So In Aristotle, there is passive and active intellect (which someone could easily parse as mind in a nonphysical sense) and passive and active material states (which someone could easily parse as material/physical stuff in the contemporary sense). — Terrapin Station

In regards to De Anima, that parsing would be incorrect as the "mind" is on both sides of the intellectual perception. That is why understanding is "the being becoming what it is" before the one who understands.
Cartesian duality only has the mind on one side; There is the one who knows and the known thing that is not the one who knows.

I wouldn't expect to "find it" anywhere. — Janus


But see that's not coherent to me. I don't think that the idea of existents with no location makes any sense really. — Terrapin Station

Well, I should have said I wouldn't expect to find it anywhere but in the imagination.

With ghosts, yeah, they'd need to have a location, too, and then we have to just kind of go, "Well, they're a bit like invisible people that can pass through items that normally we can't pass through" without thinking about the details of how that would work very much, where we pretend that somehow being able to see and hear and think doesn't inherently depend on having particular body parts, etc. — Terrapin Station

Sure, but the thing is we don't know for sure that being able to see, hear and think depends inherently on having certain body parts. We can't imagine how it would be possible to see or hear physical phenomena without possessing physical senses, but if to see something non-physical were just like thinking (which we can at least imagine to be independent of physicality) then there would be no problem involved in seeing or hearing ghosts or any non-physical phenomena.

Of course, none of this supposed non-physical stuff can be modeled because all our modeling is in terms of physicality, of mechanical processes. That doesn't mean any of this is impossible; it might be but we can't know. All we do know is that it is not logically (which is to say "imaginatively") impossible.

What about those of us who believe that it being so subjective is the reason why the freedoms of the imagination must be regulated by the discipline of acts of measurement? — apokrisis

"Must be regulated" for what or whose purpose?

"Must be regulated" for what or whose purpose? — Janus

So as to close the loop of reason and stop the endless torrent of bullshit that otherwise tends to flow.

Aristotle's conception
Aristotle gives his most substantial account of the passive intellect (nous pathetikos) in De Anima (On the Soul), Book III, chapter 4. In Aristotle's philosophy of mind, the passive intellect "is what it is by becoming all things."[1] By this Aristotle means that the passive intellect can potentially become anything by receiving that thing's intelligible form. The active intellect (nous poietikos) is then required to illuminate the passive intellect to make the potential knowledge into knowledge in act, in the same way that light makes potential colors into actual colors. The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.

There is no doubt there are a lot of disputes about what Aristotle is exactly saying but the writer is being a poor reader by not putting the question in the context of what Aristotle said quite clearly elsewhere in the book:

431b20. "Now summing up what has been said about the soul, let us say again that the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either objects of perception or objects of thoughts, and knowledge is in a way the objects of knowlege and perception the objects of perception. How this is so we must inquire."
431b24. "Knowledge and perception are divided to correspond to their objects, the potential to the potential, the actual to the actual. In the soul that which can perceive and that which can know are potentially these things, the one the object of knowledge, the other the object of perception. These must be either the things in themselves or their forms. Not the things in themselves; for it is not the stone which is in the soul, but its form. Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form of objects of perception."

De Anima, Chapter 8, translated by D.W. Hamlyn.

One person's regulation is another person's freedom, and so it is with bullshit. Where this kind of subjectivity doesn't apply is within activities such as math and science which are inherently regulated, which without appropriate regulation would not even be math or science.

No such unambivalent definition of what constitutes doing philosophy is universally accepted; the minimum requirement is that you provide argument or explanation for what you want to assert or even what you merely want to allow as a possibility, and that your argument or explanation not be self-contradictory.

What's the reason you couldn't logically have passive or active mind, as well as passive or active matter? — Terrapin Station

You could have these, but this implies that your primary division is passive/active rather than mind/matter. Analysis will indicate that you have no division between mind and matter. See, mind and matter are each divided by passive/active. This means that mind and matter have commonality, they both partake in passive, and they both partake in active, active/passive being the primary division. This implies that mind and matter are not actually divided, they are together in the passive and together in the active. Therefore you do not have a primary division between mind and matter. if you start with a primary division of mind and matter, and say that they are each passive and each active, you simply negate your division of mind/matter when you attempt to uphold the passive/active division.

One person's regulation is another person's freedom, and so it is with bullshit. — Janus

Hence the wisdom of collective rationality as epistemic best practice. If we agree how to measure something, then we can lift ourselves out of our individual ignorance.

No such unambivalent definition of what constitutes doing philosophy is universally accepted; — Janus

Sure. Philosophy would appear more tolerant. And having been pushed to the sidelines by the overwhelming success of scientific/pragmatic rationalism, it may indeed have turned to celebrating whatever social kudos it can cling on to. Flirting with irrationality and romanticism is a traditionally approved alternative. Academics can wander off and play that game too.

But when it comes to metaphysics, anything else but a pragmatic systems approach is going to be a waste of time.

the minimum requirement is that you provide argument or explanation for what you want to assert or even what you merely want to allow as a possibility, and that your argument or explanation not be self-contradictory. — Janus

But this is just aping the form of reasoned thought. By failing to agree on acts of measurement, you are just going to risk producing theories that are "not even wrong".

You seem happy with dualism and so you won't be too troubled that you are arguing for an epistemology that holds up a lack of interaction between the self and the world as an acceptable thing. It seems fine that a mind would invent a few syntactical rules and spin out the resulting logical patterns in "non self-contradicting" fashion. That's all minds do. Noodle away without a worldly purpose.

But consistent with my own meta-metaphysics, I insist on the primacy of there being some damn global point to the exercise. And acts of measurement - the ability to read the truths of the world in terms of a rational language of signs - is that bridge of interaction that connects our minds to reality.

The specificity of the measurement is what anchors the generality of the conception. Anything else is mindless free-wheeling.

Of course, metaphysics has its sacred spot at the centre of knowledge as it is focused on rational generalisation. It is always seeking to broaden the space of our conceptions. And thus metaphysics is still valuable to the degree it can be applied to the current frontiers of scientific thought. Especially in terms of mathematical explorations, we can hope to free-form our way beyond what we currently can conceive to measure.

Scientific advance is sold as working the other way round. First the troubling data, then the sweeping theoretical insight. But philosophy of science has exposed how much it is the other way around. A lot of practical difficulties with current theory has to accumulate. Then we notice that the facts never did exactly fit. And we are able to notice this having some even more general conception ... together with the even more highly specified measurements that the conception entails.

These days physics has boiled down to the measurement of entropy. And even information.

What we think we are measuring says everything about how we are conceiving reality. And this rolling revolution of thought is being advanced by scientists. When it comes to free-wheeling metaphysics, they are the least constrained by traditional thinking.

Lovers of the poetic can moan all they like, but metaphysics just ain't their strength. That kind of creativity is about the social and cultural sphere. And to the degree it can express concrete theories of how to live, then it gets tested by folk who try to live that way.

Does thinking like hippy, for instance, work as a social formula, a self-organising and self-perpetuating form of life? Does thinking like an existentialist, a romantic, a punk, or whatever? It does all come back to pragmatics even there.

Behind the ancient ruins there are grand vistas.

"Sensory representations" is only a part of what's in the mind. There are also memories and anticipations. I agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about a mind existing without senses, but it also doesn't make sense to say that a "mind is composed of sensory representations".

This is most obviously wrong. Things anticipated are in your mind, and not in your past. So it is incorrect to reduce the mind to memory as you do here. And if this is really the basis of your judgement that my notion of "mind" is incorrect and incoherent, it appears like you have things reversed, because your notion of mind is obviously incorrect. — Metaphysician Undercover

And the other, crucial, ingredient, is reason. — Wayfarer

Memories and anticipations, AND the process of reasoning, are composed of colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, etc. ie sensory representations. What form does your anticipation take if not a visual of some future event? How do you know that you're reasoning at all if your reasoning doesn't take some form? What would you be reasoning about?

There is nothing about memory that restricts it to being in, or about, the past. Memory is simply information storage. There are different types of memory. Computers also have memory and are capable of making predictions/simulations/anticipations (they're the same thing) within their working memory. Memory can contain information about the past, near-present, or future. Is your mind presently attending the sunset as it happens in the near-past, or attending a more distant past sunset when you kissed your girlfriend, or attending a future sunset when you ask her to marry you? Memory can never contain information about the present as a result of how causation works. Effects are not their causes just as sensory representations are not the things they represent. The present will always be a prediction/anticipation/simulation.

Reasoning is simply following logical rules for thinking (processing information). Computers can do that to.

You seem happy with dualism and so you won't be too troubled that you are arguing for an epistemology that holds up a lack of interaction between the self and the world as an acceptable thing. — apokrisis

Yeah, except I am not a dualist. I don't have a settled metaphysical position at all. I get that you do and that's fine...for you; so I can also agree that all your explanations are fine and dandy...for you (and anyone else who feels convinced by them).

For me philosophy is about explicating the possibilities and finding out where the inconsistencies are, what the presuppositions in any position are and identifying the purely affective motivations in thought and acknowledging them as such while not rejecting their importance.

I'm a physicalist/materialist, but my view isn't a "belief in physics" per se.

Among the big problems for me with the "God" side of things is that in my view the idea of a nonphysical existent can't even be made coherent. — Terrapin Station

Materialism doesn't leave much room for God. Dualism creates a problem of coherence. Idealism however makes sense because it allows you to keep God and be scientific at the same time.

I wonder where numbers are located. Silly question, of course - they have no location, as they’re abstractions. But nevertheless they’re real; the device on which this is being written depends on it.

My conviction is that ‘the real’ as pursued or understood by philosophy proper cannot be something known to science. And it’s also not something captured in the net of religious dogma, although it has a religious dimension. (It’s precisely on account of this that moderns will generally react against it.)

In any case, the reason why the truth pursued by philosophy cannot be known to science, as now understood, is precisely because science deals only in terms of the measurable, and mathematical predictions which start from and terminate in that. Whereas, all classical philosophies accomodate the immeasurable (Buddhism has four.) Such philosophies don’t necessarily, again, try and clothe the immeasurable in dogma (I suppose the image of throwing a cloth over a spectre comes to mind!) But they sense that which is ‘beyond measure’ and orient us with respect to it, in their different ways. And the reason why this can’t be matter for science, is because it - although there really is no ‘it’ - is ever-changing. It’s as if we, as human organisms, are uniquely able to intuit that truth, in a particular state of being - and indeed that ‘intuition of being’ is the consummation of philosophy.

1. [1177a11] But if happiness [εὐδαιμονία] consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [νοῦς], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already* that this activity is the activity of contemplation [θεωρητική]. — Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics.

I wonder where numbers are located. Silly question, of course - they have no location, as they’re abstractions. But nevertheless they’re real; the device on which this is being written depends on it. — Wayfarer

Silly post. If the device on which this is being written depends on the existence of numbers then numbers must be in the device for which it depends, just as this same device depends on electricity and wouldn't function without it, even with the existence of numbers (a program). You also wouldn't function without electricity.

If numbers are real, then they have causal powers. If they have causal powers then they have a location. From where and when was the cause - your mind, my mind, someone else's mind?

Oh, and philosophy is a science. The conclusions of one domain of investigation should not contradict those of another. ALL knowledge must be integrated.

Memories and anticipations, AND the process of reasoning, are composed of colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, etc. ie sensory representations. What form does your anticipation take if not a visual of some future event? How do you know that you're reasoning at all if your reasoning doesn't take some form? What would you be reasoning about? — Harry Hindu

No, these things are not "composed" of sensory representations. In fact, my anticipation is more like a void of such, a nothingness, where I feel there should be something. It's this feeling that something is going to occur, but not knowing exactly how to picture it which causes anxiety. When I have anxiety, and no idea why, it's like a hole, a void within, which leads to this nagging feeling that something bad is about to happen.

Furthermore, with respect to reasoning, it is impossible to reduce the act of reasoning to the things reasoned about. One is the activity, the other, the things which are active. Consider shuffling a deck of cards. You cannot describe the act of shuffling, as "composed" of the cards themselves. This would be a complete misunderstand of the act of shuffling, which is carried out by the hands which shuffle, rather than the cards themselves. The cards are what is shuffled.

There is nothing about memory that restricts it to being in, or about, the past. Memory is simply information storage. There are different types of memory. Computers also have memory and are capable of making predictions/simulations/anticipations (they're the same thing) within their working memory. — Harry Hindu

This is completely wrong. Memory is restricted to being about the past, that's what the word means, it relates to things remembered. If you are using "memory" in some other way, then it's a foreign word to us. When a computer makes a prediction, it is not the memory which is making the prediction. This paragraph is all wrong.

Idealism however makes sense because it allows you to keep God and be scientific at the same time. — Jamesk

Idealism that's not positing non-physical existents?

There is no doubt there are a lot of disputes about what Aristotle is exactly saying but the writer is being a poor reader by not putting the question in the context of what Aristotle said quite clearly elsewhere in the book: — Valentinus

No idea how what you quoted beneath this should have been reflected, in your opinion, in the Wikipedia excerpt I quoted.

And "quite clearly" is not a description I'd use. :razz:

Sure, but the thing is we don't know for sure that being able to see, hear and think depends inherently on having certain body parts. — Janus

"For sure" isn't something I ever worry about. I think it's very misconceived to worry about certainty. I think we know that being able to see, hear, etc. depends inherently on having certain body parts as much as we can know anything. That's good enough.

just like thinking (which we can at least imagine to be independent of physicality) — Janus

If anyone can imagine that so that it's coherent, they sure aren't able to express what they're imagining to me so that it makes any sense at all.

All we do know is that it is not logically (which is to say "imaginatively") impossible. — Janus

All that tells us is that per the rules of the logic game as we've set those rules up, it doesn't entail a contradiction. But that doesn't actually tell us much at all.

In regards to De Anima, that parsing would be incorrect as the "mind" is on both sides of the intellectual perception. — Valentinus

But that's what I was saying. In other words someone could parse "intellect" as "mind"

I think we know that being able to see, hear, etc. depends inherently on having certain body parts as much as we can know anything. — Terrapin Station

I'm not saying we have any good intersubjectively shareable reason to believe otherwise, but that we should recognize the belief for what it is; something we simply cant help taking for granted given our everyday experience.

If anyone can imagine that so that it's coherent, they sure aren't able to express what they're imagining to me so that it makes any sense at all. — Terrapin Station

The existence of and widespread adherence to idealism shows that many folk have had no problem coherently imagining it.

All that tells us is that per the rules of the logic game as we've set those rules up, it doesn't entail a contradiction. But that doesn't actually tell us much at all. — Terrapin Station

The " rules of the logic game" are determined by what we can coherently imagine; what else? So that's what they tell us; what the limits of the human imagination are.

The " rules of the logic game" are determined by what we can coherently imagine; what else? So that's what they tell us; what the limits of the human imagination are. — Janus

I've certainly run into people who have claimed that the notion of "obtaining contradictories" makes sense to them, and they seemed to be talking about the idea of contradictions in the standard conception of them, but I never could figure out myself how it made sense to them. Of course, I can't figure out how idealism or many other things make sense to anyone either.

I've certainly run into people who have claimed that the notion of "obtaining contradictories" makes sense to them, and they seemed to be talking about the idea of contradictions in the standard conception of them, but I never could figure out myself how it made sense to them. — Terrapin Station

It seems contradictory to say that "obtaining contradictories" make sense; the very idea of 'contradictory' seems to mean something like 'doesn't make sense'. So maybe those people you refer to have a strange and different definition of 'contradictory'.

Also how could a contradictory "obtain'; has anyone given you an example of one of those? Something like 'it was both day and night at the same location at the same time the other day'; would that be an "obtaining contradictory"?

So, you might not be able to figure out how idealism makes sense to anyone, but you should at least be able to see that it involves no "obtaining contradictories" and is thus in a quite different category than your friends' strange claims.

It seems contradictory to say that "obtaining contradictories" make sense; the very idea of 'contradictory' seems to mean something like 'doesn't make sense'. So maybe those people you refer to have a strange and different definition of 'contradictory'. — Janus

They didn't seem to be using "contradictory" any differently. The point is simply that just because something seems coherent to someone else, that doesn't imply that it's going to seem coherent to you. They'd have to do work to make it seem coherent to you.

They didn't seem to be using "contradictory" any differently. — Terrapin Station

Do you acknowledge that 'contradictory' means 'doesn't make sense'? If they are using that definition then they are saying that something that doesn't make sense makes sense; but how could that make sense?

Of course, people can say whatever they like. I could tell you I saw a square circle the other day in the park. You can make sense of the words at least.

No, I'm not referring to "doesn't make sense" for "contradictory.". I'm simply referring to unequivocal assertion and negation: p & ~p. "The cat is on the mat" and "The cat is not on the mat," without equivocating.

Memory is restricted to being about the past — Metaphysician Undercover

Nonsense; you can for example memorize formulae.

So, what's wrong with "the (same) cat is both on the mat and not on the mat (at the very same instant)" according to you?

It's a contradiction and incoherent on my view to say that both x and not-x could obtain unequivocally.

But you haven't said why it is "a contradiction and incoherent". Also, what does it mean to say that something is a contradiction and/or incoherent beyond saying it doesn't make sense? What's the difference, in other words?

Nonsense; you can for example memorize formulae. — Janus

Right, and when you have them memorized, and are capable of recalling them, weren't they necessarily given to you in the past. Therefore the memory of them is about the past, when they were given to you and you memorized them.