This is an important clarification, and if I appeared to be asking for matter without form, I shouldn’t have been. The question, whether matter can be known without form, is an interesting one, and I tend to agree with Aristotle that it can’t, but it’s not germane to the question that I (and I think the OP) was raising, which is about meaning, not form. — J

Based on the above, we now need to make this more precise. We know that the G-shape would be a matter-form compound regardless, since turtles etc. By introducing the idea of semantic/linguistic form, we’ve moved into a different use of the word “form” -- indeed, it’s what I’m calling “meaning” — J

Either matter/form applies everywhere or else it doesn't. If matter/form does not apply to words (and meaning), then matter/form does not apply everywhere. For Aristotle the matter/form duality does not merely apply to "physical" realities, although such realities are the clearest example, and are therefore the starting point. Perhaps we could say that there is a literal sense and an analogous sense of matter/form, but for Aristotle it seems to be more complicated than that.

But this position need not be merely Aristotelian. In this post I gave all sorts of examples of the subvenient term. If you think the subvenient term does not exist, then what do you make of those examples? To take one, when a copy machine makes a copy of a book page do you deny that it is merely copying the subvenient term (the Aristotelian matter-correlate)? And if it is copying the subvenient term, then obviously the subvenient term exists and is specifiable, no?

I assume that Aristotle, while averring that “it’s form all the way down,” would still call any such combination of matter and form “physical.” So would I. Otherwise, we’d have nothing to contrast with “mental.” Simply adding form to matter – assuming they could even be cognized as separate – doesn’t make the resulting phenomenon mental. (Let’s sidestep phenomenal vs. noumenal, which also doesn’t seem germane here.) So what we’re left with is what most everyone agrees to call the physical world, matter plus form . . . but then there’s the pesky issue of meanings, which is something else again. It may be “form all the way down,” but it isn’t “meaning all the way down,” and that’s the problem. — J

No, it sort of is meaning all the way down, and we are coming up against the problem of universals. I said:

And what is the difference between a linguistic-conception and a shape-conception, or between the speaker's shape-conception and the non-speaker's shape-conception? The former elements of both pairs are more abstract and "mental" than the latter. For example, we could say that, for 'G', the linguistic form builds upon the shape-form which builds upon the ink-form. [...] The linguistic form is always higher in the sense that it presupposes the lower forms, whereas the lower forms do not presuppose the higher forms. Language users are able to do more with shapes than non-language users. — Leontiskos

In this argument I was saying that there are things that are more mental and less mental, but there is nothing which is non-mental. All truths are mental, whether they be meaning-truths or shape-truths or ink-truths.

Let’s try to rephrase it: We both agree that an upside-down G is matter-plus-form but no meaning (for English speakers). We also agree that the rightside-up G is matter-plus-form-plus-meaning. — J

I think you may be conflating meaning with the mental. I would either want to say that an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning, or else I would want to say that it has no (semiotic/linguistic) meaning, but it is nevertheless "mental."

But my point all along has been that the infusion or importation of meaning occurs at this level, not at the level of words. By the time we get to “the meaning of a word supervenes on letter-changes,” we’re already working with a subvenient term (the letter) which involves the physical coupled with a meaning. — J

To say that words supervene on the physical is not to say that words supervene on letters, although words do also supervene on letters. To talk about letters qua letters is to talk about entities that already have linguistic meaning, as you have pointed out. My original statement which began this was, "the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system." A letter is not a purely physical system. The thing that the copy machine copies is a purely physical system, and mental meaning does supervene on that purely physical system.

Now the deep issue is that meaning never supervenes on what is non-mental simpliciter. If it did then we might think sand dunes are conscious, as some users in this thread apparently do think. In the case of Bobby Fisher, the copy machine, or the archeologists who turn up a dead language, a dormant or implicit meaning is being resuscitated. At the end of the day it would seem that either mind arises from matter or matter arises from mind, and as a theist I hold to the latter. Meaning and intelligibility are part of creation because creation comes from a Mind.

About the Beatles example: I had trouble following it because I wasn’t sure how you were using “linguistic form” here. Do you mean that the Beatles-person hears the lyrics in their head as the tune plays, while the other doesn’t? Why would this mean that the Beatles-person can’t hear the matter-relata at all? I’m not clear about the “indecipherable aspect” of the melody. — J

Yes, even when I wrote that post I thought that to be the weakest sentence, but I decided to keep it given the contextual discussion. First, by "linguistic form" I mean that the musical melody has taken on a lyrical form that has become inseparable for the Beatles-person. In their mind the melody is welded to the lyrics. Now it is arguable whether they are able to hear the melody absent the linguistic form (sans deautomatization). For them, the melody is always in-formed by the lyrics and their linguistic meaning. They can't directly access the isolated subvenient term, and the subvenient term only exists in its fullness for the non-Beatles-person.

(We could also think about this in terms of degrees, and say that the subvenient term is more accessible to the non-Beatles-Person than the Beatles-person, but I prefer thinking in terms of polarities for pedagogical purposes. If you wish to press the point that the non-linguistic 'G' is nowhere to be found, then I would submit that the Beatles-person also cannot find the subvenient melody. If you wish to press the point that the subvenient melody is accessible, then I would submit that G-conceived-as-a-shape is also accessible.)

(Or do you simply mean that the non-Beatles person is having a better time of it because unbothered by those silly lyrics? :wink: ) — J

:lol:

For Aristotle the matter/form duality does not merely apply to "physical" realities, although such realities are the clearest example, and are therefore the starting point — Leontiskos

Interesting, I didn’t know that. So a proposition, say, has something resembling a matter/form division?

when a copy machine makes a copy of a book page do you deny that it is merely copying the subvenient term (the Aristotelian matter-correlate)? — Leontiskos

Yes, I do, if the subvenient term you’re referring to is the one that is subsequently going to be part of a supervenience relation with words and sentences. What the copier copies is a physical object, without any “meaning level.” No surprise, the copier can’t enter into any sort of relation with anything, so its copy isn’t a subvenient term. Now, if a person reads the copied page, something different happens. The meaning-level of the letters is revealed, first, and then a supervenience relation is created between this subvenient term (a hybrid that comprises both physical objects and meanings) and what supervenes upon it (the meaning of the words, the sentences, the entire page).

For this to make sense, you also have to accept a kind of “principle of indiscernibles” which states that a copied page can be two things at once, depending on who’s looking. Before you reject that out of hand, consider that this principle can explain, among other things, how art happens – how a physical object can be simply that, and also, under the right circumstances, a work of art. (cf. Arthur Danto) For that matter, consider transubstantiation . . .

All truths are mental, whether they be meaning-truths or shape-truths or ink-truths. — Leontiskos

Yes, but what they are true about can range on a spectrum from strictly physical to strictly mental. I admit I don’t understand why there can’t be anything non-mental.

I think you may be conflating meaning with the mental. I would either want to say that an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning, or else I would want to say that it has no (semiotic/linguistic) meaning, but it is nevertheless "mental." — Leontiskos

Similar perplexity here. I suppose a hardcore idealism would insist that everything is mental, in the sense that everything we know about is a product of our minds . . . but that’s a hard sell, and I wouldn’t have thought you endorsed it. (Unless you mean that, since according to theism a creator Mind creates matter, then in that sense it’s all mental? But surely that doesn’t alter our human distinctions of mental and physical?) Maybe you could say more about the upside-down G shape understood as (semiotic/linguistic) meaningless but nevertheless “mental.” Get rid of those scare-quotes! :wink:

I understand the Beatles example now, thanks. The phenomenon you’re describing is a common one for musicians, and often vexing. For instance, I would dearly love to be able to hear song X with an “innocent ear,” unencumbered by theoretical baggage, but since I’ve been a working musician all my life and my brain now performs certain kinds of analysis automatically, this is extremely difficult for me. So the Beatles lyrics are like the theoretical baggage, in that both obscure something more basic and, arguably, more purely musical.

Yes, I do, if the subvenient term you’re referring to is the one that is subsequently going to be part of a supervenience relation with words and sentences. What the copier copies is a physical object, without any “meaning level.” No surprise, the copier can’t enter into any sort of relation with anything, so its copy isn’t a subvenient term. — J

I actually don't follow this argument at all. Why is it that the copy machine does not copy and produce the subvenient term? For reference here are some quotes from our conversation. I began:

I would want to say that the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system, in much the same way that the meaning of a word supervenes on the written symbols or spoken phonemes. — Leontiskos

You introduced the notion of a "subvenient set":

What is the (allegedly) strictly physical description of the subvenient set? — J

...and then I pressed the idea of a copy machine: the physical item is the thing that the copy machine copies. I actually don't see how it can be denied that meaning supervenes on the physical thing that the copy machine produces. If I fax you a letter what you receive is a physical copy, and that physical copy is where the meaning comes from. If the copy is faulty then the meaning will be faulty, and if the copy is accurate then the meaning will be accurate. The meaning is clearly supervening on the physical copy.

It seems to me that on your view copy machines can't exist, because you think a strictly physical meaning-carrier cannot exist. Yet copy machines seem to simply prove, contrary to your presuppositions, that physical objects can have a "meaning level."

For this to make sense, you also have to accept a kind of “principle of indiscernibles” which states that a copied page can be two things at once, depending on who’s looking. Before you reject that out of hand, consider that this principle can explain, among other things, how art happens – how a physical object can be simply that, and also, under the right circumstances, a work of art. — J

Okay, but are you saying that the copy is simultaneously a subvenient term and not a subvenient term? Above I said, "In one way these two things are the same thing, and in another way they are different things" ().

Perhaps you are saying that the dominoes are strictly physical in one sense, and yet in another sense meaning goes before their physicality given their logical ordering? We could utilize a variant of Paley's Watchmaker and say, therefore, that someone who stumbled upon the dominoes would be able to infer a source of meaning (usually called a mind).

Interesting, I didn’t know that. So a proposition, say, has something resembling a matter/form division? — J

On this forum I have found that a lot of people conceive of propositions like objectively floating clouds that can be "tapped into," much like Plato's Forms. For Aquinas (and I believe also for Aristotle) a proposition is always dependent upon a mind, and therefore the material element in the mind that corresponds to the proposition will always accompany the proposition, yes. In the case of an immaterial mind I believe Aquinas would say that there is not knowledge that exists in a propositional or discursive form. Or else, if we don't want to quickly get off track, I would probably need to know how you conceive of a proposition.

Yes, but what they are true about can range on a spectrum from strictly physical to strictly mental. I admit I don’t understand why there can’t be anything non-mental. — J

Because truth is inextricably tied up with the mental, for we do not know anything apart from our mind. My mind conceives the shapes, the letters, the words, the sentences, the meaning, etc. In one way this represents an increasing sequence of mental-ness, for the latter terms presuppose the mental conceptions of the former terms in addition to other mental conceptions. Still, there is no first term that is a non-mental truth or is known non-mentally.

What's interesting here is that the copy machine does enter into a relation with the thing it is supposed to copy, namely at the level of shape. It is able to recognize and reproduce shapes.

Similar perplexity here. I suppose a hardcore idealism would insist that everything is mental, in the sense that everything we know about is a product of our minds... — J

It's not that everything is reducible to mental powers, but rather that there is no object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way; and it seems like your search for a "physical subvenient term" is the search for an object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way.

Maybe you could say more about the upside-down G shape understood as (semiotic/linguistic) meaningless but nevertheless “mental.” — J

"...an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning..." The ability to recognize shapes requires a sufficiently sophisticated mind and visual apparatus. You could think about this developmentally. Children can recognize shapes. Older children can recognize letters. Older children can recognize words, etc. Even the recognition of shape in that first step is mental.

I understand the Beatles example now, thanks. The phenomenon you’re describing is a common one for musicians, and often vexing. For instance, I would dearly love to be able to hear song X with an “innocent ear,” unencumbered by theoretical baggage, but since I’ve been a working musician all my life and my brain now performs certain kinds of analysis automatically, this is extremely difficult for me. So the Beatles lyrics are like the theoretical baggage, in that both obscure something more basic and, arguably, more purely musical. — J

Okay, great. But I think it is also worth noting how valuable and incarnational this phenomenon can be. It allows music to take on other dimensions. John Williams' Imperial March was surely better after Star Wars than before. In fact the more closely sound engineers and composers work with other members of a creative endeavor (directors, writers, poets, actors, etc.), the better the result and the less extricable the material music.

I agree that this is a difficult argument to make, because it challenges our basic intuitions about what makes an X an X. I could reply, “Right, I think a strictly physical meaning-carrier can’t exist,” and go on, “Yes, the copy is, in a sense, simultaneously a subvenient term and not a subvenient term.” But instead, let’s look at an analogous situation.

Suppose I showed you an arrangement of objects on the floor of a museum – a shoe, a T-square, and a rope, perhaps. We could say several things about what this “is”. We could identify each object accurately. We could put our mereological hat on and declare it a composite object, and name it “Trio”. We could also – and this is the important part – call it an art object. Now what makes it an art object is debatable; it may be as simple as its presence in a museum, or it may be more complicated than that. (Never mind, of course, whether it’s good art.) But we have to agree that there is indeed this third level of “is-ness,” of being, without which we’d be at a loss to explain almost all of the important facts about the "three objects on the museum floor" situation.

The two factors I would point to as most significant in making “Trio” an art object are, first, the meaning that is given to it by human consciousnesses, and second, the fact that this meaning is essentially relational, that is, at least one other person has to agree to see “Trio” as art.

Now for the photocopy. I’m arguing that it isn’t yet a subvenient term because no human consciousness has entered into that relation with it. Nothing is “naturally” a subvenient, or supervenient, term, just as nothing is naturally an art object. If someone comes along and reads meaning into the copied page, we can now identify a supervenience relation, with the page + letter-meanings as the subvenient term, and the meaning of the page as a whole as the supervenient term. You wrote, “In one way these two things are the same thing, and in another way they are different things," and that’s it exactly.

A ways earlier, I’d suggested that this is largely a terminological matter, and this is part of what I meant by that. Not much rests on how we choose to designate all this. For most discourse about supervenience, it’s probably easier to use the familiar shortcut and think of mental meanings supervening on physical objects, as if this were the only way it could happen. I was just wanting to hold out for the more complex formulation, as being (perhaps pedantically) more accurate.

"...an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning..." The ability to recognize shapes requires a sufficiently sophisticated mind and visual apparatus. You could think about this developmentally. Children can recognize shapes. Older children can recognize letters. Older children can recognize words, etc. Even the recognition of shape in that first step is mental. — Leontiskos

I’m sure this is true, but aren’t you begging the question if you talk about a “shape meaning”? I’m questioning whether what we recognize in a shape is any sort of meaning at all. I think I have ordinary usage on my side, for what that’s worth. “What does that shape mean?” is an odd question, except under quite special circumstances.

About music: Yes, there’s an up side to non-musical info creeping into our musical experience. When I’m working with music, I’m certainly grateful that I can place my musical materials theoretically into a larger context. They become richer, and my use of them, hopefully, better.

I've tried using this example as a more intuitive way to summarize the "more is different of computation."

When you have a grain of table salt and you add more grains of table salt what do you get? More salt. Our terms don't change. And the intuition in a substance metaphysics where particles are ontologically basic is that the world sort of works like this. Yes, we can make many different kinds of things depending on how we combine our pieces, but all the properties of things can ultimately be traced to their physical constituents. In a universe where grains of salt are basic you might be able to make very many different salt structures, salt castles, salt railways, etc., but salt is always salt.

Computation does not seem to work this way. If I start with the input 1 and then add to my input, the prime() function is not going to output more of the same. 1,2, or 3 result in the same output, 1 (true for prime). If we add to our input again we get our first 0. Add more and you get 1,0,1,0,0,0 (5,6,7,8,9,10).


I am not sure if it is a good vehicle for the explanation though. Whenever I have seen explanations of how process deals with superveniance (superengraphment in process) and emergence the examples have been extremely complicated and technical, and I feel like this one might miss something in that you can ask the question "but doesn't it all reduce to dominoes, squares of Turing Machine Tape, etc." I guess the tricky move is in not seeing the substrate as ontologically basic, which is how we tend to think of it.

But we have to agree that there is indeed this third level of “is-ness,” of being, without which we’d be at a loss to explain almost all of the important facts about the "three objects on the museum floor" situation.

The two factors I would point to as most significant in making “Trio” an art object are, first, the meaning that is given to it by human consciousnesses, and second, the fact that this meaning is essentially relational, that is, at least one other person has to agree to see “Trio” as art. — J

I don't think this is parallel to the dominoes or language. In fact I think your example is somewhat similar to the idea of shape-meaning, for shape recognition is different from shape meaning (see below).

(Semiotic) Meaning involves the idea that one thing stands for or signifies something else. A sign could be purely conventional, where the the sign and what it signifies have no intrinsic relation. An example of this would be a stop sign, which signifies to drivers that they should stop, yet there is no necessary relation between a stop sign and stopping. At best, your "Trio" is a conventional sign, but I rather doubt that it rises to the level of a conventional sign unless we have some determinate idea of what "art" means. "This is art!" "What do you mean by 'art'?" "I actually have no idea." If its meaning isn't accessible to others, then it doesn't mean anything and is not a conventional sign. But perhaps someone could give a case for what they mean by 'art' in such cases - I will leave this question to the side.

The more important point is that dominoes and language are not merely conventional signs, and therefore even if it can be meaningfully said that the "Trio" is art this does not run parallel to the examples in this thread. Think about Paley's Watchmaker, referenced above. If an alien race discovers the dominoes among our remains 10,000 years from now, they will be able to understand that the dominoes "mean" a decision-procedure for determining whether a number is prime. The physical structure provides this meaning, this capacity, in a way that is not merely conventional.

And if the alien race looks at all of our artifacts of written language, they will to a large extent be able to reproduce the meaning of the language (just as we ourselves have done with dormant languages). The dominoes and language are not purely conventional because the relations between dominoes and the relations between linguistic units are not merely conventional.

Now one might argue that art is high culture and because of this is difficult to explain and recognize. That may be, but I don't think modern art of the type you have described is on par with the dominoes or written language. The relation between the dominoes and prime numbers is altogether different from the relation between "Trio" and "art." Indeed, I would argue that to name the trio "Trio" is more meaningful than predicating of it "art." :razz:

Now for the photocopy. I’m arguing that it isn’t yet a subvenient term because no human consciousness has entered into that relation with it. Nothing is “naturally” a subvenient, or supervenient, term, just as nothing is naturally an art object. If someone comes along and reads meaning into the copied page, we can now identify a supervenience relation, with the page + letter-meanings as the subvenient term, and the meaning of the page as a whole as the supervenient term. — J

I would argue that it is a subvenient term because someone can come along and understand it. The potential meaning is contained within the physical photocopy. On your reading it would seem that when our race dies out in 10,000 AD the photocopy ceases to be a subvenient term, and then when the alien race deciphers it in 20,000 AD it suddenly becomes a subvenient term again. In one sense this is true, but the pertinent question here is: how is it that the meaning can still be recovered from the physical object after 10,000 years? If what is at stake is merely a matter of human convention, then it couldn't be recovered.

I’m sure this is true, but aren’t you begging the question if you talk about a “shape meaning”? I’m questioning whether what we recognize in a shape is any sort of meaning at all. I think I have ordinary usage on my side, for what that’s worth. “What does that shape mean?” is an odd question, except under quite special circumstances. — J

Well, my point was that it is not meaning in the ordinary sense. That's why I gave a dyad to try to explain it:

I would either want to say that an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning, or else I would want to say that it has no (semiotic/linguistic) meaning, but it is nevertheless "mental." — Leontiskos

The mental "shape meaning" is perhaps better called shape recognition, and this shape recognition is precisely what constitutes one specification of the physical description of written language. The copy machine recognizes and reproduces shapes and thereby reproduces the subvenient term. You have been objecting that the subvenient term itself has built-in meaning, and therefore it is not the sort of thing upon which meaning supervenes. But have we now agreed that it does not have meaning and that meaning does supervene on this non-meaning term? The point I have been at pains to make is that linguistic meaning supervenes on a subvenient term which is mental, but less mental than linguistic meaning. In this case the less-mental subvenient term is shape recognition.

About music: Yes, there’s an up side to non-musical info creeping into our musical experience. When I’m working with music, I’m certainly grateful that I can place my musical materials theoretically into a larger context. They become richer, and my use of them, hopefully, better. — J

True. It's also interesting that jazz musicians often testify that knowing the lyrics to a song helps them to play an instrumental cover of the song. For example, Bill Frisell did an album of Beatles covers, and presumably the fact that he knew the words added to the musical quality of the album. Of course one could make more or less of this phenomenon, even to the point of reducing it to the simple question of how accurately the musician is able to mimic the original.

I guess the tricky move is in not seeing the substrate as ontologically basic, which is how we tend to think of it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think what something like Paley's Watchmaker attempts to show is that if only the substrate is ontologically basic then you never end up with watches. Or, in a world full of dominoes with no minds to order them, you never arrive at the domino structure described in the OP. Orderly structures point to ordering minds. As I noted earlier, the order generated within a mind is being infused into material reality.