I think I have a better suggestion, and that is to remove the requirement of "truth" from knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover
We represent knowledge as it really is, and this is something relative, and admitting to degrees of certainty. — Metaphysician Undercover
The addition of "approach" suggests less than equal, and less than equal is not equal. — Metaphysician Undercover
the point is that in order for there to be truth, the proper representation of the real thing must exist within the intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover
we can see that the representation need not be in any way similar to the real thing represented. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
That we do not have correspondence in a complete and perfect way does not mean that we ought not strive for it. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think it's nonsense that "truth" would be something different for God than for human beings. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
What you have demonstrated is that human knowledge is deficient. — Metaphysician Undercover
And such a premise would require that "truth" is defined in two distinct ways, which is contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover
Since we have no comprehensive way to exclude the possibility of falsity, then that possibility is a necessary (essential) part of human knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover
What you've described is teaching the concept. But this requires that the concept pre-exists, prior to the student learning it. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
Experience exposes us to the potential for the concept and then the activity of the mind causes it to have actual existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
i think this is an incorrect interpretation of the historical Plato, who believed in innate ideas. — Dfpolis
The essential note of intellect is awareness. — Dfpolis
you might want o read my article, "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," — Dfpolis
What of prime matter? We must remember that there is no indeterminate potency in Aristotle. Hyle is always the dynamics to become some particular thing. But Aristotle does recognize a hierarchy of hyle: the chest is wooden, the wood is earthen, and perhaps the earth is fiery. If no further analysis is possible (and that point must come because an infinite regress is impossible) then that unanalyzable hyle is a kind of primary matter.
From the logical point of view, the traditional doctrine of prima materia makes no sense. How can one have a concept of a principle which, by hypothesis, has no intelligibility? If all intelligibility is contained in form, matter must be unintelligible.
The essential note of intellect is awareness. — Dfpolis
However, creatures generally are aware — Wayfarer
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. — apokrisis
My conception of metaphysics is that it consists in producing a picture of what entities there are, what the fundamental entities are, and how those entities are related to one another. — Janus
And that's why I am dubious about the accounts of any kind of empiricism - Mills, or Aristotle's - to account for those capabilities in terms of experience alone. — Wayfarer
The way it strikes me, is that 'naturalism' comprises 'those things that science can or might explain'. So it's what we can explain. But metaphysics as classically conceived, is about 'what explains us'. So it is in some important way above us rather than beneath us. Which is why the classical tradition is top-down with the One, or God, or Nous (depending) at the 'top' and us humans 'here below' - betwixt ape and angel. — Wayfarer
and I have no doubt that this is true, but I do doubt that this amounts to much of an explanation of their significance; my view is that rationality transcends a purely biological account of human faculties — Wayfarer
"Approach to" is not an addition. It translates the Latin prefix ad- in adaequatio, which you continue to ignore, pretending the text says aequatio. Rather than suggesting "less than" means "equals," It recognizes that human estimates of equality are often approximate.
Also, as I said earlier, the translation is not mine, but Richard McKeon's in the philosophical Latin vocabulary in his Selections From Medieval Philosophers. So, please desist in calling it "bogus" or explain why McKeon erred. — Dfpolis
Let me begin by saying, that while you may define your terms however you wish, definitions that alter, rather than clarify, common usage, lead to philosophic confusion -- especially when no warning is given of their peculiarity. — Dfpolis
Most people use "truth" to name something they've experienced in their own thought and language, and in that of others. — Dfpolis
I don't see how anything false can count as knowledge. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give your definition of "knowledge." Mine is awareness of present intelligibility -- guaranteeing a connection (dynamical presence) with the intelligible object. — Dfpolis
According to Aristotle, saying what is, is, is speaking the truth. I take it you disagree if you think that we can "represent knowledge as it really is," and yet not have truth..
I have no problem with degrees of certitude. I see them ranging from metaphysical (guarantied by the nature of being), through physical (guarantied by the normal operation of nature), to moral (rational expectations justifying ethical decisions).
How do you see metaphysically certain human propositions as compromising "truth"? — Dfpolis
No, equality is not involved. Rather "2" evokes in readers, by convention, the concept <two> -- the same concept concept evoked by counting actual and potential instances of sets of two units. Evocation is not equality. — Dfpolis
As Aristotle notes in Metaphysics Delta, there are two species of quantity: discrete and continuous. Discrete quantities are not numbers, but countable. In counting is is rational to expect exactitude as you suggest. Continuous quantities are not numbers either, but measurable. Measurements are always approximate. So it is irrational to expect an exact value, and no one thinks we're lying when we say that the bolt is 2 cm long if that is a reasonable approximation of its length.
So, what is a reasonable approximation? One adequate to the purpose of the measurement. For example, home building requires less accuracy than grinding telescope mirrors. — Dfpolis
Let's review. In God, there is an agreement between what is in His mind and creation because God willing creation to exist is identically creation being willed to exist by God. God in knowing his own act of creatio continuo, of sustaining creation in being, knows all creation. We do not have this relation to creation. Rather than knowing creation because we act on it to maintain it, we know it because it acts on us via our senses. So, it is metaphysically impossible that we could know as God knows or have truth as God has truth. Such omniscient truth can never be a human goal, as it's ontologically incompatible with our finite nature. — Dfpolis
What we actually know conforms to reality because we are aware of it acting on us. — Dfpolis
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
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? — Metaphysician Undercover
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" — SophistiCat
My question to you is how this attempt to derive a scientific TOE differs from your conception of metaphysics. — Janus
My conception of metaphysics is that it consists in producing a picture of what entities there are, what the most fundamental or necessary entities are, and how those entities are related to one another. — Janus
So, you have broadly, theistic and atheistic metaphysics. In theistic metaphysical systems God is posited as being necessary to ground the possibility of the intelligibility of nature (as well as freedom, rationality and so on, but I think intelligibility is really the most salient point in such positions). — Janus
Now you may take a different view. Fine. I simply ask, on what grounds? Convince me with an argument. — apokrisis
Do you have an argument to support this bald assertion? — Janus
So, are you, or are you not, claiming that there is no semiosis apart from the human? It's not clear what you mean to say here. Fire creates smoke which is a sign of fire; a sign that could be "interpreted" by humans or other animals. The "agent" of the sign is the fire; what's the problem? — Janus
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." — Dfpolis
my view is that rationality transcends a purely biological account of human faculties — Wayfarer
Only humans are made in the image of God and have immortal souls endowed with the spiritual powers of rationality and freedom. — Stephen M. Barr
Thanks for the kind word and the references.
— apokrisis
The historical reality looks more like that they both got the essential duality of a formal principle and a material principle as the causal arche. — apokrisis
ontological atomism — apokrisis
The material principle is that of an Apeiron or the Indefinite - chaotic action. — apokrisis
The formal principle is then the order that regulates this chaos of fluctuation. Tames it, channels it, gives it structure and intent — apokrisis
form is a developmental outcome - the imposition of habits of regularity on a chaos of possibility, which thus always emerges as substantial actuality that is a blend of the necessary and the accidental. — apokrisis
I would say that you have a problem in that your reading of hyle leads you to suggest it contains form within it in some sense. — apokrisis
it is so hard to leave behind some notion of the material principle as already some kind of definite stuff - like a space-filling, but formless and passive, chora. — apokrisis
the point I'm making is that humans possess an essential requirement for rationality, which is the ability to form concepts and understand abstractions; it's also fundamental to language. — Wayfarer
it is assumed that these capabilities have evolved — Wayfarer
my view is that rationality transcends a purely biological account of human faculties — Wayfarer
Still, I have no difficulty in accepting Aristotle's empiricist account in De Anima iii. The senses provide us with intelligible data about the beings we encounter. The agent intellect (nous poiêtikos = subjective awareness) makes this intelligibility actually known, giving us ideas (awareness of intelligible data). Abstraction is awareness fixing on some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. I wonder what in this account you find inadequate to your experience? — Dfpolis
Since all causation is physical, physicalists must hold that consciousness is epiphenomenal -- along for the ride, but without causal power. — Dfpolis
You mean those two bald assertions?
1. Infinite exits only as a concept. Concepts are not natural. Therefore no infinite thing is natural.
2. Infinite is defined as unbounded. Immanent is defined as inhering within. Anything which inheres within something else is bounded by that thing which it inheres within. Therefore no immanent thing is infinite. — Metaphysician Undercover
I believe that all living things have an immaterial soul as agent in any semiotic activities. — Metaphysician Undercover
The formal principle is then the order that regulates this chaos of fluctuation. Tames it, channels it, gives it structure and intent. It limits and imposes a unity. It is also an active principle in a sense. But active in imposing a form, a limitation, that keeps all the action organised and heading in a shared direction that is intelligible and so persists. — apokrisis
Without a physical effect, it could not benefit survival. So, evolution couldn't select it. In sum, while you may continue to think that awareness has a physical explanation, it cannot have originated by Darwinian selection. — Dfpolis
What is rationality?
I think that:
1) Rationality is the possession of reason (a mental faculty).
2) A human being is a body/mind unity.
3) Human biology comprehends human anatomy and physiology.
4) Human psychology comprehends human mental conditions and functions
5) Corporeal and mental conditions and functions are mutually dependent, but incommensurable. — Galuchat
What is the theological argument for defining rationality as a spiritual (rather than mental) power? And why is such an argument necessary in view of the empirical evidence presented by Berwick and Chomsky? — Galuchat
if you have to be more analytic about it how would you frame the four causes? — JupiterJess
So, hyle has a determinate intentionality.
...
Aristotle's hyle is not unintelligible as is Plato's chora. It has a "desire" or intentional relation to a determinate form which can be known by analogy with similar cases. This intentionality makes change orderly and intelligible, echoing Jeremiah's "ordinances of heaven and earth" (33:25) and Thales' reliance on astronomical regularity, and foreshadowing Newton's universal laws of nature. — Dfpolis
Yes, but that's not a problem. It's the solution of a problem. The new form in a substantial change is "in" hyle in a potential or intentional way -- as the "desired" outcome of its striving. Hyle is "such as of its own nature to desire and yearn for [the new form]." — Dfpolis
So, I see no ontological role for a principle of "indefiniteness" (an Apeiron), with the possible exception of free will. But, even in free will, I see choices as sufficiently caused -- just not predetermined. — Dfpolis
Since all causation is physical... — Dfpolis
Both these assertions depend upon the assumption that there is no infinite being. — Janus
Do you have an argument to justify that belief or to explain why organisms cannot be "agents" in themselves and require "immaterial souls" in order to achieve agency? For that matter, what exactly would an "immaterial soul" be and how would it enable agency? — Janus
I'm not sure what particular clarification you seek here. — apokrisis
But not all causation is physical, that's the point with free will, intention, it's non-physical causation. And, the need for a cause of physical existence is what drives the assumption of God. The cause of physical existence cannot be something physical, therefore it is necessary to assume a non-physical cause. It is different to say that all effects are physical than to say that all causes are physical. And this is one of the important aspects of Aristotle's philosophy, that he provides real grounding for non-physical causes. — Metaphysician Undercover
Thanks, really what I was asking after was what is the core difference (if any) between "material" and "efficient" cause. The classical difference would be the material is bronze and the efficient is how the artisan uses his tools to fashions it into a statue. — JupiterJess
Also, and this fits more with the discussion with this thread and is not really addressed to you, but if the top-down constraints , formal causes do not exist when they are not in use how is it they can be repeated at future points? I've read some Aristotleian realism and it doesn't seem to come up with an adequate solution. For example if "redness" can be manifested multiple times, then when there are no red things can it occur again at a future point? — JupiterJess
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