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
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
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
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
.reduce rational method to just another form of semiosis — apokrisis
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
Metaphysics can allow itself to speculate beyond nature; there have been perfectly coherent supernatural metaphysical systems, — Janus
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
Metaphysics: needs to be logically consistent but does not need to be based on empirical evidence (not sure if it even can be). — Janus
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
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
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
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
"Has the likeness of the thing known", sounds like correspondence to me. How do you interpret this as "adequacy'? — Metaphysician Undercover
The quote is taken right out of context, by you, and given an unacceptable translation. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
We cannot say that "God's Truth" is different from human truth. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
"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
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
If perchance you could lay out their 'Platonic take on humanity', perhaps we might go from there. — StreetlightX
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
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.”
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
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
Whitehead proposes supernatural elements of reality, prehension and concrescence. "God" is used by Whitehead to describe these aspects. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
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.
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
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
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
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 think you agree with (2). So, I'm puzzled as to why you disagree with me. — Dfpolis
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
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
Thus, the concept can arise from experience -- without the need of mystical intuition. — Dfpolis
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
God is conceived by him as the fully immanent infinite entity, — Janus
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
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
Prehension and concrescence are ideas of natural processes. — Janus
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.
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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.
It puzzles me as to why you seem to have such a passion for mischaracterizing what I have said. — Janus
I distinguish science from metaphysics and each of them from poetry on the grounds that they are three different disciplines — Janus
I can't see any way in which metaphysical speculation is constrained by empirical measurement, much less necessarily so constrained. — Janus
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
...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
the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular.
Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate.
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.
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
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
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
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