But to say that these perspectives 'explain' religion, again, can't be anything other than reductionist, as it is saying that the rationale is other than, and less than, what its devotees understand it to be. — Wayfarer

There has to be a difference between doing religion and explaining religion. Explaining is the meta story, the third person objective story.

So sure. If the devotees pretend to have some meta story of why they do what they do, then that is contestable at a meta level.

It is the rules of that contest which you now need to justify.

I say the meta method has to be a process of rational inquiry. And that simply is what metaphysics is historically. It cashes out as Peirce's method of abduction/deduction/inductive confirmation. And science confirms the universal value of this kind of system of reason wedded to a process of measurement. We believe x because it is probably true in terms of the signs that we take as providing adequate confirmation of what we deduced from some set of axioms.

Now you may have some other method for doing metaphysics. But can you spell out how that works exactly. Then we can do some meta-metaphysics to see why your method might have any actual merit.

Yes, they are distinct, but they are related. In the Timaeus Plato is trying to explain the existence of multiple instances of the same universal -- say <man>. He thinks that matter is entirely unintelligible, so all intelligibility has to come from Form (Ideals). Still, in some vague way, individual differences arise from "defects of the matter" as different impressions impressions of the same seal in wax might differ due to impurities. — Dfpolis

I agree that in the Timaeus Plato is trying to establish a relationship between the universal and the particulars which are instances of the universal. Plato's approach is that the particulars must come into existence from the universal, like we find in human production, many distinct particulars of the same type, are produced from one blueprint, one plan or concept. So Plato looks at the relation between universal and particulars from this perspective, how the material particulars come into being, are created, from the universal Forms.

Aristotle's approach is somewhat different. He takes the existence of material individuals, particulars, for granted. In his metaphysics he does say that we ought to ask why a thing is the thing which it is, and not something else, which points in the same direction as Plato, but his main enterprise is to provide principles for the human mind to understand the existence of particulars. Hence his law of identity. So he works to establish a relation which is inverse to the one Plato worked on in the Timaeus. He works on principles to relate the universals of the human mind to existing material particulars.

So there is a reversal of temporal priority in these two approaches. The Platonic approach, which became the Neo-Platonic, puts the Universal Forms as prior in time to the particular material things, and builds a relationship in that way. The Aristotelian approach takes particular material things for granted, and therefore prior in time to the relationship between them and the universals which are created by the human mind.

Both, but especially practice. Not for this thread tho.

So sure. If the devotees pretend to have some meta story of why they do what they do, then that is contestable at a meta level. — apokrisis

This would true be if the "meta story" is purported to be the literal one metaphysical truth about reality. If however it is, more modestly, purported to be merely metaphorical or allegorical; a poetic 'truth as revelation' to evoke insight into the human existential situation, then to contest it "at a meta level' would be to commit a category error.

Bugger modesty. If that were truly in effect, you wouldn't be championing your laissez faire pluralism against my totalising unity of thought. You have an axe to grind like anyone else.

So I can see your game plan is to reduce rational method to just another form of semiosis - like poetry or art. In the end, all epistemologies are equal, none intrinsically better than any other, etc. We've been around the house on that enough.

And I've already laid out the reason why one stands at a higher level than the other. One is merely the view from social linguistics, the other is what has developed as a result of stumbling into a mathematico-logical modelling of objective reality. You failed to dent that argument.

a poetic 'truth as revelation' to evoke insight into the human existential situation, then to contest it "at a meta level' would be to commit a category error. — Janus

Agreed. Objective umwelts and cultural unwelts are different levels of semiosis. It would be a category error to use social ideas as the basis of completely open and rational metaphysical inquiry. The human sphere exists within the realm of nature and not the other way around.

It's complete nonsense to say that I want to

reduce rational method to just another form of semiosis — apokrisis

.

Obviously rational thinking is not rational thinking at all if it is not governed by norms that codify principles of consistency and coherency. Obviously poetry is not so constrained; so poems are generally not purporting to be examples of rational thought in that sense. On the other hand any system of rational thought is not without its founding suppositions, premises or axioms which cannot be demonstrated from within the system. In science it is the overall cohesion of all the various fields of inquiry that yield a more or less coherent picture of nature.

But that picture of nature is science, not metaphysics. Metaphysics can allow itself to speculate beyond nature; there have been perfectly coherent supernatural metaphysical systems, and whether or not one accepts supernatural founding presuppositions depends on personal preference. Personally, I prefer not to.

But you don't reject only supernaturalist metaphysics, you even reject immanentist pictures like Whitehead's or Deleuze's, even though Whitehead acknowledges that no metaphysics can give an adequate picture of metaphysical reality, and Deleuze sees systems of metaphysical thought as consisting in explorations of particular problematics, not as being overarching theories of everything

I have tried to explain to you many times why I don't think it is appropriate to apply the designation 'theory' to any metaphysical system of thought, since the 'truth' of all such systems is undecidable. If you want to say that the truth of a metaphysical system could be decidable, then provide an example of such a system, show how it is more than merely a scientific theory and show how it could be demonstrated to be true.

As I tire of saying metaphysics is neither poetry nor science; it is in between. It must be within itself logically coherent and consistent, which is not a requirement for poetry. So, basically, you are attacking a straw argument of your own devising as far as I can tell, and I can't see the point. Maybe you just like to argue for the sake of it.

And in relation to your last response; make up your mind: you seem to be both agreeing and disagreeing with the same point. I am still in the dark as to exactly how you are distinguishing "completely open and rational metaphysical enquiry" from science; most specifically from physics and cosmology.

As I tire of saying metaphysics is neither poetry nor science; it is in between. — Janus

Whatever that means.

Now you may have some other method for doing metaphysics. But can you spell out how that works exactly. Then we can do some meta-metaphysics to see why your method might have any actual merit. — apokrisis

As I said - first-person. It is about reality as lived, not as modelled or scientifically analysed. You can only discover how good a rock-climber you are by climbing - not by studying geology.

Metaphysics can allow itself to speculate beyond nature; there have been perfectly coherent supernatural metaphysical systems, — Janus

As Mariner once pointed out, 'supernatural' and 'metaphysical' are basically Latin and Greek words for the same thing.

I think the point is, in different lived metaphysics, domains of discourse have been developed where words have certain agreed meanings - but that these are not at all what might be understood in terms of current culture. They're after all embedded in cultural forms - that is what a domain of discourse is. So they can be validated against literature, philosophy and practice within a cultural milieu, even though they might not have what we would designate objective meaning, i.e. they don't give rise to objectively-measurable predictions in the way that is expected in current science and technology.

That is why for instance in continental (as distinct from Anglo-American) philosophy there's a much stronger emphasis on hermeneutics (which is the proper interpretation of texts.)

The designation of what is immanent (or for that matter natural) is conventional, as it always must rely on what we know about nature; and I don't think we know enough about nature to declare what is 'super' to it. But philosophy is not always about what can be specified, made explicit, and made objective - it also is concerned with factors that underlie whatever paradigms we choose to adopt. And those factors might be inherent to the nature of thought itself, therefore in some sense internal rather than objective. There's a lot about that kind of analysis that escapes science (although I think that phenomenology is aware of it - Merleau Ponty made some remark that 'science is always naive and at the same time dishonest'. And I think that's because science purports to provide a 'view from nowhere' which amounts to feigning omniscience, 'seeing things as they truly are', when in fact science can only engage in that kind of seeing after having bracketed out the qualitative and then forgetting that it has.)

There's a lot about that kind of analysis that escapes science (although I think that phenomenology is aware of it - Merleau Ponty made some remark that 'science is always naive and at the same time dishonest'. And I think that's because science purports to provide a 'view from nowhere' which amounts to feigning omniscience, 'seeing things as they truly are', when in fact science can only engage in that kind of seeing after having bracketed out the qualitative and then forgetting that it has.) — Wayfarer

I do agree with most of what you say above, apart from the seeming implication (by equating the two terms) that metaphysics must be supernaturalist in character. I think Whitehead and other process thinkers like Peirce, Buchler and Deleuze have demonstrated that it is quite possible to produce an entirely coherent naturalist metaphysics. Perhaps you were not saying anything to the contrary.

The thing is with semiotics; it can be understood as finding its origin entirely in nature, and it provides a "meta-physical" way of understanding nature; "meta-physical" here in the sense that meaning, the sign relation, is not a physical thing. But it is not necessarily metaphysical in the sense of being completely beyond or other than the physical world. I think the point here is just that physical world is composed of relations which are not themselves physical things. I don't believe we know what we are saying if we want to make substantive claims about the non-physicality of meaning, because that way lies the incoherence of substance dualism. The idea of bare physical substance is already unintelligible; how much more so the idea of bare mental substance!

On the other hand semiotics could be understood as finding its origin God, but then God also may be understood, as Whitehead understands it, to be an entirely natural being, not transcendent as per the traditional theological view.

I want to say that all these ideas are ultimately undecidable, we shouldn't think of them in terms of being true or false in the ordinary sense, and we cannot know what we mean if we want to claim that they are true or false in an imagined "Absolute' sense. so we are free to entertain the ones we find most illuminating or useful, but not to claim any exclusive, absolutist truth for them.

I take your point about not knowing enough about nature to "know what is super to it". On the other hand, knowing what we know about what and how we know, (at least in any discursively rational sense) we can be confident that anything we know will be of the natural order. I don't think it's possible to conceive how we could, in any intersubjectively demonstrable way, show that we have decidable rational discursive knowledge about anything supernatural, or that we could, for that matter, know that anything supernatural is actually real.

So, I am not rejecting the notion of entertaining supernaturalistic ideas, just the notion of making substantive metaphysical claims to truth about any such ideas, on account of the lack, in fact impossibility, of intersubjectively decidable evidence or criteria for assessing such claims.

I would be very happy to find myself proven wrong about this.

I believe you know what it means: I've outlined it well enough, I think.

But just in case I haven't;

Poetry; does not need to be logically consistent or based on empirical evidence.
Metaphysics: needs to be logically consistent but does not need to be based on empirical evidence (not sure if it even can be).
Science: Needs to be logically consistent and based on empirical evidence.

Not for this thread tho. — StreetlightX

True that!

Metaphysics: needs to be logically consistent but does not need to be based on empirical evidence (not sure if it even can be). — Janus

If it is about the big old world out there, then sure it needs to be empirically based. What we believe would be constrained by the evidence of experience.

Science just ups the game by shifting from feelings and sensations to acts of measurement - reading numbers off dials.

And that makes all the difference. It lifts us out of our embodied biology and into a new realm of pure abstracted reasoning.

But if you want to say that metaphysics can be based on feelings and sensations rather than acts of measurements that are themselves part of the conceptual apparatus, then go for it. Rhyme away.

When you take, say, Bigelow and Pargetter's arguments for structural universals and demonstrate convincingly how they have a maleficent apology of the nationalistic slave-owning patriarchy of Classical Greece built into them, then perhaps we will have something to talk about. Until then it's just so much sophistry.

No argument from me.

If perchance you could lay out their 'Platonic take on humanity', perhaps we might go from there.

I think Whitehead and other process thinkers like Peirce, Buchler and Deleuze have demonstrated that it is quite possible to produce an entirely coherent naturalist metaphysics. — Janus

I don't think that this is the case at all. Process philosophers tend to start with that assumption. But as they proceed into expounding on a process explanation, they find holes, gaps which cannot be filled by naturalist principles, so they end up turning toward the supernatural or God. This is evident in Whitehead and Peirce, but I'm not familiar enough with Buchler and Deleuze to say whether they've provided any means for a "naturalist" completion of process philosophy.

The thing is with semiotics; it can be understood as finding its origin entirely in nature, and it provides a "meta-physical" way of understanding nature; "meta-physical" here in the sense that meaning, the sign relation, is not a physical thing. — Janus

Semiotics does no such thing. It implies an agent as creator and interpreter of symbols, but has no place "in nature" for the existence of that agent.

On the other hand semiotics could be understood as finding its origin God, but then God also may be understood, as Whitehead understands it, to be an entirely natural being, not transcendent as per the traditional theological view. — Janus

Whitehead proposes supernatural elements of reality, prehension and concrescence. "God" is used by Whitehead to describe these aspects.

Because the testimony of sense is inherently unreliable, right? That mathematical and geometric ideas are know-able in a way that objects of perception are not, because they are grasped directly the intellect in a way that material particulars cannot be. Which was to develop, much later, into the basis of Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. — Wayfarer

Yes, Plato thought that sense knowledge was entirely unreliable. Aristotle did not.

In my article, (Dennis F. Polis, "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," The Modern Schoolman, LXVIII (1991), 3, pp. 225-244), and in my book (God, Science and Mind), I explain that the hylomorphic theory of Plato in the Timaeus is very different from that of Aristotle -- even though they were confused by Neoplatonic commentators and, subsequently, by the Scholastics.

Plato's theory was designed to explain how a single Form or Idea could inform multiple individuals. Aristotle's problem was very different -- he wished to explain how substantial change is possible. As a result Plato's "matter" (chora) is an entirely different concept from Aristotle's "matter" (hyle). The fact that both Greek terms are translated by the English "matter" only adds to the confusion.

Thanks for the correction. I copied the citations from Jozef Matula, "Thomas Aguinas [sic] and his Reading of Isaac ben Solomon Israeli" (https://www.academia.edu/10100256/30._Thomas_Aquinas_and_his_Reading_of_Isaac_ben_Solomon_Israeli)

"Has the likeness of the thing known", sounds like correspondence to me. How do you interpret this as "adequacy'? — Metaphysician Undercover

The question is: is the representation in the mind adequate to what exists in reality? If it is, then what is in our mind is true. If not, not. The point I'm trying to make is that our mental representation can never be exhaustive of reality. They will always be projections (dimensionally diminished maps) of reality. (Aquinas explicitly states that we have no direct knowledge of essences -- they are only known via accidents.) This lead one to ask how much of an "approach to equality" (adaequatio) do we need to count as truth? I am suggesting that the answer depends on the context: Our representations must be close enough that we aren't misled in our reflections, i.e. the approximation must be adequate to our needs.

I admit that this is not usually commented on, but it is essential to avoiding what I call the "Omniscience Fallacy" -- using divine omniscience as a paradigm for human knowledge. Doing so leads to the conclusion that we never "really know" anything. I think it's better to take "knowing" to name an activity engaged in by human beings. Doing so allows our mental representations to be true without being exhaustive.

The quote is taken right out of context, by you, and given an unacceptable translation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm sorry, but it's not taken out of context. It's Aquinas' stock definition, as shown by the numerous citations. According to Matula, the same definition, citing ben Israel, is used by Albert the Great, Bonaventura, Alexander of Hales and William de la Marre. So, it's a standard definition.

Note that I am not rejecting the formulation you cite. I am merely pointing out that a "likeness" invariably has less content than the original. How much less can still be counted as true?

No translation is prefect. I always get much more out of reading Aquinas' Latin than a translation because his Latin terms have connotations missing in their translations. (I got "approach to equality" from McKeon. I can find the exact citation if you wish.) So, my translation isn't "bogus." It merely emphasizes a different aspect of adaequatio. On the other hand, "equality" is quite deceptive. Aquinas never writes aequatio, but always adaequatio -- rejecting actual equality.

You are saying that since we cannot have correspondence in a complete, and perfect way, then lets just settle for something less than that, and call this "truth" instead. Anything which is adequate for the purpose at hand, we'll just say it's the truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Let's parse this out. You seem to agree that "we cannot have correspondence in a complete, and perfect way." If so, we have two options:
(1) We humans are incapable of knowing truth. (The Omniscience Fallacy).
(2) Human truth does not require " correspondence in a complete, and perfect way." (My position.)

I think you agree with (2). So, I'm puzzled as to why you disagree with me. If (2) is so, then
(a) Any incomplete, imperfect degree of correspondence counts as truth, or
(b) There is some requirement beyond an incomplete, imperfect degree of correspondence for a representation to count as truth. (My position.)

We are now faced with the question of what this additional requirement might be? The options are, exhaustively:
(i) A criterion that would allow us to draw false conclusions in our considerations, or
(ii) A criterion that prevents us from drawing false conclusions in our considerations -- I.e. The requirement that the degree of correspondence be adequate to prevent consequent errors in our considerations. (My position).

Please tell me where you disagree with my analysis.

We cannot say that "God's Truth" is different from human truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know if you have not read enough of Aquinas, or if you reject his position. In his analysis, "truth," like "being," is an analogous term, i.e. its meaning is partly the same and partly different in God and in humans. So, yes, God's truth isn't human truth. What is in God's mind corresponds to reality because God's Intellect and Will are the source of reality. On the other hand, any correspondence between human minds and reality results from reality acting on us. While the first is perfect (because God willing creation to exists is, identically, creation being willed to exist by God), the latter is not.

We come to know an object because it has acted on us in some way we're aware of. But, in acting on us in a specific way, an object does not exhaust the potential modes of action specified by its essence. Thus, we do not, and cannot, know objects exhaustively, as God does. Therefore, God's truth differs from our truth.

Valid logic does not necessitate truth, so nothing prevents us from doing logic when it's not necessarily the truth which we are obtaining with that logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course validity is not soundness. But, what is the point of being logical if not thinking salve veritate? Unless we start with the truth, we have no guaranty of ending with truth, so we cant know truth, we might just as well discard logic. Only if we can know truth is there a reason to think logically.

"Suppose I have a universal concept, <triangle>. There is no Platonic Triangle corresponding to it." — Dfpolis

On what basis do you make this assertion? If there is not some independent idea of triangle, which your concept must correspond with, then you could make your concept however you please. — Metaphysician Undercover

On the basis of the 14 or so counter-arguments Aristotle gives in his Metaphysics. Most telling to me, personally, is that I know of no reason to posit Platonic ideals. They do not instantiate triangles -- mostly people do. They are not necessary for us to know what a triangle is -- we teach children what they are by showing them examples and letting them abstract the concept. To apply the concept <triangle> to a new instance, that instance must be able to evoke the concept. But, if that instance can evoke the concept, any instance can. Thus, the concept can arise from experience -- without the need of mystical intuition. All we need to do is to focus on some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others.

And, yes, I can make any self-consistent concept I please. For example, the concept <gap triangle> -- like a triangle, but with 2 sides not joined.

when scientists like physicists produce the laws of physics, there is something real, independent, which must be followed when producing these laws. The laws must correspond with reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course there are laws operative in nature that physicists seek to describe with the laws of physics. They are observable aspects of nature, not denizens of an Ideal realm.

Your discussion of universals in Plato and Aristotle is close enough to my view that it is not worth quibbling about the differences.

If perchance you could lay out their 'Platonic take on humanity', perhaps we might go from there. — StreetlightX

Why should I? And who are you quoting? Just a bit earlier you were telling us how all Platonists, even modern Platonists-about-this-or-that, were all thoroughly compromised at their metaphysical foundation by Plato's "shitstain" (now that is an actual quotation). Well, I am not seeing how that comes about. Perhaps you could make an argument that Frege's mathematical Platonism is really crypto-Fascism?

As a result Plato's "matter" (chora) is an entirely different concept from Aristotle's "matter" (hyle). The fact that both Greek terms are translated by the English "matter" only adds to the confusion. — Dfpolis

That question has always interested me. What is your understanding of the difference?

Thanks! Great to have such a learned contributor join. I've looked up your book and judging by the abstract, very much the kind of thing I'm interested in studying. My knowledge of classical philosophy is scattershot, but I feel an intuitive affinity with Christian Platonism. In fact my first post on these forums was on the subject of the reality of intelligible objects (i.e. numbers) and I have been pursuing the topic since.

(I notice from one of the Amazon reader reviews of dfpolis' book:

Dr Polis claims not less than the irrationality of Naturalism, the view that “science will explain it all.” He also points out that “Naturalism is the politically correct worldview of modern intellectuals.”

:up: )

I don't think that this is the case at all. Process philosophers tend to start with that assumption. But as they proceed into expounding on a process explanation, they find holes, gaps which cannot be filled by naturalist principles, so they end up turning toward the supernatural or God. — Metaphysician Undercover

God as far as I am aware, does not figure in Peirce's metaphysics, and Whitehead's conception of God is naturalistic; God is conceived by him as the fully immanent infinite entity, as I understand it. Whiteheads whole project was designed to produce a metaphysics that avoids the "bifurcation of nature" into subjective and objective aspects or properties. That is why he posited pan-experientialism, which is the idea that all actual entities have a subjective as well as an objective nature; an 'interior' as well as an 'exterior'. There may be "holes" in Whitehead's metaphysics, but that would not be surprising, since there are 'holes" in any metaphysics due to the limitations of human understanding and language. Our systems simply cannot be completely adequate to reality due to their finitude.

Semiotics does no such thing. It implies an agent as creator and interpreter of symbols, but has no place "in nature" for the existence of that agent. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is simply incorrect. I haven't read a hell of a lot of Peirce, but I have read enough to know that his idea of the "interpretant" is certainly not restricted to humans or even to the animal kingdom. And there is no place in his metaphysics for God; when he spoke about God, I think he would have understood himself to be practicing theology, not metaphysics. I believe Peirce demarcated those two domains of thought. The fact that others may not demarcate them is irrelevant.

Whitehead proposes supernatural elements of reality, prehension and concrescence. "God" is used by Whitehead to describe these aspects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Prehension and concrescence are ideas of natural processes. Whitehead explicitly set about to produce a fully naturalistic metaphysics. If you think his philosophy deals with the supernatural, perhaps you could provide some quotes to back that assessment. Have you actually read Whitehead?

I know of no reason to posit Platonic ideals. They do not instantiate triangles -- mostly people do. They are not necessary for us to know what a triangle is -- we teach children what they are by showing them examples and letting them abstract the concept. To apply the concept <triangle> to a new instance, that instance must be able to evoke the concept. But, if that instance can evoke the concept, any instance can. Thus, the concept can arise from experience -- without the need of mystical intuition. All we need to do is to focus on some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. — Dfpolis

I would be interested in your take on Feser's argument concerning the nature of concepts, then. A brief excerpt:

the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular. Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But my concept man applies to every single man without exception. Or to use my stock example, any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept 'triangularity' applies to all triangles without exception. And so forth.

Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people. And so on.

Third, we have many concepts that are so abstract that they do not have even the loose sort of connection with mental imagery that concepts like man, triangle, and crowd have. You cannot visualize triangularity or humanness per se, but you can at least visualize a particular triangle or a particular human being. But we also have concepts -- such as the concepts law, square root, logical consistency, collapse of the wave function, and innumerably many others -- that can strictly be associated with no mental image at all. You might form a visual or auditory image of the English word “law” when you think about law, but the concept law obviously has no essential connection whatsoever with that word, since ancient Greeks, Chinese, and Indians had the concept without using that specific word to name it.

I interpret Plato's 'mystical intuition' to be referring to the capacity of the intellect to grasp concepts - the very action of reason itself. In order to be able to do that, the intellect represents through abstractions, which are in some sense idealisations, in another sense, possibilities. The sense in which they exist are as potentials or ideals; they don't exist in the manifest domain, but in the domain of possibility, which is, nevertheless, a real domain, insofar as there is a 'domain of real possibility'. That is why a concept of 'degrees of reality' is required, something which has generally been lost in the transition to modernity, in which existence is univocal.

Secondly, on the argument that 'concepts can arise from experience' - I think this is the kind of claim made by empiricists, such as J S Mill, who generally reject the possibility of innate mental capabilities. But only a mind capable of grasping geometric forms could understand that two completely different triangles are instances of the same general kind (although it would be interesting to see if there have been animal trials to determine whether crows or monkeys can pick out triangles from amongst a collection of geometric shapes.)

A point to note about Peirce is that he was heavily influenced by Schiller. So the poetic or aesthetic is important as the "other" to any rationalism or logicism.

That is why his triadic semiotics is a metaphysics which is large enough to be totalising. Look closely and your own concerns are found to be bound up within his system of reasoning.

So when it comes to any exercise in human rationality - such as scientific inquiry - it has to start somewhere. It has to begin in what Peirce called musement or some kind of free imaginative play of thought and interest. What he called abduction - the creative leap towards fruitful hypothesis.

So the mechanical nature of rational or logical thought itself demands the "other" that can animate it. To the degree that we refine the one - some rigid method - we have to also develop the other that complements it. We have to have that aesthetic or poetic element to our thinking which gives us something meaningful as an idea to explore by way of that method.

Now I don't think that Peirce properly clarified this aspect of his system. But it is key. To the degree that you have the one - a mechanistically constraining logic - you need just as developed a version of its other, some kind of basic freely associative imagination which plays about in ways to breed fruitful speculative lines of thought.

Like Schiller (and even Kant) then, Peirce saw creativity and spontaneity as being as basic as constraint or logical habits of thought. You couldn't get anywhere in thought without both.

So what I criticise is where the two aspects of a developed mind are treated as representing a disconnected duality - as in rationality and irrationality, or science and poetry. The Peircean view is that the two are the complementary aspects of any general process of reasoned inquiry.

Likewise, another dualism regularly forced on the discussion is the one of rationality vs empiricism. You try to split off science from metaphysics on the grounds that metaphysics is so free, it doesn't need to be constrained by empirical measurement, possibly not even by aesthetic experience - as somehow mind or spirit is all about some absolute freedom ... getting us back to that Cartesian dualism that semiosis is all about getting past.

This is a wrong move. Again, dialectics requires that to go in one direction, the other direction must be real also. So all thought - that has any shape at all - is a fruitful mix of idea and impression, concept and percept, theory and measurement. Whether you are a poet or a scientist, there is this same dialectic of generals and particulars in play. All thought is rational~empirical in structure. If you were born lacking senses, there just wouldn't be any thinking.

That is why I highlight the special nature of scientific experience. It asks us to feel and sense the world in terms of numbers or logical quantities - information. So it is a completion of the development of a logical form of discourse. A mathematical-strength conception of nature quite naturally depends on a mathematical-strength perception of nature.

Now the objection is that this is too mechanical. It winds up seeing nature as a machine. And that can be true if you have a reduced model of causality - the model that disposes of formal/final cause.

But philosophical naturalism embraces all four Aristotelian causes in a holistic systems logic. And Peircean metaphysics takes that forward by seeing holism in a process/developmental light. Then finishing the job, making explicit a dualism of information and matter which allows a physicalism which is divided by a fundamental difference without being dualistically disconnected. Information and matter become formally reciprocal, the inverse of each other.

Anyway, it is perfectly possible to take a fully holistic position as a scientist. And pragmatically - as Peirce emphasises with abduction - the aesthetic and the poetic are fully included in that as musement or creative spontaneity, a fundamental animating ingredient of rationally-constrained inquiry.

Then science does cash out a mathematical conception of reality in a mathematical perception of reality - experience constrained to the act of reading numbers off dials. But there is then the other side that results from this. Scientific level musement. The ability to enjoy a poetic or aesthetic level play in the new realm that is the mathematico-logical reality. The land of abstract dynamical structure.

Platonism does give an image of this realm as being frozen and rigid. But the Peircean view would be of a realm that is dynamical and developmental. A realm of processes of growth and purpose.

So all the way down, the Peircean view is trying to make sense of the whole of things in a naturalistic fashion. In laying the foundations for modern rationalism, it was trying to do justice to the creativity and spontaneity that makes nature a self-organising process and not some Cartesian machine, dualistically divided within its own house.

If you're interested in the difference between Plato's and Aristotle's theories you might want o read my article, "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," The Modern Schoolman LXVIII (1991), 3, pp. 225-244. (https://philpapers.org/rec/POLANR).

Plato needs to explain how multiple individuals can "participate" in a single form. His solution is that a form or ideal is like a seal, and matter (chora, pandeches) is a like the wax into which the seal is impressed. All intelligibility is in the form, while matter is wholly unintelligible. The reason individuals differ is because matter is in some way defective -- giving rise to imperfect copies. Thus, individuality is the result of imperfection.

Aristotle rejects, with about 14 different arguments in his Metaphysics, separate Platonic forms. So, he has no need to relate one form to many instances. His problem is to explain the reality of change. As a result, he sees material objects as having two fundamental aspects: an intrinsic form (which is what the object is now) and an active tendency (he calls it a "desire") to transform into something else, hyle. Hyle means "wood," and reflects the story of a wooden bed that sprouted leaves. Thus, it indicates at a "blossoming" dynamic hidden beneath the present form of things. Unlike Plato's unintelligible chora, hyle can be known by analogy. For example, we can know by analogy with other, similar seeds, that an acorn has an active tendency to become an oak.

This active tendency is not seen as reflecting universal laws of nature, but they are a natural development of the hyle idea

Thank you for the kind words.

You try to split off science from metaphysics on the grounds that metaphysics is so free, it doesn't need to be constrained by empirical measurement, possibly not even by aesthetic experience - as somehow mind or spirit is all about some absolute freedom ... getting us back to that Cartesian dualism that semiosis is all about getting past. — apokrisis

It puzzles me as to why you seem to have such a passion for mischaracterizing what I have said. I distinguish science from metaphysics and each of them from poetry on the grounds that they are three different disciplines, as I have explained. I can't see any way in which metaphysical speculation is constrained by empirical measurement, much less necessarily so constrained.

Perhaps you could explain why you think metaphysics should be, or necessarily is, constrained by empirical measurement; I'm willing to listen and give fair-minded consideration to whatever you might have to say about that. So, far you have offered no explanation to which any consideration might be given.

As to whether metaphysical speculation should be, or necessarily is, constrained by "aesthetic experience", I'm not sure what you would mean by that. Is "aesthetic experience" intended to refer to sensory experience generally or to special kinds of experience, for example of beauty or of the sublime?

As I have said before metaphysical speculation is, or at least should be, constrained by the demand for logical consistency, and by good sense; meaning being in accordance with the generally evident logic of our thinking about the broadest categories of meaning; the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and determinism, similarity and difference, change and identity, being and becoming and so on. One term of each of those dichotomies seems to be involved in the ordinary empirical world of sense experience, and the other not.

I admit that this is not usually commented on, but it is essential to avoiding what I call the "Omniscience Fallacy" -- using divine omniscience as a paradigm for human knowledge. Doing so leads to the conclusion that we never "really know" anything. I think it's better to take "knowing" to name an activity engaged in by human beings. Doing so allows our mental representations to be true without being exhaustive. — Dfpolis

I think I have a better suggestion, and that is to remove the requirement of "truth" from knowledge. In this way we do not compromise "truth", allowing that 'truth" maintains its place as an ideal. We represent knowledge as it really is, and this is something relative, and admitting to degrees of certainty. So we attribute "knowing" to human beings, and recognize that knowing does not necessitate truth, instead of degrading truth as you suggest, to allow that all knowing is truth.

Note that I am not rejecting the formulation you cite. I am merely pointing out that a "likeness" invariably has less content than the original. How much less can still be counted as true?

No translation is prefect. I always get much more out of reading Aquinas' Latin than a translation because his Latin terms have connotations missing in their translations. (I got "approach to equality" from McKeon. I can find the exact citation if you wish.) So, my translation isn't "bogus." It merely emphasizes a different aspect of adaequatio. On the other hand, "equality" is quite deceptive. Aquinas never writes aequatio, but always adaequatio -- rejecting actual equality. — Dfpolis

As I said, I think the proper translation is "equation", which suggests equality, or perhaps "agreement as you suggested, but there is nothing to indicate "approach" to equality. The addition of "approach" suggests less than equal, and less than equal is not equal.

I agree that "likeness" is not the best term, but the point is that in order for there to be truth, the proper representation of the real thing must exist within the intellect. This means the correct representation, and nothing less than that, as other than that would be incorrect. Likeness suggests similarity, but we can see that the representation need not be in any way similar to the real thing represented. This is evident with symbols. The symbol 2 is not at all similar to what it represents. However, there must be an equation or equality between the symbol and the thing represented. The symbol must always represent the exact same real thing, in order that there is truth. There is always a direct one to one relation, not an approach. There is no room for "adequacy", in truth otherwise someone might say that 2 represents something between 1.8 and 2.2. So "adequacy" invites ambiguity such that it is not necessary to have a one to one relation between the representation (symbol) in the mind, and the real thing which is being represented. But truth is dependent on this precise, unwavering equation between the representation and the reality represented.

Let's parse this out. You seem to agree that "we cannot have correspondence in a complete, and perfect way." If so, we have two options:
(1) We humans are incapable of knowing truth. (The Omniscience Fallacy).
(2) Human truth does not require " correspondence in a complete, and perfect way." (My position.) — Dfpolis

I see no such Omniscience Fallacy. That we do not have correspondence in a complete and perfect way does not mean that we ought not strive for it. That is the nature of an ideal, a perfection which we strive for but never achieve. Even if we know that we will never reach that point of absolute perfection, holding the ideal inspires us to keep bettering ourselves, knowing that we haven't yet reached the point of perfection, we can always do better. If we remove the ideal, assuming that we have reached a "truth" which is sufficient for human beings, then there is nothing to inspire us to better ourselves.

I think you agree with (2). So, I'm puzzled as to why you disagree with me. — Dfpolis

I clearly do not agree with 2. I think it's nonsense that "truth" would be something different for God than for human beings. And, the problem concerning human knowledge is easily resolved by recognizing that human knowledge does not necessarily contain truth. So we are left with human knowledge which is imperfect (lacking in truth), and there is no need to degrade truth from its accepted position as an ideal.

don't know if you have not read enough of Aquinas, or if you reject his position. In his analysis, "truth," like "being," is an analogous term, i.e. its meaning is partly the same and partly different in God and in humans. So, yes, God's truth isn't human truth. — Dfpolis

I think you're drawing on your bogus translation again. I agree that for Aquinas, the forms which exist in the human intellect are not the same as independent Forms which are proper to God and the angels. This is because of the deficiencies caused by the human intellect being dependent on a body. Therefore, as you say, there is a different relation between God the creator of reality, and reality itself, and the human intellect's understanding of reality, and reality itself. However, the equality of the relation, the one to one relation between God's Forms and reality must be the same equality which the human intellect strives for. What is the case is that the imperfection deprives us of truth.

We come to know an object because it has acted on us in some way we're aware of. But, in acting on us in a specific way, an object does not exhaust the potential modes of action specified by its essence. Thus, we do not, and cannot, know objects exhaustively, as God does. Therefore, God's truth differs from our truth. — Dfpolis

Your conclusion is unsound because you have no premise of what is required for truth. What you have demonstrated is that human knowledge is deficient. If God's knowledge is perfect, then we can conclude that human knowledge differs from God's knowledge. If we ask why human knowledge differs from God's knowledge we might find that this is because it's lacking in truth.

We cannot conclude that God's truth differs from our truth because we have no premise which defines "truth". And such a premise would require that "truth" is defined in two distinct ways, which is contradiction. So it is impossible, by way of contradiction, to make the conclusion you desire. We'd have a contradictory "truth". That's why we need to allow that the reason why human knowledge is deficient in comparison to God's knowledge is that it is lacking in something. If you've read Plato's Theaetetus you will understand that what is lacking in human knowledge is the capacity to exclude the possibility of falsity. Since we have no comprehensive way to exclude the possibility of falsity, then that possibility is a necessary (essential) part of human knowledge. This is how human knowledge differs from God's knowledge, the possibility of falsity denies us the right to claim "truth".

Thus, the concept can arise from experience -- without the need of mystical intuition. — Dfpolis

Again, this is a false conclusion. What you've described is teaching the concept. But this requires that the concept pre-exists, prior to the student learning it. Before drawing the triangle, the teacher must know the concept. And the teacher must have learned it from someone else who drew it, and so on, until you have an infinite regress. Such an infinite regress doesn't allow for any coming into being of the concept, so the concept along with human beings teaching it, must exist eternally.

Aristotle's argument against the Platonists was to say that when the geometer "discovers" the geometrical construct, that human mind actualizes it, causing it to have actual existence as a human concept. Prior to be being "discovered" by geometers, the concept existed in potential, tit could potentially be discovered. He then uses the cosmological argument to demonstrate that nothing potential could be eternal, so he refutes the Pythagorean notion that geometrical concepts are eternal.

However, allowing that the concept exists as potential prior to being actualized by the human mind, does not give it the status of "nothing" at this time. And that is why we as human beings, when we create, or actualize concepts, must abide by the restrictions placed on us by reality. So for Aristotle it is not the case that the mind creates the concept from nothing, nor does the concept "arise from experience", it is a combination of both. Experience exposes us to the potential for the concept and then the activity of the mind causes it to have actual existence.

And, yes, I can make any self-consistent concept I please. For example, the concept <gap triangle> -- like a triangle, but with 2 sides not joined. — Dfpolis

Sure, that's the nature of potential, it appears to approach infinity, thus the potential for conception would be infinite. But things like contradiction demonstrate that it is not infinitie. So you can make any self-consistent concept you like. But what I was talking about was truth in conception, and this requires that the relation between the symbol and the reality symbolized is true.

God is conceived by him as the fully immanent infinite entity, — Janus

This makes no sense. An infinite entity (if such a thing is even possible) is not natural. No natural things are infinite. Nor is it possible that something immanent could be infinite because it would be constrained by that which it inheres within.

That is why he posited pan-experientialism, which is the idea that all actual entities have a subjective as well as an objective nature; an 'interior' as well as an 'exterior'. There may be "holes" in Whitehead's metaphysics, but that would not be surprising, since there are 'holes" in any metaphysics due to the limitations of human understanding and language. Our systems simply cannot be completely adequate to reality due to their finitude. — Janus

The point though, is that it is wrong to claim that Whitehead has produced "an entirely coherent naturalist metaphysics". Whitehead's pan-experientialism is not a naturalism because it hands supernatural powers like "prehension" to inanimate existence.

This is simply incorrect. I haven't read a hell of a lot of Peirce, but I have read enough to know that his idea of the "interpretant" is certainly not restricted to humans or even to the animal kingdom. And there is no place in his metaphysics for God; when he spoke about God, I think he would have understood himself to be practicing theology, not metaphysics. I believe Peirce demarcated those two domains of thought. The fact that others may not demarcate them is irrelevant. — Janus

It is inherent within the concept of semiosis that there is an agent which creates the signs and an agent which interprets. Of course the agent is not necessarily human, that's the point, but an agent is necessarily implied nonetheless. That agent must be accounted for. In the human beings we account for agency with conscious intention. How would we account for agency in other forms of semiosis?

Prehension and concrescence are ideas of natural processes. — Janus

This is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

For example, the word “prehension,” which Whitehead defines as “uncognitive apprehension” (SMW 69) makes its first systematic appearance in Whitehead’s writings as he refines and develops the kinds and layers of relational connections between people and the surrounding world. As the “uncognitive” in the above is intended to show, these relations are not always or exclusively knowledge based, yet they are a form of “grasping” of aspects of the world. Our connection to the world begins with a “pre-epistemic” prehension of it, from which the process of abstraction is able to distill valid knowledge of the world. But that knowledge is abstract and only significant of the world; it does not stand in any simple one-to-one relation with the world. In particular, this pre-epistemic grasp of the world is the source of our quasi- a priori knowledge of space which enables us to know of those uniformities that make cosmological measurements, and the general conduct of science, possible.
...

The basic units of becoming for Whitehead are “actual occasions.” Actual occasions are “drops of experience,” and relate to the world into which they are emerging by “feeling” that relatedness and translating it into the occasion’s concrete reality. When first encountered, this mode of expression is likely to seem peculiar if not downright outrageous. One thing to note here is that Whitehead is not talking about any sort of high-level cognition. When he speaks of “feeling” he means an immediacy of concrete relatedness that is vastly different from any sort of “knowing,” yet which exists on a relational spectrum where cognitive modes can emerge from sufficiently complex collections of occasions that interrelate within a systematic whole. Also, feeling is a far more basic form of relatedness than can be represented by formal algebraic or geometrical schemata. These latter are intrinsically abstract, and to take them as basic would be to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. But feeling is not abstract. Rather, it is the first and most concrete manifestation of an occasion’s relational engagement with reality.

This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.

Actual occasions are fundamentally atomic in character, which leads to the next interpretive difficulty. In his previous works, events were essentially extended and continuous. And when Whitehead speaks of an “event” in PR without any other qualifying adjectives, he still means the extensive variety found in his earlier works (PR 73). But PR deals with a different set of problems from that previous triad, and it cannot take such continuity for granted. For one thing, Whitehead treats Zeno's Paradoxes very seriously and argues that one cannot resolve these paradoxes if one starts from the assumption of continuity, because it is then impossible to make sense of anything coming immediately before or immediately after anything else. Between any two points of a continuum such as the real number line there are an infinite number of other points, thus rendering the concept of the “next” point meaningless. But it is precisely this concept of the “next occasion” that Whitehead requires to render intelligible the relational structures of his metaphysics. If there are infinitely many occasions between any two occasions, even ones that are nominally “close” together, then it becomes impossible to say how it is that later occasions feel their predecessors – there is an unbounded infinity of other occasions intervening in such influences, and changing it in what are now undeterminable ways. Therefore, Whitehead argued, continuity is not something which is “given;” rather it is something which is achieved. Each occasion makes itself continuous with its past in the manner in which it feels that past and creatively incorporates the past into its own concrescence, its coming into being.

In short, reality consists of events, "occasions". An occasion will "prehend" other occasions, and this is an uncognitive apprehension. We could say that events or "occasions" communicate with each other in this way, through prehension. They unite in concrescence, and this produces the continuity of the concrete world which we observe.

It puzzles me as to why you seem to have such a passion for mischaracterizing what I have said. — Janus

I am simply prodding you to make explicit your position. It ain't crystal clear.

I distinguish science from metaphysics and each of them from poetry on the grounds that they are three different disciplines — Janus

And I dispute that being a hard difference. My position is that they are all united as forms of semiotic discourse about nature. They are united by the same method of reasoned inquiry - which includes measurement, or however else we term the empirical aspect of the deal.

I can't see any way in which metaphysical speculation is constrained by empirical measurement, much less necessarily so constrained. — Janus

All reasoned inquiry is constrained by that if it aims at "truth" or "knowledge".

As I explained, speculation can be free. Indeed, it is a necessity that all reasoned inquiry makes a creative leap to get started. So metaphysics has that special quality of being the speculative breeding ground for useful new ideas. But then those are ideas to be tested. Otherwise, they are not really very useful - even if they might provide light entertainment or cod support for social constructs.

As to whether metaphysical speculation should be, or necessarily is, constrained by "aesthetic experience", I'm not sure what you would mean by that. — Janus

Nor did I say it. I did say that there is an "aesthetic" dimension to mathematical-level thought in terms of being able to contemplate abstract dynamical structure in a sensory-feeling kind of way. Patterns composed of numbers can come alive and reveal their necessary form.

...and by good sense; meaning being in accordance with the generally evident logic of our thinking about the broadest categories of meaning; the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and determinism, similarity and difference, change and identity, being and becoming and so on. One term of each of those dichotomies seems to be involved in the ordinary empirical world of sense experience, and the other not. — Janus

I would say that each dichotomy - to the extent it is metaphysically right - manages to define the polar limits of possible sense experience.

Jointly, they set up the opposing bounds of what exists. And then that ensures every possible particular is to be found within those bounds.

So they are the limits that define the spectrum. And that is where the measurability begins. With black and white defined in some absolute fashion, the spectrum in-between can be divided into its shades of gray,

Fair enough, but my point still stands, since @StreetlightX insists that the rot of Plato's political and social ideology and the historical context that supposedly shaped his views infects all varieties of modern Platonism-so-called.

the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular.

Agreed.

Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate.

Agreed.

Third, we have many concepts that are so abstract that they do not have even the loose sort of connection with mental imagery that concepts like man, triangle, and crowd have.

Agreed.

I interpret Plato's 'mystical intuition' to be referring to the capacity of the intellect to grasp concepts - the very action of reason itself. In order to be able to do that, the intellect represents through abstractions, which are in some sense idealisations, in another sense, possibilities. The sense in which they exist are as potentials or ideals; they don't exist in the manifest domain, but in the domain of possibility, which is, nevertheless, a real domain, insofar as there is a 'domain of real possibility'. — Wayfarer

i think this is an incorrect interpretation of the historical Plato, who believed in innate ideas. In the Meno, for example, he argues that with a little simulation, ideas are "remembered."

I agree that universal concepts are abstractions. I am not sure if you are using this term merely to describe what they are, or if you are also talking about how they come to be. My understanding of ideogenesis is Aristotelian-Thomistic. As a result of sensation we form unified physical (neural) representations Aristotle called "phantasms." (How these are formed is the focus of the so-called "binding problem" in contemporary neuroscience.) The intellect (nous = our power of awareness) makes the information latent in these representations actually known. Every representation has many notes of intelligibility and, under the direction of our will, we can attend to some to the exclusion of others. This selective attention is abstraction and the efficient cause of our universal concepts. (Their formal cause, what provides their informative content, is the phantasm.) So, our universal ideas, while products of intellect, derive their information wholly from sense data. (Aristotle's discussion of this, which is very heavy going, is in De Anima iii.)

As for ideas and possibility, the reason they are universal is not because we have experienced and intend all their instances, as Mill might think, but because each instance is objectively capable of evoking, via abstraction, its corresponding ideas.

As for where Ideas exist, that is an-ill framed question. The phantasms which support ideas exist in the brain, but Ideas themselves are not things but activities. My idea <triangle> is me thinking of triangles, and me thinking of triangles is supported by the brain's neural processing. Still, the idea is not merely the brain's triangle representations, but my intellect being aware of the relevant notes of intelligibility encoded in that representation. Consequently, if the brain is damaged, our ability to think can be compromised -- because we may no longer be able to process contents properly.

a concept of 'degrees of reality' is required, something which has generally been lost in the transition to modernity, in which existence is univocal. — Wayfarer

I follow Aquinas in seeing "being" as an analogous, not a univocal, term. We can discuss the analogy of being when it is more relevant to the thread's topic.

Secondly, on the argument that 'concepts can arise from experience' - I think this is the kind of claim made by empiricists, such as J S Mill, who generally reject the possibility of innate mental capabilities. But only a mind capable of grasping geometric forms could understand that two completely different triangles are instances of the same general kind (although it would be interesting to see if there have been animal trials to determine whether crows or monkeys can pick out triangles from amongst a collection of geometric shapes.) — Wayfarer

I am an empiricist, but of an Aristotelian, rather than a Millian, stripe. I have no problem with "innate mental capabilities" in the sense of abilities. I see no need for any innate abstract knowledge, including so-called "a priori propositions" such as the principle of contradiction.

I don't think the ability to learn and use types, which has been implemented by artificial intelligence, implies intellect. The essential note of intellect is awareness.