Yeah, anti-supernatural naturalism has to be embedded in a metaphysics that founds it. A generalized naturalism, for which the supernatural is not coherent, can be presented as a description of human thinking. — Hoo
When the number of dimensions for action is shrunk towards the zero dimensions of a point, then a mark or sign is born - the mark or sign, the bare difference, that can now freely stand for anything. — Apokrisis
Where in the world can that happen? What are instances of that? — Wayfarer
But the difference is that I would say that the idea of the supernatural only arises within a naturalism lacking in sufficient generality. It is reductionist materialism - the claim that the real is just "observable matter" - which begets its equivalently strong "other" in the subjectivism and mentalism of the claim that there is then also the reality of the "immaterial observer". — apokrisis
Yes indeed. There is a Platonic-enough realm under a different law. We live in a "vortext" of signs and signs' other (feeling-sensation?---but this is already a trespass).As a bit of information, it is no longer (or as little as possible) part of the material world, and so free to act as a part of a play of symbols. — apokrisis
I personally can't see how we get out of the system of signs. We can use signs to create a generalized science of the relationships between signs, certainly. The non-sign matter threatens to be an empty negation like the thing-in-itself --though admittedly there's some common sense grounding it nevertheless.)But replacing mental substance/res cogitans/thinking and feeling stuff with a more abstract dualism - one of matter and sign - is what it would mean to actually start explaining the particularity of the observing human mind in cosmically generalised fashion. — apokrisis
I agree. If we are pursuing the emergent distinction seriously, we can't favor either of the children. So maybe "matter" for you is just the signs we use in physical science? Or how is it approached?For matter and sign to be the sharp contrast that emerges, the primal ground has to be also talked about as itself a third kind of abstract. — apokrisis
I agree. If we are pursuing the emergent distinction seriously, we can't favor either of the children. So maybe "matter" for you is just the signs we use in physical science? Or how is it approached? — Hoo
We only have the play of our own signs, never direct access to the thing-in-itself.
And we see this in science. We only have our representations in terms of theories and measurements. The structure or form of things is there in our formal descriptions, but the materiality is imputed largely as an act of imagination. — apokrisis
There's a notion of the real as "that which resists." — Hoo
There's something like primitive science that we learn as children. Push some things they will move. If somethings getting bigger and bigger and louder and louder, it's coming to get you, or you're coming to get it. — Hoo
Anyway, it seems that sophisticated science (science proper) depends on this bodily, sensual "child" or "animal" science. — Hoo
All of this is hard to shake, though the farther reaches of abstract thought temporarily escape them. Maybe, too, it was as simple as curve fitting. Screw intuition. Fit a curve and extrapolate. Perhaps these escapes are most effectively "captured" for general use exactly by sign systems that boldly leave intuition behind (SR, GR, QM), which then are used for the machines that convince us on the "child science" or ur-science level. — Hoo
Anyway, it seems that sophisticated science (science proper) depends on this bodily, sensual "child" or "animal" science. — Hoo
That is certainly right. It is the way we sort out the self from the world in terms of the actions we can freely take vs the reality which is their constraint — apokrisis
Also Nietzsche's will-to-power could be read as the desire to enlarge of sphere of freedom.In Fichte's view consciousness of the self depends upon resistance or a check by something that is understood as not part of the self yet is not immediately ascribable to a particular sensory perception. — Wiki
And yet there is also something about science/metaphysics/maths being able to leave the realm of concrete intuitions behind. If we stay anchored in the sensuous - believing things like colour is "real" - then that becomes a hindrance to real abstract thought. Part of becoming a theoretician of any kind is being able to let go of intuitions once some useful-feeling start has been made - the abductive leap - as from there we have to get into the formality of deducing consequences and inductively bolstering hypotheses. The models and the measurements must be allowed to take over. — apokrisis
Now of course we should still want to have an intuitive interpretation of QM, so as to make some further abductive leap towards an even greater level of generality in theory (and measurement). — apokrisis
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.