Mincing words. God is a premise that underlies your claim, which is not an argument, that:
— Fooloso4
This warrant no further response — Dfpolis

It is not that it does not warrant response but that you choose not to respond. You begin where you hope to convince others to end, that is, with your belief in God. The pretense is that the belief is derived from the argument, as if it is a conclusion and not the reason for making the argument.

Thus, physical necessity is based on how nature works, not on how we describe it. It was as physically necessary that you would fall in paleolithic times as it is in the era of general relativity. What this shows is that there is a difference between the laws of being, on which classical logic is based, and those of nature. So, the laws of nature are contingent, and thus require a sustaining cause. — Dfpolis

Yes, I agree that as long as nature behaves invariantly then it would seem that behavior is physically necessary. As far as we know nature has always behaved invariantly. We agree that nature's behavior is
not logically necessary, but that might not mean much more than that we are able to think counterfactually.

Augustine was a dualist, but he would never have said that the soul is thinking stuff (res). — Dfpolis

Yes, as you say it was Descartes who introduced the idea of two substances, understood in the human context as separate body and soul. Spinoza saw the soul as the idea of the body.

From SEP entry on Spinoza:

According to one interpretation, God is indeed material, even matter itself, but this does not imply that God is or has a body. Another interpretation, however, one which will be adopted here, is that what is in God is not matter per se, but extension as an essence. And extension and thought are two distinct essences or natures that have absolutely nothing in common. The modes or expressions of extension are physical bodies; the modes of thought are ideas. Because extension and thought have nothing in common, the two realms of matter and mind are causally closed systems. Everything that is extended follows from the attribute of extension alone. Every bodily event is part of an infinite causal series of bodily events and is determined only by the nature of extension and its laws, in conjunction with its relations to other extended bodies. Similarly, every idea or mental event follows only from the attribute of thought. Any idea is an integral part of an infinite series of ideas and is determined by the nature of thought and its laws, along with its relations to other ideas. There is, in other words, no causal interaction between bodies and ideas, between the physical and the mental. There is, however, a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelism between the two series. For every mode in extension that is a relatively stable collection of matter (an individual body), there is a corresponding mode in thought (an idea or mind).

One of the pressing questions in seventeenth-century philosophy, and perhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes’s dualism, is the problem of how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in each other. How can the extended body causally engage the unextended mind, which is incapable of contact or motion, and “move” it, that is, cause mental effects such as pains, sensations and perceptions? And how can an immaterial thing like a mind or soul, which does not have motion, put a body (the human body) into motion? Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressions—under thought and under extension—of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.

I am asked "Do you know that strange object?" I say "Yes," because I have seen it, not because I understand it. That is not to say that I don't try to understand what I see, but that I know it with the first flash of awareness. — Dfpolis

If you know an object then you must have an idea of what it is, and I would count that as being possible due to imagination, We have 'images' of things, of their patterns or forms, which enable us to recognize them.

As I understand Kant, he does not believe that phenomena are real. They are just how things appear (very like Plato's "shadows"). His noumena are real, but they are not accessible. — Dfpolis

I think that is a misunderstanding of Kant. Remember that he classed himself as an "empirical realist". How things appear to us is a function of how they and we really are. Appearances are relational, the thing in itself is not; it is what the thing is apart from all its relations.

Your argument only works if neural processes can be reduced to purely physical processes. If they have a partial dependence on intentional processes, our thoughts and actions would be partially determined by prior thoughts and not by prior physical states alone. This dependence must exist. — Dfpolis

If all thoughts are preceded by neural processes, then those prior thoughts would also have been. Note Spinoza's "parallelism" as explained above ion the SEP quote. For Spinoza there is no real separation between thought and neural process, it is not that thoughts are caused by neural processes, but that "thought" and "neural process" are the two ways we have of understanding the one thing. We are not aware of our neural processes, but we can become aware of our thoughts.

Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear".

I'm out of time at this moment so I'll have to address other points you made later.

You did not cite Aristotle and you did not lead me to reject being during change. — Dfpolis

I did, Metaphysics Bk 4 Ch 7-8, where he discusses change and the applicability of the of excluded middle . You refuse to address it. What's the point in asking for the citation if you refuse to go to the text and read the context for your own sake of understanding

To say that a thing is identical with its essence (which btw is false) is not to say anything about what happens over the course of time, which is what you are talking about. Essences only define what a being could do if it existed. So, as Aquinas saw, we need actual existence in addition to essences. — Dfpolis

You continue to deny the relevance of the two senses of "essence" and "form", saying that this statement is false while adhering to one sense, and not considering that it may be true in relation to the other sense. Essence is form, and form is actuality.

You keep doing this, trying to present some forms as non-actual, but this is completely unAristotelian, and makes a mess of his conceptual structure. So your statement "we need actual existence in addition to essences" is nonsensical, "essence" as form, is what gives actuality to existence.

That is the point of the passage I quoted. There is no difference between Socrates the individual, primary substance, and the essence of Socrates, what it mans to be Socrates. You can disagree, and say it ought not be expressed like this but then you step out of Aristotle's conceptual structure. This is how Aristotle makes matter accidental, and Form separable and prior to matter as cause of material existence, which is the basic, guiding purpose of his Metaphysics. You deny this point because you are not willing to accept independent Forms. Therefore you say it is false, and remove yourself from being Aristotelian.

I accept that, but there is also being at each point in the process. — Dfpolis

But you were denying my insistence that being and becoming must overlap. Do you now accept this, that there is a duality of being and becoming within each material particular, or individual? And, the further point you need to apprehend is the fact that the aspects which are "becoming" cannot be described in the terms used to describe the aspects which are "being". And whatever aspects are described as "being" cannot be described in the same terms as those used to describe "becoming", because of the fundamental incompatibility, or incommensurability demonstrated by Plato and Aristotle. This is discussed in Plato's Theaetetus, and Aristotle Met. Bk4 Ch 7-8.

Becoming is the actualization of a potency insofar as it is still in potency. — Dfpolis

You accuse me of "nonsense", then you make a statement like this. If a potency is actualized, then it is no longer in potency. You argued this yourself. Now you are saying that the potency might still be in potency, in the actualization of that very potency. Which is it that you believe? Either there is overlap between the actuality and the potency because they are distinct categories, which is what you seem to be saying now, or one simply replaces the other, as you said before.. Don't you think? But you don't seem to grasp Aristotle's guidance for violation of the law of excluded middle at all. Read Bk4 Ch 7-8 please, and get back to me when you have something sensible to say on the issue of becoming.

I did not say that. I said the number of kinds was always finite. — Dfpolis

Why though,? We can make up whatever imaginary "kind" we want. So there is infinite possibility for kinds. That's demonstrated by set theory.

A continuum is not a regress. There is typically one efficient cause, and one potential being actualized, for the whole transformation. What do you see as a regress? — Dfpolis

I explained the infinite regress, twice now. Between each supposed different state of being which marks each stage in a change, there is necessarily another state of being to mark that stage of the change. This goes on ad infinitum, i.e. an infinite regress.

Since it is neither true nor false, the rules applying to truth and falsity do not apply. — Dfpolis

Right, so this is the case with "matter" in general, being designated as the aspect of the world which is "potential", the rules applying to truth and falsity do not apply to matter.

Now matter is that part of reality which we cannot understand because the rules of truth and falsity do "not apply". So this produces a very real interaction problem. We have two senses of "form", "actuality" or "essence". One is the essence of the thing itself, which is the same as the thing itself, the other is the essence we assign to the thing, through our use of sense, intellect, and understanding. Each is equally "actual", but what separates these two are the accidents, and Aristotle posited "matter" to account for the accidents, as the aspects which the intellect does not grasp. So "matter" becomes the intermediary between these two very distinct types of actuality, therefore it is the medium of interaction between the two types of actuality. But since it is what the intellect does not grasp, the interaction is not grasped. Therefore an interaction problem.

There are different ways of interpreting this situation. The materialist will assume that "matter" represents something real in the universe, and therefore conclude that there are real aspects of the universe which are impossible for the intellect to grasp. So we have ontologies like dialectical materialism which allows that the reality of matter violates the law of non-contradiction, therefore matter is something real which is impossible for us to understand. But from the Aristotelian perspective, "matter" does not represent anything real, it is just a name used to refer to that part of reality, "potential" which the intellect of man, at that time, could not understand. It is that part of a particular thing's essence which the human mind does not grasp. You will probably insist, as most others do, that Aristotle intended for "matter: to represent something very real, and I would reply that a lack of understanding of the human intellect is something very real. It is just not what we tend to think of as the reality of matter., because it is a type of nothingness rather than a type of something.

Not quite. Conceiving the same reality in different ways is a form of equivocation. When we are using different meanings for the same (nominal) concept, the same formal proposition can be true and false, not because the reality is indeterminate, but because we are not thinking the same things about it. — Dfpolis

Aristotle is not talking about using different meanings for the same concept. He is talking about "relativity" as proposed by Protagoras. In this case, since the world is said to be as it is perceived, or "appears" to be, and it appears to be different to different people, we are faced with the possibility that there is no such thing as truth. This is similar to, but clearly not the same as giving different meanings to the same words. Read the referenced section please.

In Plato's theory, sensible things are like images in a mirror and have no more an essence than a reflection does. — Dfpolis

It seems you have not read Plato's Timaeus.

You begin where you hope to convince others to end, that is, with your belief in God — Fooloso4

I myself can't help but see a connection between necessary truths, the domain of a priori, and an implicit order in the Cosmos (although I remain agnostic in some basic sense). But the likely response to such sentiments will be that because this sounds like natural theology or religious apologetics, then it ought to be rejected on those grounds. Just the admission of belief in God is sufficient to call an argument into question, as it is said to automatically consign it to the realm of faith, which is definitionally subjective and not amenable to empirical proof. It is flourished as a kind of rhetorical trump card. (See! A believer!)

I think this is all a manifestation of what (atheist philosopher) Thomas Nagel describes in his essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. He begins by quoting a paragraph by C S Peirce:

The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real --the object of its worship and its aspiration.
...
The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities.

Nagel then comments that Peirce's comments

have a radically antireductionist and realist (scholastic not scientific ~ wf) tendency quite out of keeping with present fashion. And they are alarmingly Platonist in that they maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can then be tested against the facts. Something similar must be true of reason itself, which according to Peirce has nothing to do with “how we think.” If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions — so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.

The reason I call this view alarming is that it is hard to know what world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious.

This is the point where Nagel confesses to the 'fear of religion', which, he says, he and many others suffer from, and which, he says,

is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

I see this writ large in many a debate on this forum, which is why I frequently hark back to this essay of Nagel's. Science itself throws up many metaphysical questions which it is not equipped to deal with; but then, because it's not so equipped, it relegates them to the domains of personal faith or unverifiable speculation. Consequently, in the end, the only kinds of causes that today's naturalism will countenance, are those which science itself can replicate and have control over. As one Cardinal Ratzinger, a well-known Catholic philosopher, put it:

(Renaissance philosopher Giambattista) Vico....following formally in Aristotle’s footsteps ... asserts that real knowledge is the knowledge of causes. "I am familiar with a thing if I know the cause of it; I understand something that has been proved if I know the proof". But from this old thought something completely new is deduced: If part of real knowledge is the knowledge of causes, then we can truly know only what we have made ourselves, for it is only ourselves that we are familiar with. This means that the old equation of truth and being is replaced by the new one of truth and factuality; all that can be known is the factum, that which we have made ourselves. It is not the task of the human mind—nor is it within its capacity—to think about being; rather, it is to think about the factum, what has been made, man’s own particular world, for this is all we can truly understand. — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity

Hence the transformation (or devolution) of man from h. sapiens, 'wise man', to h. faber, 'man the maker', for whom the technologically-buffered ego is the sole arbiter of truth. It is that kind of thinking that nowadays rules culture.

As far as we know nature has always behaved invariantly. We agree that nature's behavior is
not logically necessary, but that might not mean much more than that we are able to think counterfactually. — Janus

Quite likely, so let us think factually. Really, no matter how we think, we are not going to have exhaustive knowledge.

If you know an object then you must have an idea of what it is, and I would count that as being possible due to imagination, — Janus

It depends on what you mean by imagination. I know that it can act as it acts on me when I sense it. Say, it can scatter light, or make a strange sound. That action modifies my brain state, causing a presence we can be aware of as an "image." That is Aristotle's phantasm. We can also imagine things not so caused. If an image is not caused by an object, it cannot be our means of knowing an object, because it is not the dynamic presence of an object.

We have 'images' of things, of their patterns or forms, which enable us to recognize them. — Janus

Yes, or others of their kind. But, on the first encounter with a new type of thing, we have no such image.

Appearances are relational, the thing in itself is not; it is what the thing is apart from all its relations. — Janus

I agree with this statement. I don't think it is what Kant meant, but I am not a Kantian and so no expert. As I understand him, the mind adds forms of understanding, rather than basing concepts such as space, time and causality on reality.

If all thoughts are preceded by neural processes, then those prior thoughts would also have been. — Janus

Being preceded by is not the same as being determined by. My passing through a signal is preceded by the signal turning green, but determined by my decision to go. Yes, that decision is partially determined by neural processes, but in the end, it is determined by my valuation of various factors, and valuation is an act of the will.

For Spinoza there is no real separation between thought and neural process, it is not that thoughts are caused by neural processes, but that "thought" and "neural process" are the two ways we have of understanding the one thing. We are not aware of our neural processes, but we can become aware of our thoughts. — Janus

If you mean, as Spinoza did not, that thoughts and neural processes are two activities of a single person, I agree. But, being two ways of understanding, of of acting, does not explain the correlation of neural processes and the contents of awareness. We are aware of information encoded in neural processes. This cannot be an accident, and so calls for an explanation grounded in the relation of subject and object, for otherwise, our thoughts cannot put us in touch with reality.

Parallelism does not put us in touch with nature. It is a ridiculous theory because if true, it could never be justified. We would have no way of knowing what extended reality is actually doing to compare it with our thoughts and see that they are parallel. Extended reality could be doing not-A while we think it's doing A.

Further, since physics has no intentional effects, neural states need to inform mental states via an intentional operation. That is the subject of the paper I am finishing, should you care to see it.

Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear". — Janus

Clearly, this is not completely true. I wanted to know how physical processes engender knowledge, so I decided to study authors who had written on cognition, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Bucke, James, Stace, Suzuki, the Churchlands and Dennett. Clearly, I decided what to think about before I analyzed their arguments. As I read, my neural net activated related contents, giving me the means of testing what I read. Yet, even there, I valued some contents more and other contents less, and that valuation determined the amount of time I spent thinking about various points in light of various facts.

I certainly agree that we cannot understand contents until we have properly disposed contents to be aware of. But, I also see, that thinking, unlike processing, is impossible without awareness. Processing can lead to activation sequences, experienced as change of association, but it cannot judge that though the setting sun is associated with an orange, it is not an orange.

Churchland is clear that there is no neural structure corresponding to propositional knowledge. His conclusion is that there is no propositional knowledge; mine that there is more to thinking than neural structures. Dennett is clear that there can be no naturalist model of consciousness. His conclusion is that consciousness does not exist; mine that this falsifies the hypothesis of naturalism.

Yes, we use language to articulate our thoughts. Still, there is more to thought than language because we often find it difficult to find the right word to express our thoughts. If thought were fundamentally linguistic, this would never happen. Indeed, we would have little language indeed, because language grows in response to our need to express thoughts current language cannot.

I'm out of time at this moment so I'll have to address other points you made later. — Janus

As am I. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Why think a mind is something that can exist without an information processing substrate to supervene upon? I.e. why think that a belief that God is metaphysically possible is not faith based? — wonderer1

Because the essential requirement for thought is a subject and an object. The object of thought need not be material, as we can think mathematical concepts that do not involve matter. So, while content may be encoded in matter, that presents more of a problem (how does the physical inform the intentional?) than a solution.

Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism.

Supervene" is a pragmatic word for considering things from a more simplistic but useful view. — wonderer1

How is it useful to know that my thoughts supervene on celestial motions? If you take supervenience seriously, you have to take astrology seriously.

For example I can usefully discuss the workings of logic gates without concerning myself with whether the logic gates are instantiated with transistors and resistors, or vacuum tubes, or relays. — wonderer1

That is abstraction, not subservience.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics. — wonderer1

True, but irrelevant to the philosophical question of how physicality and intentionality relate. To study that you need to inspect, not ignore, their relation.

So talking in terms of supervenient properties is simply a pragmatic necessity — wonderer1

Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary.

The question is, will you be consistent and agree that the mind of a god has an isomorphic dependency? — wonderer1

No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. Aquinas discusses this at length. You may not agree with Aquinas, but unless you know his theory, you cannot have an informed opinion.

Furthermore, will you recognize that a god dependent on some sort of information processing substrate is not in itself an unmoved mover? — wonderer1

Sure. That is why it is "a god" and not God.

But the likely response to such sentiments will be that because this sounds like natural theology or religious apologetics, then it ought to be rejected on those grounds. — Wayfarer

There is a difference between God as a denied premise that claims to be a conclusion and a rejection of that premise.

following formally in Aristotle’s footsteps ... asserts that real knowledge is the knowledge of causes. — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity

For Aristotle not all causes fall under the four causes. There are accidental causes and chance (tyche), which means that in addition to teleology there is indeterminacy. Not all acorns become oak trees. In addition, there can be no knowledge of the whole or cosmos without knowledge of the arche or source. We can speculate and make arguments about it, but we have no knowledge of it.

Hence the transformation (or devolution) of man from h. sapiens, 'wise man' — Wayfarer

The wise man according to Socrates is the man who knows when he does not know. Aristotle is a Socratic skeptic and dialectician, an inquirer who knows he does not mistake argument for truth.

Because the essential requirement for thought is a subject and an object. The object of thought need not be material, as we can think mathematical concepts that do not involve matter. — Dfpolis

You haven't established that thinking of mathematical concepts can occur without supervening on matter. You seem to simply be considering a "subject" as a pure abstraction without recognizing the subject's supervenience on matter. I'm not seeing how the fact that the object of thought need not be material is of much relevance.

So, while content may be encoded in matter, that presents more of a problem (how does the physical inform the intentional?) than a solution. — Dfpolis

The physical informs by developing intentional outputs. See this video on neural nets producing outputs that are about numerals in a visual field. Intentionality shows up at a relatively low level of neural network processing.

Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism. — Dfpolis

I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4.

How is it useful to know that my thoughts supervene on celestial motions? If you take supervenience seriously, you have to take astrology seriously. — Dfpolis

With a well informed perspective on the matter, a person understands that the physical effect of celestial objects on the functioning of our brains is generally so negligible that we are justified in ignoring it. It is disappointing to receive sophistry like this as a response.

That is abstraction, not subservience. — Dfpolis

Superveniences are a class of abstractions. It's not a case of being one or the other. This from Joshua Greene might be helpful:

Supervenience is a shorthand abstraction, native to Anglo-American philosophy, that provides a general framework for thinking about how everything relates to everything else. The technical definition of supervenience is somewhat awkward:

Supervenience is a relationship between two sets of properties. Call them Set A and Set B. The Set A properties supervene on the Set B properties if and only if no two things can differ in their A properties without also differing in their B properties.

This definition, while admirably precise, makes it hard to see what supervenience is really about, which is the relationships among different levels of reality. Take, for example, a computer screen displaying a picture. At a high level, at the level of images, a screen may depict an image of a dog sitting in a rowboat, curled up next to a life vest. The screen's content can also be described as an arrangement of pixels, a set of locations and corresponding colors. The image supervenes on the pixels. This is because a screen's image-level properties (its dogginess, its rowboatness) cannot differ from another screen's image-level properties unless the two screens also differ in their pixel-level properties.

The pixels and the image are, in a very real sense, the same thing. But — and this is key — their relationship is asymmetrical. The image supervenes on the pixels, but the pixels do not supervene on the image. This is because screens can differ in their pixel-level properties without differing in their image-level properties. For example, the same image may be displayed at two different sizes or resolutions. And if you knock out a few pixels, it's still the same image. (Changing a few pixels will not protect you from charges of copyright infringement.) Perhaps the easiest way to think about the asymmetry of supervenience is in terms of what determines what. Determining the pixels completely determines the image, but determining the image does not completely determine the pixels.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics.
— wonderer1

True, but irrelevant to the philosophical question of how physicality and intentionality relate. To study that you need to inspect, not ignore, their relation. — Dfpolis

To think that you have done a serious inspection while ignoring neuroscience is just fooling yourself.

Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary. — Dfpolis

Fallacious appeal to tradition.

No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. — Dfpolis

Do you recognize the special pleading?

Aquinas discusses this at length. You may not agree with Aquinas, but unless you know his theory, you cannot have an informed opinion.

You didn't qualify "informed opinion". I certainly can and do have opinions informed by much that Aquinas didn't understand. Why try to change the subject to Aquinas' uninformed opinions?

I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4. — wonderer1

"Faith based" is misdirection. Aristotle certainly did use theological premises. But as I interpret him these are not premises he holds to be true.

From the thread I started on Aristotle's Metaphysics:

So why does Aristotle make so many theological claims? I think the answer has something to do with the difference between opinion and knowledge, what can be taught and learned, and the competition between theology and philosophy. Aristotle was able to give his listeners and readers opinions that they could hold as true, but he could not give them knowledge of such things. As if to be told is to know.

...

There is then an important political dimension to the Metaphysics. The battle between the philosopher and the theologian is a continuation of the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Aristotle’s strategy in this quarrel is the same as Plato’s. Just as Plato presents a philosophical poetry, Aristotle presents a philosophical theology. It is better for these opinions to be generally assumed rather than some others. It is better to hold these opinions then succumb to misologic and nihilism. Better to give the appearance of knowledge than reveal our absence of knowledge.

Once we realized that abstractions are not reality, things become easier. There is no reason to think that the laws of mindless matter should apply without modification to thinking beings. — Dfpolis

Yes. Abstractions only exist in the imaginary world of Minds. So, they are Ideal, not Real. And physical laws can only be used as metaphors for metaphysical relationships. :smile:

Most contemporary philosophers of mind employ a Cartesian conceptual space in which reality is (at least potentially) divided into res extensa and res cogitans. Then, they ask: how res cogitans could possibly interact with res extensa? I am suggesting that this approach is nonsensical because reality cannot be divided into res extensa and res cogitans. Clearly, thinking depends on neural processes and neural processes depend on extended stuff. This dependence has been known since Aristotle wrote De Anima. — Dfpolis

I assume that by "non-sensical" you mean : from the perspective of Realism & Materialism. You may be correct, that many-if-not-most posters on TPF identify as materialists or physicalists, to the exclusion of psychological or metaphysical views. But not all.

Atomism/Materialism was an ancient philosophy, that was later confirmed in terms of physical laws in the 17th century. However, some of Newton's assumptions have been called into question by 20th century sub-atomic Science. So now, there are good empirical reasons to doubt*1 the evidence of the physical senses, and to apply the 6th sense of philosophical Reasoning. The "science" I'm referring to is Quantum Physics, not Spiritualism.

Res Cogitans is literally non-sense in the sense that mental phenomena cannot be perceived via the 5 physical senses. But commonsense led ancient thinkers to conclude that Life Functions and Mental Phenomena are not explainable in terms of their material substance. Fictional Dr. Frankenstein injected Life into his creature with a jolt of natural Lightning. But real-world scientists have not been able to cause inert (dead) matter to become a living person by means of electrical Energy. The Miller-Urey experiment, almost a century ago, didn't even come close to creating life from non-life. So, it seems that there is still a missing element or force in the Matter + X = Life or the Matter + Life + X = Mind equations. Moreover, Reality still seems to persist in presenting a dualistic face to life-seekers and mind-finders.

It's obvious that Minds are always Embodied ; unless you give credence to invisible intangible ghosts. But that simple eyeball observation does not explain the emergence of Anima or Noumena from Materia. Cartesian dualism was merely a compromise, intended to allow Science to proceed without interference from Religion*2. A more pertinent observation in the 21st century is that Mind is the Function of physical brains. But, is a Function Res Extensa or Res Cogitans, or something else, perhaps Res Causatio?

I'm not proposing a Triality, but merely that both space-occupying things, and thinking things, might be merely various products of evolutionary Causation. Not just boring linear mechanical causation, but the holistic non-linear Interactionism of quantum entanglement. I won't attempt to explain that conjectural hypothesis in this post. But I've been exploring the multi-faceted roles of Causal Information (e.g. physical Energy or mental Intention) for several years.

That Information-based notion does not displace Materialism for the practical purposes of Science, but it does provide a new way to understand the impractical unrealistic subjects of Philosophical investigations : the immaterial Mind Objects we call "Ideas" and "Concepts". And ultimately, it's a Monistic worldview. :smile:


*1. Uncertainty Principle :
The uncertainty principle presents a philosophical challenge to one of our basic assumptions about the nature of physical objects, namely, that physical variables have precise and definite objective existence.
https://www.quora.com/Does-Heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-have-a-philosophical-interpretation

*2. Descartes's Dualism :
Thus, the concept of metaphysical dualism served to be a compromise between religion and science. Descartes suggested that immaterial substances such as the soul are the locus of free will and it tends to last beyond the death of the physical body and thereby, are immortal.
https://www.studocu.com/en-us/messages/question/2491582/how-does-descartess-dualism-allow-for-a-compromise-between-science-and-religionhow-does

So, how do thought and matter interact? They don't -- because the question is ill-formed. What we have is being, with different beings having different capabilities. Some beings are extended and can think, some are extended and cannot think, and possibly, others are unextended and can know and will. This is no more surprising than some bodies being able to interact electromagnetically and others not. — Dfpolis

Indeed. :up:

Great OP. Your paper also looks interesting.

But as I interpret him these are not premises he holds to be true. — Fooloso4

But presumably your opinion has no textual warrant, and can therefore be safely ignored. In short: eisegesis.

Great OP. Your paper also looks interesting. — Leontiskos

Thank you. As I said, I am revising one on how the agent intellect works. If you would like to read it, and possibly comment, message me with your email.

Responding to you is time-consuming and seems to provide little benefit to either of us or to anyone else. I need that time to work on my articles for publication. So, I have decided to spend it there.

With kind regards,
Dennis Polis

- Great, will do!

But presumably your opinion has no textual warrant — Leontiskos

I think it is rather the case that this goes against your own opinion and what might be regarded as the standard interpretation.

The problem of what counts as textual warrant cannot be adequately addressed without acknowledgement of the practice of exoteric and esoteric writing. The distinction was once widely known and accepted, but from the 19th century forward has been, with few exceptions, ignored. Arthur Melzer 's Philosophy Between the Lines does a good job of helping to rectify this.

With regard to Aristotle, we might begin by acknowledging that his works are dialectical. We should not read him to simply presenting doctrines or to be rejecting Plato, but to be in dialogue with him. See, for example, Ronna Burger's Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics

This means that we cannot simply open a text, point to something, and claim that this is Aristotle's settled opinion of the matter. Or do you think that it is not an opinion but that he has knowledge of the arche or source or ultimate roots of the cosmos? That he is in possession of a divine science?

Earlier I posted this:

The contemporary scholar David Bolotin quotes Alfarabi.

Whoever inquires into Aristotle’s sciences, peruses his books, and takes pains with them will not miss the many modes of concealment, blinding and complicating in his approach, despite his apparent intention to explain and clarify.

(Alfarabi, Harmonization (unpublished translation by Miriam Galston,
quoted by Bolotin in Approach to Aristotle’s Physics, 6) — Fooloso4

In An Approach to Aristotle's Physics David Bolotin says:

Now to understand why Aristotle presented what he knew to be such and exaggerated picture of intelligibility of the natural world, we must consider the implications of the limitedness of the achievement of what he regarded as genuine natural science. For his denial that natural science can finally explain the given world - and in particular his acknowledgement that it cannot discover its ultimate roots - seems to leave him unable to exclude the alternative that this world might partly consist of, or otherwise owe its existence to, a mysterious and all-powerful god or gods. If there are such gods, as was suggested by Homer and Hesiod, among others, we cannot rely on what reason and normal experience indicate as to the limits of what beings can do and what can be done to them.

You of course disagree, but it is not the case that there is no textual, and I might add, scholarly warrant. For a detailed discussion available free online see Christopher Utter's dissertation .

You haven't established that thinking of mathematical concepts can occur without supervening on matter. — wonderer1

Maybe that is because I think that empirical knowledge is informed by physical action via a modification of our brain state. However, since the same thoughts supervene on astronomical motions, saying that they supervene on brain states is not at all helpful. Saying that brain states encode the information we become aware of is.

You seem to simply be considering a "subject" as a pure abstraction without recognizing the subject's supervenience on matter — wonderer1

No, I see subjects only in subject-object relations. There is no being a subject without having an intentional relation to an object known, willed, hoped for, etc. All of this is essentially intentional. Nothing about it demands physicality.

That the objects human subjects typically relate to are physical does not mean that all objects are physical and, if they are not physical, they will not be physically encoded. The essence of knowing is the union of the mind with its objects. The object informing the mind is, identically, the mind being informed by the object. Noting about this demands a physical substrate. So, what you are doing is generalizing from a single form of knowing, to all knowing. Clearly, there is no logical justification for this kind of induction.

Think about information. While it can be physically encoded, it is not physical. What computers process is not information in virtue of any physical property. Label a bit’s physical states a and b, and ask what the byte aababbab means? Reading left to right and interpreting a as 0, and b as 1, the byte means 00101101. Interpreting a as 1 and b as 0, it is 11010010. Reading right to left, it means 10110100 or 01001011. Thus, a, an arbitrary physical state, lacks intrinsic meaning.

Since information is not it's encoding, there is no contradiction in having intelligibility without a physical substrate.

Finally, your assumption that human intentionality supervenes on brain states is demonstrably false. Consider my seeing an apple. The same modification of my brain state encodes both my seeing an apple and my retinal state being modified. So, one neural state underpins two distinct conceptual states.

I'm not seeing how the fact that the object of thought need not be material is of much relevance. — wonderer1

It is relevant because it shows that matter is not essential to all objects of thought. Ask yourself how physical states can determine immaterial contents. For example, what kind of physical state can encode Goedel's concept of unprovability? Physical states interact physically, producing physical, not intentional results. So, how can a physical state interact with immaterial contents? It can't.

Instead, we have neural states encoding examples from which we can abstract concepts. Clearly, producing concepts is an intentional, not a physical operation.

The physical informs by developing intentional outputs. See this video on neural nets producing outputs that are about numerals in a visual field. Intentionality shows up at a relatively low level of neural network processing. — wonderer1

That does not happen. Neural nets only produce physical activation states. As with my computer example, the meaning or intentionality of these states is not intrinsic, but imposed by human interpreters.

Being a response to something, however complex that response may be, is not being about (in Brentano's sense) what is responded to. Believing that it is is an example of anthropomorphic thinking. Is a ringing bell about the bell puller's act? Of course not. It can, however, be used to infer that there is a bell puller acting.

Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism. — Dfpolis
I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4. — wonderer1

As you will. Still, it rebuts your claim.

With a well informed perspective on the matter, a person understands that the physical effect of celestial objects on the functioning of our brains is generally so negligible that we are justified in ignoring it. It is disappointing to receive sophistry like this as a response. — wonderer1

My point exactly! Supervenience alone is worthless. You have to look at causality, which supervenience theory was designed to avoid. And why? Because there is no possible reduction of intentional effects to physical causes. Dennett recognized that explicitly in Consciousness Explained and Chalmers recognizes it in discussing the hard problem. I showed why it impossible in my January article.

Superveniences are a class of abstractions. — wonderer1

Yes. That does not make every abstraction an instance of supervenience.

To think that you have done a serious inspection while ignoring neuroscience is just fooling yourself. — wonderer1

That is rather gratuitous! Where have I ignored neuroscience? I find it useful, but limited. It is like a street lamp's light. The light being under it does not mean that's where you lost your keys. It is better to think about what you did with your keys.

Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary. — Dfpolis
Fallacious appeal to tradition. — wonderer1

No, a counter-example to the claim of necessity.

Let's face it. When you needed supervenience to rebut my claim about astrology, it failed you. You had to abandon it, and bring in causality -- the very move it was designed to avoid.

No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. — Dfpolis
Do you recognize the special pleading? — wonderer1

It would be special pleading if I held a general principle that this violates. I hold no such principle. Since you have insufficient evidence to generalize from some minds on a peripheral planet to all minds, neither I am not violating a universal principle you have justified. I merely reject your hypothesis.

You didn't qualify "informed opinion". I certainly can and do have opinions informed by much that Aquinas didn't understand. Why try to change the subject to Aquinas' uninformed opinions? — wonderer1

Because, that is what a truth-seeker should do. I did not read the Churchlands, Dennett, Chalmers any number of other naturalists because I expected to agree with them, but because I hoped to find insights -- and I did. It always helps to see things from a perspective very different than your own.

I do not agree 100% with Aquinas. The paper I am writing is quite critical of his theory of knowledge. Still, I have not found any glaring errors of fact, and he is one of the great minds in philosophy -- well worth reading even if it is only to clarify your own position.

As for changing the subject, it was you who brought up the mind of God without researching it.

But presumably your opinion has no textual warrant — Leontiskos

You of course disagree, but it is not the case that there is no textual, and I might add, scholarly warrant. — Fooloso4

Well, you certainly haven't presented any. You claimed that Aristotle makes use of theological premises while at the same time holding that these premises are not true. Then you presented all sorts of quotes and sources that have nothing to do with your theory.

I assume that by "non-sensical" you mean : from the perspective of Realism & Materialism. You may be correct, that many-if-not-most posters on TPF identify as materialists or physicalists, to the exclusion of psychological or metaphysical views. But not all. — Gnomon

No, I mean from the perspective of anyone who takes science seriously. (I am not a materialist.) It is nonsensical because it has been known since Galen (129-216 AD) treated gladiators that thinking depends on the brain. Any well-grounded theory of mind has to take that into account. So, we cannot divide extended reality from human mental reality.

So now, there are good empirical reasons to doubt*1 the evidence of the physical senses, and to apply the 6th sense of philosophical Reasoning. The "science" I'm referring to is Quantum Physics, not Spiritualism. — Gnomon

As one with a doctorate in theoretical physics, I do not think that the facts support the far-reaching quantum interpretations that astound people. Some come from confusing the particle model with real particles (for which there is no irrefutable evidence). Some come from inconsistently treating measuring processes classically instead of quantum mechanically. Some comes ignoring entanglement over large distances, or accepted but little discussed trans-temporal symmetry principles, and some come from ignoring the nonlinearity of interactions.

There is a tendency to think that because quantum theory and consciousness are both mysterious, they must be related. The theories I have read trying to do so have not stood up. The wave function does not collapse in the brain as von Neumann and Wigner proposed, but in measuring devices because interactions with them are nonlinear and do not support superposition. So, the collapse of the wave function has nothing to do with consciousness.

It's obvious that Minds are always Embodied ; unless you give credence to invisible intangible ghosts. — Gnomon

No, one need only give credence to logical analysis such as that by which Aristotle established the existence of an immaterial unmoved mover, described as "self-thinking thought."

Cartesian dualism was merely a compromise, intended to allow Science to proceed without interference from Religion — Gnomon

Have you read Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution? No one interfered with his physics, which btw was atrocious.

A more pertinent observation in the 21st century is that Mind is the Function of physical brains. — Gnomon

How does one observe this?

I'm not proposing a Triality, but merely that both space-occupying things, and thinking things, might be merely various products of evolutionary Causation. — Gnomon

As I explain in my January paper, for this to be so, mind must have physical effects.

The uncertainty principle presents a philosophical challenge to one of our basic assumptions about the nature of physical objects, namely, that physical variables have precise and definite objective existence. — Gnomon

This is a non-problem for Aristotelians who see that measured values do not exist befoe measuring operations.

The wise man according to Socrates is the man who knows when he does not know. — Fooloso4

There is a distinction between mere ignorance - not knowing specific facts - and learned ignorance, an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions such as the nature of justice or the idea of the good. The latter approach is apophatic - which ties in with your ‘philosophy between the lines’ thesis, as apophaticism gestures towards what can’t be simply stated in plain speech, knowing that any propositional formulation will miss the mark.

There is no being a subject without having an intentional relation to an object known — Dfpolis

Schopenhauer also affirms this.

the collapse of the wave function has nothing to do with consciousness. — Dfpolis

But it definitely has something to do with the act of measurement, does it not? “No phenomena is a phenomena until it is observed”, said Bohr.

If you do not understand that Aristotle's art of writing requires an art of reading Aristotle, then we will not get very far. In large part that requires that we not read passively or expect him to tell us what is true and what to think. Like the good Socratic skeptic we must ask questions and make connections, look for contradictions and try to reconcile them.

Aristotle says:

We consider first, then, that the wise man knows all things, so far as it is possible, without having knowledge of every one of them individually …
(982a)

How far is it possible to know all things? Aristotle says that:

... it is through experience that men acquire science and art ...
(981a) — Fooloso4

Do you think Aristotle is wise? What does that mean? Does he know all things? If not, how far is it possible to know things? What limits him and us?

He says that it is through experience that men acquire science and art. Does he or anyone else have experience of the arche of the cosmos?

I'll pause here to await your response.

If you do not understand that Aristotle's art of writing requires an art of reading Aristotle, then we will not get very far. In large part that requires that we not read passively or expect him to tell us what is true and what to think. Like the good Socratic skeptic we must ask questions and make connections, look for contradictions and try to reconcile them. — Fooloso4

Yes, but I think you conflate Plato and Aristotle in this way. You are accustomed to reading Plato and then you apply the same hermeneutic to Aristotle, despite the fact that the genre and medium is different.

Does he or anyone else have experience of the arche of the cosmos? — Fooloso4

I think Dfpolis already pointed out your error of confusing a conclusion with a premise (link). Relevant here is Aristotle's distinction between what is better known to us and what is better known in itself. We only come to the latter through the former.

The latter approach is apophatic - which ties in with your ‘philosophy between the lines’ thesis, as apophaticism gestures towards what can’t be simply stated in plain speech, knowing that any propositional formulation will miss the mark. — Wayfarer

Is the problem simply that we cannot say it or that we do not know? If as you say there is:

an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions such as the nature of justice or the idea of the good. — Wayfarer

then it is not simply the latter but the former.

If, along with Aristotle

We consider first, then, that the wise man knows all things, so far as it is possible — Fooloso4

what suspicions or conclusions follow from an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions? I think the answer is: human beings are not wise.

I've learned that hylomorphic dualism offers a different perspective. The soul is not a separate "thing" or "substance" in the way Cartesian dualism conceives it. Instead, it is the form of the body—a principle of organization, a blueprint. The rational element of this soul (nous) is dynamic, intimately involved in the act of knowing. — Wayfarer

That explanation of the relationship between the substantial (res extensa) Body and the insubstantial (res cogitans) Mind (processor of Information) is very close to the reasoning behind my own Enformationism thesis. But, the Dualistic metaphor is only for convenience in communicating about Abstractions in a Materialistic society. A Realistic worldview can have no beginning or end, no preface or denouement ; only a never-ending meaningless in media res.

Ultimately, my thesis is Monistic, in the sense of Plato's hypothetical eternal universal "Form" {as the source of all space-time configurations} or Aristotle's "Prime Mover" {as the First Cause of all subsequent transformations}. Metaphorically, Eternal Form functions like a computer program with universal definitions & instructions (laws governing interactions), which are combined in various ways in the calculations of Evolution. Nature's program produces interim solutions to some (unbeknownst to us mortals) original question. Philosophy is the Quixotic quest for the meaning of this mundane routine.

The hypothetical Program of Evolution is pre-set with "principles of organization" and with the "dynamic" power to reorganize basic Matter into a myriad of unique forms (objects & organisms). This worldview is Monistic though, only if you assume that the physical computer (Cosmos) is running an a priori program that was "designed" by a hypothetical singular Programmer. Since the speculative Enformer exists metaphorically outside the physical computer world, S/he is not a real thing or person in the usual sense, but merely an postulated solution to a perennial philosophical quest for the First Cause.

This worldview does not have to be taken on Faith in some human document. The evidence is the real world of the senses, and the testament is the ideal product of Reason. Unfortunately, the Universal Cause or World Programmer has revealed He/rself only by means of the limited perception and fallible reasoning of meat brains. So, a statistical Bayesian confidence interval is the closest we can come to certainty of opinion about a Principle that is empirically unverifiable. Therefore, we may never completely agree on the name or characteristics of that ultimate Unity. Hence, as Arthur C. Clarke expressed the conundrum : "the nine billion names of God". :smile:

what suspicions or conclusions follow from an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions? I think the answer is: human beings are not wise. — Fooloso4

But wisdom is the aspiration, surely. Otherwise, what’s the point? I would put it in more traditional terms - that there is really such a thing as the philosophical ascent, that there is a way of knowing that requires a way of being, but that this is something that has to be done (praxis) not simply spoken (theoria.) So the philosopher (better still ‘the sage’) points the way but the aspirant has to walk it, and won’t really see what it is, until that is done. That’s why it can’t be explained in plain language and also why a lot of Plato’s teaching was said to be verbal only. (Compare with the meaning of ‘Upaniṣad’, Hindu philosophical discourses - the etymology of the word is from ‘sitting up close’, i.e. the chela (student) attending closely to the instruction of the guru (teacher)).

One more point - I don’t know Aristotle’s view, but in respect of knowledge, Plato and Socrates both seemed to strongly endorse ‘innate knowledge’ possessed by the soul prior to birth, which could be recovered by anamnesis. They certainly weren’t empiricist in the modern sense of attributing all knowledge to sensory experience. Plato and Parmenides were the originators of rationalist philosophy.

I think you conflate Plato and Aristotle in this way. — Leontiskos

No, not at all. I simply do not make what has become a common assumption, that Aristotle rejects Plato. We should give some thought to the significance of Aristotle staying in Plato's Academy for 20 years.

You are accustomed to reading Plato and then you apply the same hermeneutic to Aristotle ... — Leontiskos

I said specifically:

an art of reading Aristotle — Fooloso4

I agree they are very different.

your error of confusing a conclusion with a premise — Leontiskos

Here are the premises:

It is through experience that men acquire science and art.
No one has experience of the arche of the cosmos.

What is your conclusion?

Relevant here is Aristotle's distinction between what is better known to us and what is better known in itself. We only come to the latter through the former. — Leontiskos

A good way to proceed but when it comes to first philosophy do we come to the latter? How do you know?

there is really such a thing as the philosophical ascent — Wayfarer

I agree but I think we disagree as to how high we can ascend. I think we also agree that is not something we should argue about since neither of us knows

No, not at all. I simply do not make what has become a common assumption, that Aristotle rejects Plato. We should give some thought to the significance of Aristotle staying in Plato's Academy for 20 years. — Fooloso4

No, I agree that it is an error to read Aristotle against Plato. This doesn't justify a conflation.

It is through experience that men acquire science and art.
No one has experience of the arche of the cosmos.

What is your conclusion? — Fooloso4

The conclusion is that knowledge of deep causes comes through reasoning, not direct experience.

That action modifies my brain state, causing a presence we can be aware of as an "image." That is Aristotle's phantasm. We can also imagine things not so caused. If an image is not caused by an object, it cannot be our means of knowing an object, because it is not the dynamic presence of an object. — Dfpolis

I agree with what you say, but I see imagiation as involved in both interpreting or undertsnding something as something and in imagining something that does not actually exist. Note that this latter function of imagination relies on the combining of preformed images of objects that do exist.

I agree with this statement. I don't think it is what Kant meant, but I am not a Kantian and so no expert. As I understand him, the mind adds forms of understanding, rather than basing concepts such as space, time and causality on reality. — Dfpolis

I do read Kant that way, but then even Kant scholars disagree about certain aspects of his philosophy. I agree with you that Kant seems to think, or is often interpreted as thinking, that concepts of space, time and number are not based on experience, but are given by the mind as a priori forms of intuition or categories of understanding. I don't agree with that take myself.

If you mean, as Spinoza did not, that thoughts and neural processes are two activities of a single person, I agree. — Dfpolis

Spinoza did not think in terms of neural processes (as far as I know) but I think he would agree.

Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear".
— Janus

Clearly, this is not completely true. I wanted to know how physical processes engender knowledge, so I decided to study authors who had written on cognition, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Bucke, James, Stace, Suzuki, the Churchlands and Dennett. Clearly, I decided what to think about before I analyzed their arguments. As I read, my neural net activated related contents, giving me the means of testing what I read. Yet, even there, I valued some contents more and other contents less, and that valuation determined the amount of time I spent thinking about various points in light of various facts. — Dfpolis

Right, what I said was based on my own reflection on my experiences. Of course, if I read other authors I will be moved to agree or disagree depending on how what they say accords with that experience or not. I don't see any of that as saying anything about libertarian free will, though. I don't experience myself as being able to freely decide what to value or agree with; I experience that as being determined by what I have, through my own experience, been led to think.

The conclusion is that knowledge of deep causes comes through reasoning, not direct experience. — Leontiskos

So when of comes to deep causes you disagree with the first premise?