwing Platonism out with Dualism. — Galuchat

What I suggest is throwing out Platonism, in its common, degraded representation, which is the presentation of its critics, in favour of an intelligibly formulated dualism.

To clarify, on your view:
1) Forms (both General and Particular) are not physical, mental, or spiritual?
2) It is only information which may be intelligible (pure) or substance (empirical)?
3) How does your "true dualism" address the mind-body problem? — Galuchat

I must be honest with you Galuchat, and tell you that I always have problems understanding your terminology. I will however address 3) above. The mind-body dualism of the human being is one instance of dualism. It is the example of dualism which is most evident to us because we have access to the non-physical within us. But we must extend dualism to cover all existence in the universe, as Aristotle does with his matter/form dualism. This is extremely difficult for us to do, because everything external to us is only evident to us through our senses. So we cannot immediately apprehend the non-physical aspect of all that is external to us because we only apprehend our surroundings with our senses. Only our intellects can demonstrate to us, through the means of logical argument, that the non-physical is real.

We apprehend the non-physical aspect of reality within ourselves, with our minds. We understand that it is real. But we cannot sense it in the rest of the universe, because it is not something which can be sensed, though it is just as real throughout the entirety of the universe as it is within each of us. It is the intellect, logical principles, and reasoning, which demonstrate to us the reality of the non-physical, not the senses.

I must be honest with you Galuchat, and tell you that I always have problems understanding your terminology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair enough.

I will however address 3) above. The mind-body dualism of the human being is one instance of dualism. It is the example of dualism which is most evident to us because we have access to the non-physical within us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for your clarification. It should come as no surprise that I can't buy into it.

By your own definition of "physical" you have divided reality into multiple realms. You say that the physical is "any system subject to energetic constraints". By this definition you divide reality into the physical (that which is subject to constraints), and the constraints themselves. — Metaphysician Undercover

So let me get something straight: would you be ok with this definition if constraints were non-physical? If they lived in your magical realm with the Forms and Santa Claus? In other words, is your problem with the definition itself, or with the idea that constraints could never be physical? Or both? Because what then is your alternative to defining physical things?

The definition does not imply any division at all, and in any case I rephrased it a while back to state anything that only has finite amounts of energy, in response to your initial objection. So you keep attacking a strawman.

Have you read how I have addressed the epistemological problem. The same problem was really addressed thousands of years ago by Plato. Ancient dualist metaphysics has progressed far beyond that problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did. You may be shocked to know that I did not find the semi-theological speculation about the will that convincing. You may also be shocked to know that I don't find a BS word like "active" to represent a causal explanation for anything. The basic problem is that your fundamental assumptions about the world are totally bonkers. So things don't look any more promising for the conclusions you have reached on top of these weak foundations.

The evidence is logical. The active Forms are implicated by logical necessity. Their existence is demonstrated by logical necessity. Your reliance on "the empirical" misleads you into thinking that all evidence is sensual. — Metaphysician Undercover

What epic lunacy.

If 2+2 = 4, then unicorns exist.
2+2 = 4.
Therefore, unicorns exist.

Apparently I can bring anything into existence through logical necessity. This is why we should be careful with how we use logic!

But this does nothing to demonstrate that the conception of time employed by modern physics is better. And please, don't turn to your "empirical evidence". When dealing with the non-physical, as space and time clearly are, it is imperative that we rely on the intellect, and logic, for our understanding, not the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Beautiful nonsense, some of the most beautiful nonsense I've yet seen on this forum. I think you easily win the prize. We are aware of eliminative materialism. This is eliminative metaphysicalism at play: nothing exists or matters except logical metaphysics. The way you probably live your life and your participation in this online forum is proof enough that you yourself do not believe this garbage.

When we conceive of Forms, mathematical objects, laws of physics, and this type of constraint, as outside of time, eternal, our principles are subject to this "epistemic problem". "Outside of time", eternal, renders the Forms as inactive, passive, and necessarily non-causal. — Metaphysician Undercover

And that's because such a conception is false. It comes from the mind's almost irresistible tendency to 'objectify' or re-ify. That is why so many will ask: where is this so-called 'domain of ideas'? The answer is that it is nowhere, it is not located in space and time. So, for empiricism, it can't be said to exist. So it is depicted as being 'frozen' or 'immobile' or 'unchanging' or some 'ghostly realm' as that is the only kind of imagery that empiricism is capable of conceiving of; all that exists is said to be 'out there somewhere'. But what number actually refer to, is, in part, the way that the mind itself organises its own cognitive operations (something which becomes explicit in Kant although I will be prepared to acknowledge that my depiction of it is idiosyncratic.)

To understand metaphysics requires meta-noia, a literal change in the way cognition operates; it requires insight into one's own mental operations. It requires the intelligence becoming aware of the way it 'constructs' the world. Naturalism doesn't deal with that, because it operates at the level where that construction is itself treated as reality with a taken-for-granted nature. Questioning that is the business of metaphysics.

Surely it must be the opposite to believe nature is imbued with an over arching purpose? — apokrisis

I am having a hard time seeing how stasis, non-existence, the so-called ‘Heat Death’, comprises ‘a purpose’, any more than the purpose of an individual life is to be cremated. I think the problem is, 'the immanent' in terms of which we nowadays wish to see everything, isn't the domain of purpose, so we can't see any purpose in it, other than those purposes which we ourselves project onto it. But in the original semiotic view - which actually descended from Bonaventure, I have learned, the 'signs' were actually all symbols of a higher truth. Now that the 'higher truth' is no longer honoured, then what is 'signified'?

Mind-body interactions are a matter of empirical fact, not metaphysics. — Galuchat

The mind is not an object of empirical analysis. Or rather, it is made the object of empirical analysis through cognitive science, which objectively analyses cognitive and intellectual functions. But there is another sense in which mind can't be an object - plainly, as it can't be seen or measured. Much of the modern 'mind-body' problem arises from the attempt to portray the mind as an object, namely, the 'res cogitans' of Descartes, and its descendants. And that has lead to the 'hard problem', eliminativism, neo-Darwinian materialism, and all the other problems that are stock in trade on this Forum.

I am suggesting a radically different approach drawing on aspects of traditional metaphysics, and also aspects of non-dualism.

To get a better sense of this philosophical sophistry, let's try to explain emotion. — Uber

Emotion has nothing whatever to do with the question at hand.

But in the fairy tale that Wayfarer has imagined in this thread, reason has been artificially detached from the rational operations of the mind. — Uber

No, not utterly detached from it, that is not at all what I said. What I said (again) is that materialism doesn't explain reason, as reason is continually invoked in order to define such doctrines as 'materialism'. Actually Schopenhauer has a wonderful quotation on just this point:

" ...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself... Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time.

That totally nails it. And the reason that number (etc) is real, is that it provides the means for those operations to disclose universally-applicable truths about the empirical domain.

Far from being a 'fantasy world', that actually is the very thing that makes scientific method possible. But it has become so thoroughly forgotten that it now appears to you as 'fantasy'.

More broadly, here is a candidate final cause or physical objective for all life, not just humans: to avoid thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the natural environment by continuously dissipating away energy to that environment. The real issue for you isn't final or material or efficient causes. Those are just words that you use to fill space. It's that you don't like the specific causes being invoked to explain the world, because they do not require the prior existence of your magical realm. — Uber

Which ultimately comes down to utilitarianism and honing those skills which are required for enhancing survival. Which is all well and good, but if you actually look at the subject of philosophy, there are other layers and levels of meaning that it is concerned with.

The last paragraph is just false. The vast majority of physicists are naturalists, in the ontological sense of the word — Uber

Agree - what I am arguing is that the materialist paradigm has been seriously challenged, or even undermined by developments in modern physics. And, sure, most physicists are naturalists and natural scientists, but some are not, and there's plenty of debate going about idealism in physics, the ultimate nature of matter, and so on. Questions such as the nature of the reality of numbers and natural laws are still well and truly alive.

I'm not bringing up Aristotelian philosophy out of nostalgia. It is because the Greek tradition was already critical, was already highly sophisticated and insightful into very deep questions about the nature of things.

Yes this is the kind of nihilism which Nietzsche saw Christianity as inevitably leading to; the annihilation of all *merely* human meaning by an imposition of purported overarching transcendent meaning. Nietzsche was no nihilist; this in an egregious misunderstanding; he was opposed to the nihilism, the devaluation and destruction of human meaning which is an inherent in religions when they become established by power as dictatorial traditons.

I am having a hard time seeing how stasis, non-existence, the so-called ‘Heat Death’, comprises ‘a purpose’, any more than the purpose of an individual life is to be cremated. — Wayfarer

Again, this is something I have replied on multiple times. The answer is the same. Life and mind - as natural systems - can be understood to have a purpose that is orthogonal to this baseline entropic tendency. It is all a point of view.

So the second law prevails in the cosmological long-run. It is the baked-in tendency. But shit happens along the way. The Big Bang "wanted" to be a simple spreading~cooling radiation bath, but then it cooled to a degree that massive gravitating particles condensed out of this general smooth flow. The breaking of the electroweak symmetry by the Higgs field created a sudden clutter of hydrogen and other simple atoms. The smooth entropification was interrupted by a sudden production of negentropic matter.

That led to planets and stars. Stars are one way all that negentropy is being fizzled back into radiation. But stars leave a heavy atom residue. So now we have the conditions where life and mind could arise as further re-entropifying systems. It is part of nature's global desire that if anything could accelerate the return of that residual negentropy to the general entropic flow, then that kind of dissipative structure must inevitably develop.

So it is completely reasonable that life and mind should conceive of their reason for existing as being some kind of cosmic necessity. The Universe needs us organisms to break down the negentropic lumps that have developed in its entropic flow.

Humans are the most amazing dissipative structures in known creation. We can heat up entire planets in about a century. Our second law awesomeness in this regard is easy to quantify.

So yes. You do look at humans and think we must be really special. But the reason we are so focused on our own personal negentropic development is because our resulting entropy production is so matchingly spectacular.

We have developed mythologies - cultural, political, economic - that enable us to pursue the Universe's central goal by apparently aiming our lives at the very opposite of what it is doing. It is entropifying, but we are negentropifying.

But look closer. All that negentropic structure is what is managing to burn the millennia of trapped fossil carbon that "fell out of the entropic flow" by getting buried under rock. We are doing an amazing job of eating up all the coal and petroleum.

Pay attention to what we are actually achieving. Don't get fooled by the mythologies we spin around the social structure and cultural attitudes needed to pursue the Cosmos's grand plan.

Wayfarer, the examples I provided showed that you can use unrestricted metaphysics, of the kind you seem to be enamored with, to say a lot of stupid things about the world. Interestingly you did not object to the substance of the argument, only that it did not apply to our discussion because we're talking about reason. But I think it very much applies to reason as well, in the sense that explaining the rational operations of the mind would constitute a successful explanation of reason itself, if you are willing to pull it back from the metaphysical and transcendent realms.

Metaphysical reason is never invoked to explain reason in the context of materialism. That's a red herring. You are the one invoking metaphysical reason to explain the rational operations the mind. Materialism recognizes that those operations are emergent properties of a special kind of brain (the human brain) dynamically coupled to an external world. So it absolutely does not need the made up form of reason you are pushing to explain the mental properties of the brain, the rational and the irrational ones! Curiously, you never talk about the latter. I wonder if insanity and irrationality are also hanging out there among the Forms, constantly imbuing humans with stupidity?

So then...you agree that naturalism can provide final causes? You are upset about what, that these causes lack the "layers of meaning" that you think philosophy should have?

I strongly disagree with your assertions on modern physics. I think most developments in modern physics have strongly reinforced naturalism, not undermined it. This is not just because of the predictive power of physics. It's also because modern physics has revealed nature to be so complex and dynamic, capable of doing things that people could have never fathomed before modern times. The discovery of things like black holes, topological insulators, quantum fields, and entanglement are a reminder of the great diversity of physical systems that comprise nature. And the ideas developed to describe them provide some deep unifying frameworks, which hold great explanatory power even though many of them are still under empirical and theoretical investigations.

Interestingly you did not object to the substance of the argument, only that it did not apply to our discussion because we're talking about reason. — Uber

There was no substance in your counter-arguments. Honestly and seriously. You're one of the better writers to join this forum, and you explain yourself well, and you are making me think through what I'm saying - but what I'm arguing is supported by my own research and with references and sources.

Furthermore, I perfectly understand that my philosophical project, the kinds of things that I argue, are counter to the majority view. I understand that what Nagel calls 'evolutionary materialism' is the consensus view in the secular West and I am taking issue with in on fundamental grounds - not with reference to any form of ID, but basically through a variety of transcendental arguments. When Thomas Nagel did likewise, in his 2012 book, he was hugely scorned by the secular intelligentsia.



But I think Nagel was correct overall.

So - your analogy of 'emotion' has no application whatever in this context. To explain why, consider the following:

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, 'intellect' is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal).

Intellect is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).

That intellectual activity -- "reasoning" in the formal sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination [and to emotion!] is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. The thesis is either explicitly or implicitly denied by modern empiricists. — Feser

So - you're explicitly denying it, but I don't think your showing a lot of understanding of what it is you're denying, and why.

I think it very much applies to reason as well, in the sense that explaining the rational operations of the mind would constitute a successful explanation of reason itself, if you are willing to pull it back from the metaphysical and transcendent realms. — Uber

I would question whether you can 'explain reason'. Reason is 'what explains'. We can't actually explain why 2 + 2 = 4; such expressions are metaphysical primitives (in Frege's terminology) which form the 'rules of thought' but are not, or cannot be, actually explained any further. Again, the nature of number is still a vexed question, but being able to reason numerically is obviously fundamental to science itself.

One of the presumptions of the evolutionary model is that reason is an adaption or an evolutionary development in the service of survival. But I say that doesn't explain reason at all - it sells it short. That's why you're saying 'you see how easy all this is?' You're saying it, because you don't really understand it. You've accepted the wisdom of the crowd, that Modern Science has it all worked out, we're just filling in the details. And I'm really not trying to be condescending or to troll you. It's a serious topic.

Materialism recognizes that those operations are emergent properties of a special kind of brain (the human brain) dynamically coupled to an external world. — Uber

It doesn't recognize that - it is simply the claim of materialist philosophers. But non-materialist philosophers (who, I maintain, form the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition) don't accept that view. Read this quote again, carefully:

...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself... Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time. — Schopenhauer

(And whatever else Schopenhauer was, he was certainly no apologist for religion!)

So then...you agree that naturalism can provide final causes? You are upset about what, that these causes lack the "layers of meaning" that you think philosophy should have? — Uber

Not 'upset'. Philosophy does have concerns which extend beyond naturalism. Modern culture has put a taboo on anything beyond the scope of naturalism - calling something 'supernatural' is a kiss of death. Calmly contemplate how vexed this debate already is, and ask yourself why. This is a matter of history, as much as philosophy.

....the annihilation of all *merely* human meaning.. — Janus

Shame about Nietzsche's sister giving all his copyright to the Nazis, eh?

Shame about Nietzsche's sister giving all his copyright to the Nazis, eh? — Wayfarer

How does that relate to what I had written?

Sorry, an idle thought. I struck it out.

I think most developments in modern physics have strongly reinforced naturalism, not undermined it. — Uber

Well - this is a whole other can of worms. But, right at the moment, there is an immense debate going on in the Physics community, about whether string theory, and the related concept of 'the multiverse', really does amount to a scientific theory at all.

In the 'nay' corner, are various scientists and commentators, including George Ellis, Joe Silk, Peter Woit, and Roger Penrose among many others. One of their fundamental criticisms is that string theory doesn't make testable predictions at all, and nor can the proposed multiverses or 'the landscape' ever be empirically demonstrated. So they are arguing that it doesn't pass muster as science.

In the 'yay' corner are Sean Carroll and others, who say that Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability' out to be retired as the scope of science has burst through the kind of notional limits of Popper's understanding. (I have read the term 'popperazi' in this connection, as it's become quite a spiteful argument.)

Then there's another issue in current cosmology - or two, actually - one being, the fact that there's a gap in the accounts of the mass-energy of the observable universe to the order of 96% of the totality now being thought to exist in some unknown form currently designated 'dark matter~energy'. Another is the so-called 'fine-tuning' and related 'naturalness' problem of the 'standard model', the former of which has generated vast controversy and many large and difficult books.

And none of those issues look like being resolved any time soon, if at all.

So, the nature of 'naturalism' is well and truly an open question. You can't sanguinely gesture at science as if we have it all worked out, we're just waiting for some additional details to flesh out the whole picture. We could well be on the cusp of a much greater revolution than the Copernican.

I wonder if insanity and irrationality are also hanging out there among the Forms, constantly imbuing humans with stupidity? — Uber

No, they've taken refuge in the White House.

So let me get something straight: would you be ok with this definition if constraints were non-physical? — Uber

According to the definition they are non-physical. That is implied necessarily by you definition of physical as that which is subject to constraints. You've created a separation between the physical, and that which constrains the physical. This must be non-physical. I'm not OK with it because it suffers the epistemological problem. As I said in my first reply, I find in my experience that constraints are physical, so I think you're way of the mark even using "constraints" as a defining term.

The definition does not imply any division at all, and in any case I rephrased it a while back to state anything that only has finite amounts of energy, in response to your initial objection. So you keep attacking a strawman. — Uber

Good, as I said, we ought to leave "constraints" right out of this definition. How would you define "energy" here? Do you allow for potential energy? Suppose as a simple example, because I'm no physicist, that an object transfers energy to another object, through force, and this is explained by the means of a field, such that the potential energy is the property of the field. Would you say that the field is something physical because it has a finite amount of energy, even though that energy is just potential energy, and a "field" is just a mathematical construct?

The basic problem is that your fundamental assumptions about the world are totally bonkers. — Uber

I'll keep that in mind.

What epic lunacy. — Uber

I'll keep that in mind as well as the following:

Beautiful nonsense, some of the most beautiful nonsense I've yet seen on this forum. — Uber

It appears like you have no constructive criticism, no interest in philosophy, and no means for discussing, let alone refuting, the points I made. At least you admit that my replies are beautiful. Yours are ugly.

To understand metaphysics requires meta-noia, a literal change in the way cognition operates; it requires insight into one's own mental operations. It requires the intelligence becoming aware of the way it 'constructs' the world. Naturalism doesn't deal with that, because it operates at the level where that construction is itself treated as reality with a taken-for-granted nature. Questioning that is the business of metaphysics. — Wayfarer

I agree. This is why we proceed with logic as the fundamental principle of "construction" rather than the sense impressions of empiricism. Uber calls this "epic lunacy" to place logic as more reliable than the senses.

There was no substance in your counter-arguments. Honestly and seriously. — Wayfarer

That's an understatement. Look at Uber's replies to me. Bye now, I know when my time is being wasted.

I am having a hard time seeing how stasis, non-existence, the so-called ‘Heat Death’, comprises ‘a purpose’, any more than the purpose of an individual life is to be cremated. I think the problem is, 'the immanent' in terms of which we nowadays wish to see everything, isn't the domain of purpose, so we can't see any purpose in it, other than those purposes which we ourselves project onto it. But in the original semiotic view - which actually descended from Bonaventure, I have learned, the 'signs' were actually all symbols of a higher truth. Now that the 'higher truth' is no longer honoured, then what is 'signified'? — Wayfarer

Apo will have his own answer, probably quite different from mine, but I couldn't pass over this since it is so relevant to the point I made about nihilism as it was understood by Nietzsche. The thing is entropy is not an overarching purpose at all, except insofar it is conceived to be so by people. And the same goes for 'the salvation of the soul', 'the liberation of all beings', or, on a more immanent scale, ideological reifications such as the inevitability of proletarian revolution. None of these "master narratives" are real beyond the fact that they are believed by people.

This is the case with any "higher truth" whatsoever. Higher truths are real only insofar as people are committed to them, and they may be judged only by their fruits. I'm not saying people should not be committed to such ideals, if that is what they feel is right for them, but the fatal error consists in prescribing such things for others, even for all people.

So, to say that the only meaning is human meaning, whether individual or collective, does not constitute nihilism at all. The subtle imposition of meaning by the collective on the individual is what holds, at least for modernity, the seeds of nihilism, insofar as it forecloses on the possibility of any creative individual establishment of meaning. And the totalitarian imposition of meaning by the collective on the individual is nihilism full-blown, at least in those cultures where individual creative aspirations have begun, or continue, to exist.

What could it mean for all individuals to honour a "higher truth"? Whose "higher truth" would they be honouring? I can't see how it could be anything but a retrogressive return to life "under the aegis of tutelage"*; a capitulation, a loss of nerve, a cowardly going back to a life which the spirit of the Enlightenment rightly sought to put behind it.

* Hegel

One of their fundamental criticisms is that string theory doesn't make testable predictions at all, and nor can the proposed multiverses or 'the landscape' ever be empirically demonstrated. So they are arguing that it doesn't pass muster as science. — Wayfarer

So isn't there some irony here that string theory is good evidence that science is Platonistic enough to bend its own alleged empirical rules when the mathematics seems so reasonable that it must be true?

If string theory had a single calculational outcome, then it would be game over. But it turned out to have a "landscape" of possible solutions.

If you then look at most of the critics of string theory you cited, they are then pushing their own particular Platonistic barrows. They have some alternative "reasonable" mathematical model, like loop quantum gravity.

So a cynical reading of the situation is that you are hearing from the experimental physicists getting concerned that the theoretical physicists were getting to much attention for just doing mathematics. They need those guys to produce "testable models" - preferably models like the Higgs particle which are bang in the energy range of the next generation collider they want funded. And then the other critics were the various mathematical physics wanting oxygen for their own Platonistic theories.

So, the nature of 'naturalism' is well and truly an open question. You can't sanguinely gesture at science as if we have it all worked out, we're just waiting for some additional details to flesh out the whole picture. We could well be on the cusp of a much greater revolution than the Copernican. — Wayfarer

Again, is this evidence that science is getting it wrong, or getting it right?

If you are wanting science - at the grand level of cosmological speculation - to be more Platonistic, well it is more Platonistic. It treats mathematical structure as being real.

And if you want science at that level to be less Materialistic, well it is that too. Atoms have dissolved into particles, which have dissolved into excitations, which have dissolved into informational degrees of freedom. The physicists don't believe in matter as the kind of substantial material stuff you criticise them for believing in.

So as the Platonic structure has become more real, the material stuff has become matchingly less real.

And that just happens to be exactly the kind of Naturalism you would find in the metaphysical tradition that connects Anaximander to Aristotle to Peirce.

None of these "master narratives" are real beyond the fact that they are believed by people. — Janus

But there, you fallen straight into subjectivism/relativism - something is true, because it's true for me.

This is the case with any "higher truth" whatsoever. Higher truths are real only insofar as people are committed to them, and they may be judged only by their fruits. I'm not saying people should not be committed to such ideals, if that is what they feel is right for them, but the fatal error consists in prescribing such things for others, even for all people. — Janus

I get that. You know the term 'samskara'? Well, I think there's a deep samskara in the Western mind-set against anything it deems 'religious'. A big underlying problem in modern culture generally, is that there's a kind of implicit threat contained in Western religion. It goes back to 'believe and be saved' - the converse being, don't believe and you're damned. 'Orthodoxy' means, after all, 'right belief' (from 'doxai', belief or opinion.)

The implicit threat is that you either believe as you're told, or else. When you look back to the history, in Western culture, there were massive conflicts and convulsions over all this - the Inquisition, the religious wars. Then Calvin - 'the ayatollah of Geneva', he has been described. 'Freedom' according to the European Enlightenment, was getting as far away from all this as possible. Liberation is liberation from that.

Now, I see this whenever this topic comes up. The least suggestion of higher truth is interpreted in terms of 'appeal to religious authority'. I think its the samskara of Western religion. It conditions a lot of what is said in philosophical debates especially, in a 'don't mention the War' kind of way.

That point I mentioned was from a podcast I listened to on Christian Platonism. It noted that St Bonaventura, a contemporary of Aquinas, was the forerunner to later semiotics, but in the context of interpreting nature as 'signs' of the Divine law (he was after all a medieval). But within that worldview, then the whole Cosmos was animated by purpose, of which things are 'signs'.

And I think even C S Peirce was open to something like that:

The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to science, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and Nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real -- the object of its worship and its aspiration. ...

The soul's deeper 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, by slow percolation, gradually 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. — C S Peirce

Reasoning and the Logic of Things, edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 112, quoted in Thomas Nagel Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion.

Now tell me, how distant is that last paragraph is from the point I've been arguing in this (and many other) threads? Nagel himself says that he finds

these declarations not only eloquent but entirely congenial; but they have a radically antireductionist and realist tendency quite out of keeping with present fashion. And they are alarmingly Platonist in that they maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our "inward sympathy" with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can then be tested against the facts. ...If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions--so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.

The reason I call this view alarming is that it is hard to know what world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious. Rationalism has always had a more religious flavor than empiricism. Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable.

And there it is again: you run into the 'fear of religion', which Nagel then goes on to spell out:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

And here we all are!

What could it mean for all individuals to honour a "higher truth"? Whose "higher truth" would they be honouring? — Janus

In one sense, you're quite correct in saying that each of us has to find our own way, and that this results a plurality of forms and views. That is why I studied the question through comparative religion - so as to try and discern the outlines of the universal ideas about such matters that are depicted in the various philosophical traditions. The three that I have the most affinity with are Christian Platonism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Advaita. They're all different, and in some respects even radically at odds with each other. But in the context of a global culture and global communications, (and also global crisis) the perspectives they offer do provide an answer to that question. There is enough in common between all three of them to form the outline of a living philosophy, that's for sure.