Of course, but then again, what is good? How can you guarantee that the good that your moral education teaches people actually creates a good bias? What if your moral education isn't forming the good that you thought it would and people are now having a bias that is instead morally questionable? — Christoffer

Yes, this is exactly the issue, how are we to determine good biases from bad. You were talking as if all biases are bad, but now you appear to accept that some might be good. So, on what bases are we going to distinguish good biases from bad biases?

Isn't it then better to have a neutral system of anti-bias so that good is always evaluated by not having a pre-existing belief bias? — Christoffer

No, like I explained, biases are a natural and essential part of being human. Therefore it is impossible to be bias-free, and any attempt at "not having a pre-existing belief bias" would be a completely unrealistic attempt due to that impossibility. Such an attempt would just turn into a matter of gravitating toward keeping the biases which one is comfortable with, and eliminating the others, because it is impossible to not have any bias. Then we end up still having biases and no principles for distinguishing which biases we ought to have and ought not have.

Our biases is us favoring certain knowledge over other. We favor those things out of our emotions, our craving for comfort. The comfortable "truth" is the one we defend and form our world-view on. This means we evaluate new knowledge not by their own merits, but by how they relate to the knowledge we favor, that we are comfortable with.

Therefore, detachment from bias makes us better at evaluating the knowledge we have and the knowledge we are confronted with. — Christoffer

Your proposed "detachment from bias" is unrealistic, impossible for a human being to achieve, analogous to a mind separated from its body. It is not the human condition, nor is it a possible condition for a human being, so forget about it, and move along to something more realistic.

Bias is an error in perfect understanding. — Christoffer

Do you accept as true, the proposition that "perfect understanding" is impossible for human beings to obtain. If so, then you ought to recognize that your goal of being bias-free is not a reasonable goal for a human being. This conclusion necessitates a completely different approach to biases. Instead of attempting to reject all biases as fundamentally unwanted, we need to accept that it is impossible to reject all biases, therefore we need some principles by which we can decide which to reject. Do you see that these "principles" cannot themselves be biases, but more of a versatile, or universal method for assessing biases.

You cannot conclude there to be good biases without first concluding an answer to what a good bias really is. And to form such an answer requires you to explore a moral realm without bias, since you would otherwise just apply your own bias of what you believe is good before concluding and applying it as a collective bias that others should follow. — Christoffer

This is not true. My demonstration that there are good biases came from your assumption that there are bad biases. So from your premise, that we ought to rid ourselves of biases, because they are bad, I demonstrated that if there are bad biases there is necessarily also good biases. So the conclusion is derived from your premise of bad biases, and there is no need for me to show what a good bias is..

Furthermore, all that is required to further this process, is a definition of what constitutes "good". Once we have that, we can judge biases as to whether or not they are consistent with, or have that quality. "Good" would be defined in such a way as to be a principle, to serve as a method for judging biases, without itself being a bias.

Again, how can you distinguish good biases from bad if you don't form arguments in a mental space where biases do not exist? How can you deconstruct something if it is essential to the human existence? That would imply that all of philosophy is circular reasoning, one bias following the next ad infinitum. — Christoffer

All that is required is to have a process for judging biases which is separate from the biases, a process being an activity, whereas a bias is a static belief. The process therefore cannot itself be a bias. This is why science is based in a method, "method" signifying a process.

And yes, it is part of the human condition to have biases, it's part of our human psyche, which is why acting against it, understand it and understanding its behavior has been the single greatest method for human advancement. We cannot question the status quo without acting against our biases, without detachment from them. — Christoffer

It appears like you have the idea here, when you talk about a "method". But it is not a matter of acting "against" biases, as you state. Nor is it a detachment from bias, as this is impossible. It is simply a way of acting which recognizes the reality of biases and the need to cope with them. To deny them, or pretend a detachment is self-deception.

Where I draw the line, however, is when specifics are boiled down to something similar to factual claims. If someone speaks of "soul" and actually means some ethereal part of the divine that's trapped in our flesh, and uses this as a factual premise in their arguments, that is an unsupported claim. It's this type of claim that I refer to as biased. It is a bias towards the preconceived belief of the soul as something actual, something part of physical reality or supernatural reality that in itself hasn't been supported either. It's arguments that functions on these biases that philosophy consequently dismantled, if not in the time they were formed (due to historically inadequate methods of actually knowing how the world worked), then in historical times after when more factual understandings emerged. — Christoffer

Let me take what you say here about the "soul" ad make an analogy. The concept of "soul" is a very difficult and complex subject in philosophy. It requires great study to understand the soul, Plato's "Phaedo" is a good start. But then there is Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and many others. So when a learned philosopher makes a claim about "the soul as something actual", I would assume that this philosopher has some understanding about that matter. That philosopher probably even understands that Aristotle defines the soul as actual, and explains the logical reasoning why the soul must be defined as "actual". Therefore we cannot say that such a claim is "unsupported".

But you could call that a bias if you like. Then however, when a learned physicist refers to a photon as something actual, we should assume that the definitions produced from observations of the photoelectric effect which incline the physicists to speak of a photon as an actual thing, constitute a bias in the very same way.

As to your question, ‘did they really believe?’ Belief and the desire to believe can be very dangerous, easily manipulated and exploited. — Wayfarer

So the answer to @Andrew4Handel 's question is more like one of the "or" options, such as social control, rather than an answer of whether or not they really believed. The actual beliefs which were behind the behaviour were hidden, and the behaviour of the adults in the scenario was intended manipulate.

The child is born with the "desire to believe", and this cannot be properly represented as the "tabula rasa" because something has to support this capacity the capacity to actually believe. If we represent the belief as what is learned, then the belief itself a type of capacity, as the potential to act in a certain way. But the innate aspect, what the child is born with, is also a capacity, therefore of the same category. That makes any type of theoretical separation of the belief from the underlying support of the belief very difficult, vague, and to a degree arbitrary.

The desire to believe therefore, is also the capacity to be manipulated, as teaching is an act of manipulation. The teaching process is very clearly a process of manipulation. What role does "Truth" play in this process? One might argue, that if the teacher is honest, and what is taught is a "true" representation of what the teacher believes, then there is truth within that process. However, I would argue that upon analysis this would be exposed as mere justification, and not really Truth at all because the teacher might still hold false beliefs which are being honestly, and justifiably the beliefs which are taught.

So I propose that we must turn to the position of the student in this process of teaching, to be able to find the real role of "Truth" here. This is the underlying capacity to learn, the "desire to believe", what the student is born with. The teacher brings to the table various capacities to act, which are that which will be taught, as beliefs, and these capacity are justified by the social environment, or context of the teaching act. The student brings to the table the capacity to learn, as a predisposition. Truth is within this predisposition, the "desire to believe". It is of the highest value to the teachers because without it their efforts will be fruitless. Whether or not it is of high value to the student is another question, because I have represented it as the capacity to be manipulated.

When I say "things gravitate towards a preferable reality," I'm referring to the interpretation of "reality" that makes us feel most comfortable. Such preferences can change, and we can gravitate towards different comfortable realities depending on how our beliefs evolve. — Christoffer

Now the point is that gravitating towards what is comfortable is not necessarily gravitating toward what is good. But people can be trained through good moral education to gravitate toward what is good and this is equally a "bias". In other words, biases can be good too. The issue though is that such training requires effort, and it is a special type of effort. It's the effort of the teacher, which is made for the good of the student, the effort we make to train our children. This effort doesn't bring any good to the one who makes the effort, it brings good to the one who receives the training.

So, we can allow our children to gravitate toward what is "comfortable", or we can make the effort to train them to gravitate toward what is good. In the sense that each is a tendency to "gravitate toward", they are both types of biases.

The reality we find most comfortable is one in which we have clear and comfortable interpretations, regardless of their validity. Such bias often arises from the anxiety of the unknown. We tend to eagerly embrace a narrative of reality that offers us the most comfortable existence. — Christoffer

I do not see how this is at all possible. Since our biases arise from our training, what we have been taught, they cannot at all be related to the unknown. Our biases are deeply seated in our knowledge, and anxiety toward the unknown is something completely different from bias.

And you even describe bias as providing a form of comfort, so how could this possibly arise from anxiety of the unknown? If there is anxiety of the unknown there is no comfort, and vise versa. Bias is related to the known, and if it exists as a sort of comfort, then it is a type of self-confidence in one's own knowledge which excludes one from such anxiety toward the unknown. But just like I explained above, bias does not necessarily direct one toward comfort, biases may direct us toward making an effort, which is clearly not a comfort. If the person is trained to have great respect for the unknown, and this would involve a certain amount of anxiety toward the unknown, then this sort of bias could certainly be good, as motivation toward scientific endeavours and such things which would help us obtain knowledge.

Point being, philosophy has still been about countering biases regardless of which time it was in, it's precisely why people like Thomas Aquinas are well known, due to his careful reasoning and keeping Greek philosophical traditions alive based on Augustines previous work. — Christoffer

So I think you have this completely wrong. Philosophy is not about countering biases. Biases are inevitable as a fundamental aspect of human existence. Philosophy is concerned with distinguishing good biases from bad, such that the good can be cultured. And, it may be argued that other disciplines like science and religion deal with culturing biases. Whether such biases are bad or good is a judgement for philosophy to make.

Bias is a broad term and it doesn't just mean a failure in an argument or deduction, but also how things gravitate towards a preferable reality. — Christoffer

I think you ought to distance yourself from this concept of "preferable", and take a look at the way you use it. The word is a relative term, so it only holds meaning in relation to an end, a goal, or a person's intention. So, whenever the word is used, we can ask, 'preferable for what purpose, or what reason?'.

Your phrase "things gravitate towards a preferable reality" doesn't make any sense. If we qualify "reality" with a way of looking at reality, perspective, or ontology, you'd be saying that things gravitate toward a preferred ontology. The problem though, is that it requires effort to achieve ends, goals intentions, so "gravitate" is not an appropriate word here, because it signifies a lack of effort, going with the flow or something like that.

Now your sloppy use of words has left us with a bifurcation in potential interpretations, each going in opposing directions. By "gravitate towards", do you mean a type of going with the flow, which would incline one to proceed toward any random end or goal, as a sort of laziness, or do you mean making a concerted effort toward an identified goal or end? As you can see, these two are completely different, and there is really no way to tell, from your use of "preferable" which you are talking about. Does "gravitate towards a preferable reality" refer to the lazy attitude of ill-defined goals and lack of ambition, or does it refer to the attitude of having specified goals and making effort to achieve them?

The Pythagoreans, also known as the Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras, are another good example of a secret society. Plato drew a lot of material from the Pythagoreans, making these secrets public, but the material was published in the form of a critique.

Bloody well deserved, considering what they accomplished with no electric power — Wayfarer

This capacity, to create, to construct, through the application of mathematics and geometry is what gave the Freemasons a unique position in relation to the Church. The Church needed the masons for the construction of their earthly structures, so it also needed that mathematics based ideology held by the masons. The masons were allowed to maintain their parallel belief system, and any parts inconsistent with those of the Church were allowed to be held in secret. Therefore, so long as the beliefs were kept secret, the Church could turn a blind eye and not exercise persecution.

This element of secrecy has left the early history of this masonic guild, prior to themselves recording data, shrouded in mystery. But you can bet that this parallel belief system is as old, if not older than the Inquisition, which we know about through the documented history recorded by the Church. Evidence is to be found in the adoption of educational materials from Arabia, into the west, such as the "Arabic numerals".

Freemasonry describes itself as a "beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols".[38] The symbolism is mainly, but not exclusively, drawn from the tools of stonemasons – the square and compasses, the level and plumb rule, the trowel, the rough and smooth ashlars, among others. Moral lessons are attributed to each of these tools, although the assignment is by no means consistent. The meaning of the symbolism is taught and explored through ritual,[8] and in lectures and articles by individual Masons who offer their personal insights and opinions. — Wikipedia

Again, that esotericism is done is a long way from that it ought be done. — Banno

The more pertinent question is, 'do you see the usefulness of esotericism'? Whether or not the end is good or evil (relation to "ought") requires prejudice to answer.

Have you ever wondered about the example used by Wittgenstein at the beginning of the "Philosophical Investigations"? The example is derived directly from stonemasonry:

The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them.

This book is loaded with esotericism, hidden meaning, and I think that's why Wittgenstein's philosophy is commonly called mysticism. To disregard, and pay no attention to this aspect, the hidden meaning, is to miss out on an important part of his philosophy. If you believe that "private language" is impossible because Wittgenstein produces a logical argument which proves that private language is impossible, while simultaneously demonstrating esoterically that "private language" is very real, then you've misunderstood Wittgenstein.

The issue being that the contrived definition of "private language" which lends itself to the logical proof is not consistent with how one would commonly understand "private language". So the logical proof just demonstrates the impossibility of an imaginary, fictional "private language". Meanwhile, real private language is true and happening, and demonstrated by Wittgenstein. This sort of logical proof (unsound or false definition) is what Socrates and Plato exposed as providing the rhetorical power of sophistry.

Esotericism is essential to philosophy proper, but it's culturally subversive and so, often concealed, as a hidden layer of meaning in the texts themselves. — Wayfarer

To openly speak against the Creed, or any firmly held dogma for that matter, can be compared to suicide (Socrates, Jesus for example). In the case of The Inquisition, it wasn't even necessary to "openly speak" out, to be punished. The Freemasons enjoyed a unique position.

Are you saying that happenings are not beings, and science only treats of beings?

Is internal intuition a false category when applied to objects that aren't animals? — schopenhauer1

Intuition is a feature of the subject, and I think it is the basis for one's ontology.

Accidents are obviously the source of actual outcomes, but we do not have a science for it. — Paine

Isn't statistics and probability the science of accidents? Or would you say that this does not qualify as "science"?

For Harman, there is a
fundamental gap between objects as they exist in and for themselves, and the external
relations into which these objects enter. — Shaviro 282

The important concept here, which is often overlooked, is the "gap". In order to understand objects as individuals, or to understand activities which involve relations, there is a need to assume a gap of separation, and this might be a boundary, or void space, or some such thing. You can refer to Kant's description of pure intuitions here, as the basis for this understanding. Notice that a distinction can be made between the pure intuition of the external (space for Kant), and the pure intuition of the internal (time for Kant).

If the gap is assumed to be spatial, we have external objects to work with, but if the gap is assumed to be temporal, we have internal conceptions, changing relations and associations, interactions and causation to deal with. Whether a person chooses one or the other, as the basis of one's ontology, depends on whether the person is looking outward (Kant's external intuition), or looking inward (Kant's internal intuition). So Harman, as you describe, looking outward, apprehends external, spatial relations, and Whitehead looking inward, apprehends internal, temporal relations.

There is a way to reconcile these two perspectives, and that is to see the person, the individual self, as the gap, or boundary which separates the internal from the external. In a way it is simplistic, as it plunges you back toward the basic Platonic dualism of the internal mind and the external body. But under the modern day terms provided by Kant, the separation, or gap, may be understood as a separation between space and time, where space is external and time is internal, and the gap (being the self) separates these two.

Fortunately, also, the argument relies on the fact that we can tell wrong from right. — Ludwig V

I don't see this. Right from wrong is a judgement made by reason. If reason is fallible so is that judgement.

Philosophy is like a swamp. Swamps are for staying out of, in the first place, and for getting out of if you can in the second. — unenlightened

If you happen to stumble into the swamp, beware of the lurking alligator who has no desire to leave the swamp.

Your own words 'will become' in the context you use them, contradicts your 'time flows into the past' claim, 'will become' has not happened yet. The expansion of the universe allows for 'future' to exist as more 'distance' is created, which creates more 'time' or 'spacetime'. So the flow into the future is constant but can be experienced at different relative speeds, depending on observer reference frame (time dilation). — universeness

The expansion of the universe cannot be discussed in terms of "speed", or as you say "relative speed", because this is not considered to be a motion at all, or even the cause of any relative motion. If it were motion, then there would be motions faster than the speed of light, and that would contradict the premises employed in the detection of such "expansion". So it is incorrect to say that 'distance' is created. And physicists have no principles whereby they could explain or describe how spacetime could actual expand. "Expansion" is just a term they use to refer to what is unknown or confusing to them, as other terms like "dark energy" and "dark matter" are used in the same way, to refer to things which escape the predictive capacity of the hypothesis.

So it is your idea which is contradictory. And since you use reference to the unknown in your attempt to justify the real existence of the future, this just serves to demonstrate how faulty your premise is. You are claiming that it must be real because you can put a name to it like "spatial expansion".

And, you haven't shown how my words are contradictory. We can readily talk about non-existent things, your idea that things in the future must exist because we can talk about them is unfounded, and proven untrue through your own demonstration.

Yes, the end of the previous cycle, NO intentionality required. — universeness

So this is your real explanation? One cycle begins at the end of the previous cycle. How do you propose to determine the point which marks the beginning and end, when each point on the circle is the same as equidistance from the centre? That's why circular motion is said to be eternal. Your cyclical model really provides no reality for a beginning or end, just an assertion that the beginning of one cycle was the end of the previous cycle.

We could say the same thing about the present moment, the beginning of one moment is the end of another moment. There's nothing wrong with saying that. But unless we can determine a real boundary between moments, such statements are meaningless. As is your statement about the beginning and ending of cycles, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's absolutely meaningless.

No, the cause is the expansion of spacetime and it happens during every time unit. — universeness

There you go, reference to the unknown "expansion of spacetime", and your contradictory explanation of it, in your attempt to argue that something is known. The "expansion of spacetime", "dark energy", "dark matter" and such names, just refer to anomalies which are observed as an effect of the application of theory. Instead of recognizing that the observational data which is inconsistent with the applied hypothesis indicates that the applied hypothesis is incorrect, as a good scientist adhering to the principles of the scientific method ought to do, you simply give the anomalies names and pretend that these are real things that you can talk about.

How is that different from assigning the name "God", and pretending that God is a real thing we can talk about. Well, in your case there is a multitude of fictional things (gods) to talk about, one for each place the hypothesis fails, and each failing hypothesis, but in the case of theism, there is only one, "God".

And of course, you apply the fictional and meaningless "time unit". Until the real boundary to the proposed "unit" is demonstrated, this is meaningless nonsense in any ontology.

Your conclusion fails imo, as it requires an 'intentionality,' which itself would need to be cyclical. — universeness

Intentionality isn't cyclical. That's the problem with the materialist/physicalist representation of it, it ends up being cyclical, when in reality there is nothing to indicate that it ought to be. Since the materialist representation shows time as flowing from past to future, instead of from future to past, the only way that it can accommodate intentionality which relies on a future to past flow of time for conception, is to allow for that looping aspect. This creates the cyclical representation of intention. In reality, time only flows one way, into the past. The future (May 13 for example) will become past as time flows into the past. So the materialist representation of time, which shows the past as prior to the future, and therefore things in the past as causing what will come to be in the future, is fundamentally wrong. And the only way that they can allow for the real flow of time to have an influence on the way that they understand and represent time, is through these loops, which inevitably become externalities, and infinite cycles.

The only path open to humans who exist 'within the notion of time,' is to suggest that the concept of 'eternal' has NO beginning in time. — universeness

The conventional Christian conception of "eternal" is "outside of time". Time is measured as it passes, so only past time is capable of having been measured (measurable), and the future is therefore outside of time. All real time, as measurable time, is in the past. But the true cause of what will be at the present, must be prior to the present, therefore in the future, so this cause must also be outside of time.

There is another way to apprehend this. Imagine that there is a beginning to time. At the moment when time began there was necessarily no past time, yet there was necessarily future. And for time to begin, there must be a cause. Therefore, this cause was necessarily in the future. For time to continue passing there must always be a cause, and this cause is always in the future.

My viewpoint in this makes me an atheist and my main challenge to your 'eternal intentionality,' is to either make it's existence and continuing presence/existence known, NOW, or else, I see no rational reason for YOU to maintain your position — universeness

So, that is the rational, explained above. As time passes, there must be cause of things being as they are, at each moment of passing time. Since time flows from the future to the past, the cause of things being as they are at the present must always be in the future in relation to what comes to be at the present. This is the cause which is always outside of time (eternal), as prior to time.

We experience this cause which is outside of time as intentionality. Whenever we want things to be in a specific way at a specific moment as time passes, we make an intentional act, and this causes the situation to come to be as we desired. The act of the will is prior to what comes to be from it. So intention is how we as human beings, partake in this eternal cause which is always prior to time.

The continued hiddenness of this eternal intentionality... — universeness

That the future is always hidden from us, and no part of it can ever be sensed by any of our senses, in no way indicates that it is not real. It is logically necessary to conclude that the future must be in some way real, or else time could not be passing. As explained above, the cause of time passing is always in the future in relation to the present.

mired in primal fear of taking FULL ownership and responsibility for our own existence — universeness

The idea that we ought to take full ownership and responsibility for our own existence is utterly ridiculous. Do you not allow that your parents are somewhat responsible for your existence, and that your schoolers are somewhat responsible for your ideology?

I might agree, but materialism has no concept of telos. There is no possibility of intentionality outside the intentional actions of agents. — Wayfarer

I think that the existence of intentionality is the pivotal issue to both philosophy and religion. Religion takes intentionality for granted, and sets up rules and conventions for the guidance of intentional acts, which become traditions. But natural philosophy, science, chews away at the underpinnings of what was taken for granted through understanding of "natural processes", and propositions of causation. This produces a shift in what is taken for granted, natural processes, rather than intentionality.

The two, natural processes and intentionality, show themselves to be incompatible because intention is based on a view toward the future, and causation is based on a view toward the past. So the two look at the activity of the passing of time at the present, in opposite directions.

The two perspectives can be characterized as free will toward future actions, and determinism from past reality. Social conventions shape which is taken for granted, such that we tend to view the other from the perspective which we take for granted, making the other a sort of illusion. The modern environment, of a society shaped by scientific development inclines us to see intentionality from the causation based perspective, such that the mainstream force, or flow of time from the past is primary. Then intention gets modeled as a looping, feedback activity, an eddy in the flow. This lends itself to the "cyclical" representation of intention.

if you want something with more scientific rigor behind it, then I vote for the conformal cyclic cosmology of Roger Penrose or > 3d superstring theory, or Mtheory with each universe being created by interacting 5D branes. These extra dimensions of the very small, that are 'wrapped around' every point in our 3d existence, are undetectable to us but are the reason why some posit nonsense such as 'something from nothing.' Quantum fluctuations are probably caused by these extra dimensions. The system is most likely (so for me, warrants a high credence level,) cyclical and eternal.
All of these similar 'cyclical and eternal' proposals are far far more likely and far far more rational that any theological posit (normally flavoured by some supernatural agency with intentionality) I have ever heard and any I am ever likely to hear about. — universeness

The "cyclical" model is probably best presented, in its most comprehensible form, by Aristotle, as the eternal circular motions of the planets. The cause of the eternal cycle is said to be an intentionality, the divine contemplation, a thinking, thinking on thinking. I have argued elsewhere that Aristotle dismisses this proposal, as untenable, though he is commonly cited as a proponent.

The important takeaway though is that such eternal cycles can only be comprehended as requiring a cause. Intention, being incorporated into the system as a looping feedback activity is the only thing available which is capable of producing such an eternal circle. This places intention as prior, in the absolute sense; prior as the cause of eternal cycles, and timeless balances like symmetry, and prior as the cause of semiotics.

It is this recognition, which hands priority to intention, as the view toward the future, rather than causal determinism, (the view toward the past), as the true guiding perspective. This inclines us toward religion. Then we come to understand that natural processes, as we apprehend them, really cannot be taken for granted, and the only thing which can really be taken for granted is the intention, the view toward the future, which when we turn around to see the past, has shaped us in our being at the present.

They are using the justice system to engage in lawfare, and the ease with which they can do it makes the system a bloody joke. — NOS4A2

Don't act surprised! The man with thousands of lawsuits under his belt. who lived his life engaging the legal system against others, with the greatest ease, anytime that it appeared to be profitable, has now had the tables turned on him. Could you expect anything other than this?

There are philosophers who are pragmatists and pragmatism(s) is(are) philosophical positions inside philosophy, so I don't accept the dichotomy implicit above. It seems possible you are conflating epistemology in philosophy with the correspondance theory of truth.
I was also reacting to what I think is overly binary in saying he 'deceived himself'. — Bylaw

Fair enough, I'll qualify my statement: "a certain type of philosopher seeks the truth". The one's who do not seek the truth, but seek some useful principles, pragmatists, might still be correctly called "philosophers" by common convention.

You're still going to need both and I was supporting what he had asserted around that. I am certainly not saying we can't be fooled by our senses, just as we can by reason. Unless you are a rationalist, there are going to be empirical facets to getting past illusions. You can absolutely decide that X, based on sense impressions, was false, but any demonstration of this will have empirical work around it. — Bylaw

The point though, is that reasoning is more reliable then mere sensation with memory. Furthermore, some types of reasoning are more reliable than others. The ones dependent on sensory input, like induction, have been demonstrated to be less reliable. So, the further we can get away from being dependent on sensation, the more certain we will be in our knowledge, and we can conclude that sensation tends to mislead us. When it's clear that sensation misleads us, and the further we get away from being dependent on it, the more certain our knowledge will be, how do you conclude that we will always need both?

Science is empirical. It is based on observations. — Bylaw

Yes, and this is obviously the weakness of science. It's the problem of induction which Hume pointed to. That is why the statement of the op is correct, science is irrelevant to the problem of consciousness. This is because we must get beyond the limitations of science to properly understand consciousness, and if we fall for the idea that empirical science is capable of providing such an understanding that would be a case of being deceived by your senses.

And, hey, that was a kind of slimy way to talk to me. I was not impolite to you so you didn't need to go ad hom. And before I am told I don't know what ad hom means, yes, you didn't make a formal ad hom fallacy, but it was definitely 'to the man.' And the first paragraph was also slimy though less direct. — Bylaw

I was referring to a particular instance, as an example, to demonstrate a general point. This is a common procedure. The example happened to be you. I thought perhaps a first hand example of how a person gets deceived by one's senses, might help to prove the point. If you took it as an insult, you shouldn't have because we all get deceived in this way. Anyway, it appears like you did take it as an insult, so I will apologize. I am sorry, no harm was intended.

Talk about senses in the sense of sense of oneself getting in the way of things. — Bylaw

Sorry, your personal example doesn't seem to work. I can't figure out what you're trying to say.

I believe a solution is possible, not that I have a solution. You'd probably have to reread a bunch of my posts to really understand. If we start with the premise that certain aspects of reality (like the temporal continuity discussed) appear to us a unintelligible, there are two principal ways to respond to this. One way is that we can conclude that such an aspect is itself inherently unintelligible. The other way is that we apprehend the appearance of unintelligibility as a product of our approach. In the latter case we reassess and analyze our approach. In the former case, we give up any effort to try and understand, as necessarily fruitless. The former is what I call unphilosophical. Check this post:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/802467

The fallibility of science is just a facet of the fallibility of human beings. I'm guessing, but I guess you are taking this line because you want to escape Hume's problem. — Ludwig V

Exactly, because Hume's method is to portray reason as infallible, then demonstrate the fallibility of our assumptions about causation, and induction in general, and conclude therefore that these types of reasoning are not properly called "reason". That is a problem, because it leaves these processes without any category, no means to understand them, therefore no means to address and rectify their problems. Instead, we ought to class them as forms of reasoning which are more fallible than some others, therefore these forms of reasoning have issues which need to be addressed.

So you put your faith in reason because a rational principle would resolve Hume's problem? — Ludwig V

Yes, look what I said early. Hume wanted to place such assumptions as based in some sort of custom or habit, and then not face the reality that reasoning is itself a habit or custom. This is a problem which inheres within Hume's approach to rationalism. He seems to want to give reason a sort of divine, infallible status, as if it were separate from a bodily function of human beings, but this is a mischaracterization of the human reasoning process. So my position is not as you say, to put my "faith in reason", it is to put my faith in the human capacity to adapt, change, and evolve reason in a way which is conducive toward truth.

One facet is the theorems and deductions, which give transcendent certainty. — Ludwig V

This is exactly Hume's mistake, to portray "reason" in this divine way, as something which produces "transcendent certainty". This means that we have to create a divide, a separation within the category of "reason", such that some forms of reasoning produce divine certainty, while others do not. That creates an inconsistency within the category, because what is necessary to some types, the declared "certainty" is not necessary to other types. So Hume's solution is to remove those types which do not create certainty, from the category, leaving only the divine forms, which produce transcendent certainty as qualifying for the category of "reason".

But this is a mistake. There is no such divine form of reasoning which produces transcendent certainty. All forms of reasoning suffer from some degree of fallibility, as activities of fallible human beings, so all forms of reasoning, including deductive, inductive, abductive, etc., ought to be classed together, and they can be judged according to their degree of reliability or fallibility.

When things go wrong, we cannot blame the rules which are by definition immune to mistakes and error. So we blame ourselves instead. In other words, reason has success logic. — Ludwig V

The issue here, is that we, the human beings, are the ones who created the rules for the logic. These rules are just "customs", therefore they are not immune to mistake, and yes we can blame them, when we can demonstrate the faults which inhere within them.

This is where there is a need to differentiate "custom" from "habit". A "habit" is a property of an individual, while a "custom" is attributed to a group of people. There is a difference because all customs are habits, but not all habits are customs. We tend to judge habits as good or bad, and when a habit is a custom, simply being a custom does not ensure that the habit is a good habit. We can say that "correct", and "right" are descriptions based in custom, such that rules and laws which conform to customs provide us for judgement of correct, and right, in our judgements of habits which conform to customs. If you act according to custom you act correctly. But since there is always inconsistency between one culture and another concerning some customs, we must allow a higher standard of judgement (good for example), whereby we can judge some customs which produce correct and right acts according to one culture, as actually not good.

You can trust reason in the abstract sense, but human attempts to apply it are not immune from mistake. When you think you have the rational solution, you may be mistaken. I think of reasoning as a human activity, rather than an abstract structure, so perhaps I have a slightly different perspective from you. — Ludwig V

So the mistake is evident here when you say "reason in the abstract sense". If you maintain your principle, "reasoning as a human activity", this principle itself is an abstract principle. It states a general process, as an abstraction "reasoning", or we could call it "reason". But what it says of this process, as what is essential or necessary to the process, is that it is a human activity. If we look at human activities as fallible, such that this is necessary, or essential to all human activities, then we can conclude that reasoning, or "reason" is necessarily fallible, through deductive logic.

Now we have excluded what you call "reason in the abstract sense" from our category of reasoning, such that it is just a fiction, imaginary, and not an abstraction at all, because it is not supported by any logic. We simply have this name, "reason in the abstract sense", which is really oxymoronic, because it is supposed to point to some sort of abstract reasoning, but it is not supported by any type of abstraction. If instead, we allow some sort of reality to this form of "reason in the abstract sense", we'd have to make up all sorts of fictional ideals, "transcendent certainty" etc., as defining features of it, and what would be the point of that?

. Hypotheses and theories are critically important, but when theory and data conflict, it is theory that needs to be changed. — Ludwig V

But I'm arguing the fallibility of science in general, because of its reliance on sense data, so this is just circular.

I thought you were against Hume's thesis. — Jacques

I agree with Hume's criticism of induction, as indicated. I just don't agree with how he proceeds from there. That the problem exists is really quite evident, but I think that Hume moves in the wrong direction, toward portraying it as unresolvable rather than toward finding principles to resolve it.

Are you happy to doubt that you are reading this? — Banno

Where doubt enters this scenario, is with the question of what does it mean to be "reading this". Then we may consider the statement of the op:

I made a thread about skepticism and said that we cannot coherently deny that language transmits meaning because by understanding this sentence you have proven that language transmits meaning. — Andrew4Handel

That meaning actually transmits from you to me, in the act of me reading what you wrote, is highly doubtful. This would require that I understand "reading this" in the same way that you do. Otherwise I cannot assume that I got the meaning you intended to give me, and meaning did not transmit. Discussions here at TPF demonstrate that you and I do not understand words in a similar way. Therefore I can conclude that meaning does not transmit, and I most likely understand "reading this" in a way other than you intend. Since you wrote "reading this" and you are proposing that someone else is the one doing the reading in the way that you intend by "reading", and it is likely that the person is reading in a way other than what you intend by that word, doubt is clearly justified.

It decieved him in a context that is almost completely useless to most of us most of the time. So, yes, if one wants to understand the motions of the solar system parts, his assessment is off, in nearly every other human context, he's got a perfect fine interpretation. And one that can be useful.
And reason can also deceive. But since he goes ahead and advocates for using both, I'm not sure what the overhanding problem is. — Bylaw

That is the difference between pragmatics and truth as providing the guiding principle. For reasons unknown, the philosopher seeks the truth. Some people feel comfortable with pragmaticism, and accept without doubt, the principles which currently serve them. The philosopher always wants to move ahead and proceed toward the truth.

Seems to miss the point. We don't have to give up either. Reason is pretty useless without the senses, at least to any empiricist. IOW the senses are, for example, the foundation of science: in observations. — Bylaw

Reread my post, I said "when the two disagree". It seems like you misunderstand the nature of science. The senses are not the foundation of science, science is based in hypotheses, theory. Your empiricist theory has misled you, another example of how human beings allow their senses to deceive them.

The cues that normally allow us to know when we are moving are missing, just as they are missing in an aeroplane. — Ludwig V

This is exactly why it's correct to say that the senses deceive. When the sensible "cues" are missing, we draw the wrong conclusion. You say: "The sun does go up and down, from the point of view of the surface of the earth. It could not be otherwise." Obviously, it could be otherwise. It could be that the surface of the earth is spinning in a circle, and the sun is staying put. And if you wrongly assume that you, on the surface of the earth are staying put, because the "cues" of moving are missing, you would wrongly conclude that the sun goes up and down from the point of view of the surface of the earth. Therefore, you failed to account for the motion of the earth in your assumption, and allowed your sensed to deceive you.

Senses and reason are both capable of misleading us and are our only resources for finding the truth. Junking one in favour of the other is incomprehensible to me.

I have a feeling that the conditions are not such as to provide a basis for progress in this debate. Do you? — Ludwig V

If you do not see that reason is far more reliable than sense, and when the two disagree it is far more reasonable to accept reason over sense, then I think you're right when you say further progress is impossible.

If consciousness does not arise from the physical properties we know, and it does not arise from something like panprotopsychism (and I'm sure many here do not believe it does), then what? — Patterner

Hi Patterner, welcome to the forum. I'll answer this question with a simple "stay tuned..."

But I am sure that the senses do not systematically deceive us. — Ludwig V

Why do you think that the sun appears to come up and go down, when this has been proven to be false? And why does it look like we see the full range of electromagnetic waves as the colours of the rainbow, when this is just a small portion? If this is not a 'systematic deception' than what is it? And how would you describe hallucination if not a form of deception?

I'm also sure that simplicity is not an option, but a necessity. — Ludwig V

That is the essence of deception, it is dome because it is deemed to be a "necessity". Plato also exposed this feature. Are you familiar with what is commonly referred to as the royal lie? Over simplification of something extremely complex, for the person's own good, is deception.

If we had senses that perceived everything that's going on at the level of electrons, we would be unable to grasp the bigger picture that we need. It's not about deception; it's about pragmatics. — Ludwig V

This is a faulty conclusion. There is nothing to prevent an intelligent mind from understanding both big picture and small picture at the same time. What is more likely the case, is that the physical sensing apparatus evolves much slower than the mind, because the brain must allow for vast possibility and rapid changes in thinking patterns, even over the lifespan of one individual. This allows the conscious mind to evolve much quicker than the physical sensing system. So the senses are suited to a less capable consciousness, which human beings had prior to the rapid advancements of the mind, in the last few thousand years. Therefore the senses are presenting very simplistic, over simplified, and underdeveloped images to the mind because the physical aspects of the human sense apparatus were developed when the mind was much less advanced, and the body cannot change fast enough to keep pace with the rapid advancements and evolution of the mind. In other words, the human body still has essentially the same physical sensing apparatus as it had thousands of years ago, but it's mental capacity has greatly advanced. Therefore the ends or purpose of the "pragmatics" you refer to, are greatly outdated, and this is analogous to continuing with a story about Santa Clause when the person is a grown adult, it's nothing but deception.

This is a classic example of what I mean. There's a story - I don't know if it's true - that someone observed to Wittgenstein that it is easy to understand why the ancients thought that the sun goes round the earth, because that's the way it looks. To which Wittgenstein replied "How would it look if it looked as if the earth was spinning?" The answer is, exactly the same. — Ludwig V

I did not use the word "look", I intentionally said "feel", to avoid this objection. Do you know what it feels like to be spun around? And when you are being spun, isn't it very obvious that the things in your field of vision are not moving around you, but you are being spun? Your example provides no bearing on the issue.

There is a reason why we have a multitude of different senses, different sense organs directed toward different aspects of the world. Each one, is in itself, by itself, very deceptive. Through comparison of what the different senses provide for us, the mind can reduce the deception. But reduction is not elimination.

As to electrons, we are simply not equipped to perceive electrons directly. I'm cautious about pronouncing on the sub-atomic world; I don't understand the physics well enough. I am clear that our senses give us the information they are equipped to gather. By paying attention to our perceptions more closely, we work out that physical objects are very different at small scale. Our perceptions did not deceive us, any more than a normal microscope deceives us when it does not reveal electrons. We misinterpreted them, but now have a better understanding because we paid closer attention to the information they give us. — Ludwig V

What you say here is a direct indication of the point I am making. There is a whole "sub-atomic" world which our senses are hiding from us. But you misrepresent, or misinterpret the actual problem. You say the senses are "not equipped" to provide us with information about this sub-atomic world. That is clearly false, because it is exactly the case that this is the type of information which the senses are providing us with. The sense of smell for instance, is providing us with information about the interaction of atoms at a molecular level, and this is exactly an interaction of electrons and sub-atomic particles. The sense of sight is providing us with information about the interaction of light (photons) with the electron structure of the various different molecules. And the sense of hearing is providing us with information about the vibrations of the massive parts of atoms.

So it is clearly the case that we are equipped to sense the activities of the sub-atomic world that's exactly what the senses do. However, the problem is that in the relation between the senses and the brain, the information provided through the sense organs is interpreted and represented by the brain, with the principal purpose of remembering, in a very basic and simplistic way. The human being's capacity for memory is very limited so this huge amount of data rolling in at an incredibly high speed must be vastly simplified. This simplification is essentially false memory, created by a very deficient memory system which requires that the sense data be overly simplified, and when the conscious mind looks at the memory as "true" it is deceived. When the conscious mind visits the memory, it is deceived into thinking that the memory is giving an accurate account which it is not. Furthermore, the conscious mind's experience of "the present" is nothing other than what the brain is submitting to memory, limited further by attention, so this is equally faulty and deceptive.

However, the conscious mind in its totality goes far beyond simple experience of the present, and memory, it has anticipations, intentions, desires, will, and judgement to deal with as well. These other aspects, intention and the desire to know, (philosophy), have led the conscious mind to a position high above what the physical body provides for it. That is why we have produced all sorts of instruments for analyzing different aspects of the world, which go far beyond the limitations of the underdeveloped physical system of the human body, like the electron microscope you mentioned. The simple fact of the matter is that the relatively primitive physical body of the human being has not been able to keep up with the rapid development of the conscious mind and its understanding. Therefore to fall back onto the observational capacities of the human body, asserting superiority and "truth" to sensation, rather than moving forward into the realm of what logic dictates, even though this may appear contradictory to sense data, is to fall for that deception.

Your conclusion has a certain paradoxical appeal. I agree that sometimes we draw the wrong conclusions from what our senses tell us (that's a bit over-simplified, but it will do for now); but surely we sometimes get it right. Similarly, reality is partially intelligible to us and partly not, and we work hard to understand the latter part. You seem very fond of comprehensive statements, but the truth is more mundane than that. For example, you say:- — Ludwig V

i see things in the opposite way to this. You say the truth is mundane. I believe that the truth is not mundane at all, and is way more complicated than any of us can possibly imagine. Quantum physics gives us the tip of this iceberg of complexity. I think our bodily systems greatly simplify a very complex reality, so that we sense extremely complex things as very simple. We've evolved this way, we must start from the bottom up in our understanding as evolving beings, so things must be put into the most simple form possible, to begin our understanding.

Look, we see the sun as rising and setting, when logic tells us the earth is really spinning. There's also supposed to be some sort of spinning motion with electrons around atoms. Do you think that living beings are incapable of 'feeling' that the planet they are on is spinning? Or, do you think it's more likely that all these spinning motions that logic tells us are occurring around us, and within us, are completely compensated for within the living system, to give us a seemingly stable position from which to observe? I think all these complex motions are hidden from the conscious mind, not sensed, because the senses have evolved so as to hide all these complexities from us because they are just too difficult. All that our senses bring to our conscious minds are some very simplistic motions, to begin us on our task of understanding.

And I say "Don't we also say things like "between t1 and t2 this process was going on?" — Ludwig V

Sure, but think about how we describe and understand processes, it always comes down to a matter of one state changing to another. We can name a process, even provide a brief description of it, but what really provides meaning and understanding is how the process takes us from A to B. A is the cause, B is the effect. This is why the truth about the passage of time is not mundane at all, it's actually very complex. We like to think of it as mundane, because this facilitates 'the simple life". In reality life is not simple, so all we're doing with this type of notion is facilitating the deception.

I agree with the first quotation, but not with the second and, although I accept that we often get things wrong, I'm not at all sure that it is because our sensations deceive us; it may be that they neither deceive nor reveal. The problem may like in our interpretations. — Ludwig V

In the first passage, I describe how my understanding of what we get from sensation differs from Hume's. There is a problem though with my perspective, and that is that for logical purposes, we describe things in terms of static states, in the same way that Hume describes sensation gives us. We say things like "this was the situation at time1, and this was the situation at time2. So the reason I believe Hume's position is incorrect, is because I think these static states are produced by us, by our minds, for the purpose of applying logic, and it is incorrect to say that this is what sensation gives to the mind. What sensation gives to the mind is a temporal continuity, and the mind breals the continuity into distinct states, in a variety of different ways, depending on the intended purposes. That is why I argued earlier that all the breaks in the continuity which constitute the divisions between t1 and t2, and such, are subjective, imposed for various purposes.

There is a fundamental incompatibility between the perception of reality as a persistently changing continuity, and as a succession of separate but contiguous discrete instances. This is an incommensurability which mathematicians have not been able to resolve. Therefore, one of the ways of representing the world must be wrong, either the way of sensation, as a continuity, or the way of logic, as a succession of discrete instances.

The inclination (intuition) is to accept the sense representation as the correct representation, and conclude that the way we use logic to represent reality is just a model, and this model is incapable of providing a true representation. But this renders that part of reality, the procession of time, as fundamentally, and necessarily unintelligible. However, as I explained in that post there is a potential way around this problem. It is completely possible that the way that our senses present the world to us is "deceptive", as explained by Plato. And from this perspective we can say that it is absolutely possible that the procession of time is truly intelligible to the human mind as a succession of discrete instances, and we just need to identify those breaks in time which constitutes the separate moments.

So, you say that the problem may lie in our interpretation. This is consistent with what I've argued. if reality is as I've said above, consisting of discrete moments, then the faulty interpretation is the assumption that how the senses present reality to us, as a continuity, is completely consistent with the way that reality actually is. If, on the other hand, we assume that the approach of our logic is incorrect, or inconsistent with the way that reality is, then we assume that reality is necessarily unintelligible. So to allow for the possibility that reality is intelligible to us, we must assume that this other assumption, that 'how the senses present reality to us is completely consistent with the way that reality actually is' is the faulty premise of interpretation. So to allow for the possibility that reality is intelligible to us, we must assume that the senses deceive us.

The difficulty is to see exactly what "how" means and to understand that asking such a question means rejecting Hume's idea of atomistic idea of experience (which analytic philosophy largely inherited from Hume). — Ludwig V

Yes, this I believe is the root of the problem. Hume described the experience of sensing as a series of static states which may change as time passes. This implies a break, a divide between each state. Then he moves to address the problem of how the mind relates one state to another. The distinct states being what sensation gives us. But i think that in reality, sensation is an experience of continuous activity, which we produce breaks in through withdrawing our attention, either intentionally or unintentionally.

This is a substantial difference because on the one hand we have the perspective of sensation providing images of natural states with implied natural divisions between them (Hume), and on the other hand we have the position that sensation provides natural continuous activity, with the sensing being imposing artificial divisions onto that continuity. So from the Humean perspective, it appears necessary for the observing mind to understand the natural relation between natural distinct states, in order to understand the natural progression of these states, and this is what he thinks of as causation. But if the other perspective is right, then sensation does not provide us with any naturally distinct states, and no natural separations. So any description of causation by this means would be to describe the relations between completely artificial separations.

But from the other perspective, these separations are apprehended as completely artificial, so they may even be totally arbitrary, or at best the separations are imposed in different ways for different purposes, (analogous to Wittgenstein's boundaries in meaning). So the difference manifests as Hume looking for an independent, objective relation between cause and effect, a relation which creates a unity through a natural form of synthesis, while the other perspective looks for the subjective principles of analysis whereby we divide what is present as a natural continuity.

I'm afraid I disagree with both of you. You misunderstand Hume. His position is that scepticism is right if it recommends careful and judicious examination of the facts and judicious decisions based on them, wrong if it is applied excessively. I think that's about right. It's not a case of radical scepticism (Pyrrhonism according to Hume) or nothing. — Ludwig V

I definitely wasn't saying that Hume is anti-skeptic. I see all philosophy as fundamentally skeptical. Even the anti-skeptic would be skeptical of skepticism. if one was just stating certainties, that would not be philosophy. The issue of course is the way that a philosopher places limits to one's own skepticism. No philosopher, not even Socrates, ever seems to be skeptical in an absolute sense, they always seem to believe that they get to the bottom somehow (In the skeptical form of analysis), and here they claim to find some sort of self-evident truth, something to take for granted (eg, Descartes' "I think therefore I am."). It may be the case that the best philosophers are the ones who never seem to get to the bottom, never finding any self-evident truth, and always remaining skeptical, open minded.

Hume's position is that even though our inferences are not well grounded, we will continue to make them, as a result of what he calls "custom or habit". He then makes a sequence of moves, as I outlined in an earlier post, to arrive at a non-sceptical position that "uniform experience" is proof. One may or may not think that's legitimate; it's certaintly dubious. There is also the problem that experience is not uniform, unless we select among our experiences. Which, as you are indicating, we do, and in the process notice differences as well as similarities. — Ludwig V

So the point I make above, is that this proposed "uniform experience" is not an inference, a custom or a habit at all. It is simply a statement of description of the sense experience, an observation. Therefore there is no need to inquire about the mental activity which creates this uniformity, it is not within the realm of conscious thought, and cannot be described as habit or custom.. However, since we are prone, (by habit), in our mental activity to impose divisions on this given uniformity, and we do seek truth, we ought to inquire whether there is any true, natural separations, upon which such divisions could be based.

This requires a deeper form of skepticism. We must cast doubt on what the senses provide for us, in the way of Plato, who teaches us that the senses deceive. From this perspective we can apprehend the continuity which is given by sensation as manufactured, created by the apparatus which produces the sense experience, and therefore there is the potential that this is not a true representation. Now we would have the proper platform for inquiring into the possibility of true divisions, the true separations in time, which the experience of sensation, as a continuity, hides from us in its deceptive ways.

That is, the very concept of being free to say whatever you want without reprisal (the tenure system basically) is being misued to only allow those club members in that pass a certain belief litmus test. — Hanover

Life at the university, conform or be cast out. Option number three, pretend until you're tenured. But how are the deceptive bastards who get in through pretense treated? The real pretense is that this system is supposed to support diversity.

What I have noticed in the past, is that I can pick an imaginary time in the future, say tomorrow morning for example, and say something about it, like it will get light outside, and the sun will rise, and when that time comes, it will happen, just like before. So in my experience, I've gone to bed when it's dark, expecting that it will get light in the morning, because it has done so in the past, and it actually does as I expect. So this I believe, justifies (is the rationale for) my belief that the future will resemble the past, with respect to this feature of reality.

If, in your question, you are assuming a more general definition of "future" and "past', and you are ready to produce a definition of these things, as abstract objects, I believe that the future cannot resemble the past in such definitions. The two are in a way mutually exclusive, but not in the way of proper opposites, where there is a similarity derived from being exactly opposite, they are opposed more in the sense of dichotomous. But if we take some particular aspects of reality, particular material things, like in my example, I think there is rationale for believing that the future will be similar to the past for those particular things.

1. Techniques in statistics and probability theory do not rely on induction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The theories themselves do not necessarily rely on induction to be produced, but a judgement of the reliability of them, in application, does rely on induction. So people might produce thousands or millions of such theories, in any random way, but we would only choose the ones proven by induction as reliable, to be used, and these would become the conventional.

One way to put this point is to say that Hume’s argument rests on a quantifier shift fallacy (Sober 1988; Okasha 2005a). Hume says that there exists a general presupposition for all inductive inferences, whereas he should have said that for each inductive inference, there is some presupposition. Different inductive inferences then rest on different empirical presuppositions, and the problem of circularity is evaded.

This is another way of putting the point I made above in my reply to Jacques. Inductive reasoning relies on particulars, and it proceeds toward making a general statement about similar particulars. And, predictions always concern particulars. So if we start with general principles, abstractions like "future" and "past" in the most general sense, the question of how they are similar is a completely different question. To show that two general abstractions like "future" and "past" are similar, would be to place them into a broader category of abstraction, the concept of "time', or "temporality", and say that they are both temporal concepts, therefore similar in that way.

So Hume really just makes an inductive conclusion about inductive conclusions, that they all employ some sort of presupposition about temporal continuity. This may be useful if we want to know something about the process of inductive reasoning, but then again it might itself be faulty induction. But to put inductive reasoning into the larger context, as to how the conclusions of induction are used by us, i.e. how induction is actually useful, we need to show how they are related to other logic, deduction.

This turned out to not be true under all consistent geometries, e.g., a triangle on a curved plane, as drawn on a ball. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is not really a consistent geometry though. A "curved plane" is contradictory because the curve of a sphere requires three dimensions while the plane is two. To make the curved plane we need to annihilate the convention of dimensions, but in doing this we annihilate the triangle. So really, the triangle is incommensurable with the proposed "curved plane" (which is a misnomer because it's not a plane at all), and in reality a triangle's angles always add up to 180 degrees. Because the proposed triangle on a curved plane is not a triangle at all.

That is, there is no way to tell between an a priori analytic truth and a firmly held dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is why, as I said above, we could make thousands or millions of such theories, by what is called "pure mathematics" but only the ones which prove themselves to be useful (and this is itself an inductive method) are accepted into convention. The usefulness is what inspires the "firmly held dogma". So if it turns out that it's better for us (more useful) to annihilate the conventional spatial dimensions, such that we have the so-called "curved plane", then that will become conventional, or "firmly held dogma".

Additionally, if I buy into computationalist conceptions of physics, then what comes before dictates what comes after by the same sort of logical entailment Liebniz had in mind when he developed his conception of computation, then my expectation that the future is like the past is not grounded in Hume's UP. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As you point out though, your expectation is grounded in some sort of UP, or to put it more precisely, "a UP". And, as I discussed in my prior post, such principles obtain varying degrees of reliability. So we would need to isolate and analyze this specific UP as to its own peculiarities and uniqueness, in order to determine whether your expectations about particular aspects of the future are well grounded. Therefore the skeptic wins out in the end, because each such expectation is unique, and therefore must undergo examination through the skeptic's microscope, in a way unique to it.

I think this depends on what counts as justification; justification meaning the reasons given for the claim about the future. And, we have different sorts of reasons for making such claims. A random assertion about the future would not qualify as being justifiable. Nor would the claim of "intuition tells me so", or "I have a feeling that such and such is about to occur', qualify as justification.

But when we get into more reasonable attempts at justification, I would say that as described above, bare statistical analysis is at the lowest level. This would be simply a matter of following a pattern of occurrence, without knowing the reasons for the pattern. But when we know the reasons for the occurrence of the pattern, we can take justification, and reliability to the next level. This is because then we can pay attention to the features which are designated as the reasons for the pattern, to watch for any changes within those features, which could result in anomalies in the pattern. This would make prediction more reliable, so it's a higher form of justification.

I'm afraid I do have a problem here. I don't disagree with this, but I don't understand what "validates the necessity" means. — Ludwig V

Do you see that "necessary" is a judgement, a claim, or assertion? And, this type of judgement is one which requires justification or else it is meaningless. if I assert "Y follows X, of necessity", or "it is necessary that Y follows X", those terms "necessity" and "necessary" are meaningless without justification. So when I referred to something which "validates the necessity', this type of justification is what I was referring to.

That's fine, except that I want to ask why "must". What if it doesn't? — Ludwig V

The word "must" is justified in the same way the necessity is. If the necessity is validated by justification, so that we can use "must", yet what was deemed as a necessity by that word 'must", does not actually occur, then we can infer a flaw in the justification (the reasoning).

If you say "Oxygen is necessary for life (except for anaerobic bacteria)", I understand that if there is no oxygen, most living things die. So I understand that most living things must live in an atmosphere that contains a certain percentage of oxygen. — Ludwig V

So you have given a false necessity here. Oxygen is not necessary for life, as your exception of anaerobic bacteria shows. This is evident from the fact that you proceed from "oxygen is necessary for life", through the stated exception, to your later assertion of "most life". A more appropriate understanding would determine the types of life forms which require oxygen, and then the true statement of necessity, "oxygen is necessary for these life forms..." could be made.

I'm not clear what the last word adds to the bald statement "water will freeze." — Ludwig V

This is exactly the point, the word "necessarily' adds absolutely nothing, unless it is accompanied by the justification (reasons). We can, and often do, facilitate communication by using 'necessary' in its various forms, without the explicit justification, because the justification is implicit. We simply assume when speaking, or writing, that the other person knows the reason for the claim of "necessary". But I do not think that we can go to the extreme position which Hume seems to be proposing, to say that the reasoning is not there at all, and the use of "necessary' would just be a custom or habit, with no underlying support of reasoning.

The best that I can offer is that if the prediction fails, I will not abandon the generalization, but treat it as a problem that demands an explanation that will preserve as much as possible of what I thought I knew. So if a sample doesn't freeze at that expected temperature, I will research until I find an answer - such as that the water contains too much salt to freeze at the normal temperature. Again, having learnt that fire causes burns, when I find burns occurring in the absence of fire, I will research until I realize that it is heat, not fire, that causes burns and amend my causal law accordingly. Admittedly, my belief that when a causal law fails, there must be an explanation, and my treatment of such failures as not just a fact, but a problem, is a matter of faith, (this may not be the right expression, but something along those lines is needed). Strictly speaking, when what we think is a causal law fails, that disproves the law (cf. Popper). But I can postpone abandoning the law until I'm convinced that there is no explanation for the exceptional case. There is no time limit on the postponement, so I am never compelled to abandon it and if my law is useful, I will classify the falsification as an unexplained event and continue to rely on it. Necessity is a matter of the status of "water will freeze", and not a straightforward question of truth or falsity. — Ludwig V

So what you present here is the issue, and that is the reliability of the underlying reasoning, the justification. And this is what fuels skepticism. Suppose it is customary for us to use "necessary' in its various forms, quite often, because it facilitates efficient and rapid communication. Each time we use one of those forms, there is an implied reasoning or justification. But each implied justification is unique in its reliability, depending on the different sorts of understandings which comprise the various implied justifications. So the simple word "necessary" refers to all sorts of different types and different degrees of understanding (reasoning). Now the skeptic will insist that we must analyze each one, each time that we habitually think of something as "necessary", or use that term, to ensure that there is a reliable understanding which supports it's use. Our customary ways of speaking hide misunderstanding.

The 'exceptions' that you refer to, which pop up, will appear at first, to be random. That is because there are so few of them that there is not enough to produce any sort of pattern which can be analyzed. However, the random exception demonstrates a deficiency in the necessity (the underlying understanding). The method we use to approach the underlying understanding, with the evidence of exceptions as ammunition, is the critical decision. I believe this requires a different type of thinking, maybe what they call thinking outside the box, and this might point to a type of intuition. What is important is the art of identifying relevant factors. Things which seem to be irrelevant, and which may be treated by the customary understanding as irrelevant, may actually be relevant. Also the skeptic apprehends the potential for significant misunderstanding within the things which are taken for granted.

A very good example of attacking an underlying understanding, which was riddled with exceptions is the geocentric model of the cosmos. I believe that the multitude of exceptions (retrogrades) made most intelligent people believe that the model was fundamentally wrong, for many hundreds of years. I think that even further back than Thales and ancient Greece, many believed that a heliocentric model was required. The problem was that mapping the planets as perfect circles could not produce something consistent with the observations, so it could not be supported by predictions. Therefore the desired heliocentric model could not be produced. So, just like you describe here, the use of the extremely complicated geocentric model, which employed all sorts of exceptions persisted. I interpret Aristotle as producing the metaphysical principles which denied the reality of perfectly uniform circular motion. This is the critical point, and it enabled Copernicus with the ammunition to explore various possibilities for non-circular orbits of the planets around the sun, eventually resolving the problem.

"Materialism is the view that every real, concrete2 phenomenon3 in the universe is physical. It’s a view about the actual universe, and for the purposes of this paper I am going to assume that it is true.

2. By ‘concrete’ I simply mean ‘not abstract’. It’s natural to think that any really existing thing is
ipso facto concrete, non-abstract, in which case ‘concrete’ is redundant, but some philosophers like to say that numbers (for example) are real things—objects that really exist, but are abstract. — Manuel

How do you account for the reality of abstractions? You say that every real concrete phenomenon is physical. Then you say that "concrete" means "not abstract". So you allow for a category of 'real not concrete', or 'real abstract', as something distinct from 'real concrete'. By your words, abstract things are not concrete, therefore not physical, yet they are real things which you talk about. And, by your words, these abstractions cannot be part of the universe. So where are they?

I don't understand why you point to my alleged narrow-mindedness, though it could well be the case. — Manuel

I point to your effort to restrict your "universe" to exclude abstractions as a narrow-mindedness, because you seem to recognize the reality of abstractions yet you want to force them out of your "universe" through this exclusion, as if abstractions are somehow unreal. When a large part of what is present to your mind is abstractions, yet you want to force these abstractions out of your mind as something unreal, this can be called a narrowing of your mind, an effort to deny the reality of a large part of what is present to your mind.

As for the supposed contradiction you raise, I take it to be part of our cognitive constitution. We understand the manifest image (as per Sellars term) and we understand a bit of the scientific image.

We are so constituted that we grasp the two aspects of the world, which are actually different views of the same phenomenon, one being more reflexive and careful (science).

It could easily be the case that some intelligent alien species would see how photons get colours as they are processed in the brain, or they could intuitively understand how gravity or qm works. That's not us. — Manuel

I don't understand why this would require an alien. if we can see, as I point out, that our representation is incoherent due to a contradictory nature, then we could simply accept that this is a poor representation, and look for the true representation. There is no need to invoke an alien to do this for us.

But look, you claim two different views of the same thing. How would two different views of one thing be possible in a universe which only consists of one thing? Isn't it necessary to assume something which serves to separate one view from another view. Suppose the universe is all one substance, all matter as you claim, such that the observers, the observed, and everything else is simply matter. What would distinguish one view from another view, making this a real distinction. Furthermore, how could there even be something called a view, because all that matter would block any possibility of a view.

No need to rewrite physics. — apokrisis

Actually, the uncertainty principle, to begin with, is an obvious demonstration, of the reality of this need. Producing a metaphysics which incorporates the deficiencies of science, instead of recognizing them as deficiencies, and seeking the way to resolution, is a meaningless exercise.

You keep touting "naturalism", as if this categorization was sufficient to justify your metaphysics. But naturalism just reifies mother nature, in a similar way to the way that theology reifies "God". The principal difference is that theology allows that the aspects of the universe which appear to us as unintelligible, actually are intelligible, but only appear not to be intelligible because the method we are applying toward attempting to understand them is inadequate. This method is the method of natural philosophy, the scientific method, which has its limitations. Naturalism, on the other hand, treats the unintelligibility of these aspects of the universe as inherent to the nature of the universe itself, rather than as the consequences of deficiencies of the mind and its method of understanding. The difference therefore, is that naturalism approaches something which appears as unintelligible as inherently unintelligible, where theology approaches it as inherently intelligible, but appearing as unintelligible due to a deficiency in the approach.


So naturalism and scientism wrap each other up in mutual support of denying the reality of the supernatural (that which could only be understood by a superior intelligence). But this mutual support is really nothing other than a vicious circle of unintelligibility. Use of the scientific method reaches its limits and finds anything beyond that to be unintelligible to this practise. The naturalist metaphysician models the aspects of the universe which are rendered by the scientific method as unintelligible (chance, randomness, etc.) as ontological (symmetry breaking, etc.). The proponents of scientism take these ontological models as "truth", and therefore proof that the scientific method is the only means to the goal of truth. So the scientific method continues to produce more support for naturalism by demonstrating that these aspects of the universe are inherently unintelligible, as naturalism continues to produce the ontology which represent them, in its support of scientism.

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Our commonsense notions lead us astray in regard to the nature of the world. That something can be at the same time a particle and a wave in superposition is a fact about the world, it doesn't make sense to us, too bad, it's what we have. — Manuel

The reason why it "doesn't make sense" is not that it is counterintuitive, or contrary to commonsense notions, the reason is that it is logically incoherent, as I explained.

No, by physicalism I mean everything in the world is physical stuff - of the nature of the physical - this means that experience is a wholly physical phenomenon. But if it is true that experience is physical, and history is physical and everything that exists is physical, then clearly the physical goes way beyond what we usually attach to the meaning of the word. — Manuel

Until you define what you mean by "physical" this talk is rather pointless. And, as I explained last post, any attempt to describe the whole world as one kind of stuff will inevitably result in incoherent and contradictory descriptions when you start to apply your definitions in practice. To you, this might appear to be a very miniscule part of reality which gets rendered as incoherent, but that's just an indication that you have a very narrow mind, and the miniscule part you get a glimpse of is just the boundaries which confine that narrow mind. In reality, what is on the other side of that boundary is a whole lot more vast than what fits inside your concept of "physical".

I have to say that I don't understand what necessity means here. I assume you don't mean the "true in all possible worlds" kind of necessity. That would be ambitious for an explanation of empirical phenomena. — Ludwig V

This is how I understand "necessity" in the context of cause and effect. The cause is said to necessitate the effect, so we can say that when the cause occurs, the effect must occur. So for example, if a temperature of lower than zero Celsius is said to cause water to freeze, then we can say that whenever this temperature occurs, water will freeze necessarily. It is this "necessity" which validates the normal concept of causation, and which is very effective in prediction.

The difference between prediction by statistical analysis, and prediction by causation, is that the statistics alone cannot provide the required necessity. We could watch water freeze, always at the very same temperature, numerous times over and over again, and no matter how many times we do, we do not get the required necessity, even though we could use this to produce accurate predictions. Having it happen one hundred percent of the times, is not sufficient for necessity, because that might be one time, or a thousand times, in both cases it's one hundred percent. What provides the necessity is the understanding of how the molecules move, and this gives us the reason why water freezes at that temperature. It is this understanding of "the reason why" the two events are related, which validates the necessity of causation.

I'm not trying to defend Hume, just to understand him. All we've got is what he wrote and I don't think those texts have the answers to your challenges, except that I don't think he ever claims that there is any guarantee that our predictions are always successful. That would be inconsistent. — Ludwig V

The point is not whether our predictions are guaranteed, or one hundred percent certain, but that we can have success in a consistent way. We can predict that the sun will rise day after day for example, with a great deal of success. Success is not "guaranteed", but such a prediction has proven successful in the past, and will likely continue to be so. The question is whether such a prediction, which has proven to be successful, and will likely continue to be so, is produced by reasoning, or some other form of habitual or customary mental activity.

I believe that the critical issue here is the matter of successfulness, reliability. We know from experiential evidence that conclusions made through reasoning are reliable. We also know from experience that predictions made without any form of reasoning at all, are highly unreliable. So, we can make random predictions without reasoning, but they are unreliable, and the question for Hume is how does he think we can produce any degree of reliability without reasoning.

Here's an example. Suppose two events occur in succession which are completely coincidental, and I wrongly conclude that one caused the other. Now I'll predict that if I want the later one to occur again, I can initiate the first, and predict the second. But that would be unreasonable because the concept of causation requires more than a simple temporal succession. There must be another premise which establishes the relationship between the two events as more than just a temporal succession, to validate "causation".

So when we look at a simple prediction, like the sun will rise tomorrow, the prediction may based solely on the continuity of what has occurred in the past, into the future, the consistency of nature which Hume is talking about. But notice that there is no "causation" invoked by this prediction. It's a sort of statistical analysis which produces a prediction based on probability, without any need to appeal to causation whatsoever.

Now, we can see that Hume tends to conflate these two types of successful prediction, the one based in statistical analysis, requiring no concept of causation, and the one based in causation. We should also recognize, that the latter, the successful prediction based in causation, is derived from a true understanding, reasoning, because it requires that further premise which establishes a true and necessary relationship between the thing considered as cause, and the thing considered as effect. But the other type of successful prediction, the one based in statistical analysis does not require that form of understanding, just recollection of past memories, and perhaps a method of applying mathematics in a more complicated prediction. We might inquire whether this type of prediction based in simple memory, and developed into an application of mathematics in statistical analysis, is a form of reasoning, or another type of habit or custom. And I think this would be a valid inquiry because such predictions of events are made without producing a "reason" for the occurrence of the predicted event. But this question is removed from the question of causation, and ought not be confused with it. And Hume seems to conflate these two types of prediction.

Look at it this way. He argues 1) that all our ideas are drawn from experience 2) that experience provides no justification for making predictions based on past experience and 3) that we are going to go on doing just that. He also says that we have found this practice useful. Whether this counts as a justification or merely a cause is debateable. — Ludwig V

So the matter which Hume needs to address, if he were here, is the extra premise required to establish a relationship between the predicted event, and the thing which is supposed to be the cause of that event. We can make predictions through statistical analysis, and we can say that these predictions are solely derived from "past experience". The sun has come up every day, I think it will come up tomorrow. And, Hume can make all sorts of claims about this type of prediction, but those claims would be irrelevant to the subject of "causation", because no cause is implied by such a prediction.

But if we want to address the type of prediction which is based on causation, and this is a type of prediction which relates two events in a necessary way, we can't simply take what is true about the other type of prediction, and apply it to this type of prediction, because they are completely different. And I really don't think we can relate two types of events as cause and effect, in the true and necessary way required to produce consistently successful predictions, without some form of reasoning. And this is why it is necessary to understand "the reason" why they are related as cause and effect, in order that the relationship proposed be the true and necessary relation required for consistently successful predictions.

I follow Strawson here, everything is physical, and that means everything. It's a terminological choice, but a coherent metaphysical one, which focuses on the nature of the world.

Within the physical (or material) we understand the conscious aspects of it better than anything by far. But there remains a lot of the physical we understand poorly, which is the non-conscious aspects of the physical (or matter).

What's the incoherence in this view, if you could explain it a bit more? — Manuel

The point is that when such a theory is applied, incoherencies inevitably arise. We can start with the one most obvious in physics, the so-called wave/particle duality. It is incoherent to say that the same energy, at the same time, moves from one place to another as both a particle and as a wave. The way that energy is transmitted through wave action is completely different from the way that energy moves as an object moving from A to B.

By saying that everything is physical you are saying that the way that physics represents reality is the way that things are. But physics represents reality in a way which is incoherent.

You outline a standard account. But I don't accept that it is Hume's. But he is very clear a) that he accepts the sceptical argument (on the grounds that our experience provides no basis for rejecting it) and b) that we make our predictions because of association of ideas and custom or habit. He is careful to say that our understanding plays no part in this, which I think means that no process of reasoning is involved. I think his account is best classified as a causal one. — Ludwig V

This is simply a cop out by Hume. Reasoning is association of ideas, it is habit, and it is custom. And reasoning is the process of understanding. So if Hume wants to say that there is some type of association of ideas, which is not a form of reasoning, but some other type of mental habit, or custom, which is not conducive toward "understanding" like reasoning is, then he needs to explain what he's talking about. For him to assert that we pretend our predictions are based in reason, when this mental custom where predictions are based, is really something other than reasoning, requires justification. He needs to explain what other types of mental customs we have, which are other than reasoning, and how those other customs might result in successful predictions.

I think we by now have sufficient evidence to show that mind and matter are not distinct (different) ontological categories, but instead should be considered part of the same phenomena, matter, which we do not understand well at all. — Manuel

I disagree with this. I don't see how "matter" could ever be defined in a way to reconcile the two distinct categories. There would be too much contradiction and incoherency. What you say, i.e. that we do not understand matter, is evidence of this.

If we define a term for the sake of supporting some ontological position, when we do not really understand the thing referred to by that term, as you propose with "matter", then unless the ontological position is absolutely correct (which is extremely improbable), when we use that term in application, contradiction will be inevitable.

If current public languages are insufficient for communicating something an agent wants to communicate, it can use other means to try to transmit the semantic content, e.g. drawing a diagram of inventing a new word — Count Timothy von Icarus

More than this, the means for communicating is often chosen on the grounds of simplicity. Communication in general is a tool formed for the purpose of facilitating action. So in many cases the public language is sufficient, but sort of like overkill, so the agent may create a very simple demonstration to take the place of a long explanation which might be required if conventional language was employed. This is sort of like the way we use acronyms and short forms. As we gain experience we find simpler ways to do (or say) the same thing.

However, does this rule out theories of natural teleology to you? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know how one would conceive of "natural teleology", so I cannot answer this.

These have a conception of teleology/final cause that isn't dependent on an agent, at least not in a straight-forward way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

From my perspective an "agent" is something active, and something active is required for causation. So we can't really remove the agent from final cause, but you might have something different in mind for "agent", which is an ambiguous term.

Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos," proposes a sort of teleology of immanent principles underlying the universe that in turn result in its generation of agents. That is, the principles come first and in turn generate the agents that fulfill them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem I find with much of this type of metaphysical speculation is the difficulty in determining the active principle which is responsible for causation in a teleological explanation. So for example, you mention "immanent principles" which result in the "generation of agents". Well, a "principle" is fundamentally passive, and so we still need something active, to act as the actual cause of this generation. But this active thing, acting in a teleologically generative way, would really be an agent itself. So it doesn't make sense to say that this would result in the generation of agents, which from this precept must already exist. And if we remove the prerequisite prior agent, we just have a disguised form of emergence.

The need for the prior agent, the actuality which acts as cause, is explained by Aristotle's cosmological argument. If we remove all actuality, to start with a pure potential, like prime matter is supposed to be, then we supposedly have a time, at the beginning, with pure potential, and nothing actual. But any potential needs to be actualized by something actual, to become actual, so the pure potential could not actualize itself, and this would mean that there would always be pure potential, and never anything actual. This is the problem I find with Plotinus' One. It is supposed to be a pure potential which is the source of all things. But this idea falls to Aristotle's cosmological argument, so the Christian God is a pure actuality.

I find these hard to conceptualize at times. The principles are what generate the agents who can recognize the principles and whose existence is part of the process of actualizing them. But then it seems like the agents are essential to defining the principles as teleological, even though the principles predate them, which, if not contradictory, is at least hard to explain in a straight forward fashion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, it seems like you grasp the problem I described above, quite well. Notice that the problem is really the result of a reversal of the actual-potential order expressed by the cosmological argument. The principles which are posited, in the idea you expressed, are supposed to be responsible for the actualization of the agents, but it's really the activity of the agents themselves which accounts for the actualization of the agents.. The problem obviously, is that the action of the agents is supposed to generate (cause) the existence of these agents. So we have a vicious temporal circle where the agents, through their actions, cause their own existence. The point of the cosmological argument is to show that an agent (in the general sense of something actual) must be prior to any actualization of potential. So the actualization cannot be the cause of the agent, it is necessarily caused by the agent. Keep in mind though that "agent" is used in the general sense, so God as an immaterial "agent" is somewhat different from a human being as an "agent", existing with a material body.

I would imagine an example of this would be something like language generation creating exponentially greater cultural learning which then favors a trajectory away from fixed innate instinctual mechanisms for purely learning mechanisms. In this way, the higher level language creation influences lower level instinctual mechanisms (in this case reducing its efficacy). — schopenhauer1

The key here to what I was saying, is to see language development as a freely willed activity of individuals, which is a bottom-up form of causation. We tend to think of language as a structure of rules which we must necessarily be obliged to follow, in order to be understood. But this is a false necessity. If it were true, it would render the creation of language, and its evolution, as something impossible. So we must consider the creative power of the individual, with free will, as the true essence of language, being the necessary condition which allows for the existence of language by causing the existence of language, in the sense of final cause.

There is what I would call a faulty interpretation of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", which assumes a "private language argument", as demonstrating the impossibility of the individual's "private language" as having a relationship with language as a whole. This is analogous to the interaction problem of dualism, the private language is portrayed as incapable of interacting with the public language. But this is a misinterpretation because what Wittgenstein's so-called private language argument really demonstrates is how it is possible for the private aspect of language to incorporate itself into, and therefore become a feature of the more general public language, through this causal relation which Wittgenstein saw as necessary to the existence of language.

So what is particular at the globally general level of the Comos – its will to entropify – becomes the context that makes sharp sense of its own "other" – the possibility of tiny critters forming their own local wishes and ambitions within what remains still possible in a small, but personally valued, way. — apokrisis

By no stretch of the imagination can "entropy" be conceived as a particular. This is the problem encountered when you incorrectly portray final cause as top-down causation. You have to assign purpose to the most general, the most global, and this is exactly opposite to what empirical observation shows us, that purpose is a feature of the most particular, the most local.

This can be clearly understood in the principles of holism. The part has purpose in relation to the whole. "Purpose" therefore, is a property of the part, not the whole. And if we were to attempt to assign purpose to the whole, we would have to relate that whole to something else, make it a part of a larger whole, to say that it has a function in that relation.

To see how "purpose" is causal, as a property of the part, in its relation to the whole, requires an understanding of final cause, and it's associated concept, free will. When the part acts purposefully toward being functional in the existence of the whole, the part does this freely, without causal coercion from the whole. Therefore the "principle" which the part adopts, and which gives it purpose, is derived from something other than the whole of which it is a part of. This principle is fundamental to the part's existence as a part, and is causal (bottom-up) in the sense of final cause.

You haven't dealt with my naturalistic argument. — apokrisis

Your naturalist argument is flawed for the reason I explained. You wrongly portray final causation as top-down. This is because you incorrectly conflate final causation, which is bottom-up causation empowered by the freedom of choice, with the top-down constraints of formal cause, of which "entropy" is one. It is very clear, from all the empirical evidence that we have of the effects of final cause, that the purpose by which a thing acts, comes from within the agent itself, as a bottom-up cause, and it is by selecting this purpose that it may have a function in relation to a whole.