Oops, I used superscript instead of sub-script. My bad. :yikes:

what universal does “2” denote? — Galuchat

The symbol "2" (or "II" or "two") denotes the number 2.

Whether it exists, or the mode in which it exists, is exactly what is at issue. As you no doubt know, this question is at the heart of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' which says there's not an electron lurking within the probability wave until we measure it; the probability wave is all there is, until the measurement is made. That is why Bohr remarked something along the lines that the particle doesn't exist until it is measured; which is why the ontology of the 'probability wave' is still such a vexed issue. — Wayfarer

If you were to wake up on another planet and saw two aliens suns rising on the horizon, you might assume this was a probabilistic event. One unique data point can appear random since there is no pattern yet formed in the mind. If we watch the suns rise day after day we will begin to notice a pattern, then the event becomes more deterministic. Probability is a subset of determinism. This can be demonstrated via the concept of entropy.

Bohr noted the same thing. As a probability wave function, the electron is like watching the alien suns rise the first day. We now know it is there, but we don't know if this location is consistent, so we assume probability. Once you measure it, the fuzzy position is reinforced with more data, so a pattern forms and it becomes more deterministic. My concern about statistical based science is it implied a chaotic mind that cannot form the patterns needed to reach determinism. it stuck in the front end of observation where things appear more random.

If you suffered from Alzheimer disease and your short term memory was compromised, the world would look much more probabilistic, since one would not be able to remember the related data points of yesterday, to form a pattern. Each observation would appear new and random. Statistics may allow you to cope with this state of mind.

Note: In terms of entropy, and probability being a subset of determinism, entropy is a measurable quality, even if hard to define. The concept was developed during the early days of steam engines and work cycles. When doing an energy balance there was always lost energy that could not be accounted for. The amount of lost energy was measurable and was defined as the entropy.

What was observed in terms of measuring the entropy, was entropy turned out to be a state variable, meaning for any given state of matter, the measure value was always constant. Water at 25C and 1 atmosphere of pressure always has an entropy value of 188.8 joules/(mole K). We may model a glass of water as due to random collisions, yet all that random adds up to constant.

A state variable was a pattern that was observed. If the entropy of the universe has to increase, and increasing entropy creates more complexity, in the future, the future state of the entropy will also be a constant measured value, determined by that state. The future state may appear random, since we don't know how to predict future states we have never seen. However, that future state will have a new entropy constant, that is already predetermined by that state.

If we apply this to life and the DNA, what appears to be random changes on the DNA for future evolution, actually defines a new state of the DNA, with a new constant entropy, that has increased a fixed amount from the previous state. The jump is determined by the free energy difference. It looks random because biology does not think in terms of the pattern called state. It has a chaotic mind that is stuck in the foreplay of probability.

Free will and choice uses the random foreplay of determinism, yet in the end, it is jump of a fixed amount of entropy, determined by the brain.

The symbol "2" (or "II" or "two") denotes the number 2. — Wayfarer

Symbols are objects having intersubjective meaning. In this case, they are graphical or written code for mental representations of multitude, magnitude, etc. Both symbols and their associated mental representations are actualities.

What would be a general description of the number 2 which would apply to all instances of mental representation associated with the symbols "2", "II", "two", etc.?

Your logic is a little out of whack. If you are framing matter as the indefinite - in opposition to the definite - then that is just putting matter in the category of the metaphysically dichotomous. — apokrisis

Obviously, that is exactly what I said I am not doing, so your capacity for misinterpretation is overwhelming.

Dichotomies might be regarded as an intelligible form, but the whole point is that they are the intelligible form that subsumes differentiated categories, such as form and matter, into a higher level method of logical categorisation. Dichotomies talk about form and matter as being the limits of a common process of division.

So you are making the reductionist mistake of trying to reduce dynamical processes of opposition to mere standalone categories. And yet you know the logical definition of a dichotomy to be "mutually exclusive/jointly exhaustive". The coherent relationship - the asymmetry, or broken symmetry - is what it is all about. — apokrisis

Actually, you are making the reductionist mistake, as I explained. You reduce all aspects of reality such that they are described by logical dichotomies. With a clearer perspective of reality, you would understand that the primary divisions are categorical rather than dichotomous, and that the dichotomous is just one category rather than the entirety of reality as you describe. And if that category of "dichotomous" is claimed to be "exhaustive" then it is nothing but a false description. Categories are neither mutually exclusive nor jointly exhaustive, and this underscores the imperfections of human knowledge. To claim that the dichotomous is "exhaustive" of reality is ignorance of this fact.

Not quite. Necessarily, before anything can be measured, it has to be measurable. If the electron did not exist, it would not be measurable.

Let me suggest that existence is convertible with the capacity to act in some way. For anything to be measurable, it has to respond to our efforts to observe it. Imagine "something" that did not interact with anything in any way. it would be impossible to observe, let alone measure. If if had no interactions, it could not evoke the concept <being>, and so would not be an instance of being. — Dfpolis

I don't think that this is actually the case. Hallucinatory things may be measured. So just because one provides a measurement of something, this does not mean that the measured thing is real. Imagine that I find Bigfoot's print in my backyard and I take a measurement of that footprint. So I have a measurement of Bigfoot's footprint, but the marking I measured wasn't really a footprint from Bigfoot, it was caused by something else.

Clearly, we cannot say "if the electron did not exist, it would not be measurable". A faulty description of the thing measured means that the measurement is of a non-existent thing. It takes 24 hours for the sun to orbit the earth, is such a measurement of a non-existent thing (the sun's orbit around the earth is non-existent).

Not on the view I am defending. Rather than being baseless subjective or social constructs. ideas are the actualization of objective features of reality, i.e. the intelligibility of the known object. — Dfpolis

You are completely ignoring the creative, imaginative, aspect of ideas. If you had respect for this creativity you would not claim that "ideas are the actualization of objective features of reality", because you would have to respect the fact that they are subjective creations. Ideas are an act of the subject, not an act of the "objective features of reality".

This problem is inherent in your description of the relationship between existence and measurement. "Measurement" is an act carried out by the measurer. The thing being measured need not be active at all, in order for it to be measured. Yet you claim that a thing must act to be measured. Therefore you have completely turned around the act of measurement, such that you describe it as an act of the thing being measured rather than an act of the measurer. And so, this is a false description.

We can only measure quantities and intentionality is not a quantity. — Dfpolis

Then there ain't anything to meaningful to talk about. — apokrisis

Would you care to clarify how meaningfulness depends on being a quantity? It sounds like the long discredited claim of Logical Positivism.

Concepts have to be cashed out in their appropriate percepts. And it is clear that you are doing the usual dualistic thing of wanting to claim that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of it being a qualia - a feel, an affect, something mental, something ineffably subjective and hence beyond simple objective measurement. — apokrisis

My, what a bundle of confusion!

1. It seems from the context that by "percepts" you mean sensations of the physical world. The physical world is not something separate from us as mindful creatures knowing it. (I'm not saying that it depends on us for its existence, but rather, when we think and speak of it, we do so as part of nature, not as "gods" looking down on it.) Our intentions occur in, and are part of, the natural world. We are only able to think <physical world> because our intellect allows us to distinguish aspects of reality that are physically inseparable. The physical world as I conceive it is inseparable from me conceiving the physical world -- and so inseparable from my intentionality.

2. There is no a priori reason to give precepts of the physical world a more privileged standing than our awareness of mental acts. And, you can offer no a posteriori reason because your methodological dogmatism prevents you form considering, let alone judging, the data of self-awareness.

3. In speaking of "qualia," you violate your own methodological axiom, because the concept <qualia> cannot be "cashed out in ... appropriate percepts" of the physical world.

4. I am not a dualist, nor am i "doing the usual dualistic thing of wanting to claim that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of it being a qualia."
a. I am not a dualist. I have defined substances are ostensible unities The human capacity to perform different kinds of operations does not transform us into pluralities. Further, we only think of physical and intentional operations as "different" because we project them into different (intentional) concepts. In reality, my intending to arrive at the store and my walking to the store are simply different aspects of the single act of getting myself to the store.
b. I have said intentionality is not a quantity and therefore not measurable. So I'm not claiming
"that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of" anything.
c. I have not raised "qualia" in making my case, nor do I intend to do so.

5. I have not mentioned any "feels." I have pointed out that the act of seeing an apple, for example, not only gives us data about the apple (as objective object), but also about ourselves (subjective object) -- for example that we can see, be aware, direct our attention, etc. None of this involves "feels." So please spare me the typical physicalist pap.

6. As I pointed out above, you have made no case reducing "meaningfulness" to measurability.

7. If you wish to deny that we have a power of awareness, or that in being aware of sensory representations they become actually known, please do so. Just direct your comments to what i actually say instead of what you wish I said.

For a start, it changes the subject at a basic level. — apokrisis

You're quite right. I want to put the conversation on a track that will resolve the problems that have confused Western philosophers since the time of Descartes -- not go around the traditional squirrel cage.

We could say that there is that general quality of first person perspective which makes awareness intrinsically a matter of "aboutness". But that now leaves out the goal-centric nature of an embodied mind. — apokrisis

No, I have already discussed intentions that are commitments to goals -- e.g. my going to the store.

So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. — apokrisis

First, we have intentions independently of whether our desires are met, and second, knowing is also a kind of intentionality, but generally doesn't commit us to a goal. Still, if satisfaction is a topic that interests you, I encourage you to investigate it.

The aboutness is also always about something that matters — apokrisis

When we first become aware of an aspect of reality, we have no idea if it will be "important" or not. It's only after we have mulled it over, examining how it relates to the rest of what we know, that we come to judge its importance.

So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. It is not a free-floating subjectivity. — apokrisis

I have not been talking about "free-floating subjectivity" but about subject-object relations.

It can ask the question of what the Cosmos appears to be trying to achieve in general. — apokrisis

This is a philosophical or religious question, not one for natural science, which is concerned with the nature and history of the physical world.

material energy and formal variety are not only both conserved quantities in nature, they are essentially exchangable — apokrisis

I know of evidence supporting this claim. "Formal variety" is not a physical concept, nor is it a conserved quantity on physics. Further, there is no relation in physics linking energy and form as there is linking energy and mass.

Nature - considered as a memory, a record of syntactical markings - is now understood as being composed of atoms of form. — apokrisis

Really?? By whom? What does "atom of form" even mean?

We thus can move on from information as uninformed syntactical possibility — apokrisis

That is not the well-accepted definition of Shannon -- who has defined information as the reduction of possibility -- which is surely not "uninformed syntactical possibility."

As you have completely lost me, there is no point in my commenting on the rest of the post.

No I don't think there's any surprise here. I know some physicists, and they recognize that the laws of physics are descriptive principles based in inductive reason, and not representative of some "laws of nature" which are operating to cause matter to behave the way that it does. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already said that the laws of physics are human descriptions. I agree that these are arrived at inductively. When I say "laws of nature" I am not discussing the laws of physics, but that which they approximately describe -- the cause of the particular phenomena that are the evidentiary basis of our inductions.

However, when one goes on to say the laws of physics are "not representative of some 'laws of nature' which are operating to cause matter to behave the way that it does" one is making a claim inadequate to the actual practice of physics. For example, we explain the time-development of the cosmos in terms of the laws of nature. This makes no sense if the only "laws" are descriptions formulated by modern thinkers. Why? Because such laws did not exist during the epochs of the universe they are supposed to have effected. It is also difficult to see how human descriptions could effect purely physical process, even at the present time. Finally, descriptions that describe no reality are, by definition, fictions. If we're willing to imbue fictional descriptions with explanatory power, we should all study J. K. Rowling more closely.

Thus, unless the laws of physics are more than fictions, there is no reason to think that physics has any application to reality. I conclude that those holding these views are voicing philosophical dogma rather than reflections on the actual practice of physics.

There is no basis in reality to assume that there are corresponding active laws of nature causing the occurrence of what is described. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, your claim is that physics is a species of fiction writing.

let's say that there is a descriptive law which says that if the sky is clear, it is blue. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a hypothesis contrary to fact. In fact, it is not even a good generalization. Clear night skies are not blue.

Do you have an actual example you can use to make your point?

the reason why the sky is blue is not that there is a law acting to make it that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is false. We explain why the sky is blue by applying laws dealing with the scattering of light, which are based on Maxwell's electrodynamics.

The activity here, which produces "the observed behaviour of matter" is the activity of observation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confused. Generally, our observations inform us of activity that happened before we observe it (in the case of astrophysics, often billions of years before).

Our observational interactions usually play an insignificant role in the activity being observed. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as quantum observations.

Hallucinatory things may be measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

First. I am not sure what you have in mind here. How do you measure a hallucination?

Second, hallucinations have a basis in reality. It's just not the basis that normally produces the "image." For example, instead of being caused by a pink elephantine animal, the image may be due to an intoxication induced neural lesion

So just because one provides a measurement of something, this does not mean that the measured thing is real. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, you're saying we can have hallucinations with no real cause?

Imagine that I find Bigfoot's print in my backyard and I take a measurement of that footprint. So I have a measurement of Bigfoot's footprint, but the marking I measured wasn't really a footprint from Bigfoot, it was caused by something else. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure how you confusing "something else" with Bigfoot advances your case. I never said you had to know what it was that you were measuring, just that it had to be real to be measured. In your example, the footprint (which is what you are measuring) is quite real.

A faulty description of the thing measured means that the measurement is of a non-existent thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is nonsense. A man robs a store. On the way out, he passes height marks by the door and is measured to be 6'2" tall. A witness says he has blue eyes, but really he has brown eyes. By your logic, the robber does not exist.

You are completely ignoring the creative, imaginative, aspect of ideas. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. I've said that we often bridge our ignorance with constructs that are not adequately supported by evidence.

Ideas are an act of the subject, not an act of the "objective features of reality". — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, ideas result from a subject-object interaction, not from either in isolation.

"Measurement" is an act carried out by the measurer. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Measurement" is an act carried out by the measurer. The thing being measured need not be active at all, in order for it to be measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please explain how this would work in a concrete case. I want to measure my grandson's height. I press a ruler down on the top of his head, and his head presses back (Newtons' third law) as I mark the wall. I want to measure the width of a fabric. I lay a tape measure across it, and compare its marking to the edge revealed by light the fabric scatters into my eyes. I want to weigh out a pound of sugar. I put it on a scale and it presses the pan down against the spring as the dial moves. I want to measure the momentum of a bullet. I shoot it into a ballistic pendulum, and see how far back the bullet moves it.

So, what is your counter example?

you describe it as an act of the thing being measured rather than an act of the measurer — Metaphysician Undercover

No, again. I say that the measurement results from an interaction, not from the act of either in isolation.

I prefer Kant's 'transcendental idealism' — Wayfarer

I can't think of a single reason to support Kant's Transcendental Idealism. He invented it to avoid Hume's very sound analysis showing that time-sequenced ("accidental") causality is not necessary. Then, having done so, he invented anomalies that would not otherwise exist (such as the opposition between a supposedly necessary determinism and free will). It's better to go back to the Aristotelian moderate realism and avoid all these confusions.

But what scientific realists advocate is actually what Kant would describe as 'transcendental realism', i.e. the implicit acceptance that the world would appear just as it is, were there no observer. — Wayfarer

I would call that naive realism. Just because a Fuji apple, illuminated by by white light. has the objective capacity to evoke a red-quale in me does not mean that the apple has objective "redness." If I illuminate a "red" apple with green light, it will look black.

So, what our sensory interactions with the world reveals is the world's objective capacity to interact with our senses. This capacity is real, but potential until the world is actually interacting with our senses. So, it is not that we impose forms of sensation orforms of thought on the world. It is just that we activate some of the world's potential modes of interaction, and not others. We don't sense how Fuji apples scatter infrared our untraviolet light because we can't see infrared our untraviolet light. So, we know reality, but we don't know reality exhaustively.

We can reflect this in formulating our ontology by saying that existence is convertible with the capacity to act in reality, and essence is the specification of an object's capacity to act. Since actual sensory interactions give us information on (but do not exhaust) an objects possible acts, they inform us about the essences of things without beginning to approach divine omniscience. Necessarily, sensation also informs us of its object's existence.

Thus, phenomenal sensations put us in touch with noumenal reality, just not exhaustively.

But the entire vast universe described by science, is still organised around an implicit perspective - in our case, the human perspective, which imposes a scale and an order on what would otherwise be formless and meaningless chaos. — Wayfarer

I certainly agree that our knowledge is a projection (dimensionally diminished map) of reality. it is limited by perspective, by our limited sensory modalities and by the conceptual space we employ in representation and analysis. That does not mean that we impose order on nature.

First, we are not "apart" from nature, but part of nature. So, it is silly to say that order is not found in nature because we are its source. Since we are part of nature, necessarily, any order found in us is order found in nature.

Second, I see no evidence that we are the sole or even the main source of the order we find in nature. If order is found in our sensory life, then it is found in the interactions informing our sensory life. And those interactions are informed as much by their objects as by their subjects. How can completely disordered objects participate in orderly interactions?

Meaning is a semantic relation. Prescinding from theological considerations, it is a truism that there is no meaning apart from agents such as ourselves able to impart and interpret meaning. This is not a statement about insensate reality, but about the nature of semantics.

"Form" is quite different than "meaning" because it is not semantic, but constitutive, Form specifies an object's actuality -- the specific ways it can act here and now. If different kinds of objects did not have different forms, they would not interact with us in different ways. If an object did not exhibit continuity of form, it could not interact with us in similar ways over time. So, forms, unlike meanings, do not depend on subject-object interactions for their reality. They are ontologically prior to such interactions. If an object could not interact with us in this way, it cannot interact with us in this way.

for it has passed through the machinery and manufacture of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time.

Of course, there is no evidence that the human mind imposes "forms" as those of space, time and causality. So, before bringing in the vast structure of post-Kantian thought, you need to show that its foundations are deeper than Kant's unwillingness to accept Hume's counter-cultural observations.

Whether it exists, or the mode in which it exists, is exactly what is at issue. As you no doubt know, this question is at the heart of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' which says there's not an electron lurking within the probability wave until we measure it; the probability wave is all there is, until the measurement is made. — Wayfarer

There are a lot of mutually incompatible conjectures that call themselves "the Copenhagen Interpretation," and even more interpretations that do not. I assign no evidentiary weight to the many "interpretations" of quantum theory. I am happy to discuss the actual physics of the matter -- as supported by observational data and the successful application of mathematical formulae.

Quantum physics uses a deterministic formalism for everything other than observations. I have good, physical, reasons to think that the relative unpredictability of observations is epistic, not ontological. (it can be understood by modelling detection events using multi-electron models in a fashion consistent with other successful applications of the same physics.

But you have to know what 2 denotes - in other words, you have to be able to count - before you can make any deductions about the composition of water molecules. — Wayfarer

That's exactly what i said. The concept <2> arises from counting operations, not from the mystical apprehension of a Platonic Idea, *2*.

It's the fact that 2 = 2 and always has an invariant meaning that makes it a universal. — Wayfarer

What makes <2> universal is that it applies equally to all real and possible sets of two elements.

'thought is an inherently universalising activity - were materialism true, then you literally could not think'. — Wayfarer

Almost. Abstraction is universalizing, Awareness of a particular is also a form of thought, and is not universalizing.

I have no problem with the notion of incorporeal reality. I have a problem with substantial universals and with exemplar ideas.

What would be a general description of the number 2 which would apply to all instances of mental representation associated with the symbols "2", "II", "two", etc.? — Galuchat

I think actually defining what number is is a very difficult thing to do. If you look at the Wikipedia entry on philosophy of mathematics you will find it is very long, detailed, and with hundreds of references.

The idea which interests me is mathematical Platonism. It's derived from, but not the same as, the philosophy of Plato, and is based on the contention that abstract objects - numbers and the like - are real but not material. And the argument for that is, basically, that real or natural numbers are the same for all who think, but are only intelligible to a rational mind. So it's all very well to say that this is simply 'the operation of counting' but that doesn't amount to any kind of insight into the ontology of the issue. And the reason the ontology of the question interests me, is that I still believe that the ancient intuition of the 'chain of being' or 'gradations of being' is actually true (see this entry), but that there's no way to understand it without a sense that there are different levels or domains of reality, of which 'the formal domain' is one. And that sense of different levels or modes of being is exactly what has been lost in the transition to modern thinking, where 'existence' has a univocal meaning (which *I think* is the meaning of the allusion in the title of Herbert Marcuse' book One Dimensional Man.)

you need to show that its foundations are deeper than Kant's unwillingness to accept Hume's counter-cultural observations. — Dfpolis

Life is too short. But I will offer up Kant's well-known aphorism, that concepts without percepts are empty, and that percepts without concepts are blind. If according to your philosophy, all knowledge is gained by experience, then dogs, horses and cows ought to be able to speak and count, because they too are the subjects of experience. But of course they do not, because they lack the innate intelligence, the rational intellect, which is the seat of all such powers. And that innate ability has to exist in order to interpret experience and to infer and to predict, and so on. And whilst it may be informed by what it learns from experience, it is an innate capacity.

And, you can offer no a posteriori reason because your methodological dogmatism prevents you form considering, let alone judging, the data of self-awareness. — Dfpolis

The reason would be that I have studied the relevant neuroscience and psychology. Self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language. And so all its "data" is socially constructed. That is the place I would start on that subject.

Our intentions occur in, and are part of, the natural world. — Dfpolis

Sure. I'm all for an embodied, ecological, enactive, etc, approach to neurocognition. But that is what underwrites a semiotic understanding of the issues. The natural world for us is an umwelt - a system of meaningful sign.

So on the one hand, our perceptions are always embedded in an active modelling relation with the world - the noumenal thing-in-itself. There is always that necessary aboutness or intentionality. But still, the mind is the product of forming that model of the world. The phenomenal is the other side of the relation. We experience our own umwelt - our experience of a world with "us" in it.

There is an irreducible complexity here. A triadic Peircean story.

And that is why I stress the necessity of being able to cash out any concept in acts of measurement. There always has to be a percept that answers the case in terms of a "fact". The aboutness is really about the umwelt we form as our sign of the world. It reflects all that we could afford to ignore by way of information - the entirety of the entropic physicality of the world - so as to construct an interpretation in terms of personalised meanings.

Look, I see an elephant. It is grey. It is angry.

A chaos of physical possibility has just been reduced to a collection of signs that have meaning for me. Indeed, I am "me" because there is that point of view which forms exactly that set of signs in response to some chaos of physical possibility.

So what I was after was some proper definition of intentionality from you to support your case. Talk of the "data of self-awareness" suggests you are way off the mark.

But I guess in mentioning data you accept that all generalities must be cashable in terms of their particulars. If we have an idea of a quality, then we must be able to quantify that in the sense of point to some sign, citing some particular act of perception or measurement.

I say the elephant is grey. You say look closer. You see more colour, more shades. I shrug and say "gray enough" from where I stand.

The satisfaction of theories are always negotiable. But the way that claims are satisfied is a standard epistemic process.

I have said intentionality is not a quantity and therefore not measurable. — Dfpolis

And what I said was that intentionality is a quality. A general conception. And qualities are only intelligible to the degree they can be particularised or quantified.

You can't actually have a clear conception of something - like intentionality - unless you can point to its specific located examples. That is how intelligibility works. Induction from the particular to the general and then deduction from the general back to the particular again.

If "intentionality" is an intelligible construct, you will be able to present the specific instances which support the general case - the acts of measurement which make sense of the claims of the theory.

I have pointed out that the act of seeing an apple, for example, not only gives us data about the apple (as objective object), but also about ourselves (subjective object) -- for example that we can see, be aware, direct our attention, etc. None of this involves "feels." So please spare me the typical physicalist pap. — Dfpolis

As I say, I fully endorse that enactive, embodied, etc, approach to cognition. I've studied it for many years. I agree that our subjective self is what emerges along with the objective world as the result of there being that modelling relation in place at an organismic level of semiosis.

But when you talk of the data of self-awareness, this is the meta-cognitive stuff that folk often refer to as an abstracted notion of selfhood. This is where the dualism normally starts - the mind becoming something actually separate from the view it is taking.

Again, there is the bit in the middle. The umwelt. And it anchors a state of interpretation. The dualistic error is to see the umwelt as the actual noumenal world being presented to a self, making that self now also its own mentalistic thing.

Our percepts are already only a self-interested system of signs. They are a reduction of the physical world to habits of meaning. And a selfhood is imputed because the habits establish a persisting regularity to a point of view. We can always find "ourselves" in the self-interested logic of that perceptual umwelt.

So I was asking how your concept of intentionality can navigate that enactive understanding of psychology. If you actually do take an ecological and embodied view as you say, then you ought to find it natural that intentionality can be quantified. You would be happy to point to the particular signs that it exists as a general fact of some kind.

As I pointed out above, you have made no case reducing "meaningfulness" to measurability. — Dfpolis

Perhaps now I have. :)

If according to your philosophy, all knowledge is gained by experience, then dogs, horses and cows ought to be able to speak and count — Wayfarer

Really?

I assume that the unstated premise here is that dogs, horses and cows know as we know, If not, your claim makes little sense.

I think that the behavior of known non-human species can be explained by the known mechanisms of neural data processing -- without positing that they aware in the sense that makes intelligible contents known contents. If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be glad to consider it.

Neuroscience has done a good job in showing how neural nets can acquire and employ information. Their models do not require a knowing subject or an agent intellect because they do not involve the formation or deployment of concepts.

You seem to think that I'm claiming that sensory experience alone is sufficient for concept formation. I make no such claim. I have always said that concepts require the operation of awareness, Aristotle's Agent Intellect (nous poetikos).

They are a reduction of the physical world to habits of meaning. — apokrisis

Isn't the idea of a physical world itself "a reductive habit of meaning"?

However, when one goes on to say the laws of physics are "not representative of some 'laws of nature' which are operating to cause matter to behave the way that it does" one is making a claim inadequate to the actual practice of physics. — Dfpolis

I don't agree. As I said, I know some physicists, and they do not practise physics as if the descriptive laws of physics represent some "laws of nature"[. They work to understanding existing laws of physics and establish new ones, without concern for whether there is such a thing as laws of nature. Like I said, this is an ontological concern.

Since you didn't like my last example, I'll give you another. Suppose there is a law of physics which describes the activity of matter which is attributed to gravity. Why would you think that this law of physics represents a law of nature, rather than thinking that this law represents a description of how the activity of matter is affected by something called gravity?"

For example, we explain the time-development of the cosmos in terms of the laws of nature. This makes no sense if the only "laws" are descriptions formulated by modern thinkers. Why? Because such laws did not exist during the epochs of the universe they are supposed to have effected. It is also difficult to see how human descriptions could effect purely physical process, even at the present time. — Dfpolis

The fact that laws of physics can be extrapolated, projected, to a time when there was no human beings, doesn't support your claim that these artificial laws represent natural laws. That we can project the law of gravity to a time when human beings did not exist, doesn't prove that the law of gravity represents a natural law of gravity, rather than it being a description of how mass behaves when influenced by something called gravity.

Do you see my point? The laws of physics are descriptions with very wide (general) application, so they are generalizations. In order that they are real, true laws of physics, it is necessary that the things which they describe (gravity, Pauli's exclusion, etc.,) are real. There is no need to assume that there is a "law of nature" which corresponds. That is just an ontological assumption.

So, your claim is that physics is a species of fiction writing. — Dfpolis

You've obviously misunderstood what I've been saying. I hope that I've made it clearer for you.

the footprint (which is what you are measuring) is quite real. — Dfpolis

No it is not, that's the point, it is not a footprint, therefore "the footprint" is not real. And the thing measured, being a footprint, is not real. So you cannot base "existence" on measurability because we often measure non-existent things.

This is nonsense. A man robs a store. On the way out, he passes height marks by the door and is measured to be 6'2" tall. A witness says he has blue eyes, but really he has brown eyes. By your logic, the robber does not exist. — Dfpolis

No, by my logic his "blue eyes" do not exist. Where's the nonsense in that?

Please explain how this would work in a concrete case. — Dfpolis

I take a ruler and lay it beside something, measuring that thing. Why do you claim that it is necessary for that thing to interact with me in order for me to measure it. There is a medium between the thing and my eyes, which allows me to see the thing, but there is no interaction between me and the thing. And so long as there is a medium between the measurer and the thing measured, there is no interaction between the two. Clearly interaction is an unnecessary, and unwarranted stipulation on your part.

I have always said that concepts require the operation of awareness, Aristotle's Agent Intellect (nous poetikos). — Dfpolis

I think from my cursory reading of the texts that Aristotle's 'Agent Intellect' amounts to something considerably more than 'awareness'. Again, animals have awareness and are the subjects of experience, but humans are distinguished by rational intelligence (and I hope the definition of the human as a 'rational animal' is not controversial.) What interests me is the nature and the objects of the rational intelligence. It's all very well to say that we interpret the 'notes of intelligibility' from the perception of sensory objects, but it seems to miss a central point, from my reading of it, which is: what is it that makes objects intelligible.

Again, that quotation from the Catholic encyclopedia (and I have no religious affiliation with Catholicism, but Catholic philosophy it is the only source that preserves it, that I know of):

Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by, or intrinsically dependent on, a bodily organ, as sensation is. This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these activities involve elements essentially different from sensuous consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas. These are different in kind from sensations and sensuous images. These latter are concrete and individual, truly representative of only one object, whilst the universal idea will apply with equal truth to any object of the class. The universal idea possesses a fixity and invariableness of nature, whilst the sensuous image changes from moment to moment. Thus the concept or universal idea of "gold", or "triangle", will with equal justice stand for any specimen, but the image represents truly only one individual.

But then, that is rather like Brennan's account that you previously criticized. So here:

Since the notion of "agent intellect" is very abstract, it is good to ask how this concept relates to experience. What mental act makes neurally encoded information actually known? Clearly, we come to know when we become aware of them. So, the agent intellect is simply our awareness -- and abstraction is focusing our attention, our awareness, on some aspects of experience to the exclusion of others. — Dfpolis

It's interesting to note that the encyclopedia entry on the agent intellect says that:

The nature of the active intellect was the subject of intense discussion in medieval philosophy, as various Muslim, Jewish and Christian thinkers sought to reconcile their commitment to Aristotle's account of the body and soul to their own theological commitments. At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of the nature of eternal life.

And the passage that was taken from De Anima as support for this endeavour was this one:

Knowledge (epistēmē), in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows, and while knowledge in potency comes first in time in any one knower, in the whole of things it does not take precedence even in time.

This does not mean that at one time it thinks but at another time it does not think, but when separated it is just exactly what it is, and this alone is deathless and everlasting.

I find the last phrase significant, as I think it went on to form the kernel of the medieval doctrine of 'the rational soul'. But the point of the Platonic epistemology, which despite his differences, Aristotle still had a lot in common with, was to identity that in knowledge and experience which was of the nature of the eternal, the timeless, 'the deathless and everlasting', as the passage says, beyond the merely quotidian concerns of survival and procreation.

Whereas at this point, I'm at a loss here to see how your account differs from today's mainstream orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology. Wouldn't it be just as easy to account for the way you conceive of rationality in terms of evolutionary adaption? Something like pattern recognition, that the organism has evolved all the better to cope with the exigencies of survival?

Yep. The idea certainly would be.

That is why I would accept a restriction on knowing the noumenal. But indeed I go further. I am saying the umwelt is a kind of double fiction. It contains both the self and the world as its double aspect.

When I see that yellow flower, the yellow is the sign that there is a physical world ... for the mental "me".

And now that we can conceive of the physical world in terms of quantities of information, we are extrapolating that semiosis of signs to make it foundational to our ontology. The world itself is understood in this Janus two-faced fashion. The self~world distinction - where self stands for some individuated point of view - is reduced to make it the way we understand the world in general.

Of course, it is still all just ideas - our usefully organised impressions, the tale we tell to form an umwelt. But it offers a neat resolution - one that is dual aspect without slipping into the pan-psychic.

Reality itself can be regarded pan-semiotically as a system of signs. It is formed by its own reductive development of intelligible habits - it's laws or other regularities that frame every event as confirmation of some generalised intent.

So as I say, both "mind" and "world" can only be constructs. The "physical world" is our useful fiction - the one that makes most sense in opposition to that other useful fiction of "the conscious mind".

But then, it becomes something when physics itself starts to embrace that semiotic twist and begin to measure the world in terms of atoms of form rather than atoms of matter. Information or entropy? These are now just two sides of the same coin - the one basic Planckian unit of reality measurement.

So that little move secures the scientific self in a completely objective description. A neat new trick.

Well actually, the job ain't done yet. The major chunks of theory - quantum mechanics in particular - can't formalise the definition of "the observer" in the way they have formalised "the observables".

And yet even here, huge progress is being made. You now have a decoherence version of QM - one with thermal statistical mechanics bolted on - which allows the "environment" to replace the "experimenter" in the effective collapse of a wavefunction.

Again, there is still the huge problem that decoherence just spreads out the uncertainty so it becomes completely diffused - without actually being collapsed. However it is still scientific progress. And recent turns in quantum interpretation keep becoming more overtly semiotic.

So the brain forms a rather particular view of the physical world - an umwelt that is useful for decoding reality in terms of a universe of "medium sized dry goods". We know from psychology that it is all an interpretation, a system of sign, and not the thing-in-itself. Qualia like yellowness mediate a relation between a "mental me" and a "material object" - both aspects of this being useful fictions of thought.

Having grasped the semiotic nature of experience, we can then push that back towards the reality we seek to experience in more true and naked fashion. And surprisingly perhaps, that is not some crazy random move. It turns out to work amazingly well. It fixes physicalism by giving back some of the essential stuff that went missing - like intentionality or formal/final cause.

Yep. The idea certainly would be.

That is why I would accept a restriction on knowing the noumenal. But indeed I go further. I am saying the umwelt is a kind of double fiction. It contains both the self and the world as its double aspect. — apokrisis

It would seem better then to say that the idea of the physical world is really a reduction of the noumenal to a habit of meaning. I would further modify what you say and call self and world fictive rather than fictional, since they have their roots in reality, but are not real in the sense we might think when we hypostatize them.

The world itself is understood in this Janus two-faced fashion. — apokrisis

Should I be offended? :joke:

But then, it becomes something when physics itself starts to embrace that semiotic twist and begin to measure the world in terms of atoms of form rather than atoms of matter. Information or entropy? These are now just two sides of the same coin - the one basic Planckian unit of reality measurement. — apokrisis

Yes, the ideas of form without matter or matter without form both seem incoherent. So, our understanding is ineliminably "dual aspect" in nature.

It fixes physicalism by giving back some of the essential stuff that went missing - like intentionality or formal/final cause. — apokrisis

So, it would seem that, for you, intentionality in it's inorganic guise is entropy, and in its organic guise is negentropy, and the same may be said for formal/final causation?

I can't comment on the QM stuff you wrote, because I know too little about it. :smile:

It would seem better then to say that the idea of the physical world is really a reduction of the noumenal to a habit of meaning. — Janus

Was there a difference?

I would further modify what you say and call self and world fictive rather than fictional, since they have their roots in reality, but are not real in the sense we might think when we hypostatize them — Janus

Again, is there a difference that matters? If fictional is specific to the literary, then fictive is perhaps more suitably general in being a product of the imagination. But it seems like hair splitting.

Should I be offended? — Janus

Sorry, I couldn't resist that little joke.

So, it would seem that, for you, intentionality in it's inorganic guise is entropy, and in its organic guise is negentropy, and the same may be said for formal/final causation? — Janus

Intentionality would be the negentropy - organic or inorganic. Even energy has stuff it is itching to do.

So what would match that in a double aspect or dichotomous fashion would be uncertainty - an indecision of some fundamental kind. And entropy is the uncertainty of a state of material disorder or unpredictability.

Meaningfulness is then a low entropy/high information condition. A negentropic or intentional state.

Confusingly of course, Shannon information is defined in exactly the opposite terms. It is defined in terms of entropy or fundamental degrees of freedom - a capacity for nature to surprise you and confuse any intentions you might have had.

So information now means its exact opposite - meaningless syntactical variety.

And yet that's fair because entropy is how you wind up justifying that you can completely specify the state of a complicated system, like a gas of a gazillion particles, just by knowing a couple of critical numbers, such as a temperature and a pressure reading.

So lift the covers of the scientific modelling and the two-facedness of it all can be seen. We have to construct an image of the ultimately meaningless so as to have a backdrop against which to measure the "other" of the ultimately meaningful.

Newton had a backdrop in space and time. That foregrounded the "other" of a located event.

Modern physics is now reinventing itself using just information/entropy as a generalised backcloth - one on which even space and time, along with energy, can emerge as the locally measureable.

So that is what I mean about folding mind into the physics. The unification of information and entropy, the atoms of form and the atoms of matter, means that this new metaphysical backcloth is ready and waiting to host all your neuroscience, as well as all your physics. It is a backdrop so mathematically general that it allows a common approach to measurement to be taken to absolutely "everything".

Which is exactly what is happening with the Bayesian brain approach to theories about mental function.

So the usual notion of how mind science is suppose to work is that one day it would all be collapsed to a story of physics.

But no. Now - in a pan-semiotic or information theoretic approach - both physics and neuroscience are being collapsed back to a still deeper metaphysics. One that is beyond the old Cartesian dualism.

And, for metaphysical thinkers, this then becomes the new umwelt. When you look at minds or worlds, you see them as essentially the same thing - the same semiotic process.

This is certainly the great breakthrough Peirce made a hundred plus years ago now.

That we can project the law of gravity to a time when human beings did not exist, doesn't prove that the law of gravity represents a natural law of gravity, rather than it being a description of how mass behaves when influenced by something called gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover

The idea of the action of gravity is indispensable to the scientific understanding of the evolution of the Universe, so, that gravity was universal prior to the advent of human life is entailed by that understanding. How would the idea of the universal action of gravity at all times and places differ from the idea of a universal natural law of gravity; a law which is real in more than a merely nominalistic fashion?

Was there a difference? — apokrisis

Well, yes, because then we would not be reducing the noumenal to the physical world. If all our experiences and ideas, including the physical world, are habitual reductions to intelligible meaning, then these reductions are natural outcomes of the noumenal, but can never constitute exhaustive knowledge of the noumenal in the sense that it might be said that we could, in principle at least, exhaustively know the physical world, since the latter just is the empirical world of our own experience and understanding.

Again, is there a difference that matters? If fictional is specific to the literary, then fictive is perhaps more suitably general in being a product of the imagination. But it seems like hair splitting. — apokrisis

But I don't see the world and the self as products of the imagination, but rather as products of nature. Perhaps you are right about the definitional difference between fictional and fictive being hair-thick. The imagination is also a product of nature, but the thing is I want to maintain a distinction between more and less arbitrary products; with purely fictional productions tending towards the more arbitrary end of the spectrum, obviously.

Intentionality would be the negentropy - organic or inorganic. Even energy has stuff it is itching to do. — apokrisis

I don't see a significant difference between this and Whitehead's notion of prehension, and the pan-experientialism which has grown out of it. (But let's not become embroiled in that argument again; I only mention it in response to your referring to his purported "pan-psychism" again a few posts ago).

Anyway, I thought it was the universal "desire" of energy to reach a state of equilibrium or maximal entropy which you understood to be the general "intentionailty" at work in physical nature, with even the negentropic self-organizing accumulation and utilization of energy which constitutes biological life as ultimately serving this same entropic "intention" or formal/final cause.

Well, yes, because then we would not be reducing the noumenal to the physical world. — Janus

Not getting it. Making the distinction of the noumenal is agreeing that we can't reduce reality to some claim of "direct perception". And then my semiotic point is that we wouldn't even want to. The goal is to be able to ignore reality in practice. That is what carves out the space for us to impose "our" desires on nature.

So my focus is pragmatic. It is not about exhaustive knowledge but effective control.

The problem with "knowledge" as a goal is that it lacks an obvious intentional point. So pragmatism starts by admitting the aim of a mind is to achieve things in the world. Control already builds in intentionality in a way that knowing doesn't.

But I don't see the world and the self as products of the imagination, but rather as products of nature. — Janus

Right. The self~world distinction - the epistemic cut of an unwelt - does arise directly out of nature. That is the definition of an organism - the evolution of life and mind.

But now we are humans engaged in metaphysical-level semiosis - modelling that employs the language of maths, logic and measurement. And it is how that very high level view, one that aims to be generically objective, which is talking metaphysically about "selves" and "worlds".

So humanity has evolved semiotically to the point where we are doing this. And it has some use. It is how we have been constructing a cultural and technological level of organism. The Noosphere even.

Ultimately we have to still live in a biological and physical reality. We are constrained by all that. But it is at least thinkable that we can pass through the technological Singularity and launch some further level of semiotic beasthood - the Matrix or some other god-awful cyber-reality.

So of course all this is the product of nature in an ultimate sense. Again, that is what pan-semiosis would claim. It is nature all the way down, and all the way up.

But we have actually constructed the era of the machine. And we can't be sure what kind of umwelt that is going to evolve as part of its nature.

Another reason for wanting a well-developed theory of these things.

I don't see a significant difference between this and Whitehead's notion of prehension, and the pan-experientialism which has grown out of it. (But let's not become embroiled in that argument again; I only mention it in response to your referring to his purported "pan-psychism" again a few posts ago). — Janus

I'm happy to debate the difference any time.

Not getting it. — apokrisis

I didn't word that so well. I should have said: Then we would not be reducing the idea of the noumenal to the idea of the world.

The problem with "knowledge" as a goal is that it lacks an obvious intentional point. — apokrisis

On the contrary, I think many people love knowledge for it's own sake.

As Aristotle says: All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

I'm happy to debate the difference any time. — apokrisis

We have already "debated" it ad nauseum, and not productively either, since we have never managed to be talking about the same things or in the same way. :broken: :brow: :zip:

The idea of the action of gravity is indispensable to the scientific understanding of the evolution of the Universe, so, that gravity was universal prior to the advent of human life is entailed by that understanding. How would idea of the universal action of gravity at all times and places differ from the idea of a universal natural law of gravity; a law which is real in more than a merely nominalistic fashion? — Janus

If gravity is the property of something, (say the universe, or things in the universe), then it is not a natural law, it is a property, so it should be understood that way. When I say "On a clear day the sky is blue" you ought to interpret that I am making a descriptive statement about the sky, not that the statement represents a natural law. Why would you think that we ought to interpret descriptive statements about the universe or about fundamental particles as representing natural laws?

What would be a general description of the number 2 which would apply to all instances of mental representation associated with the symbols "2", "II", "two", etc.? — Galuchat

I think actually defining what number is is a very difficult thing to do. If you look at the Wikipedia entry on philosophy of mathematics you will find it is very long, detailed, and with hundreds of references. — Wayfarer

If after deliberative cogitation, you have no description for an abstract universal called "number", it would be reasonable to conclude that you've never actually used such a concept in mental modelling, much less in controlled or automatic problem-solving and decision-making.

Given this situation:
You are a field officer in charge of a company which has engaged with hostile forces. The enemy has taken a small hill across the river where you are encamped. You have spotted an enemy convoy of several companies 5 miles away approaching your position. You radio for air support which will arrive within 5 minutes. They will be dropping napalm on the convoy. You have two routes of escape: one is under vegetative cover at a 25% gradient, the other is across level, open terrain. Carrying 100 pounds of kit, your soldiers can travel three times faster over level ground than they can over steep ground.

If:
You are thinking in terms of abstract universal numbers instead of in terms of quantity (multitude, magnitude), space (location, area, distance), time (instant, duration, synchronisation), motion (direction, trajectory, velocity), and thermodynamics (heat content, flow),

Then:
You are dead.

if one is doing abstract or theorectical math one always thinks in terms of the "abstract" number or you will fail the class (you won't be dead, you just won't pass).

How would idea of the universal action of gravity at all times and places differ from the idea of a universal natural law of gravity; a law which is real in more than a merely nominalistic fashion? — Janus

They differ because one is a simple description, while the other is formulated as a 'law'. Gravity is what it is, and does what it does. It achieves this without any external input or guidance; there is no law, if by law we assume something that somehow binds or forces certain behaviour(s). Humans formulate laws as a way of expressing their understanding of stuff. They are only descriptions, nothing more. So your description of gravity as acting universally is simple, correct and useful. Your description of a law adds nothing that I can see. :chin:

...nor is the 'law' 'real', if I understand your intended meaning (of 'real') correctly.

And, you can offer no a posteriori reason because your methodological dogmatism prevents you form considering, let alone judging, the data of self-awareness. — Dfpolis

The reason would be that I have studied the relevant neuroscience and psychology. Self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language. And so all its "data" is socially constructed. That is the place I would start on that subject. — apokrisis

I have also studied neuroscience and modern psychology, and found nothing in them to suggest that introspection was dispensable. So, being open to reality, I accept introspective ans well as physical data. Data selection is a great sin in science, but here you are trying to defend it.

As i note in the sentence you quoted, you are in no position to judge the data of self-awareness because you refuse to examine it. When I studied science, we started with observational data and used it to judge theories. Apparently your education had you to start with theories and them use it to reject data.

Neither the a priori selection of data nor giving primacy to theory over data reflect the scientific worldview. Instead, what I see in your response is a worldview laden with unexamined cultural presupposition. You state your faith position that "Self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language," without offering a shred of evidence or a line of argumentation. Then you follow up with the dogmatic non sequitur that "all its 'data' is socially constructed.

Let's see why this view is absurd. We may begin by asking how language works. Contrary to your apparent presupposition, it does not magically transfer ideas from speaker to listener. Rather, it causes the listener to re-construct the thought the speaker is trying to convey by reflecting on her own experience. If you tell me that a musical passage is redolent of Haydn, and I have never experienced Haydn's music, I have no idea what you mean. Thus, the effectiveness of language is based on shared experience.

Thus, were i to speak to you of "awareness" or "self-awareness" and you had no experience of either, you wouldn't suddenly develop a baseless theory of subjective experience (as you want us to believe). You'd nave no idea what I'm talking about. Thus, your claim that "self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language" is not only unsupported, it assumes a magical theory of language,

Moving on to your dogma that "all its 'data' is socially constructed." This does not follow even if we assume that self-awareness is "a cultural meta-skill." A skill is an acquired proficiency in doing something. If I'm learning microbiology, I may be able to look into a microscope without much training, but it is only with the acquisition of our culturally-transmitted scientific heritage, i.e, with a specific skill, that I will be able to identify what I'm looking at as Yersinia pestis. Does this mean all data on Y. pestis "is socially constructed"? Of course not. So, your conclusion is a non sequitur.

Return to the fundamental question, what rational justification do you have for ignoring the data of subjective experience?

The natural world for us is an umwelt - a system of meaningful sign. — apokrisis

If you mean the natural world in se, it is more than, and metaphysically prior to, the umwelt, If you mean the world as understood by us, we certainly do understand it via the instrumentality of essential signs. Language uses instrumental, not essential, signs and so is of minor interest in relation to nature either in se, or as understood.

But still, the mind is the product of forming that model of the world. — apokrisis

This is at best confused, at worst simply wrong. If you mean by "mind" the contents we know, then yes, they necessarily enter into our model of reality, but that is a non-standard meaning of "mind." If you mean our capacity to be aware, process information and direct our activity, mind is clearly ontologically and temporally prior to the contents entering our models.

We experience our own umwelt - .... — apokrisis

This, again, is confused. We do not primarily experience our experience (the umwelt). We primary experience the objective world from our own standpoint. The totality of that experience is our umwelt. Of course, being self-aware, we also know that we are experiencing the world.

... - our experience of a world with "us" in it. — apokrisis

This is different from "experiencing the umwelt." I said earlier that knowing is a subject-object relation. So, of course we experience the world with our self in it. (There's no warrant for scare quotes.) Still, the primary object of experience is objective reality, not our experience of objective reality. It's simply that our experience of reality is not exhaustive, but limited.

There is an irreducible complexity here. A triadic Peircean story. — apokrisis

What might that "irreducible complexity" be? Instrumental signs are physical structures. Objects are either intelligible aspects of reality or mental constructs, and interpretants are thoughts evoked in an intellectual subject. Which is "irreducible"? Which cannot be further analyzed?

And that is why I stress the necessity of being able to cash out any concept in acts of measurement — apokrisis

How does the Peircean triad entail the necessity of measurement? This seems more like free association than logic.

Look, I see an elephant. It is grey. It is angry.

A chaos of physical possibility has just been reduced to a collection of signs that have meaning for me. — apokrisis

What "signs" are you thinking of? If they are your thoughts, they do not fit Peirce's analysis of instrumental signs. Your thought of the elephant before you is your awareness of the dynamic presence of that very elephant. Your neural representation of the elephant is identically the elephant's modification of your neural state and that iws what I'm calling the elephant's "dynamic presence." So, it is not a "sign" of the elephant you're aware of, but the elephant acting on you that you're am aware of.

Again, if the "signs" you are thinking of are your thoughts, there's no difference between those signs and their "interpretants." Here, sign and interpretant are identical. So, the triad becomes a dyad -- meaning that our thoughts are a different kind of sign from those considered by Peirce. But, if that is so, it is an error to apply Peircean semiology to thoughts.

The satisfaction of theories are always negotiable. — apokrisis

This is baloney. No amount of "negotiation" will make Martian "canals" into evidence of Martian civilization. Your example depends on a linguistic ambiguity that can be resolved with adequate care. Posits stated in the same words, but with different meanings, are not the same theory, but different theories. Claiming they are the same is the fallacy of equivocation, not "negotiation."

And qualities are only intelligible to the degree they can be particularised or quantified. — apokrisis

This is a faith claim, not an argument. Of course only particulars are intelligible, because there are no substantial universals to be intelligible, but that does not imply that only quantities are meaningful.

Don't you have an actual reason for your claim that only quantities are meaningful? (I note that the claim itself is not a quantity, and so entails its own meaninglessness.)

You can't actually have a clear conception of something - like intentionality - unless you can point to its specific located examples. — apokrisis

Another faith claim -- which is manifest nonsense. Mathematicians have the clear ideas such as <irrational number> and <Hilbert space>, but there isn't an example of either on display for your examination. I have a clear idea <habitual mendacity>, but it's exampples are not confined to specific locations.

Induction from the particular to the general and then deduction from the general back to the particular again. — apokrisis

You seem to have missed the difference between induction and abstraction, despite my pointing it out.

If "intentionality" is an intelligible construct, you will be able to present the specific instances which support the general case - the acts of measurement which make sense of the claims of the theory. — apokrisis

1. Intentionality is not a construct. It is an idea abstracted from intelligible instances.
2. I have given specific examples. Here are more: Jill knowing she's sitting, John hoping for continued good health, Mary willing to go to school, etc.
3. Providing examples is not an act of measurement.
4. A concept is not a theory. It is not even a judgement.

our subjective self is what emerges along with the objective world as the result of there being that modelling relation — apokrisis

Subjective awareness does not "emerge" from modeling. It is our objective capacity to know intelligible contents. if we lacked subjective awareness, we could not know the world, let alone model it. What can emerge is the concept of being a subject, but the emergence of concepts is not the emergence of the reality conceptualized.

an organismic level of semiosis — apokrisis

This is word salad. There is no actual signing without agents creating and/or understanding signs. So there is no "non-organismic level of semiosis."

This is where the dualism normally starts - the mind becoming something actually separate from the view it is taking. — apokrisis

Anyone who thinks the mind is "separate" from the objects it knows has undercut the very basis of knowing -- a dynamic interaction of subject and object.

There is nothing intrinsically dualistic in abstracting concepts of subject and object, for different concepts can be grounded in the same, unified object. It is only when one forgets this, as Descartes did, that dualism results.

Our percepts are already only a self-interested system of signs. — apokrisis

This is certainly not the view of Peirce. Signs do not know as selves know, nor are they capable of having interests, They are merely instruments of knowledge.

If you actually do take an ecological and embodied view as you say, then you ought to find it natural that intentionality can be quantified. — apokrisis

You have shown me no connection between my understanding that we know the world from a unique perspective, and the possibility of performing counting and/or measuring operations on all that we know.

if one is doing abstract or theorectical math one always thinks in terms of the "abstract" number or you will fail the class (you won't be dead, you just won't pass). — prothero

Fair enough.
How would you use universal numbers to solve the problems and make the decisions in the situation I described above (abstracting all particulars)?
Also, converting from one system of units to another results in different numbers without affecting the measured phenomenon, so would the field officer using two different systems of units (e.g., metric and imperial), and modelling each set of universal numbers arrive at two different solutions and decisions?
Can there be numbers or systems of measurement apart from particulars?

As I understand it, to say there is a universal law just is to say that there is a universally invariant form of action, a natural behavior which operates at all times and all places regardless of human awareness and opinion.

I think from my cursory reading of the texts that Aristotle's 'Agent Intellect' amounts to something considerably more than 'awareness'. Again, animals have awareness and are the subjects of experience, but humans are distinguished by rational intelligence (and I hope the definition of the human as a 'rational animal' is not controversial.) — Wayfarer

Animals have what we might call "medical consciousness" -- an objectively observable state of responsiveness. We have no evidence that other animals have consciousness as subjective awareness. The only evidence that we humans do is our own personal experience, the testimony of others and reasoning by analogy.

Animals don't provide us with accounts of their own subjectivity and it seems to me that purely neuro-physical model of animal psychology is adequate to explain their behavior. I do not claim to know that animals don't have subjective awareness. I just do not see any reason to believe they do. This may seem hardhearted, as we empathize with animals, but empathy is not evidence.

Returning to Aristotle, let me ask you: in your experience, when do sensations pass from merely intelligible to actually known? Is it not when we become aware of them? If so, then what we call "awareness" is what Aristotle calls the nous poetikos. In focusing our awareness on various aspects of the sensible representation, are we not actualizing different notes of intelligibility? Abstracting different concepts?

I am happy to call us rational animals. Reason, as opposed to neural data processing, requires us to be aware of the data we are processing.

what is it that makes objects intelligible. — Wayfarer

In a different post, I suggested (based on Plato's Sophist) that we explicate "existence" as the bare ability to act in reality. So that anything that can act in any way exists. We can also reflect that any "thng" that can never so anything (can't resist penetration, scatter light, etc., etc.) is indistinguishable from no thing.

Similarly, we can think of essences as specifying an object's possible acts. For example, humans have immanent activity (so we are alive), are able to sense, reason, beget, etc. and it is these capacities that define us as human.

In sensing things our interaction with them modifies our neural state. Their modification of our neural state is (identically) our neural representation of them. Because of this dual attribution (its action on us = our representation of it), we can think of the sensory object as existentially penetrating us.

This puts data about the object's essence in us -- because its action on our nervous system is one of the possible modes of action specified by its essence.

When we become aware of the contents of the neural representation, we become aware of some of what the object can do, and so are informed (in part) about the object's essence.

That is how I see the object's intelligibility (its essence) informing us.

There are at least two profound mysteries here:
1. What we are aware of is not our neural state. We are unaware what neurons are firing or even that we have neurons. What we are aware of is the intelligible contents encoded in the neural representation -- but not all of them:
2. The same neural state that encodes data about the object also encodes data about the state of our sensory system. For example, the state encoding the image of an apple also, and inseparably, encodes information on the activation of rods and cones in our retina. Yet, when we become aware of the neurally encoded contents, it is not information on our retinal state that we know, but information on the object we're looking at.
I can think of no physical mechanism that can separate these two kinds of inseparably encoded data. It seems to require an additional factor -- something connected with "apple" data that is not connected with "retina" data. It is almost as if we can make a direct, intentional connection with the apple as the target of our interest.

I hope this helps answer your question.

But then, that is rather like Brennan's account that you previously criticized. So here: — Wayfarer

OK. To be clear, I am not denying that awareness/ the agent intellect, can and does produce universal ideas. I'm saying it can do more -- that we can also be aware of particulars -- for if we did not have the capacity to grasp both the universal and the particular at the same time. with the same faculty, we could never form judgements like <John is human> -- joining a particular and a universal.

At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of the nature of eternal life.

Yes. The issue was, was the agent intellect part of the human person (which grounded an argument for immortality) or was it outside of the human person (God making intelligibility actually known) which would undercut the argument for human immortality. I see this as resolved (in favor of an intrinsic power) by taking the phenomenological approach I'm suggesting.

Knowledge (epistēmē), in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows -- Aristotle

This is the point i was driving at above in identifying our neural representation with the object's action. The same reasoning applies to knowing: The subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject. This identity underwrites an ontological inseparability.

Whereas at this point, I'm at a loss here to see how your account differs from today's mainstream orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology. — Wayfarer

First, I do not see awareness as belonging to the physical order.
a. For all of the standard reasons you quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
b. Because it is excluded from the physical order by the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science.
c. Because it can separate (via abstraction) the physically inseparable.
d. Thoughts, as mental signs are radically different from physical signs such as brain states.
e. Because Daniel Dennett showed that no physical model can explain the data of consciousness.
f. Because some instances of awareness are devoid of physical content, and so not dependent on neural representations. (I'm thinking of the vast literature on mystical experience and especially of W. T Stace's phenomenology of introvertive mystical experiences.)

Second, there is no viable model for the evolution of awareness.
a. There is no physical model of awareness, so there is no plausible mechanism an evolutionary theorist can work to explain.
b. To be consistent, physicalists either have to:
i. Deny the reality of consciousness (Eliminative materialism) -- in which case there is nothing to evolve, or
ii. See awareness as an epiphenomenon -- along for the ride, but having no causal efficacy. But, if it has no causal efficacy, it can have no effect on reproductive fitness. That leaves evolution with no way of selecting it. Thus, evolution cannot explain the advent of awareness.

There are many more differences (discussed at length in my book) but these should give you an idea.

Something like pattern recognition, that the organism has evolved all the better to cope with the exigencies of survival? — Wayfarer

This is a common confusion. Proficiency in pattern recognition and other data processing techniques can certainly evolve, but "pattern recognition" involves no actual "recognition" -- no awareness of the data being processed. To have an idea, not only do we need content (which can be neurally encoded and processed), we also need awareness of that content. We have no physical model of awareness, and no hint as to how to discover such a model. (David Chalmers' "Hard Problem of Consciousness.")

If after deliberative cogitation, you have no description for an abstract universal called "number", it would be reasonable to conclude that you've never actually used such a concept in mental modelling, much less in controlled or automatic problem-solving and decision-making. — Galuchat

You don't have to know what it is in order to use it. For the same reason, expert mathematicians have conflicting philosophies of maths, and scientists have divergent philosophies of science. It doesn't stop them being mathematicians or scientists but it does indicate that the meta-philosophical questions raised by and in these disciplines, are not necessarily solved from within their own domains.

Can there be numbers or systems of measurement apart from particulars? — Galuchat

Pure maths comes to mind. Have a read of Rebecca Goldstein on Godel.

Gödel was a mathematical realist, a Platonist. He believed that what makes mathematics true is that it's descriptive—not of empirical reality, of course, but of an abstract reality. Mathematical intuition is something analogous to a kind of sense perception. In his essay "What Is Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis?", Gödel wrote that we're not seeing things that just happen to be true, we're seeing things that must be true. The world of abstract entities is a necessary world—that's why we can deduce our descriptions of it through pure reason.

:up: Thank you for the lucid explanation, no further questions at this point.

First, I do not see awareness as belonging to the physical order. — Dfpolis

I take it that all you mean by this is that what you term "awareness" (which I would call 'reflexive self-consciousness' to distinguish it from animal awareness) cannot be adequately explained in terms of sheer physics? I would agree with that and say that this is also true of biology in general.

Or are you suggesting that it is part of some separate (supernatural or transcendent) order? If you are asserting the latter, then I can't see how you should not be classed as a substance dualist in the Cartesian sense.

If reflexive self-consciousness is dependent on, and evolved along with, language, and linguistic capability confers survival advantages (which it obviously does), then I don't see why reflexive self-consciousnesses could not have evolved.