I told him that he can't hate it as much as philosophers do. — lll

So lovers of wisdom hate loving wisdom?

So lovers of wisdom hate loving wisdom? — Tom Storm

I think it's better unelaborated, having first given it a try.

The following QUOTE may be helpful in making sense of the mound haunting mutter and mutter hunting mound.
===
As Anatole France say in The Garden of Epicurus, we may imagine rubbing and polishing the coins of different countries until all inscriptions on them are erased. In this way, the coins are extracted from space and time, they would have inestimable value and their circulation could continue ad infinitum. This takes us from the world of our senses to the realm of metaphysics: knowing safely what the coins have lost, we do not know what they have gained. Of course, this is a mere dream, but does it have philosophical implications?
...
Wearing out of our words makes us metaphysicians. Metaphysics chooses worn-out words, such as the absolute, infinite, nonexistence, which do not display a trace of original coinage. These concepts have a negative form.
...
What is the relation between metaphorization which covers up itself and the negative form of concepts? The function of these concepts is to sever the links of our thought with the sense of any concrete existence. In Aristotle’s work, metaphysics comes after nature (physis). A metaphysical sentence is always symbolical and mythical. The sentence “The soul owns God to the extent, in which it takes share of the Absolute.” does not contain any signs, only symbols whose colourfulness and evocative power were erased. With some phantasy it can be said instead: “The breath is seated on the shining one” (God) “in the bushel” (to the extent) “of the part it takes” (in which it takes share) “in what is already loosed (the Absolute),” and elaborate it metaphorically even more: “He whose breath is a sign of life, man, that is, will find a place in the divine fire, source and home of life, and this place will be meted out to him according to the virtue that has been given him of sending abroad this warm breath, this little invisible soul, across the free expanse.” Even at this point we would not arrive at the original figures of speech, though our fantasy would read as an old Vedic hymn. From this, says France, follows that metaphysicians rub the colours from the old myths and fables, and are their collectors. They cultivate white (colourless) [clear] mythology.
...
First and foremost, there are no originary concepts. All of them are tropes, starting with the word archē – origin and principle, that is, governing rule, control. The value of the “basis”, “base”, “ground” corresponds to our wish to stand on a firm ground.
...
The words for comprehending and conceiving (fassen, begreifen), says Hegel, have a totally sensuous contents that is substituted by spiritual meaning. The sensuous words are becoming spiritual in the process of their use.

===
The last fragment addresses the historical accumulation of meaning that seems to make a relatively abstract realm possible (simultaneously providing a relatively concrete realm 'left behind.') This touches again on the impossibility of summarizing a philosophy. The words get their 'meaning' from within the conversation that employs them, via relationships to still other words in that conversation, as if they were characters in a novel who are delineated by how they treat one another.

The issue is then how do your recover what folk think they mean by meaning, consciousness, mind, intentionality, agency, etc, from an infodynamic perspective? . . .
The theory isn't complete until it is the meaningfulness of signs all the way down, coupled to the meaningless of material contingency all the way up. — apokrisis

Since "infodynamics" is based on Shannon's definition of "information" in terms of Entropy & Thermodynamics, I tend to avoid that approach, in favor of a more general & less physical interpretation. Infodynamics may be a useful way to think about Information as a scientific concept. But my interest in Information is as a philosophical notion. Unfortunately, there are a few nagging gnats that view every topic from a reductive/scientific/materialistic perspective. I try to ignore them, but sometimes I have to swat at them, as they buzz in my face. It's OK though. They are a minor nuisance. :cool:

Enformy (analogy to thermodynamics):
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend, opposite to that of Entropy & Randomness, to produce Complexity & Progress. It is the mysterious tendency for aimless energy to occasionally create the stable, but temporary, patterns we call Matter, Life, and Mind.
BothAnd Blog, post 28
Note -- In thermodynamics, what I call "Enformy" (philosophical concept) is known as "Negentropy" (physical term).

But to be a success, this reduction to "atoms of form" has to incorporate more than just a process metaphysics to take the edge off the hard materialism (that wants to oppose itself to the fluffy idealism). — apokrisis

Yes. When John A. Wheeler spoke of "bits" of Information, he was metaphorically imagining them as "atoms of form". Yet, "bits" by themselves have little-to-no influence on the real world. It's only in the corporate form of Systems or Wholes, and their related Processes, that atoms of information add-up to the dynamic physical swarms that we call physical objects.

It will take someone better informed on Semiology to interpret the various meanings of bits of information all-the-way-down and back-up again. As an amateur, I have to avoid getting bogged-down in philosophical technicalities that are over my head. Would you like to volunteer for the job of Information Semilologist? :smile:

So, it's all Information/EnFormAction, all the way down. — Gnomon
Yes. And that is matched to? And the third thing that is a meaningful balance of the opposing forces of spontaneity and constraint is being explicitly offered in the theory where? — apokrisis

Good question. I may get into the details of that dynamic "balance" in a later post. But it's all about creative Enformy counter-balancing destructive Entropy. :smile:

But my interest in Information is as a philosophical notion. — Gnomon

So more intuitive than mathematical? What is gained by sacrificing full rigour here?

It is the mysterious tendency for aimless energy to occasionally create the stable, but temporary, patterns we call Matter, Life, and Mind. — Gnomon

Energy is a scientific notion justified by Noether's theorem and the conservation symmetries of a closed system. So energy doesn't even "exist" outside of there being a potential difference to be dissipated.

Talk of "mysterious tendencies" need to be replaced by talk of entropic gradients, and then even about self-bounding systems - such as Big Bang universes that are their own cooling~spreading heat sinks.

Note -- In thermodynamics, what I call "Enformy" (philosophical concept) is known as "Negentropy" (physical term). — Gnomon

Yep. But negentropy doesn't just float about as an aimless tendency either. It can only be rigorously defined when counterfactually opposed to entropy as part of the one system - that has the finality dynamical persistence rather than the contingency of "temporary stability".

Would you like to volunteer for the job of Information Semilologist? — Gnomon

I am simply arguing that this job is being done. It is the systems science tradition, starting with Anaximander and Aristotle, proceeding though Hegel, Kant and Peirce, becoming a general view in modern science - at least as evidenced by dissipative structure theory, condensed matter physics, biosemiotics, hierarchy theory, enactive psychology, infodynamics, etc.

Of course telling your own tale in your own words is fair enough if you just want to arrive at your own synthesis of where modern science has got to. :up:

Talk of "mysterious tendencies" need to be replaced by talk of entropic gradients, — apokrisis

Why? How would replacing "mysterious tendencies" with "entropic gradients" improve one's understanding? I think this would be a step backward, because "mysterious tendencies" is the more general, and "entropic gradients" is the more specific. Real understanding assigns logical priority to the more general. So for instance, we understand "human being" through an understanding of "animal", and we understand "animal" through reference to "mammal", etc..

So, we should start by defining "mysterious tendencies" as aspects of reality which are not properly understood, or something like that, instead of proceeding to talk about "entropic gradients" in the pretense of understanding.

Enformy (analogy to thermodynamics):
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend, opposite to that of Entropy & Randomness, to produce Complexity & Progress. It is the mysterious tendency for aimless energy to occasionally create the stable, but temporary, patterns we call Matter, Life, and Mind.
BothAnd Blog, post 28
Note -- In thermodynamics, what I call "Enformy" (philosophical concept) is known as "Negentropy" (physical term).

I always find it interesting to think of what happens if you flip the process.

Thermodynamics is the ground for time. Without the thermodynamic arrow of time pointing towards entropy, we don't have a clear direction for time. The laws of physics work as well backwards as forwards. When we talk of relativity and time slowing down or speeding up, we're really just talking about the relative durations of certain oscillations under the varying effects of gravity, at least as far as the measurement of this effect is concerned.

So, if we flip the direction of entropy, we have a universe tending towards order. Life and other complex self-organizing systems emerge and begin increasing local entropy. Life forms slowly devolve into less and less complex organisms, sucking up entropy and breaking down complexity. Genomes act as one way membranes purging information about the enviornment. Ecosystems are broken down bit by bit. Vertebrates are replaced by single celled bacteria. Eventually, life is driven to extinction by the unending trend towards order.

The takeaway for me is that complexity only exists in the gap between order and chaos, on the fringes. It's very dialectical that way. Being and nothing stand in contradiction, so we have becoming, the continuous transition of being into the nothingness of the past. According to Penrose, when your reach either end of the entropy scale, the heat death of the universe, or the pre-Big Bang singularity state, the formal mathematical descriptions becomes increasingly identical. So then, we also have order and chaos standing in contradiction, undefinable in their absolute states, and so we get complexity within becoming as a secondary synthesis.

Metaphysics chooses worn-out words, such as the absolute, infinite, nonexistence, which do not display a trace of original coinage. — lll

“....To coin new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom successful; for this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate distinction of which from related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully to preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed, and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it....”

we should start by defining "mysterious tendencies" as aspects of reality

Seems to me that there being anything at all is plenty mysterious. It's the central question of philosophy and science, and answers have not been forthcoming.

But if being itself is a mysterious tendency, how are you going to possibly define the term? You can't define "all that is" in opposition to anything else that is that is not simply a component part of being. You can also define being against the idea of nothing, zero, etc. but this is about as far as you can go.

Definition requires difference. If you start at the very highest level of generality, you have no differences to use in definition and your project is doomed. Logically, it would make more sense to start down at the very smallest differences that can be discriminated. If you wanted to define visible colors, you work your way around something analogous to a digital color wheel, and tweak the various shades in small increments until you've laid out a map of all the discernable colors.

Now, a whole is not always defined by its parts. We have emergence as a concept. However, a thing's parts are always, necissarily, part of the definition of the whole.

Pragmatically, you can start wherever you can make meaningful distinctions since some differences are more relevant than others, and concepts from higher level definitions work for understanding lower level ones due to self similarity and fractal reoccurence.

If you look at theories of parts and wholes in metaphysics, generally it is proposed that things are just the sum of their traits, and so traits are the logical unit of analysis. The primary opposing theories to this view hold that objects possess an essential haeccity, a substratum of "thisness." This substratum of bare being/identity makes a thing different from just its traits, and so neatly solves many problems of identity that come up when you posit that a thing is just the tropes/universals it possesses/instantiates. However, the substratum is unanalyzable, an ontic primitive, and so it can't be where your analysis starts, and is arguably a vaccuous concept entirely.

Arguably, something along the line of Aristotlean substance is a third option, but I'm not convinced that this isn't just blending the two other theories, while still leaving the problem of haeccity unresolved. Aristotle claimed the identities of numerically distinct entities with the same substance are self explanatory. I am not sure it is.

But my interest in Information is as a philosophical notion. — Gnomon
So more intuitive than mathematical? What is gained by sacrificing full rigour here? — apokrisis

What-is-gained is, as you say, a notion that is "more intuitive than mathematical". I am not a mathematician. So, as an amateur philosopher, with no formal training, if I tried to present my Information thesis in mathematical terms, I would be out of my depth. That's why I have to depend on links to specialists, for those who desire a more rigorous treatment. Please click on some of my links for "full rigour". :nerd:

Of course telling your own tale in your own words is fair enough if you just want to arrive at your own synthesis of where modern science has got to. — apokrisis

Yes. I'm not pretending to be an expert in the science of Information. So, I merely use the speculations & conclusions of scientific professionals as evidence to support my own amateur philosophical conjectures. For example, the link below agrees with my contention that "information is the fundamental building block of the universe". If you have any technical questions, please contact the author. :smile:

New experiment could confirm the fifth state of matter in the universe :
Dr. Vopson's previous research suggests that information is the fundamental building block of the universe and has physical mass. . . .
He even claims that information could be the elusive dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe. ___Physicist Dr. Melvin Vopson
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-state-universe.html

IS THIS RIGOROUS ENOUGH FOR YOU?

I've never liked that 'Skeptical Enquirer' rag, although I noted with surprise the recent online interview between one of its founders, Michael Shermer, and Bernardo Kastrup, which was surprisingly congenial, I thought, causing me to re-consider a little.) — Wayfarer

Note : Shermer is the founder of Skeptic magazine, not SI. Coincidentally, I just read a Skeptical Inquirer article this morning, that mentioned the Plato & Aristotle concepts of "forms", "universals", and "essence". It's a review of Life is Simple, by geneticist Johnjoe McFadden, about "how Occam's Razor set science free". "William's heresy was to challenge the Church's view that theology was a real science . . ." We now understand that "theology" is philosophy, bound by an official mandate to support an authorized creed.

Referring to radical scholastic theologian, William of Occam, "He attacked the idea proposed by Plato that things we experience in our world are only faint shadows of the real objects that existed . . . somewhere." My own mildly-radical thesis is that our modern notion of "Information" can shed some light into the shadows of that ancient conjecture. The article continues : "Plato termed these 'real' objects Forms, and 'St. Augustine had already imported Plato's Forms into the early medieval Church where they became ideas in the mind of God." Those universal definitions (ideals) of real things were not just vaguely "somewhere", but specifically located in a the "mind" of the creator of the universe. Hence they became universal principles, governing particular things. McFadden goes-on to note that "Later, Aristotle modified the Forms into 'universals', which were thought to be the 'essence' of an object or concept". And that's how I came to connect the philosophical notions of "Forms" & "universals" & "essences" with our scientific concept of Information as abstract knowledge.

But, Occam concluded that "there was no need for any sort of vague, abstract, entity . . ." Ironically, Claude Shannon's definition of "information" sounds very much like a "vague, abstract, entity" symbolized by 1s & 0s. His "information" was quantified in terms of degrees of Entropy, which is itself a reference to the abstract concept of disorganization (the absence of order). But then, McFadden quotes a biologist that, "life is too complex, even irreducibly complex . . . for Occam's Razor to be of any use". However, If we envision "Information" (the creative power to enform) as both universal and essential, all that apparent complexity can be reduced to myriad forms of a single principle, which I call "EnFormAction".

The article even mentions some conjectures of theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, whose mildly-radical ideas I have discussed in the blog. One of those speculations is the notion of "genetic information", which I refer to as "generic information" to indicate that all the manifold things of reality can be traced back to a single simple principle of Essential Form. Anyway, my thesis agrees that "life is simple" when viewed from the perspective of a universal tendency to self-organize into more complex systems with unique properties, such as Life & Mind, from inorganic & mindless matter. The Skeptical Inquirer might not agree with my interpretation of the article, but I appreciate its consideration of creative simplicity, as a natural principle. :nerd:

EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Note -- EFA is the simple singular natural principle of organization, that causes the matter of the world to self-organize. It also produces the natural tendency that I call Enformy, which counteracts Entropy & Randomness, to produce complexity & progress.

because "mysterious tendencies" is the more general, and "entropic gradients" is the more specific. — Metaphysician Undercover

Statistical tendencies would be the more generic, mathematically speaking. Mysterious tendencies don’t lend themselves to formal treatment, just frantic hand waving.

f you look at theories of parts and wholes in metaphysics, generally it is proposed that things are just the sum of their traits, and so traits are the logical unit of analysis. The primary opposing theories to this view hold that objects possess an essential haeccity, a substratum of "thisness." This substratum of bare being/identity makes a thing different from just its traits, and so neatly solves many problems of identity that come up when you posit that a thing is just the tropes/universals it possesses/instantiates. However, the substratum is unanalyzable, an ontic primitive, and so it can't be where your analysis starts, and is arguably a vaccuous concept entirely — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’re leaving out phenomenology, Wittgenstein , poststructuralism , deconstruction and various and sundry other recent positions that unravel the notion of objects having intrinsic presence or substance or being.

Life forms slowly devolve into less and less complex organisms, sucking up entropy and breaking down complexity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it is the higher complexity life that transacts more entropy. The earth’s surface is measurably cooler where it is covered by a richer ecosystem. Breaking down the rainforests means less work gets done to break down the intensity of the solar flux.

So organic complexity can only exist in the positive direction because, overall, it works to break down barriers in the generation of entropy. It makes more mess than it makes order.

So, if we flip the direction of entropy, we have a universe tending towards order. Life and other complex self-organizing systems emerge and begin increasing local entropy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. That's exactly what my coinage of Enformy proposes. Without some countervailing "force" to thwart destructive dis-organizing Entropy, randomness & disorder would prevail, and Evolution would become Devolution. Some scientists have made a weak acknowledgment of that downward-directional problem with the awkward term "Negentropy". Calling it negative though, permits them to treat the on-going progression of evolution as a quirky accident. However, giving that organizing principle a positive connotation allows us to interpret the singular direction of Time, and of Evolution, as-if it is working toward some teleological destination.

Not surprisingly, that may be why most scientists are uncomfortable with any hint of plan, purpose or positive direction in the natural world. Yet, if the universe is not, in any sense, directional, how could human intentions, and organized human Culture, emerge from purely random collisions of atoms? My assumption is that there is nothing in the actual Effect (Evolution ; Time) that was not potentially in the Cause (Big Bang). Although, mathematically, time should be reversible, in practice that's never observed in reality.

So, we shouldn't read too much into the news that "Scientists Have Reversed Time in a Quantum Computer". In abstract math, anything is possible. But in concrete reality, change is always uni-directional, toward the "heat death" of the universe. However, what if some future cyborg-culture learns how to permanently reverse Entropy? I'll leave you to work-out that Sci-Fi story. :nerd:


Negentropy is reverse entropy. It means things becoming more in order. By 'order' is meant organisation, structure and function: the opposite of randomness ...
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy

Intention : purpose, aim, plan, design, impulsion, intent, end, motive, ambition, ultimate-aim, obligation and more.

Entropy vs Enformy :
* Entropy is a property of the universe modeled as a thermodynamic system. Energy always flows from Hot (high energy density) to Cold (low density) -- except when it doesn't. On rare occasions, energy lingers in a moderate state that we know as Matter, and sometimes even reveals new qualities and states of material stuff .
* The Second Law of Thermo-dynamics states that, in a closed system, Entropy always increases until it reaches equilibrium at a temperature of absolute zero. But some glitch in that system allows stable forms to emerge that can recycle energy in the form of qualities we call Life & Mind. That feedback-loop "glitch" is what I call Enformy.
BothAnd Blog Glossary

Culture vs Nature :
Nature and culture are often seen as opposite ideas—what belongs to nature cannot be the result of human intervention and, on the other hand, cultural development is achieved against nature
https://www.thoughtco.com/nature-culture-divide-2670633
Note -- Human Culture is anti-entropic in that it opposes the disorganizing effects of natural processes. That's why we have to do regular maintenance on our un-natural technology.

But, Occam concluded that "there was no need for any sort of vague, abstract, entity . . ." — Gnomon

A major digression, but I don't believe the nominalists ever properly understood the idea of the forms. A form is not a 'vague abstract entity' or an entity of any kind, if an entity is considered to be a thing. A form is more like a principle or defining characteristic, intelligible only to the 'eye of reason', and the loss of this understanding represents a watershed in the history of ideas.

Now this [late medieval nominalist] philosophy was itself the legatee of the greatest of all disruptions carried out in the history of European thought, namely that of Duns Scotus who for the first time established a radical separation of philosophy from theology by declaring that it was possible to consider being in abstraction from the question of whether one is considering created or creating being. Eventually this generated the notion of ontology and an epistemology unconstrained by, and transcendentally prior to, theology itself. — John Millbank

For an in-depth analysis there's also an essay (used to be online, now avialable via Academia) called What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, Joshua Hothschild.

Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. Notice: even if contemporary philosophers came to a consensus about how to overcome Cartesian doubt and secure certainty, it is not clear that this would do anything to repair the fragmentation and democratization of the disciplines, or to make it more plausible that there could be an ordered hierarchy of sciences, with a highest science, acknowledged as queen of the rest—whether we call it first philosophy, or metaphysics, or wisdom. — Joshua Hothschild

Of course, all of this is far, far distant from information theory, entropy, thermodynamics, engineering, and the other preoccupations of technological culture.

But, Occam concluded that "there was no need for any sort of vague, abstract, entity . . ." — Gnomon
A major digression, but I don't believe the nominalists ever properly understood the idea of the forms. A form is not a 'vague abstract entity' or an entity of any kind, if an entity is considered to be a thing. A form is more like a principle or defining characteristic, intelligible only to the 'eye of reason', and the loss of this understanding represents a watershed in the history of ideas. — Wayfarer

Your comment on "entities" may be a digression only in the sense of supplementary information. As I superficially understand the position of Nominalists, they were opposed to Realists, who didn't believe in anything non-physical anyway. For a non-physical abstract "entity", giving it a name doesn't make it a real thing.

So, their name-vs-entity argument seems to be a "how many angels can dance on a pin" debate. Below is the philosophical definition of "entity" I prefer. From that perspective, an Ideal entity, such as a Platonic Form, exists Abstractly & Potentially until Actualized physically. Of course, how that abstract-to-concrete transformation could occur, probably requires some notion of creation of Something (actual) from Nothing (potential). I suspect that concept of Potential existence does not compute in the worldview of Realists, Materialists, and Physicalists. For them, ideas & ideals, or principles & fundamental truths, are merely religious propaganda.

But, for me, a "Potential Entity" is a legitimate topic of philosophical discussion. If we can't talk about abstract ideas & ideals, what's the point of Philosophy? Unfortunately, we could debate endlessly about how that transformation occurs. But the Enformationism thesis proposes a possible answer : it's all metaphysical Information all the way down, only the material container (outward form) changes due to phase transitions or physical transformations. But, lets not digress on an abstruse mathematical or scientific description of phase states & transitions. Those ghostly apparitions might begin to sound like mathematical magic. Is a "phase state" a real or ideal entity? :cool:

PS__I would ask for more information on the "watershed event" stemming from the "eye of reason" notion. But that might be merely a digression from a digression. :wink:

Entity :
An entity is something that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object, actually or potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity

systems theory phase transition :
A phase space of a dynamical system is the collection of all possible states of the system in question. A phase transition occurs as a result of some external condition, such as temperature, pressure, etc.
https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~butner/systems/DynamicalSystemsIntro.html
Note -- "possible states" sounds like unactualized Potential Entities.

From that perspective, an Ideal entity, such as a Platonic Form, exists Abstractly & Potentially until Actualized physically. Of course, how that abstract-to-concrete transformation could occur, probably requires some notion of creation of Something (actual) from Nothing (potential). I suspect that concept of Potential existence does not compute in the worldview of Realists, Materialists, and Physicalists. For them, ideas & ideals, or principles & fundamental truths, are merely religious propaganda. — Gnomon

I'm inclined to agree. Where this started for me was with the realisation of the reality of numbers. This realisation was that while all phenomenal things are composed of parts and come into and go out of existence, numbers are not composed of parts (although strictly speaking that only applies to primes) nor do they come into or go out of existence. At the time I felt it was a minor epiphany - I thought, aha! this is why the ancient philosophers held mathematical entities in such esteem, as they're nearer to the unconditioned i.e. not subject to change and decay ¹. That was an intuitive leap, but it's held up. But the question it leads to, if numbers (etc) don't exist in the same way as phenomenal objects (or particulars) then in what sense do they exist?

The popular answer is that they exist in the minds of humans only, that they're a mental construction. But the problem with that view is, it doesn't allow for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, nor for the fact that mathematics is governed by rules. So I'm firmly part of the 'mathematics is discovered' camp. That's what lead to my interest in universals, generally. So I formed the view that there are different levels or modes of existence - whereas for modern thought generally, there is only one mode, i.e. the verb 'to exist' is univocal. Things either exist or they don't. But in the traditionalist view (if we can call it that) there are degrees of reality, with numbers and the 'intelligible forms' being of a higher order (i.e. possessing a higher degree of reality) than phenomenal objects (although they're not at the very top). But this way of thinking is literally unintelligible to most people nowadays - because, in my view, and as that passage I quoted says, the way of understanding associated with that has been forgotten. We're encultured to a nominalist-empiricist-materialist culture, for whom only things are real.

This is actually starting to seep through in various aspects of culture and philosophy. You recall that article I pointed to about Heisenberg and potentia. The experimental discoveries of physics have more or less forced metaphysics back onto the table. (Heisenberg was a more-than-competent philosopher by the way and a lifelong student of Plato.)

I would ask for more information on the "watershed event" stemming from the "eye of reason" notion. But that might be merely a digression from a digression. — Gnomon

This book was an eye-opener for me. Read it in around 2010-11 when I first started posting on forums.

It's like forensic science - trying to work out what happened to philosophy through the examination of a badly-decomposed corpse. :wink:


----------------

1. 'Neoplatonic mathematics is governed by a fundamental distinction which is indeed, inherent in Greek science in general, but is here most strongly formulated. According to this distinction, one branch of mathematics participates in the contemplation of what which is in no way subject to change, or to becoming and passing away.' ~ Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.

What are those? I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of metaphysics articles, those are the big ones I was aware of. How do they get around it?

The earth’s surface is measurably cooler where it is covered by a richer ecosystem

I'm lost here. Doesn't this imply that life forms running in rewind would be increasing local entropy, and thus running against the grain of the now contracting universe that is headed towards ever decreasing entropy? That's what I was thinking of anyhow.

On a side note, if you were an extra dimensional traveler watching our universe run in reverse, I wonder what the opposite of the Big Bang would be? "The Incredibly Slow Warm Up?"

The only (somewhat) intelligible formulation of "physicalism" is whatever physics says, is all there is. So we should stick to what physics says about everything.

That has the unfortunate tendency to leave out almost everything that is of importance to human beings, once we introduce much higher levels of complexity than things seen in physics. It's also important to remember that what physics says now, will not be what physics says in a few years, if the field continues growing that is.

In any case, I don't see why "physicalism" has to be associated with physics. It can be a monist claim which states that EVERYTHING is physical, including consciousness. This doesn't force physicalism to physics, it merely points out how baffling physical stuff can be.

But that's not sticking here. So whatever the debate is supposed to be about, is not of much substance, in my opinion, unless one considers eliminitavism seriously, which is hard to take as being plausible or even coherent.

Doesn't this imply that life forms running in rewind would be increasing local entropy, — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. The sun’s radiation hits the earth at about 5900 degrees K and is then re-radiated into outer space as some cooler frequency. The energy is scattered into a much greater number of infrared photons, hence it has more entropy.

Bare rock re-radiates it at about 330 K, while rainforest re-radiates it at about 290 K. So life contributes greater entropy than bare rock can.

On a side note, if you were an extra dimensional traveler watching our universe run in reverse, I wonder what the opposite of the Big Bang would be? "The Incredibly Slow Warm Up?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The whole story had got more complicated since they found the universe is being accelerated by dark energy or the cosmological constant. There is an extra push that is adding to the conventional thermal arrow of entropy unwinding. So a gravitational collapse or contraction couldn’t now recover the Big Bang’s original low entropy condition in the way that folk used to imagine as a reversal of time.

Ironically perhaps, this does now guarantee an actual Heat Death as the opposite, or rather inverse, of the Big Bang. But that’s another story to do with anti-de Sitter holographic horizons and the effective end of time. :razz:

Thermodynamics is the ground for time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is not really true. Time is a constraint in thermodynamics, but thermodynamics is clearly not the ground for time, because time is an unknown feature. We cannot even adequately determine whether time is variable or constant. I think it's important to understand that the principles of thermodynamics are applicable to systems, and systems are human constructs. Attempts to apply thermodynamic principles to assumed natural systems are fraught with problems involving the definition of "system", along with attributes like "open", "closed", etc..

Definition requires difference. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a mistaken notion which I commonly see on this forum. Definition really does not require difference. Definition is a form of description, and description is based in similarity, difference is not a requirement, but a detriment because it puts uncertainty into the comparison. So claiming that definition requires difference, only enforces my argument that this is proceeding in the wrong direction, putting emphasis on the uncertainty of difference rather than the certainty of sameness. A definition which is based solely in opposition (difference), like negative is opposed to positive for example, would be completely inapplicable without qualification. But then the qualification is what is really defining the thing that the definition is being applied to.

Logically, it would make more sense to start down at the very smallest differences that can be discriminated. If you wanted to define visible colors, you work your way around something analogous to a digital color wheel, and tweak the various shades in small increments until you've laid out a map of all the discernable colors. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Notice what you say, you look for something "analogous". Analogy informs us through similarity, not through the differences. The differences are what we must work to exclude, to make the analogy work.

If you look at theories of parts and wholes in metaphysics, generally it is proposed that things are just the sum of their traits, and so traits are the logical unit of analysis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is not true at all. It is generally proposed in metaphysics, and supported by evidence, that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is a logical fallacy, the composition fallacy, which results from what you propose.

The primary opposing theories to this view hold that objects possess an essential haeccity, a substratum of "thisness." This substratum of bare being/identity makes a thing different from just its traits, and so neatly solves many problems of identity that come up when you posit that a thing is just the tropes/universals it possesses/instantiates. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And this is nothing but nonsense. What could a "substratum of 'thisness'" possibly refer to? "Thisness" is what we assign in predication. It is a feature of human description. It is impossible that the human description is the substratum of the thing itself. This is the same sort of problem which you demonstrate with thermodynamics and "system" above. You attempt to make the description, or the model, into the thing itself. But then all the various problems with the description, or model, where the model has inadequacies, are seen as issues within the thing itself, rather than issue with the description.

Mysterious tendencies don’t lend themselves to formal treatment, just frantic hand waving. — apokrisis

Nothing in the real world submits itself to "formal treatment". Formal systems are pure theory. And, there is a very real divide between theory and practice, which produces the necessity for standards of application. The standards for applying formal systems in practice, cannot themselves be formal systems. So those who dismiss such standards as "frantic hand waving", choosing to apply formal systems willy-nilly, produce nothing but fictious nonsense.

But the problem with that view is, it doesn't allow for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, nor for the fact that mathematics is governed by rules. So I'm firmly part of the 'mathematics is discovered' camp. — Wayfarer

This problem goes both ways. There is the "unreasonable effectiveness" to deal with, but also there is mistaken axioms to deal with. How do you account for the reality of mistaken discoveries? What is it that is discovered, when the discovery is a mistake?

Where this started for me was with the realisation of the reality of numbers. . . .
The popular answer is that they exist in the minds of humans only, that they're a mental construction. But the problem with that view is, it doesn't allow for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, nor for the fact that mathematics is governed by rules. So I'm firmly part of the 'mathematics is discovered' camp. — Wayfarer

Yes. I'm not a mathematician, but I think of Math as the Logic of the universe. It's the non-physical "structure" of the physical world. That invisible framework of reality consists of stable consistent patterns of inter-relationships upon which are hung the physical "furniture" of the real world. We can't perceive those intangible links, but we can conceive them via rational inference. So, we "discover" the logical scaffolding of physics, not by empirical probing, but by imaginary conception. We seem to fill-in-the-blanks between things by mentally constructing a pattern of links to fit the pattern of nodes. When a particular pattern is found to be consistent & essential, we call them Rules or Laws that metaphorically "govern" that particular category (set) of nodes.

The stability & necessity of those invisible-but-knowable patterns make them effective for predicting missing nodes or links (components). They serve as a mental map that shows most-but-not-all roads & cities, so we can find our way around the world, even though we are half-blind to that intangible structure. Pardon my woolly description of a topic that is above my pay grade. As an architect, I used to design future concrete physical structures, by first creating an imaginary abstract pattern of relationships between imposed loads (forces) and columns & beams (links). When the math balanced-out, I could be assured that the "logic" of the structure was "sound". Only then, could I be sure that the Potential mental construct would -- when Actualized into material reality -- hold-up under the physical forces of the natural world. That's what I would call "reasonable effectiveness". :nerd:

PS__The mathematical & logical scaffolding of Nature forms the patterns-of-meaning that we call "Information".

Structure :
1. (noun) the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex.
2. (verb) construct or arrange according to a plan; give a pattern or organization to

What are those? I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of metaphysics articles, those are the big ones I was aware of. How do they get around it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let me list some of those who unravel the notion of objects having intrinsic presence or substance or being.

Hillary Putnam, Dan Zahavi, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida , Merleau-Ponty, Matthew Ratcliffe , Michel Bitbol, Foucault, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Evan Thompson, Richard Rorty, Francisco Varela, Eugene Gendlin, Paul Ricouer.

To get around the idea, that is, to deconstruct it, is to place contextually pragmatic relations prior to the intrinsic being of objects ( or semiotic codes or informational structures) . In other words, difference before identity.

Nothing in the real world submits itself to "formal treatment". Formal systems are pure theory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Formal systems can be supported by acts of measurement. That makes them useful as models of the world.

When the math balanced-out, I could be assured that the "logic" of the structure was "sound". — Gnomon

Right. To me that suggests an intrinsic connection between maths and the world. I'm interested in the idea that scientific laws exist where logical necessity meets physical causation.

_The mathematical & logical scaffolding of Nature forms the patterns-of-meaning that we call "Information". — Gnomon

The word 'matter' is etymologically related to 'mother':

Matter: Origin

Middle English: via Old French from Latin materia ‘timber, substance’, also ‘subject of discourse’, from mater ‘mother’.

'Form' denotes the 'active principle', whereas matter is the recipient, that which is formed, it is passive. The form is the active causitive principle, that which causes the particular to be.

'In Proclus' Elements of Theology, propositions 7–13 begin to formalize and systematize causes and culminate in linking the First Cause to the One, the Final Cause to the Good, and finally identifying the One to be identical to the Good. Proposition 7 is fundamental to the entire structure of Neoplatonic theology and asserts: a cause is superior to its effect, etc. 1'

Whereas the tendency of materialism is to declare that matter is self-organising, that it contains its own organising principle.

Formal systems can be supported by acts of measurement. That makes them useful as models of the world. — apokrisis

Sure, but the point is that the standards as to what constitutes "support" for a formal system cannot itself be a formal system. So it's wrong to characterize something which is not understood as a formal system as "frantic hand waving", or else formal systems would just be totally useless fictions or fantasies.

The word 'matter' is etymologically related to 'mother': — Wayfarer

That's right, Plato's description of "matter" as the female receptacle, in the Timaeus is very sexual in nature. Plato plays with word meanings like that a lot. You'll see Socrates described as a midwife when "conception" is discussed, in the Theatetus for example.

Sure, but the point is that the standards as to what constitutes "support" for a formal system cannot itself be a formal system. — Metaphysician Undercover

That point is made by Robert Rosen’s modelling relations theory, Measurements are the informal part of the formal process. The system, as a whole, is thus a complementary pairing of models and measurements. We have to figure out what counts as sufficient support as something that is pragmatic and contingent on circumstance.

So it's wrong to characterize something which is not understood as a formal system as "frantic hand waving", or else formal systems would just be totally useless fictions or fantasies. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hand-waving refers to the waving of empty hands - hands which ought to be full of supporting specifics. So it is indeed pointing to what is lacking and thus leaving a “theory as a useless fiction or fantasy.

Yeah... We can lay consciousness on the research table in our most expensive labs. Study it and holding it in the bright light of investigation. As if we will find something terribly enlightening and as if we are oh so clever. Pointing at connections in the brain and body, the electric currents that run, testing "the subject" wearing our white research coats that feels so empowering. "We know these currents loop strangely back in this and that brain area, while the neocortical vision area projects into the nuclei...blah blah blah.. But you won't find actual consciousness, nor a way to explain it by looking at brain matter.