But Then this ontology is not an explanatory ontology. So if this ontology does not explain, I don't know what is the point of maintaining it.

psychology cannot be reduced to physics, but must nonetheless share a physical ontology. — SEP

I'm curious, what is the difference between physics and a physical ontology?

Yep. Describable, as you hint, in thermodynamic terms — Banno

And also, doesn't thermodynamics work with the heat produced by a system?

Where do you see the measurable heat (Motion of atoms and molecules) in a sentence like:

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".

#1 C1 follows since the experience does not have the capacity to be coherent, given its definition — MoK

I think you refer to experience as a tabula rasa. But haven't you read Kant? the subject structures that which provides us with the senses. In that sense "coherence" is not given by the object, but in the interaction between the subject and the object. The subject is also active in the shaping of experience.

On what basis do you say that experience cannot be "coherent"? That requires a demonstration. For it makes much more sense to see experience as composed of forms of sensibility (space and time) and categories of the understanding. Otherwise experience would be chaos of stimuli.

The object can indirectly perceive its content, and that requires another substance to perceive the information and change accordingly, such that the object can then perceive the content of another substance. — MoK

The so-called qualia for example are the ways in which the subject interprets the stimuli given by the relationship with the object. We cannot say that objects have qualia, but that qualia are active interpretations of the subject.

That capability is fundamental to Aristotle's hylomorphism (matter-form dualism), which is very different to Descartes' matter-mind duality, because it depicts intellect (nous) more in terms of a capacity than as some ethereal 'thinking substance'. — Wayfarer

This reminds me of Kant's critique of the Cartesian cogito. Kant said that we cannot perceive ourselves except as phenomena and not as things in themselves. Not to mention that in Kant there is no treatment of the mind but a treatment of faculties. In that sense Kant is Aristotelian following what you are saying.

Is all this question about subtances a pre-Kantian discussion?

In many discussions of 'substance' in philosophy, this distinction is lost, leading to the question of what kind of 'substance' the mind might be, which is an absurd question. It is the fatal flaw in Cartesian dualism, one which Descartes himself could never answer. The mind is not a 'thinking thing' in any sense other than the metaphorical. Reducing it to a 'thinking substance' is an absurdity. (This is why Aristotle's matter-form dualism retains a plausibility that Cartesian dualism never exhibited.) — Wayfarer

I agree. Consciousness does not fit into what Aristotle called Ousia. In fact in his writings on time Aristotle stated that beings (Ousia) are not in time and exclude it. Another approach is needed that considers the temporality of consciousness as something that constitutes it. If the being of consciousness is closely related to temporality it is difficult to understand why we are still speaking in Aristotelian language.

As you may have noticed I talk about something that works rather than something being true and false. In any example you give we can make the conversion: For example when you speak of a placebo pill, it does not act objectively like a non-placebo pill, they are simply different ways of working. Here the pill is a sign that is introduced in a certain context that gives it all its significance, this is transcription, in the cases that you would believe that there is a falsehood of the placebo pill what there is in reality a different functioning. Like the psychological which is a different context of transcription than the physiological.

Encoding something is but one step in transcription. As I say this requires a use of signs where the space and time assigned to the sign takes place. But of representation there is nothing, since there is no sense or meaning that travels with the physical signs, and to the extent of that is that we cannot speak of representation but of the effects that produces an encoded message in another person, moreover the very notion of message is problematic, since there is no message until there is decoding. But decoding is nothing more than introducing a system of signs in a context, another system of signs, which gives it a meaning.

Correctness? No, it works. Once we abandon the idea of representation something can work well or it can work badly according to our expectations. Like a broken clock; the clock is a system of signs that produces a meaning, but we transcribe it into our language with which we have expectations no longer that the time is correct but that it works according to different contexts, such as world time. Is there representation between a clock and world time? No, each one is a different context and what we believe to be representation is tuning, a matter of time, which we associate with expectations such as the arrival of a train.

Theory of knowledge? This approach denies epistemology, since epistemology is from end to end based on the idea of representation. But in reality it gives us an idea of how the world works without this idea. Above all it gives us the idea that the world doesn't really change much for practical purposes. The only thing that really changes is the work of philosophers who believe in the idea of representation as true and talk about things like right and wrong.

You propose transcription as an alternative to representation – but how can a transcription be true or false if it explicitly rejects the notion of representing something external? — DasGegenmittel

And what does transcription look like linguistically? Since any form of language already implies differentiation, structure, and thus representation, how can transcription escape this? Isn’t every linguistic expression already a form of representation? — DasGegenmittel

It is like when the phenomenon of translation occurs. It simply works and does its job [to make us understand each other] here the transcription is given by the relationship between two sign systems, places, distances, times and tempos are assigned between the signs in such a way that both languages become the version of the other transformed, transcribed.

Another example is communication. When a person communicates something to a second person he is actually causing an effect on this second person by structuring his language in such a way that understanding takes place. But there is no representation, there are only causes and effects. To communicate something to someone is to cause an effect in another person. It is no longer a matter of representing to ourselves what the other thinks, but of determining ourselves as the other, thinking as the other, to the extent that our language is configured and determined by the words of another person.

The word transcription is a host of genetic transcription, but I generalize it to ontology.

But once we begin forming concepts, things become imprecise—and I agree with that. However, I don’t think it’s enough to rely solely on experience, because it doesn’t allow us to sufficiently anticipate how the world is to be understood. Only by digitizing the world into concepts can we make predictions about things not yet encountered. We can’t think the world 1:1 in all its atoms, nor perceive it that way in everyday or scientific practice. I hope I’ve captured the core of your thought. — DasGegenmittel

When we think of imprecision we still have the idea of knowledge as a representation of reality, that is to say, as similarity. But I take a different approach to the matter, since the idea of representation entails problems like the one you have pointed out.

However, we can think in another way. We can think of our relation to the world as the relation of a translator to a different language. Translation is never a representation but a transcription. It is a matter of places and times that are structured in the language of arrival from the times, places, distances, tempos, etc. of the language of departure. The source language is the world. Each translation does not try to reflect something of what is translated but imposes its own structure.

Consequently, it is no longer a question of the clock surpassing us and surpassing our concepts, but rather that our concepts irremediably, like any translation, do not represent anything other than converting it into something, hence the usefulness of the notion of transcription. We transcribe what the clock says, but this transcription is a completely different world. But fluid and changing, just like our clock. Our concepts are also fluid and changing because they are transcriptions such that if we could watch the time to the rhythm of the clock our thinking would change ceaselessly along with the clock.

We must ask ourselves if there is something as fixed and stable knowledge that is not changing as a "real time" transcription changes. So imprecision is not something proper and essential to the concept, but something relative like our physical impossibility to follow the clock in real time. But our knowledge is indeed something changeable like our clock, only that it differs in tempo, as a transcription can be made in real time or in delayed time. Thus the difference is not between being and becoming, but difference of becomings.

Every perception—even when enhanced by technological means—is only an approximation of reality — DasGegenmittel

This is precisely the idea that I criticize. If we abandon the idea that we are trying to represent reality faithfully, the matter becomes something very different. Science can no longer be conceived as knowledge but as technique. A human technique that, as I have said, constitutes synthetic identities. That is, as a device of reality that can function or not. Here to function means to be in continuity with reality but no longer in a representative sense of our beliefs but in a sense of fitting or adjustment. So a truth is not something that is discovered but that is produced, truth is the synthetic identity where different courses of action converge and resonate with each other, as a well-adjusted device.

The point is that truth as representation or correspondence has many failures to keep pace with reality. In any case we are still restricted to the subject-object division. That is why I advocate the construction of knowledge as working with reality. A truth is not something you discover or think about or believe in. But in a very different way it is something that is constructed. The subjective part should not be taken as the epicenter from which knowledge is constructed. If we take scientific work as an example we are actually working with reality constructing synthetic identities in which theories, phenomena, operations and relations converge in the same flow of human action in a harmonic way so to speak.

Scientific work also works with possibilities, but the scientist believes that what is represented in the imagination is going to happen. This implies that one thinks in possibilities precisely because the becoming is not given. The fact that the becoming is not given is the opportunity to be right or wrong in predictions. But a prediction is never a given. They are ontologically different things.


We would have to say the opposite of what You say (ad consecuentiam btw) that the fact that becoming is not given is that which obliges us to do science with the difference that we must believe in the uniformity of nature, but this is a belief that can never be confirmed universally, because becoming is never given. No matter how many experiments we do, the possibility of failure is always there. It is a possibility, like that of succeeding in our predictions.

I think you have missed my point. If you tell me that there is a deterministic system that will end up in X state you are making a prediction. But if the system is not in its state X the system prediction cannot be confused with reality. That is, the prediction is a representation not reality itself. The prediction is one possibility among others, even if it is confirmed. And this is due to the non-givenness of becoming. We could only be absolute determinists if all the processes of reality were already given. But that is not the case. No matter how many experiments you do, predictions will always be imagined representations of what will happen, i.e. possibilities among others. And reality will always be in a state of not-given. Basically This is the problem of inducción.

The existence of possibilities is that which follows from the fact that any course of action is not given in advance. That is, that in a sense the world is always in play. No matter how well our expectations or predictions are fulfilled there is always something not given in becoming. We can foresee that the sun will die in X years, but nevertheless it is not given. To the extent that there is something not given, thought is able to think of possibilities, there is always something left over that escapes prediction.

The determinist has to explain how the future is given. But that is something that cannot be done, since predictions are always possibilities and are representations of becoming. How does a prediction turn out to be true? Even if it turns out to be true, it is still a representation of becoming and not becoming itself. That is why we cannot say that things are determined, because they are only determined in the representation but not in becoming itself.

They are simply words that remind us that there is no ultimate metalanguage that serves to describe language. It is the same with the word "metaphor". You define it in a non-metaphorical sense and there is a contradiction in what it is to speak metaphorically and to define metaphor, that is, you betray its meaning. This implies that there is no metalanguage of definitions valid for all cases. Moreover, when we believe we have a metalanguage we use it as any other way of speaking that you can also define in another metalanguage of a higher order; and so on ad infinitum. That is, there is no ultimate metalanguage from which to define all aspects (or being) of language.

But not simply in our minds. but, as it were, ideas extend their existence beyond the mind, reaching the minds of other people, books, recordings, hieroglyphics, etc. In that sense they are extramental things, insofar as they transcend or transcend the finitude of our mind. This is because their being is always contextualized. That is to say, their being depends on the relation with other things, and these relations as relations between signifiers extend their reality beyond the mind, contextualizing it. Think of how many times a book has given you an idea, or the words of another person, a painting, etc. This means that ideas are contextualized in and by an extramental world.

The idea of sign to which I refer is that of "being in the place of something else ready to be interpreted by a context". So you can understand ideas as a kind of sign. For example when you think of rain there is a representation in which you can think of that object rain: you think of clouds, lightning, umbrellas and other things that are not directly present that nevertheless give meaning to that idea and not only that but constitute it.

Without this possibility of the sign (that of being in place of something else...) ideas could not be transmitted. But above all, it is thanks to this that it achieves the characteristic ideality of the idea: its repetition. Be it in someone else's head, in writing, in an archive, in a painting, in a paper, in our world, etc. For example if you think of an idea that another person gave you, that idea is present in your mind but it is no longer present in the mind of the other person.

When I say that ideas are material, I do not mean that they are physical, but a third option between the mental and the physical that respects the identity of each one. And this is provided by the idea of sign. An idea is a meaning that has a relation to other meanings, according to which it is itself a signifier. And this makes it possible to understand something as the language in which you transmit ideas to other people. If the idea did not exist as a sign within a system of signs we could not speak of transmission from one person to another (since in Communication you are being affected by the signs of another person). Moreover, the fact that an idea belongs to a system of signs ensures its ideality (that it is something that persists even beyond the subject who thinks it). In this sense ideas are as material as any sound within the transmission of ideas) but not in a physicalist sense, but in a very different sense.

Ideas unfold in the world. When we think of an idea transmitted by language for example. Since there is a relation to signifiers the idea itself becomes a signifier within a chain of referral. It is necessary to explain how the idea is related to sound, the extension of language and the relation of representation (for example the relation to pixels on a screen). This explanation can only be carried out if the idea and its representation are part of the same system of signs. This implies that the idea is not enclosed in the head but that literally the world is made of ideas unfolding, our world, but the idea is something necessarily material, if by material we understand the finiteness of the sign, its appearance, its action and reaction, its contact, its causality, its transformation, its difference, etc....

There is an interesting interpretation based on the temporality in which subjectivity unfolds. It refers to the absolute novelty of the future now that becomes the present. This absolute novelty makes the non-present now constitutive of subjectivity. Is this not what the other has always meant, another perception as another absolute now? This would restore the possibility of another subjectivity as equally originary.

“The now is not a point but a continuity that is always in transition.” (Lectures on Time-Consciousness)

The pure ego only shows itself to consciousness by reflection, — Joshs

But it has intentional sense. That's my point. And therefore it is related to the expressiveness of language. The pure self as an object for consciousness is intentional and therefore it is expressive. My emphasis is Husserl's need for pure language for a description of the phenomena in the epoche Including pure ego.

No. It is related to the sense of expression. "I am" has meaning beyond whether I am alive or not, but no longer because it is said in the epoche but because it is a function of language. Husserl needed language to found the expressivity of the epoche. He tried to make language something pure given in the epoche. But he did not succeed, since he needed to justify ideality as repetition in the sense in the epoche.

It is related to the sphere of expressivity of sense or meaning where the pure self of the transcendental reduction shows itself self-evident to consciousness. The sense of this pure I is self-evident. But as sense it has a linguistic value (see phenomenology of language in Husserl) , as "I am". "I am" is the sense of the self-evidence of the pure self.

You are forgetting that there is a passage from the naturalized ego to the transcendental ego. Therefore, the two cannot be confused. The transcendental ego is a sort of eidetic reduction of the ego that we begin with in the natural attitude and which is dealt with by psychology, for example. Thus this natural ego is also reduced, put in parentheses. I know that the reduction and epoche does not mean that literally the world of the natural attitude ceases to exist. But there is an ego of the natural attitude which is taken care of by psychology. Therefore, by rights, the self-evident and essential sense of "I am" would be worth and have all its transcendental eidetic value even if the natural ego disappears or is bracketed out of existence. It is a necessary possibility. But a possibility that is no longer safeguarded by the transcendental ego itself but by the language that allows signification beyond a living or dead subjectivity.

“The ego as the subject of psychological experiences is not the pure ego of transcendental phenomenology. The latter is not an object in the world but the source of all world-constitution.”
— Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (1913)

My point stands because there is in fact a reduction of one's own psychological ego or empirical self. Otherwise all transcendentality would be ruined.

I can't see that at all. The paragraphs that I've just been studying are those concerning his critique of naturalism — Wayfarer

I am speaking "in fact". By bracketing the world I include my worldly self. That is why in the epoche it is said that the "I am" has full evidence. Which means that I can be dead (the worldly self) and the "I am" is still originally self-evident. But in fact the epoche is made from a singularity that gives the specific sense to the "I am", with which the "I am" remains anchored to worldliness if it is not for the language that here saves ideality.

The article barely discusses eidetic intuition and original evidence (in the epoche) and Husserl's intuitionism in general. What I am referring to is what links intuitionism in Husserl with his claim of objectivity and ideality of phenomenology as a science of essences (unconventional Platonism as Husserl himself would say).

An example is given by Derrida: when I say "I am" in the epoche. Husserl would tell us that it has a full evidence or that we have an intuition of full and ideal essence (which can be understood universally) , however for being in the epoche the "I am" has a possible meaning without object in the world (since the world is put in parenthesis). So the "I am" has full meaning and evidence even if in fact I am dead. How is this possible? Well, it is not simply because of the epoche because the epoche is still made by me being alive. It is language that makes such a thing possible, that "I am" means even if I am in fact dead. Language here gives ideality to expression because language is transmitted and repeated.

For me, Husserl's Cartesian enclosure limits his philosophy. His aspiration was to objectivity and ideality, but then why shut himself up in subjectivity? Husserl himself in "The Origin of Geometry" gives us the tools to get out of the enclosure when he speaks of ideality as something constituted by repetition and reactivation through tradition. This repetition, however, cannot occur by means of an epoché. We interact with things in a theoretical way but without the need to leave the natural attitude. Moreover, the only possibility of achieving true ideality and objectivity is to go against Cartesian enclosure. Proof of this is Husserl's own need to introduce apperception and intersubjectivity into the bosom of this transcendental dimension. But the question is how can another subjectivity settle in this dimension of the solitary life of the ego? Is it not necessary, for example, language and writing to make what we call objective truths settle? And ultimately to make their ideality be given as such? Husserl in this sense remained a prisoner of the egological dimension. And therefore it is necessary to find another way out of the confinement of founding the constitution of truth and objectivity.

Thanks all for the very constructive feedback, I’m away from desk for today look forward to further remarks and criticisms. — Wayfarer

No problema.

Further to the distinction between the structures of subjectivity and the merely personal, a snippet from the IEP article on Phenomenological Reduction (a very detailed and deep article, I will add, and one I’m still absorbing)

Thus, it is by means of the epochē and reduction proper that the human ‘I’ becomes distinguished from the constituting ‘I’; it is by abandoning our acceptance of the world that we are enabled to see it as captivating and hold it as a theme. It is from this perspective that the phenomenologist is able to see the world without the framework of science or the psychological assumptions of the individual.
— IEP

The same distinction I made between the subjective and the merely personal. — Wayfarer

For Husserl the objectivity of science is ensured by ideality as a repetition that transcends singular experience and can be repeated in different subjectivities (Ideas concerning a pure phenomenology and a phenomenological philosophy, Book I, § 18). The question is always how in an increasingly Cartesian enclosure there can be a communication and transmission for the ideality of meaning and truth to occur. According to this, the ideality of meaning must betray the principle of the principles of phenomenology, which is the pure evidence of meaning as something given as ideal once and for all immediately for consciousness.

The same distinction I made between the subjective and the merely personal. — Wayfarer

I have always wondered why Husserl still maintains the idea of a self, ego, (in your case subjectivity) in this domain of the transcendental. Especially when he relates it to intersubjectivity. Husserl would say that every man can have access to this domain of the transcendental, so what is true for one is true for the rest. Is there, again, the hope in a repetition? Something that repeats itself from man to man in which a particularity is neutralized, in this case the monadic ego. Just wonder...

Yes.

Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

It is difficult for me to understand this. Isn't it some kind of a big mind or trascendental ego? By the way, The essential structures of a transcendental ego are essential because they are discovered in an eidetic reduction of psychology. In such a case we are talking about an essence that belongs to every human being. But there is a continuity with what I am saying: the reduction is the product of an imaginary variation (method of phenomenology). It is a process that leads us to a repetition, finding this structure in all people, don't you think? It is something that we discover as repetition through a neutralization (imaginary variation).

This is too deep in fenomenology, you can ignore me.

That's an interesting analysis, although I don't think that 'subjectivity is neutralised by repetition' really holds water — Wayfarer

How does it not? When two persons perform the same proof of the theorem both are neutralized and it can no longer be said that they are the raison d'être of the theorem. Subjectivity no longer justifies the nature of what has been proved although it has participated in its genesis. In this sense the theorem has been invented but has reached a degree of objectivity. In general we consider that something invented is not objective; my point is to show that something can be objective even if it is invented.

So I suppose what you're saying is that when only a single subject has such an insight, then it's subjective, but that as it becomes more and more widely known and accepted, then it is seen as objective — Wayfarer

Kinda. But not only because it is known but because in the construction of the theorem there are different realities involved in the matter. But what is important is repetition as a means of a virtually infinite induction that transcends, transcends subjectivity, transcends cultures, transcends subject, trasciende experiments and so on ad infinitum.

The theorem transcends and become "objective" by repetition and neutralization of particular genesis.

Subjectivity is never outside science. It is always in its genesis. What happens is that subjectivity is neutralized by phenomena such as repetition. That is, someone once invented the Pythagorean theorem, but through different mechanisms: language, writing, and repetitive processes that lead to its fulfillment, the theorem went from being the subjective invention of a person to a broader field of existence. It is a process of objectification. The same happens with sciences such as physics where experimentation becomes repetitive and theories are confirmed over and over again transcending the subjectivities always necessary to make the experiments.

In this sense objectivity is not simply the theory that corresponds to reality, but the theory that reaches an ontological degree in which reality and subjectivity are immersed. So we must even say that the theory of relativity transcends laboratories and experiments and reaches an ontological degree of its own. But of course nothing without these moments of neutrality of the particularities and thus to transit on the way of infinite universality and objectification.

Or there always was. Either way, uncaused existence. — Philosophim

I think we agree on this, given the structural closure of causality. That is what I have referred to with these two restrictions:

1. Ex nihilo nihil fit
2. Causality implies only relations between two or more things.

There has always been causality.

Why not one thing, then another thing 1 second later? What if there are still uncaused things happening throughout the universe as we speak? My point in all of this is that the argument does not conclude it has to be only one thing. — Philosophim

I claim there cannot be only one thing, in a causal context. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Causality presuposses relations n+1, If we want to maintain a principle of reason we cannot appeal to things created out of nothing.

From my point of view the causality of the universe is closed in its structure, since we cannot think of one thing in the absence of any causal relation with another thing, nor of things created out of nothing. Therefore causality has no end or start.

For all we know its possible that there is something that formed that then formed something else. — Philosophim

To me that is irrational. How is it possible for one thing to completely form another thing out of nothing?

If you have no present, then nothing would be possible — Corvus

Why not say the same about the past? Something proper to the past is that it was once present. In that sense there is a need for the past in order to understand and explain the possibility of the present. That the present passes but does not disappear completely (becomes past) is necessary for the existence of the present as something caused.

And we would still ask, "What caused that to exist?" The answer is always the same in the end of the causal chain. — Philosophim

If it is a causal chain we cannot assume that it is one thing that existed alone and suddenly gave birth to a second thing. The causal relation as a relation requires at least two or more. Causality does not consist in creating things out of nothing (one thing creating a second thing out of nothing) but in creating things out of other various things (plural). That is why the idea of a first cause is so problematic.

Perhaps the problem is to understand causality in a linear and horizontal way and not in a vertical way in the order of coexistence.

An interesting point. But we can imagine a universe consisting of one simple thing. That would exist correct? — Philosophim

Yes, it can be said that it is possible that only one thing exists. But then we could no longer speak of causal relationships, don't you think?

About the scope of composition I have always wondered if when we reach the limit of composition we come to find something very different from composite things: A simple thing, without parts. I wonder likewise whether this simple thing is in a higher order of existence with respect to composite things.

But I immediately realize that the whole (or the relational property of the whole) has a retroactive effect on all parts, including the simple parts of a whole. The relational whole acts as the context of the simple thing making the simple thing something that is not known from itself but from its context, that is, from its relation to the other things.

Then it would not be a problem to reach the limit of the composition, we do not reach something divine or of a superior order of existence (the bricks of god). We arrive at one more part of the whole, since these last parts of the composition are only possible to know and understand them by putting them in relation to other things.

This said in causal terms seems to indicate that there are always at least two and never a first cause. First there is relation in terms of ratio essendi. The relational aspect of things seems to be primary and determinative of the identity of things themselves.

I used to interpret Kant's experience as "perception — Corvus

OK. But then you agree as would Kant that perception is given in the present. And we agree that you have to explain the prensent rationally in some way.

Let me ask you, do any of those worlds you invented have that function of explaining the present?

Already did it:

Don't you think that if we had this faculty it would not be necessary to make theories about reality? I mean, any theory would be true insofar as reality is given to us in its truth and we simply have to intuit it. — JuanZu