But the form is separable from the matter, that's how we know things through abstraction, the form of the vase is brought into the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

The form of a vase is not physically separated and brought into the mind, What we do in abstraction is mentally distinguish the form of the vase from its matter.

How does the form enter our mind? Dynamically, not physically. The form acts on us via our senses, but all the while, it remains inseparable from the matter of the vase. If it ever ceased to be in the vase, it would cease to be the form of the vase.

If the form of a vase were inseparable from the matter of a vase, you could not say that the form is immaterial because it would be of necessity united with matter, impossible to be otherwise, and therefore material. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not the definition of "material" I am using. "Immaterial" only means not made of matter. Something immaterial can be completely inseparable from matter, or it can exist apart form matter. If it can exist apart from matter, it is called "spiritual." Forms of vases and laws of nature are immaterial but require matter to be what they are, and so they are not spiritual.

As shown by mystical experience, human awareness can operate in ways not dependent on matter, and so is spiritual.

The existence of order does not necessitate the conclusion of intentionality, the existence of purpose does. — Metaphysician Undercover

When a process is ordered, in the sense I an using the term, it acts in a determinate way. If it acts in a determinate way, it will have a determinate end at any point in time. To have a determinate end is to have a purpose.

How about the activity of the earth orbiting the sun, or of things moving from gravity? These are orderly activities, described by laws, but unless we can determine a purpose for these activities we cannot conclude that there is intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree. We can determine their intentionality by applying Brentano's analysis or my logical propagator approach.

Also, the human failure to discern purposes is not an argument that there are no purposes

But you want to change this definition such that order is the essence of intention — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all. Order is one sign of intentionality. Purpose is another. The ordering of means to ends is also a sign, Aboutness is a forth. Being a logical propagator is another. Being a product of intellect or will are still others.

Therefore the existence of the means, i.e. order, does not necessarily indicate intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are no means without ends they are subordinate to.

So you go on and on talking about forms, the immaterial, and intentionality, as if you think that these are real and you believe in them, when in reality you think that these are just the illusions of deluded minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

In a dialog, we should employ the principle of charity -- attributing intellectual integrity to our dialog partner, and looking for the interpretation of what is said that gives it the most sense and rationality. I've said nothing to indicate that I'm writing in bad faith, and I take offense that you have chosen to accuse me of bad faith simply because you don't grasp what I'm telling you.

If the form inheres in the vase, as the matter of the vase does, and is inseparable from the matter of the vase, then how is it anything other than the matter of the vase? I — Metaphysician Undercover

Because neither the matter nor the form are the actual being we call a "vase." Each is an aspect of the vase that we can separate in our minds, but not in reality.

I told you, a work of music, or art. It must be a sign because it has meaning, as is evident from the emotions which it arouses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Emotions are not meanings in the intellectual sense, just in an extended sense that does not apply to signs. Consider what you've said in relation to my original statement, which was that brain states are not signs of the contents they encode because they are neither formal nor instrumental signs. How does the fact that music and art can evoke emotions relate to my claim -- or support your objection?

Defining a word such that many things which are normally referred to by that word are excluded by your definition, in order to support an ontological position, is not good metaphysics. That part of reality excluded by your definition is also excluded from your ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all. The question being examined is how neurally encoded contents relate to the ideas they support. This is a question about information, not emotions. So, the only relevant kind of meaning is that relating to information.

I am not denying the reality of emotions, nor the capacity of art to evoke them. I am only saying that is not what we are talking about now.

I don't think your realistic interpretation of three is necessary to make the sentence true. The referents in the sentence are the molecule and its atoms, which, if counted, will number three. — Dfpolis

It seems to me that you could say the same thing about the particulars. That is, the referent of the sentence is the world which, if observed in a specific way, would present as a water molecule and its atoms. — Andrew M

We need to think about the potential being actualized by each operation. For any potential to be actualized, there needs to an actual being with that potential.

Perhaps the actual being of a water molecule is smeared out in some quantum fashion that does not coalesce until it is observed. That is possible and if so, then the exact configuration we observe would not be actual until we interact with it -- observing it. Still, experience shows that every time we observe a water molecule, we find two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So, whatever its unobserved state, that state is fully determined with respect to the kinds of atoms we will find. Since information is the reduction of possibility, and there is no possibility that we will find any other atoms, we can say it's atomic structure is fully informed.

So, we know there is some reality, prior to our observation, that is determinately H2O. Further, that reality is doing things. For example, it is contributing to the gravitational field.

Now, what about the "threeness" of the molecule? It is also a determinate potential, but it is not doing anything that the physicality of the molecule is not doing. It has no operations of its own. it is just a non-operational aspect of the molecule waiting for someone to come along and count it. Whe we do count it, we actualize its intelligibility, forming a subject-object relation with this aspect of the water molecule.

The whole reality of the <three> comes from us actually thinking it. In other words, the only activity specifically associated with the "threeness" of the molecule is us thinking about it. Apart form us thinking it, there is no activity associated with "threeness" -- so it is potential, not actual, when not actually thought.

Matter is an abstraction. The material is an abstraction. Ergo realities independent of matter is an abstraction. — Blue Lux

Matter is the foundation in reality for the concept <matter> (an abstraction), which is expressed by the word "matter." While the thought <matter> is an abstraction, its foundation in reality (the aspect of reality that elicits the concept <matter>) is not.

Think of volley balls, baseballs, soccer balls, rubber balls, ping pong balls, etc. All are real balls. None are abstractions. Each is able to elicit the concept <ball>. <Ball> is an abstraction because it leaves behind the information that makes any individual ball unique or a specific kind of ball. Still, when I speak of balls, I'm not referring to an abstraction but to real, spherical objects.

So, realities independent of matter are realities that can act without depending on any material object.

Communicating has nothing to do with getting others to see what you see, for that assimilation of theirs is going to label what you see as an abstraction, which will only reconfigure their own experience. No meaning is exchanged. And it can not be proven that there is actually an increasing meaning... Such an increasing would have to be objective... Transpersonal and devoid of meaningful meaning. — Blue Lux

In communication, meaning is not "exchanged." It is recreated. Our signs do not actually "carry" meaning. When an instrumental sign is received and interpreted, an association is invoked in the interpreter. If the interpreter sees smoke, she associates it with fire and the associated concept <fire> becomes the meaning of the cloud of smoke, considered as a sign, When you see the word "ball," then, by a learned association, you think of concrete balls and the abstract concept <ball> -- recreating in yourself the meaning I expressed in typing "ball."

So, yes, communicating is entirely about getting others to "see," intellectually, what I see. If my communication succeeds, the recipient's mind is not merely "reconfigured." She starts thinking of what I am thinking of. Her thought is not my thought, but each of us think of the same reality from a different perspective.

Of course we can't "prove" that meaning is increased, because often it is not. Sometimes communication fails altogether. Still, we can see it. If I'm speaking of soccer balls, and she is a soccer fan, while I'm not, her associations, the meaning evoked in her mind, may far exceed mine. That's why good art can be so powerful: because it can evoke meanings in its audience which far exceed those in the artist. Thus Michelangelo's Pieta can evoke all of the feelings of sorrow and loss we have experienced -- feelings that are uniquely ours, not Michelangelo's. Still, we may feel as he felt.

So, the meaning of the Pieta is transpersonal. It is not confined to any one person, but shared by many. Yet each shares it in their own personal way -- calling to mind their own sorrow and loss, not Michelangelo's.

Nietzsche -> Freud -> Adler -> Maslow — Blue Lux

I've read a fair amount of Freud. Again there is no mention of Nietzsche. Just because Dirrida mentions the two of them together with Heidegger as strong influences, does not mean that Freud's views were strongly influenced by Nietzsche. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and online Britannica make no mention of Nietzsche in their articles \on Freud. Paul Vitz suggests that Freud's theories on the unconscious and libido reflect those of Aquinas, albeit unknowingly.

The de facto configuration of being intelligible by others is the source of in authenticity, namely of the they. — Blue Lux

We will have to agree to disagree. I see authenticity as arising out of knowledge by connaturality -- knowing one's self by being attuned to what "resonates" with us. Did you decide you were gay because "they" told you so, or because of experiences that resonated with your being?

The transpersonal label is what establishes the point of reference known as objectivity, which is metaphorically the source of all inauthenticity. — Blue Lux

I don't think that "the objective," what is intersubjectively available, is rightly called "consciousness." It is at the other pole of the subject-object relationship from awareness.

Being at the other pole of the relationship, the objective is neither authentic nor inauthentic. Only our response can be authentic or inauthentic.

The single consciousness is the consciousness of objectivity, which does not define consciousness as a whole but is consciousness in a very real degree. — Blue Lux

We may each be conscious of the same object, but our consciousness of that object is uniquely our own -- not only because we are different subjects, but because as different subjects we each have a different relation to the object (a different standpoint and a different set of associations).

There is no creation of existence. Existence preceeds essence. — Blue Lux

Yes, existence is prior to essence, and no, existence as a whole cannot be created. Still, individual existents, even whole universes, can be created, ex nihillo.

You're not being precise at all. You're simply saying that a certain set of rules are necessarily correct but have no reason for believing so. Anyone can say that, actually showing it has been my repeated argument against you. — MindForged

i am ceaselessly amazed how I can explain my position repeatedly, and spark no glimmer of understanding. You asked "What defines correct thinking?" I defined the term, saying "forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially. "Rules." were not mentionde.

Your reply doesn’t address a word of my response. Instead, you put in my mouth something I did not say. Further:
1. You didn’t ask for a justification, but criticize me for not giving one here.
2. I have previously given a justifying argument, but you claim I’ve given no reason for my position. Whether you agree with my reasons or not, saying I have given none is a lie.
3. In a good faith dialog, the partners do their best to understand one another, asking for clarifications when needed. They then respond, to the best of their ability, to what is actually said. You are not doing me that courtesy.

Moving on:

Logic is the enterprise of creating a system which preserves truth by not resorting to "principles of being" (which, again, you do not have some inherent claim to the correct principles of being without argument) but to principles of inference. — MindForged

First, if you "create" a system without foundational reflection, there is no reason to think its principles of inference will besalve veritate. Since truth is the adequacy of our thought to reality, any foundational reflection must include an understanding of reality, of being.

Second, the principles of being are not my personal discovery, nor are they limited by finite domain of human experience and cognition. Rather, just as our understanding of unity applies to anything that can properly elicit the concept <one>, so the principles of being apply to anything that exists.

Third, as first principles, they cannot be the conclusion of a more fundamental deduction. Still, we can examine the processes by which we come to them, and I’ve offered such an account. You have chosen not to criticize my account, nor have you offered viable counterexamples to the resulting principles.

You’ve made hand-waving remarks about the unreliability of human cognition. I could make similar, but substantiated, objections to the beliefs of symbolic logicians – say to Hilbert’s program and its demise at the hand of Goedel. Of course humans make errors. I've made plenty, but the strength of communal research lies in its power to identify errors and correct the processes leading to them. So, if you have a specific criticism of my abstractive justification of the principles of being, please spell it out.

The reason the symbolic side is more in vogue is precisely because the normative role of logic requires first having your inference rules and axioms laid out first. — MindForged

That is a good reason to begin with an examination of correct thought, as Aristotle did. It is no reason to "create" rules of inference that lack an adequate foundation in human thought or in the reality it seeks to reflect.

In Syllogistic, one cannot derive any arbitrary conclusion from inconsistent premises, e.g.

Some As are Bs
No Bs are As
Therefore, All As are As — MindForged

Your syllogism has an undistributed middle, and the conclusion, while true, is invalid.

Consider:
Some Americans are Hispanic.
No Hispanics are pure Irish.
We can draw no conclusion linking "Americans" and "pure Irish" from this data, so your "syllogism" is formally invalid. Substituting "American" for "pure Irish" does not make it a valid form.

What warrants accepting contradictory claims is that you might well have good reason to believe both and no (current) means of picking one over the other. — MindForged

With reasoning like this, no wonder we disagree! Knowing the truth of neither, warrants neither.

I have no good reason for believing p if I have a good reason for believing ~p. Why? Because reasons for belief do not work in isolation, but in the aggregate.

The "shaky" foundations of the calculus before the theory of limits was developed is not an example of your claim. No one using calculus in that era doubted that it was a reliable tool. No physicist used it despite thinking it was "false." Mathematicians recognized that its foundations needed work, but did not simultaneously believe it was well-founded.

Rational people do not accept contradictions. If they can't decide, they suspend judgement.

Explosion didn't become standard in logic until Frege created classical logic. — MindForged

You mean there was no Principle of Pseudo-Scotus before Frege? In which of Frege's Latin works did he write "ex falso sequitur quodlibet"? Or "ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet? Was it in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logisch mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl? Oh, wait, that was in German, like the rest of hie works, wasn't it? Have you read anything about logic before Frege?

The way people form their concepts of being an existence are not the same. — MindForged

Yes? Are you going to explain?

Aristotelian logic does not map to the "ways of thinking". In fact, probably no logic does to any degree of usefulness (otherwise developing AI would be much easier). — MindForged

I suggest you read John Poisot's Ars Logica (translated in part as The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas) or Henry Veatch's Intentional Logic.

Confusing AI, implemented in with instrumental signs infinite state machines, with human thought, which employs formal signs, betrays an inadequate grasp of material logic.

The particles in question are, quite possibly, not identical to themselves — MindForged

Really? If that’s what you think, you have completely misunderstood the text. Let's look at it:

When you observe a particle of a certain type, say an electron, now and here, this is to be regarded in principle as an isolated event. Even if you observe a similar particle a very short time at a spot very near to the first, and even if you have every reason to assume a causal connection between the first and the second observation, there is no true, unambiguous meaning in the assertion that it is the same particle you have observed in the two cases.

Note that the "identity" being discussed here is not that expressed by the Principle of Identity (“Whatever is, is”) -- which is unitary -- but a binary identity linking two cases. Using one as a counterexample to the other is equivocation.

It does show that. If "Whatever is, is" holds for quantum objects as well (take Schrodinger's case of electrons) then they necessarily must be ontologically individuated. — MindForged

It does no such thing. "Whatever is" assumes no specific structure to reality. It applies to whatever is actually the case.

Can people defensibly have different accounts of an idea which goes by the same name? — MindForged

If you mean by “accounts” explanations of the genesis of the idea, then, of course, the same idea can have a different genesis in different people. If you mean essentially different definitions[\i] of the same idea[\i], then no, because essentially different definitions specify essentially different ideas.

If what you meant to ask was: Can one apply the same name, say “Principle of Identity,” to different ideas, then of course they can. The Principle of Identity in abstract algebra is not the Principle of Identity in ontology. Equating them can only lead to the fallacy of equivocation.

I said Aristotle gave this argument as a metaphysical example of where the Law of the Excluded Middle does not apply. Your response is to say that the rules are different there. Well, yea, that's what I was saying. — MindForged

No, I did not say the "rule" is different. The "rule" is exactly the same. What is different is that future contingents do not exist, and so fail to meet the conditions of application for the rule -- which applies to all existential situations. This goes to the heart of what I am saying, and what you fail to see -- namely, unless you understand the foundational role of the principles of being, you cannot understand when the conditions of application for logic are met, and when they are not.

I gave another example earlier, when I showed how simple it was to resolve the Liar and Jourdain's paradox if one understands the dependence of logic on being.

The particles in question are, quite possibly, not identical to themselves (it's a question of science and not one solved by recourse to abstraction from everyday experiences). To pretend that's not the argument I was making is a lie. — MindForged

I have pointed out that unary and binary identity are different, If you cannot or will not grasp this, there is no point in my pressing the matter further.

You can redefine "exists" if you wish, but doing so will not change what I mean by the term.

Ah the good ol' "My definition is inherently the default one" — MindForged

Not at all. I am only saying that you cannot claim to rebut my position when you do not use my definitions. If I am talking about the associative property of fields and you argue that there is no such property in a corn field, what you're saying may be true, but it's entirely irrelevant to my position.

if you cannot accept truth-values then you cannot even use modern mathematics. — MindForged

I do not reject all use of truth values. I simply see that they are not well founded for every well-formed formula. In other words that truth is a prelational, not na intrinsic property.

Rudeness begets rudeness my friend, and you have a habit of using it and pretending it didn't happen. — MindForged

I admit to being rude to you. When I encounter an uncivil jibe, I sometimes post rude rejoinders. I will try to be more charitable,

Kripke gives examples in "An Outline of a Theory of Truth", — MindForged

I suppose you are talking about this, from pp. 691f:

Consider the ordinary statement, made by Jones:
(1) Most (i.e., a majority) of Nixon's assertions about Watergate are false. Clearly, nothing is intrinsically wrong with (I), nor is it ill-formed. Ordinarily the truth value of (1) will be ascertainable through an enumeration of Nixon's Watergate-related assertions, and an assessment of each for truth or falsity. Suppose, however, that Nixon's assertions about Watergate are evenly balanced between the true and the false, except for one problematic case,
(2) Everything Jones says about Watergate is true. Suppose, in addition, that (1) is Jones's sole
assertion about Watergate, or alternatively, that all his Watergate-related assertions except perhaps (1) are true. Then it requires little expertise to show that (1) and (2) are both paradoxical: they are true if and only if they are false. — Kripke

Note that "Everything Jones says about Watergate is true." is not a statement about the reality of Watergate, but one about Jones' statements. Similarly, "Most of Nixon's assertions about Watergate are false," is not a statement about Watergate, but about Nixon's locutions. Thus, it cannot be counted among "Nixon's assertions about Watergate."

Since truth is the adequacy of our thought to reality, it is not intrinsic, but relational. Thus, not all statements have to be true or false. Some can be non-referential, having no relation to reality. and so neither true not false. Accordingly, if some of the subject statements are non-referential, it is a category error to assert that they are true or false.

So, Kripke's paradox just like Jourdain's. While either statement here, or in Jourdain's paradox, could be ultimately referential, in the scenario given, they are not. We can confirm this by a thought experiment. If we change anything about Watergate not covered by Jones' excepted statements, the change will not alter the supposed truth or falsity of either Jones' or Nixon's claims. Thus, just as in the Jourdain case, the sentences, considered jointly, are unrelated to reality.

The fundamental error here is assuming that truth and falsity can be assigned t statements which can't be cashed out existentially. The same principle shows the rationality of requiring universal propositions to have existential import.

So, you want me to seriously consider that I may never have encountered existence? I'm not following you down that rabbit hole either.

No, I'm saying that "reflecting" upon it does not by virtue of magic entail you have developed an adequate understanding of it — MindForged

I am not claiming to have an exhaustive knowledge of being. My understanding only needs to be adequate to justify the principles of being that underpin traditional logic.

If you have a supperior way of justifying fist principles, please be good enough to share iit. If you believe my grasp of being to be inadequate, you need only show that one or more of the principles of being implicit in it (as stated -- not as extended by you) is false. So far, you have not.

Yea, one which we can say true things about. — MindForged

No, one we can say conditionally true things about. The condition is what Aristotle called "the willing suspension of disbelief." If you impose this condition on a premise, then it remains imposed on any dependent conclusion. So, if you want to say "In an imagined world with Pegasi, some horses have wings," I would have no objection. But, that conclusion does not make your case.

"All winged horses are horses" should come out as true — MindForged

Only in the dissociated world of symbolic logic where "truth" does not mean adequate to reality.

"Sorry mate, it's no longer true that zebras are black and white because, obviously, there are no zebras anymore!" — MindForged

Future contingents never had actual existence. Extinct animals had actual existence. We express this with past tenses. So, "Pterodactyls have wings (today)" is not true, while "Pterodactyls had wings (when they lived)" is true. Of course, common language isn't precise, so we have to consider the intention expressed, not just the words used. So, if someone says "Pterodactyls have wings," meaning "One characteristic of being a peterodactyl is having wings," she is speaking the truth, but imprecisely.

No, I ignored the "merits" because the "cost" includes rejecting modern logic and mathematics which make crucial use of the concepts you're dispensing with, not to mention rendering innumerable natural language expressions as mistaken — MindForged

I already pointed out that this is baloney. There is nothing in traditional logic that prevents anyone from stating a set of axioms and working out their implications. Knowing traditional logic only means that they will be able to bring greater insight to the task.

So, now that I've taken your fig leaf, and shown that there is no "cost," what is wrong with my solution?

Not the stupidity, the lack of usability. If it cannot even work for expressions such as that then its use of existential import (and the ill-defined notion of "correct thinking") just aren't worthwhile to keep. — MindForged

So, you you think its "useful" to be able to prove that some living horses have wings? And believe that "salve veritate" thinking is not "worthwhile"? I am trying to be charitable here, but it's not easy.

Perhaps you have in mind some theorem or empirical finding that cannot be arrived at using traditonal logic? I surely know none.

Without a theory of quantifiers (which we get in classical logic) one cannot, for instance, distinguish between the condition for the continuity of a function and the condition for uniform continuity. — MindForged

Universal quantification:
"For all n (a natural number), n has a successor." How is this more or less informative than "All natural numbers have a successor"?

Existential quantification:
"There exists an n such that n is q." How is this more or less informative than "some natural number is q"?

Or lets take a "problem" from the quantification article for Wikipedia:
1 · 2 = 1 + 1, and 2 · 2 = 2 + 2, and 3 · 2 = 3 + 3, ...
This sis supposedly problematic because it is infinite. But, it can be stated as a universal affirmative: "All natural numbers are such that 2 times the number is the sum of the number with itself."

Admittedly, modern notation is far less cumbersome. Still, that is not a problem of principle, but of notation.

Why have you recommended this work over those of modern semioticians (e.g., Saussure, Peirce, vonUexkull, Morris, Sebeok, Lotman, Eco, Deely, etc. )? — Galuchat

Because his distinction between formal and instrumental signs clears up a number of confusions found the philosophy of mind (e.g. in representational and cybernetic theories of mind), as well as theories involving "a language of thought." It also brings into question the primacy of language that undergirds analytic philosophy.

More generally an intentional approach to logic allows one to dispose of a number of paradoxes such as the Liar and Jourdain's. Arguably, it makes Russell's theory of types unnecessary and gives a simple resolution to issues such as those raised by Quine in Word and Object.

That said, I do not pretend to more than a smattering of Saussure, Peirce and Deely. If modern semioticians have resolved these issues, I would be happy to learn more of them.

Yes, you have denied this, not explicitly but implicitly. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I have not. I'm not responsible for you extrapolating beyond what i have said.

As such, these laws are explicitly material — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing being material with the laws being dependent on matter for their expression. For example, the form of a vase is immaterial (not made of matter), but it is inseparable from the matter of the vase. I have made it quite clear that the laws are immaterial -- it is a category error to ask what they are made of.

since God is understood to be immaterial, as the cause of matter and material existence in general, it is implied that the laws cannot be traced to God. — Metaphysician Undercover

This makes no sense. On the one hand you say that "God is ... the cause of matter." On the other that because the laws are material (which they are not), they cannot be traced to God.

You are saying that it is incorrect to associate invariance with the laws of nature. How are they even "laws" then, if they're subject to change? — Metaphysician Undercover

I am saying that over the widest field of their application the laws of nature are invariant and so rightly called "laws." Still a large range is not universality. Are American laws against speeding not laws because there is no speed limit on the autobahn?

This is completely different from "participating" in the law, which is to accept the law and act accordingly. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the Thomistic context in which I am using the term, "participating" in Divine Providence means being a co-creator with God.

It was your suggestion that the human being is a unity of intentional and physical. If these were not stated as distinct parts, then what do you mean by this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I mean that we can perform both physical and intentional operations, and that our intellect can discern the difference between these kinds of operations. In the same way, a rubber ball is not part sphere and part rubber. It is one thing with different aspects the mind can distinguish.

I think you and I have completely different notions of "intentionality". I associate intentionality with the will, the intellectual appetite. So "the good", as that which is recognized by the intellect as desirable, is at the root of intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not that we have different notions, it is that I am showing the intentionality of the laws by looking at their intrinsic character rather than their Source.

Human beings have physical bodies. They also have intention. To give priority to intention does not necessitate that the laws of physics are not applicable to the human body. It just means that the laws of physics are not applicable to intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not so fast. If decide to walk to the store, each step is a physical process closely described by the laws of physics. It is also a product of my intention to arrive at the store by walking. So, there is no either-or here. It is a both-and situation. An adequate account has to incorporate both the physical and the intentional realities at work here.

In #2, I see that you use "intentional" in a way completely different than I would. I would say that "intentional" means to act with purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you denying that God has a purpose in maintaining the laws of nature? I am not. I am just not bringing God into the conversation so as not to be drawn off on a theological tangent.

That premise would be that where there is order, there is intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is more than one way to skin a cat. I offered less contentious arguments, viz. my logical propagator argument and that based on Brentano's analysis of intentionality.

he proposition you made in the op, which I objected to, was that the laws of nature inhere within matter. So now you have contradictory positions — Metaphysician Undercover

We've discussed this before. The form of a vase inheres in a material vase, still it is immaterial.

in #3 you claim that we can understand the human mind's "material structure" by following the "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not what i said. I was discussing the method of natural science and its self imposed limits, and pointing out the data excluded by this approach.

So how could we understand the material through the laws of nature, when the laws of nature are an aspect of the intentional? — Metaphysician Undercover

In 3, I said we can study the physical structure of the mind (the brain), by applying the method of natural science. I did not say we were studying the mind's "matter." Let me say it yet again: "Physical" does not mean "material." Describing material states is only a small part of physics. A much greater part is studying the laws of nature, which are intentional.

Second, we cannot follow the laws of nature in the application of natural science even if we wanted to, because the closest thing we have is the laws of physics, but these are distinct. — Metaphysician Undercover

Did I say we were following the laws of nature? I said we were applying the method of the natural sciences.

What I would like to know is how you conceive of the laws of nature operating "in" matter without reducing the laws to being matter itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the same way that a vase's form inheres in the vase without being the matter of the vase.

how are these non-spatial laws, which are inherent within matter, anything other than matter itself? — Metaphysician Undercover

Same answer.

Second, how could these laws act? — Metaphysician Undercover

In the same way human committed intentions act -- by actualizing a specific potential motion.

But meaning is often vague and indefinite, so the sign does not need to be formal or instrumental. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have an example of a sign that is neither formal nor instrumental?

This is the case with many emotions. Something triggers an emotion, that thing is a sign because it actualizes meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

An emotion is not a meaning, it is a state of being.

there is nothing specific which the sign "represents". — Metaphysician Undercover

Then, it is not a "sign" in the standard sense of the term. As you say " to be a sign, all that is required is to actualize meaning." Of course, you can equivocate on "meaning." I am taking a meaning to be informative -- to represent something,

consciousness does seem to be contingent on the material, although it is itself immaterial. — Blue Lux

If we can be aware of realities essentially independent of matter, then awareness need not be contingent on matter. I think mystical experience shows that we can, If you are interested, I suggest you start with W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy -- which is phenomenological, not religious, in perspective.

Stace makes the point that some types of mystical experience are completely free of sensory content -- and therefore of the need for neural processing.

Your own authentic position can only be understood by an assimilation, which loses meaning in the process. — Blue Lux

This need not be so. I try to communicate by getting others to stand beside me and see what I see. If I succeed, they see what I see, but from their own perspective, and as relevant to their own experience. So they may actually see more than i see -- increasing, rather than diminishing, meaning.

Consciousness is an objective, transpersonal entity in terms of the they — Blue Lux

I have no idea why you would say this. Consciousness is not a thing, not an entity, but a power that intelligent beings have. It is also ultimately personal -- it is what makes me the knowing subject in subject-object relations. If it were transpersonal, I would be directly aware of what others experienced. I am not.

meaning is often not communicated at all, and it is precisely in these meaningless structures of 'knowledge' or reference that constitutes the herd constitution of consciousness. — Blue Lux

Again, I don't know what this could mean. Yes, sometimes, even often, we fail to communicate but when you say "these meaningless structures of 'knowledge' or reference ... constitutes the herd constitution of consciousness," I'm at a loss. There is no awareness, no consciousness, without some object of awareness. If we communicate nothing, there is nothing to be aware of.

Maslow's hierarchy came after Nietzsche, and it is precisely the understanding that Nietzsche tries to communicate which sets the tone for an understanding of such a hierarchy at all — Blue Lux

I've read Maslow's paper. He does not mention Nietzsche. I've never read Nietzsche, but I had no problem understanding Maslow. So, it hardly seems necessary to know Nietzsche to understand Maslow.

The problem is not necessarily authenticity itself but alienation as well, which is not synonymous with authenticity. — Blue Lux

OK.

"There is no "having to be intelligible to others." — Dfpolis

This is not the case... It is that consciousness is often completely unintelligible in terms of the they. And an authentic consciousness would have as its object its being authentic. — Blue Lux

It seems to me that to be authentic is to act in conformity with your self-understanding -- not twisting yourself to conform to the expectations of others. If so, then doesn't "having to be intelligible to others" cut across the core of authenticity?

I'm not saying that we should ignore others, or even their efforts to understand us. I'm saying that if they refuse to understand us, or even if they try and fail to understand, that is their problem, not ours.

If there really were a single consciousness, everyone would value and devalue the same things — Dfpolis

This is not analytically true. — Blue Lux

I mean if there were a single consciousness, there would be a single mind. We would all know and see things the same way, and so value the same things.

If love is a mystical experience by your definition — Blue Lux

That is not what i said.

I provided an issue that falls out of using that definition. — MindForged

I disposed of.

Which

You are avoiding the issue though. What defines correct thinking? — MindForged

I have already said. Let me be more precise: forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially.

That is determined by articulating some formal set of rules, i.e. a logic, and arguing that such a system ought to be reasoned in accordance with. — MindForged

Not quite. It is observing that if you're reasoning, and want the truth of your premises to guarantee the truth of your conclusion, your reasoning needs to reflect the principles of being. Adhering to certain forms is one way of doing this.

That being that there's a difference between logic (a set of symbols and rules regarding their transformation) and the normative roles we give to a certain set of those rules (the correct rules for reasoning, or if you prefer, thinking). — MindForged

Since you admit there is a difference, between what you call "logic" ("a set of symbols and rules regarding their transformation") and the science of correct thinking, let us agree that what I am discussing is not what you call "logic"

Let us also agree that mere fact that two areas (correct thought vs the transformation of symbolic forms) differ is not a reason for the study of one to be more in vogue than that of another.

Classical logic says from a contradiction everything follows and yet it would be impossible to actually reason that way in everyday life (just recall how often you come across conflicting information). — MindForged

From a contradiction, anything does, in fact, follow. And yes, we are told conflicting things. ( I would not call both conflicting statements "information" because they cannot both reduce what is logically possible.) Does the mere existence of conflicting claims warrant treating contradictory statements as equally true? Hardly.

Do you think that the existence of conflicting claims is new -- that the people of Aristotle's time were not beset with half truths, misunderstandings, rumors, myths and outright lies? If they were, then there is no more reason now to ignore the study of correct thinking than there was when Aristotle taught invented logic.

Of course if you are not interested in truth, Aristotelian logic can be of little use. I want to be able to deconflict incompatible claims. I see the goal of philosophy as providing us with a consistent, experienced-based framework for understanding reality -- resolving the conflicts you find so overwhelming as to justify giving up on correct thought.

A finding which even your own apparent source (Aristotle) disagrees with. — MindForged

Please! I've already dealt with this absurd claim.

And again, reflecting on your own experience does not entail finding a necessity because your experience does not encompass the whole of how reality can be. — MindForged

Of course my "experience does not encompass the whole of ... reality. It does not need to. As with many lacking a adequate background in perennial philosophy, you are confusing induction on the Hume-Mill model with abstraction. Hume-Mill inductions are not reliable because, to reach a universal conclusion, they must add an assumption (that all other cases are like those already encountered), to the data. Abstraction is quite different, It does not add to the data, it removes some notes of intelligibility, fixing on others to form actual knowledge. So, to form our concepts of <being> and <existence>, all we need to do is remove any notes of intelligibility that specify the particularity of the being we are encountering.

So, it is completely immaterial that we have not encountered all possible beings, or even all actual beings. All that is required to apply our understanding of being is that anything to which we wish to apply it be able to evoke the concept <being> -- and all reality is.

My response was that your argument is valid in basically every logic. Ergo it wasn't resorting to Aristotelian assumptions. — MindForged

Let's be clear. The syllogism only reflects a valid thought process in words. Aristotelian logic is not about verbal forms. It is about the ways of thinking expressed in those forms. (See Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic.) So, no, the form of thought is not addressed in non-intentional systems of "logic." They only deal with rules of symbolic manipulation.

I gave you an example of a (potential) empirical violation of the Law of Identity. — MindForged

That is precisely the point. Your example has nothing to do with the Principle of Identity we are discussing. To continue to pretend that it does, after I have shown you its utter irrelevance is arguing in bad faith.

Your response was simply to claim that Identity is necessarily true (in the world) therefore my example is off the table because it posits the Law of Identity is only contingently true (only holding for some objects). — MindForged

My response was that granting the facts you put into evidence does nothing to show that "Whatever is, is" is false. Please do not distort my position. If it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable, then it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable. (BTW, I have no reason to doubt this.)

Nor is it useful to pretend that the Principle of Identity is something else. I am not following you down a Trumpian rabbit hole, so I am skipping the rest of your comments on identity.

This might contradict Relativity — MindForged

No, it does not. The Sea Battle (on earth) tomorrow is in the future in all frames of reference.

Since you brought it up again, her is what Aristotle actually says:

This is the case with regard to that which is not always existent or not always nonexistent. One of the two propositions in such instances must be true and the other false, but we cannot say determinately that this or that is false, but must leave the alternative undecided. One may indeed be more likely to be true than the other, but it cannot be either actually true or actually false. It is therefore plain that it is not necessary that of an affirmation and a denial one should be true and the other false. For in the case of that which exists potentially, but not actually, the rule which applies to that which exists actually does not hold good. — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

The reason Aristotle give is exactly that I gave, i.e. that because the case is not actual (does not exist) neither proposition can "be either actually true or actually false."

It's not obvious that the future doesn't exist, or at least, you've no experience on which to say anything about it. — MindForged

You can redefine "exists" if you wish, but doing so will not change what I mean by the term.

At this point you cannot even use modern logical systems, nor even modern mathematics based on those systems. — MindForged

I do not base the math I use on symbolic logic, as no mathematical system reducible to arithmetic can be shown to be self-consistent. I justify my mathematics by abstracting its foundations from reality -- thus guarantying its self-consistency.

Still, I wonder why you are not commenting on my simple resolution of the "insoluble" paradoxes, or jumping in with an actual defense against my charge that "truth value" is an incoherent concept. "Cute" is not a counterargument.

As it happens, your experiences (even ones you may think must be true) can be incorrect. — MindForged

So, you want me to seriously consider that I may never have encountered existence? I'm not following you down that rabbit hole either.

you've given no argument that it is actually necessary or how you know it to be so other than by saying "Upon reflection". — MindForged

I invite you, and all readers, to make a similar reflection and determine whether or not your understanding of <being> justifies the principles we've been discussing. I can only lead you to the standpoint, orient you, and bid you to look. I cannot put the insight in your mind.

That's not what I said. Pegasi do not exist. That does not mean I cannot define a meaning for "Pegasi". — MindForged

I was not talking about your example, but responding to your claim that I had made my case true by definition.

Rather, definitions point to the aspects of reality we're discussing.

... Definitions do not always point to actual things, sometimes they just point to ideas or concepts. — MindForged

Quite right, they do not always indicate some reality. I was imprecise. I should have said they specify concepts that may or may not be instantiated.

Still, unless we are discussing ideas or concepts, they do not just point to ideas or concepts. The definition of "Pegasus" is not the definition of an idea, but of a mythical beast.

Classical logic is the logic Frege created in the 1870s, Aristotle used Aristotelian logic. — MindForged

Yes, symbolic logicians have appropriated "classical logic" for a class of propositional "logics." In some sources, Aristotle's logic is the first example of a "classical" logic," and you have used the term to include the kind of logic I am discussing. ("Classical logic says from a contradiction everything follows.") Still, I don't want to confuse you, so I'll say "Traditional Logic" -- which has a long history of development after Aristotle.

That said, you have once again pettifogged instead of addressing my point, viz. that traditional logic is not primarily about linguistic forms, but about correct thinking, and the alternatives you raised look no deeper than the surface of formal expression.

And the Liar-type paradoxes have nothing to do with existential import, because the arguments don't have any quantifiers in them so your response here makes no sense. — MindForged

I did not say the sentence of the Liar paradox had existential import. I said that that the concepts of <truth> and <falsity> did not apply to the sentence because it made no reference to reality.

Stepping back, you're so dogmatic in your commitments that you will not even discuss the merits of my solution. instead, you employed the Trumpian tactic of raising other issues (T-schemes, existential import, etc) to distract from my proposal.

"All winged horses are horses" is obviously true unless you make the (now discarded) Aristotelian assumption about existential import. — MindForged

1. No, it is not true. Truth is the adequacy of what is inthe mind to reality, and your claim adequates to no reality.

2. You were trying to show the outright stupidity of Aristotelian logic, but you could only do so by violating its canons, specifically by ignoring the requirement that Universal affirmative propositions have existential import. That is shabby at best. It is like a high schooler trying to reject algebra by "proving" that 1=2 -- forgetting that there isw a prohibition against divideing by zero.

Otherwise we have this infinite class of perfectly analyzable statements (in ordinary language) and yet we cannot reason about them meaningfully. — MindForged

Again, you are closed to my fundamental point. Traditional logic is not about sentential or any other form of symbolic manipulation, It is about correct thinking. There is no explicit or implicit contradiction in requiring existential import of universal affirmative judgements about reality. If you think there -- have at it.

And a logic like that is so weak as to be inadequate in modern mathematics. — MindForged

Thank you for your faith claim.

1. I've already shown you that you cannot rationally apply axioms without the line of thought reflected by the syllogism in Barbara.
2. Nothing in traditional logic prevents you from postulating axioms of whatever sort and working out their consequences. The axioms can specify any of the systems of symbolic manipulation that so amuse you. So, understanding how to think correctly can do noting but help you think correctly about the several systems you choose to call "logics."

there would still be three atoms in a water molecule even if there were no intelligent agents in the universe. For that sentence to be true, none of the referents can depend on an agent's thoughts. — Andrew M

I don't think your realistic interpretation of three is necessary to make the sentence true. The referents in the sentence are the molecule and its atoms, which, if counted, will number three.

Thinking in relation to others changes the authenticity of your own meaning into its herd analogue. — Blue Lux

"Thinking in relation to others" is the inescapable foundation of successful communication. If you have not already, you will find that I'm quite able to maintain my own, authentic position while communicating with others. I think you are capable of the same.

This will to a lack of ambiguity and a demonstration of human life that attains the value of absolute or normal or conventional is that which boxes the human into a construction of their own lives as not with reference to their own subjective feelings and meanings but with regard to everything they are not, which is all that is communicable — Blue Lux

Yes, there are people who twist themselves into knots to "fit in," but they are rather low on the path to satisfy Maslow's heirarchy of needs or growth in Fowler's stages of faith. There is certainly nothing "universal" here.

I am gay. My thoughts about my life, if this was fifty years ago, would be overruled by the genius of the species, — Blue Lux

Only if you let it. If you know history, you know that many have stood proud of their orientation. Of course there have been, and are, social pressures and even criminal penalties, but many found ways to work around these while continuing to be authentic to themselves.

I love someone. When I communicate this... This love that is 'mine' becomes just another relationship. When I create something significant to me, I communicate it to the world, consciousness delivers me over to the herd mentality where I have to be intelligible by others, which is not guaranteed, and thus what I have created loses in a very real sense its meaning, because its meaning can not be apprehended by everyone. — Blue Lux

We all have thoughts and feelings that others do not or will not understand or accept. We feel cut-off and long for a union of souls that most of us never achieve in this life. (Perhaps mystics do.) There is no "having to be intelligible to others." It is rewarding when we are, but we create value by valuing. if you value your creation or your love, it is valuable. If you do not, it is valueless for you.

So, your creations do not loose value when others fail to appreciate them, however disappointing that may be. You imbue them with value when you value them. If others also value them, they add new value, but if they don't, they can't take away the value you have imbued them with unless you allow it.

If there really were a single consciousness, everyone would value and devalue the same things. It is your uniqueness that allows you to create value where none existed before.

Mystical experiences are at base experiences. They are not different than ant other experience. — Blue Lux

Oh, but they are. Other experiences are defined by the information, the reduction of possibility they convey. Most mystical experiences convey no information. They do not reduce what is possible. They open us to new possibility. Mystical experience shows us that it is possible to achieve the unity that we long for in love.

I accept that that is your faith position. Thanks for sharing.

But they don't act! Rock are passive; actions are, er, active. — Pattern-chaser

Scattering light and attracting bodies gravitationally are actions.

What would be immaterial? — Blue Lux

Anything not composed of material constituents.

I can deny the existence of immaterial realities and still not accept the notion that consciousness or being is the result of interactions of matter or the material. — Blue Lux

Either consciousness is made of matter or it is immaterial. If consciousness is made of matter, then it "is the result of interactions of matter." If you deny this, you are left with consciousness is immaterial.

Presumably there is only one reality, but we know there are many logics so there seems to be an inherent problem with your definition. — MindForged

There is no problem with my definition. I am not denying that "logic" can have many meanings. I'm specifying the meaning I'm using.

Namely, the contradiction with having multiple correct ways of thinking about reality based on different, inconsistent logics. — MindForged

I defined what I am talking about as the "science of correct thinking." The "logics" you are thinking of do not study thinking. Mostly, they study systems of symbolic representation and manipulation. So, while they may be correct ways of thinking about various formal systems, they do not study the structure of correct thought, as does classical logic.

You are simply assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle in your metalanguage and then pointing out how it then appears in the object language. — MindForged

No, I am not.

First, I am not even discussing language. I am discussing thought that may or may not be expressed in language.

Second, I am not "assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle." I am finding that, when I reflect on the understanding of existence I have abstracted from my experience of reality, I see that some conjectured state must either be or not be. This is not an "assumption," but a finding. Futher, it is not a finding about about language, or even about thought. It is a finding about reality.

As I said, this and other Non-classical logics have their own metatheories that make do not accept Excluded Middle. — MindForged

I am not denying that, because I am not discussing systems of symbolic manipulation and their metatheories. I am confining myself to the study of thought, and specifically, thought that is necessarily salve veritate. This requires us to look at the relationship between thought and reality, not the relationship between systems of symbolic manipulation and their corresponding metatheories.

So, when we apply mathematical or cybernetic algorithms, the reasoning justifying their application is quite Aristotelian.

I sincerely hope I don't sound rude, but are you kidding me? — MindForged

I note that you did not comment on the syllogism I offered in evidence. Is your claim, then, that to apply a principle to a concrete case we do not need to recognize that the concrete case meets the conditions of application? Or perhaps that we can validly apply principles that are not thought of as universal? Or perhaps you want to claim that if the conditions of application can be stated in words that can describe, in another sense, the case at hand, we can still rationally apply the principle to that case?

Check Newton da Costa's work (based on work by early pioneers in quantum mechanics) about indistinguishable quantum objects. That is, objects that are such that they are *ontologically* indistinguishable (it's not an epistemic limitation), non-individuated objects. Schrodinger himself explicitly endorsed this, hence the old phrase that quantum objects had "lost their identity". — MindForged

You see not to understand the Principle of Identity. it does not make contingent claims about reality, saying, for example that electrons are individually identifiable or even that they are individuals. What is says is: "Whatever is, is." So if it is the case that electrons are not individuated, then that is the case.

Now, do you have an actual example of a violation of the Principle of Identity?

Aristotle disagrees with you. He believes there are metaphysical violations of Excluded Middle: contingent statements about the future — MindForged

I am sorry, but this does not contradict my position, but a confirms it. The reason the linguistic expression of the Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to future contingents is that they do not exist. Since they have no being, there is no justification for applying a principle founded in our understanding of existence.

Non-contradiction: The Liar paradox. — MindForged

Again, my position offers a simple solution to the Liar paradox, Jourdain's paradox and other conundrums based on the notion of "truth value." It simply shows that "truth value" is an ill-defined construct. Actual truth, however, is not. The liar who says "I am lying" is making no statement about reality. Therefore, what he says cannot be either adequate to or inadequate to the referenced reality. So, the concepts <truth> and <falsity> have no application.

The same applies to Jourdain's paradox. You may recall that it is a card that says on one side "The statement on the other side of other card is true," and on the other "The statement on the other side of other card is false." Jointly these sentences make no claim about reality, and so, again, the concepts <truth> and <falsity> have no application.

So, we see that founding logic in a reflection on being provides us with a simple solution to problems for which, as you point out, "Professional logicians have no standard resolution."

And if one is, as I am, a Platonist about mathematical and other abstract objects like propositions, one is (as I am) committed the accepting the existence of inconsistent objects from what seems to be an argument from commonly accepting rules for reasoning. — MindForged

I am sorry to see you committed to so many errors.

No, it is not question begging. It is an experiential claim to which you have provided no counter example or rebutting argument — Dfpolis

It's question begging. You made the argument that in even assessing e.g. Constructive Mathematics one has to use Excluded Middle because you think it results in an situation where you're... violating Excluded Middle. — MindForged

The assertion of first principles is not question begging. Every line of argument, to avoid circularity, must have first principles. That does not mean that those principles cannot be justified. it only means that they they cannot be deduced. They can, for example, be justified by an appeal to experience. My claim, which you refuse to address, is that the principles of being are abstracted, a posteriori, from our understanding of existence.

You have tried, but failed, to provide counter examples. If you have more to offer, please do so. If you have no more to offer, show how the principles cannot be based on our experienced-based understanding of reality. Claiming that experienced-based knowledge is "question begging" will not do.

You said this:

"Thus, these principles are not a priori, not forms of reason, but a posteriori understandings that are so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being."

All this really says is that "once you assume my definitions of the relevant terms and their scope of application is global in all possible domains, you'll see they apply to all of reality" — MindForged

Note that while my claim addresses what can be known from our experience of reality, your reply fails to address what we can know from experience. it is, therefore, nonresponsive.

we have definitions for things which do not exist in reality so I don't really know why you're insisting on thinking about definitions in that way. — MindForged

Of course we can't define things into existence. Rather, definitions point to the aspects of reality we're discussing. They suggest that our dialogue partners look in that direction in the hope that they will see what we see. If they do look, and see that we are wrong, they can do us the service of pointing out our error. However, if our partners refuse to look, because they believe there is nothing to see, there is no more we can do.

The argument I gave there is *valid* in Aristotelian Logic, having the form: All A's are B's, All A's are C, Therefore some B's are C. — MindForged

What you refuse to grasp is that classical logic is not concerned with linguistic forms, but with correct patterns of thought. Aristotle spent a great deal of time pointing out fallacies -- many of which (such as the equivocation in your example) use apparently correct linguistic forms to mask manifestly incorrect thinking.

Take up existential import with Aristotle, modern logics don't have this issue. — MindForged

That is why they cannot resolve paradoxes such as the Liar and Jourdain's.

As for Aristotelian existential import being an "issue," make your case.

its clearly not an obvious equivocation — MindForged

I spotted it instantly. Are you claiming that "horse" is univocally predicated in "some horses have wings" and "winged horses have wings"?

Also, you have not applied the little you know about Aristotelian logic. You claim to know about existential import in Aristotelian logic. If so, you know that "All winged horses have wings" is false because it lacks existential import. So, you should have seen that not only does your syllogism have an undistributed middle (because of equivocation) but also that its major premise is false.

For something to be a sign, for it to signify, all that is required is that it has meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am sorry, but no. To actually signify a sign must actualize meaning in a mind. If it does not do this, it is only a potential sign.

we can recognize that a thing is a sign, without having any idea of what it signifies — Metaphysician Undercover

We can recognize it's potential to be a sign. If it does not actualize a meaning in a mind (and meanings exist only in minds), it is not an actual sign.

For example, when I hear people speaking a foreign language I recognize the sound as meaningful without having any idea of the meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a different case. The language is actually signifying to those using it, just not to you.

And, I can say things without clearly knowing what I am saying. So there is no need that the sign be either formal or instrumental in order to be a sign. especially when that which is signified is vague and unclear. Hence ambiguity is very real. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you are speaking, the sign is instrumental. Your audience must first recognize your words for them to convey your meaning..

Of course communication can be defective. Your utterance may be malformed. It may not be correctly understood. That has nothing to do with the question of what constitutes a well-formed, operational signs.

My idea, as you can see, is that consciousness does not really belong to the individual existence of man but to his community or herd nature; — Blue Lux

I have a problem with this, because if awareness were one and communal I would be aware of every other persons experience and they of mine. I am not. I am directly aware only of my interactions with the world -- of myself standing as a subject to the objects I encounter.

our thoughts themselves are constantly overruled by the character of consciousness--by the genius of the species--dominating them--and translated back into herd perspective. — Blue Lux

I do not find my thoughts "constantly overruled by ... the genius of the species." I often find myself at odds with the thinking of others and with anything that could pass for a "herd mentality." Nor am I alone in thinking that, at times, I am "a voice crying in the wilderness."

Rather than my thoughts being "overruled by the character of consciousness," I find them informed "by the character of consciousness" -- as I become aware of some aspect of reality apparently missed by others. And, again, I do not find myself alone in this. Each person has their own standpoint and subjectivity -- giving rise to their own, unique subject-object relationships.

All our actions are at bottom incomparably personal, unique, endlessly individual, there is no doubt; but as soon as we translated them into consciousness, they no longer seem so — Blue Lux

I do not find this in my experience. Perhaps you can provide an example to help me see what you see.

the nature of animal consciousness is such that the world we can be conscious of is only a world of surfaces and signs — Blue Lux

Mystical experience stands as a counter to this -- being the awareness of an underlying ineffable unity.

We simply have no organ for knowing, for truth, we know (or believe or imagine) just as much may be useful in the interests of the human herd, — Blue Lux

Again, mystical experience stands as a counter to this -- it does not "inform" us -- does not limit what is possible, but expands it. So, we have an intellect that can and does know what is.

It as absolutely absurd to think that without consciousness there still exists anything. Consciousness is uncreated. — Blue Lux

If you are talking about God, I agree that the cosmos is utterly dependent on Him. Still, I don't think that God's existence is so easy to see that atheists are missing the obvious.

Rationality requires that everything have an adequate explanation, even if we don't know it, So, any ultimate explanation must be necessary and self-explaining. What is necessary cannot change, because any change shows that the aspect that changed was not necessary. So, it must be distinct from the changing universe -- not part of it.

Yes, there are three atoms independently of anyone counting them, but there is no actual number independently of an agent thinking it.

OK, but the usage in the analogy is other than your usage, so it doesn't actually explain your claimed convention. In the analogy there is a God who imposes law and order on nature, through His free will choices, but in your usage there are laws inherent in matter, with no free will act involved. — Metaphysician Undercover

Have I denied that the intentionality of the laws can be traced to God, or that God wills freely?

You are saying that Newtonian laws of physics were broken down by human intentions, — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am saying that applying the laws of physics outside their verified range of application was and is unjustified. I am also saying that until well into the 20th century, we had no adequate data on whether human intentions modify the laws of nature. So asserting their invariance when human commitments are involved was unjustified.

That's why I insist that "laws of nature" ought not be used. It fosters deception through equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no equivocation if we define and apply terms with care.

But we do not need to perturb the "laws of nature" to have free will, if we properly expose, and represent "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, if you use a different definitions, your expression of the same reality may well be different. We need only recognize the reality. Our different express of that reality is of minor import.

But if there are no such laws inherent in matter, as the concept of "matter" is normally understood, then matter is free to be moved according to infinite possibilities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, and the success of physics is a stroke of completely unjustified good luck.

participating in the laws which move matter, rather than by overruling, or perturbing the laws. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your objection is purely linguistic. I see no real distinction between "participating in" the laws and "perturbing" the otherwise universal laws. I've never said we "overrule" the laws.

If you describe a human being as a unity of "physical" and "intentional" aspects, then you have distinguished these two parts as distinct. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not "parts" which can be physically separated, but aspects that can give rise to independent concepts.

If the "principle of action" inheres within, then we must identify which distinct part it inheres within, the physical or the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already said that both our willed commitments and the laws of nature are intentional. The consequent motions are physical. So, there is no need to confine it to one "part" or another. Again, there are no "parts" -- only a whole that can be conceived in various abstract ways.

If it inheres within the physical part, as you claim — Metaphysician Undercover

I made no such claim.

Why not just place the principle of action in the intentional part, such that it can exercise freedom over the indeterminate physical part, thus allowing for freedom of will? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because doing so would mean that the laws of physics are entirely inapplicable to us. In point of fact, they provide reasonably accurate descriptions of our motions.

Let's be clear, because I think you are confused as to my position.
1. Our intellect and will both belong to the intentional order.
2. "The physical," as I conceive it is not reducible to a material state. It is what we study in the natural sciences. The physical world is both material (specified by state descriptions) and intentional (having a well-defined order I am calling "the laws of nature."
3. When we apply the methods of natural science to the human mind, we can grasp its physicality (its material structure and its operations insofar as we follow the so-called "universal" laws of nature). It cannot grasp (because of the fundamental abstraction) our subjectivity (our awareness and will). Thus it misses the dynamics that allow us to exercise freedom.

Do you recognize that a law is a form? — Metaphysician Undercover

It depends on how you define "a form." If you man a Platonic form, there are no such things. If you man a Scholastic Substantial Form, they are species specific, and do not grasp the "universality" of the laws of nature. If you merely mean "immaterial," yes the laws of nature are immaterial in the well defined sense of not having material constituents.

how can you say that all forms are immaterial, yet also reject the notion that there are laws extrinsic to matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

The laws of nature, not being spatio-temporal objects, have no intrinsic location. Instead, they "are" where they operate -- and they operate on and in matter. So they are "in" matter in an operational sense. So, if "by matter"nyou mean the empirical stuff that we can observe and experiment on, then the laws are intrinsic because they are revealed by such observations and experiments.

If you mean by "matter" an abstract principle, coordinate with form, we have had that argument and come to an impasse.

the law describes either what is or what ought to be — Metaphysician Undercover

A law of nature does not determine what is, the material state does that. it determines what will come to pass -- what potency will be actualized. That is the point of its being a logical propagator.

To say that God, as the creator of physical existence is not temporally prior to physical existence, is simply false. — Metaphysician Undercover

If God is perfect, he cannot change for every change would add or remove a perfection. Since time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. So we cannot predicate before and after of God.

Also the laws of nature necessarily act concurrently. If the law of conservation of mass-energy is not operative here and now, mass-energy is not conserved here and now.

Placing laws (Forms) as inherent within matter is clearly materialist. — Metaphysician Undercover

No it is not. Denying the existence of immaterial reality is materialist. I am not doing that.

How do you support an immaterial aspect of reality when you have already stipulated that the part of reality which some assert to be immaterial, i.e. laws and Forms, inhere within matter? — Metaphysician Undercover

I have not said that they are the only immaterial realities. They are not even essentially immaterial, as neither forms of matter nor laws of nature can exist independently of matter.

And what is this ontological priority of the 'laws of nature?' I assume you are saying that the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world?
And so you are fundamentally deterministic.
And in bad faith. — Blue Lux

My, my. A little charity, please.

Working backward:
1. I am a determinist when physics is an adequate abstraction.
2. I am not a determinist with respect to human will -- where physics is an inadequate abstraction.
3. I am not saying "the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world."
4. I am saying that they actualize a specific logically possible line of action.of insensate material being.
5. The ontological priority of laws of nature is that they actualize the potential motion of material being. What actualizes is ontologically prior to what it actualizes.

↪Dfpolis
And if nothing was there to acknowledge this abstraction of 'rock' it would too still exist?
Absurd — Blue Lux

If there was nothing (no one) to acknowledge the abstraction <rock> there would be no abstraction to acknowledge. There might still be actual rocks, as there were for billions of years before the advent of intelligent life.

That is a consequence of our 'instinctive naturalism', you might say. — Wayfarer

Yes. Aquinas would say that the human mind is ordered to the understanding of material being.

for example there is the absolute presupposition that nature is governed by invariant laws that is fundamental to the practice of the modern natural sciences. — Janus

Thank you for the explanation and reference.

I would agree that this is a presupposition of the physical sciences, but I have argued that they have a self-limited range of application -- viz. the portion of nature in which subjective intentionality can be successfully abstracted away.

I think this specific presupposition is no more absolute than Kant's forms of space, time and causality. Hume did away with the so-called necessity of (accidental or time-sequenced) causality, and Einstein with the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time. If our ideas of space and time were forms imposed by our mental machinery, then alternative concepts of space and time would be literally unthinkable.

If the universality and invariance of the laws of nature were an absolute (instead of a context sensitive) assumption, I could not be a physicist while entertaining the possibility that the laws are perturbed by human committed intentionality. Also, it is hard to see how one could maintain the possibility of multiverse whose universes have a variety of laws and constants.

t is the use of the word “representation” to describe phenomena such as neural conditions and signals that I object to, because none of its contextually-relevant connotations (e.g., picture, figure, image, idea) reasonably apply. Whereas, referring to phenomena such as paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music as representations would be an appropriate use of the word. The difference being the latter are semantic (have meaning for a mind). — Galuchat

First, I think that we can agree that "representation" has many analogous meanings, and while there are good reasons to prefer your usage, if we are careful not to equivocate, we can use other meanings.

Second, I agree that thinking in terms of "neural representations" is projecting the reality of perceptions into a very incomplete conceptual space. The concepts of picture, figure, image, idea, etc. are left out of the neural projection, and so anyone who thinks solely in terms of neural representations is committing the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. That said, the firing of retinal rods and cones, for example, does create a neural representation that is processed by the brain -- and interfering with that processing degrades our perceptions. So, refusing to consider the role and reality of neural representation leaves our analysis critically incomplete.

Third, our neural representations are neither instrumental nor formal "signs." Instrumental signs are things that must first be understood in themselves before they can signify. For example, we must first grasp that the smudge on the horizon is smoke, and not dust, before it can signify fire. We must make out the lettering on a sign before it can tell us a business's hours. Formal signs, (ideas, judgements, etc.) Work in a different way. We do not first have to realize that <apple> is an idea before it can signify apples. If we know it is an idea at all, it is only in retrospect, as we we reflect on the mental instruments employed in thinking of apples. So, the whole being of a formal sign (all that it ever does) is being a sign. <Apple>, for example, does not reflect light, exert gravitational attraction, or do anything other than signifying apples.

As I said, neural representations normally are not signs in either of these ways. (One can imagine that some neuroscientist could examine our brain state and determine that the signs she is observing encode the image of the apple we're seeing, which would make it an instrumental sign, but that is not the normal case.) Normally, we do not know what our neural state is, and so the neural "representation" is not used as an instrumental sign of the thing we are perceiving. It is certainly not a formal sign, as its essential being is neurophysiological, not semantic.

So, theories that see ideas as brainstates suffer from semantic confusion, and theories that see self-awareness as a species of proprioception are equally confused.

Forth, as I said to you in relation to Damasio's observation on the biological representation of reality, it does not seem that a neural representation can encode enough information to allow us to distinguish between exteroception and interoception -- between representations of the environment and representations of bodily state. So, we need other channels of information to explain our experience.

But this is confused. What one perceives by the use of one's perceptual organs is an object or array of objects, sounds, smells, and the properties and relations of items in one's environment. It is a mistake to suppose that what we perceive is always or even commonly, an image, or that to perceive an object is to have an image of the object perceived.

I agree for the most part. Locke erred in saying that all we know is our ideas. Rather ideas are means of knowing reality. Still, I am not a naive realist. Apples are not "red" as we see red. Apples have objective properties (say an absorption spectrum) that, in normal light, with normal color vision we will see as red -- that will evoke a "red" quale. In other light, if we are color blind, etc. the evoked quale may differ.

This does not mean we aren't seeing what "is there," or that all we see is a construct. Instead it mans that "what is there" is more complicated than imagined by the unreflective mind. All of our perceptions are subject-object interactions -- inescapably both objective and subjective. (Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur -- Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient.) Still, it is not constructed, but received.

I think we are agreed on "decoding."

Thanks for the references to John of St. Thomas, Henry Veatch, and your video on Ideas and Brain States. — Galuchat

You're very welcome. I found John of St. Thomas and Henry Veatch very useful.

We might be a little more explicit and say it is the science of correct thinking about reality -- because we want it to be salve veritate -- if our premises reflect reality, then we want "correct thinking" to be such that our conclusions will necessarily reflect reality. — Dfpolis

This seems incorrect. Logic has many uses which either have nothing to do with reality or else is used in a way we might not reason about reality. — MindForged

Of course "logic" can be defined in many ways, so it is not one thing, but many related things. That is why I defined what I meant by logic: the science of correct thinking (about reality). That is what I am offering to justify.

Of course, this does not mean that classical logic is unrelated to other forms of "logic." You raise he example of SQL. To apply SQL, we must first realize that, given our actual goals and the reality we are considering, SQL can be applied and doing so will advance our goals. This, of course, is thought about reality, and if our forms of thought did not yield true conclusions, the application of SQL would be irrational.

In the same way, you mention "Constructive Mathematics (based on intuintionistic logic) which rejects the Law of the Excluded Middle." Yet, if, in criticizing the proof of a theorem in Constructive Mathematics I were to say that in addition to an axiom you used applying or not applying there was some other possibility you had not considered, surely you would object. So, while you may construct a system which makes no internal use of the principle of excluded middle, in reasoning about that system, you would use the principle.

Second, whenever we apply any scientific principle to a particular instance, we necessarily use the syllogism in Barbara. Let p be a scientific principle and q describe sufficient conditions for the application of p. Then we think as follows:
All cases such that q are such that p.
A is a case such that q.
Therefore A is a case such that p.
So, when we apply mathematical or cybernetic algorithms, the reasoning justifying their application is quite Aristotelian.

Identity violations: See non-reflexive logics and quasi-set theory. — MindForged

I've said while we can think of impossible states, there can't be impossible states. You have not provided a single example of a real state violating the ontological principles of identity, contradiction or excluded middle.

statements like "so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being" are just question begging. — MindForged

No, it is not question begging. It is an experiential claim to which you have provided no counter example or rebutting argument.

Sure, if I accept all your definitions for "truth", your preferred inference rules, your semantics/metatheory, then yes they follow. But that simply makes the nature of the disagreements have an obvious location of disagreement (e.g. in the semantics and such). — MindForged

No. Definitions of terms point to aspects of reality that can be experienced and analyzed. So, the question is not about the self-consistency of semantic relations, but about the adequacy of my account to our experience of reality.

All winged horses are horses.
All winged horses have wings.
Ergo some horses have wings. — MindForged

As I said, logic is not about the consistency of language, but about salve veritate thinking. To save truth, you must start with truth. "All winged horses are horses" is not a truth, but an equivocation. "Winged horses" are not "horses" in the sense living equine creatures, which is the sense of "horses" required by the conclusion. In the same way, there is no true statement in which "the present king of England" is taken as having a substantive reference.

It speaks poorly of those who educated you in logic that you are unable to spot so obvious an equivocation. Correct thinking is not about matching letter sequences or manipulating word strings. It is about using conceptual representations rationally.

You think that a rock, which cannot act, therefore does not exist — Pattern-chaser

No, rocks scatter light, gravitate, resist imposed forces, etc., so thy exist.

I would agree that "being is convertible with the capacity to act", but I would say that refers to specific being, being as some kind of being and not to "being as such" or 'pure being". The "unreflective concept of a minimal existent as a passive blob" I agree is unhelpful and couldn't count as 'pure being'. The inability to say just what pure being is, is the reason that Hegel equates the idea of pure being with the idea of nothingness. Nothingness is no-thing-ness, and pure being is no-thing; passive blob or otherwise — Janus

I think "being as such" (being qua being) is not the same as what you're calling "pure being." When I say being qua being, I am thinking of any instance of existence, not considered as a specific kind of thing, or as having specific properties, but only insofar as it exists. On the other hand when I am thinking of "pure being," I am thinking of undelimited being, not of delimited beings insofar as they exist. In other words, I am thinking of God.

I touched on the idea that God is no-thing earlier. Denying the the kind of delimiting specification which characterizes things does not imply that undelimited being (no-thing) is nothing. Nothing can perform no act, while undelimited being can perform all logically possible acts -- so Hegel (or his sister) seems hopelessly confused.

In fact it is exactly on account of science being restricted to the knowledge and understanding of the actions of existents upon one another that Collingwood rejects the possibility of a science of pure being. He says that metaphysics is only viable as a historical science which examines, explicates and analyzes the 'absolute presuppositions' upon which the sciences, from the ancient to the modern, have been based. I must admit i find it hard to disagree with this. — Janus

Of course, our limited intellect and representational capacity, makes it impossible to form any proportional concept of undelimited or infinite being. Nonetheless, we can entertain a well-defined ostensive concept, i.e. one that points, uniquely, at infinite being. As the words "undelimited" and "infinite" indicate, this can be done by the via negativa. By asserting an ability to act while denying limiting characteristics, we form an indexical that points uniquely to pure being (God).

I have no idea what an "absolute presupposition" would be. As I have said, I think all so-called a priori proposition are a posteriori with respect to their foundational experiences, but may be applied "a priori" (without detailed reflection) thereafter -- this because they apply to all beings insofar as they exist.

Reading further, you seem to agree with me on a priori propositions, which leaves me wondering what kinds of things you see as "absolute presuppositions"?

We also seem to agree on mystical experience and its expression. I suspect we each have a lot more to say on the subject.

I have shown you the texts and the logic of the case. There is nothing more I can do.

OK, so the question is, will you adhere to the analogy? — Metaphysician Undercover

There is noting to "adhere" to. The analogy only explains the naming convention, not a prescriptive rule.

do you assume that the laws of nature order natural behaviour through the free will choices of matter? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course not. Analogical predication is partly the same and partly different. I said what was the same. An important difference is that humans are free, rational agents and insensate matter is not.

What physicists choose to study is irrelevant, because the laws of nature, as you have described them are independent of what physicists study. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a little too facile. While the laws of nature exist independently of our knowing them, our knowledge of them depends on actual study. If physicists have not studied a dynamical regime, that regime will not be in physics' verified range of application. We saw this in the early 20th century when the descriptions of Newtonian physics broke down for relativistic and quantum regimes. So, until we studied the effects of human intentions on the laws, we could not say what those effects were. Now that we have some data, we can be assured that our intentions do perturb the laws.

The point is, that either matter is bound and determined to follow the laws of nature, as you claim, in which case there can be no free will, or matter is not determined by the laws of nature, in which case free will is possible — Metaphysician Undercover

You have not exhausted the possibilities here. The third option, which now appears to be the case, is that we do follow the laws of nature, but they vary in response to human intentions. So, physical change does follow the laws of nature, but our will is a factor in determining those laws.

you are only trying to create the illusion of free will — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? How does my saying that our will contributes to the determination of motion "create the illusion of free will"?

Either the activities of matter are determined by the laws of nature, or they are not, regardless of what the laws of physics say. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed! But, if the laws of nature depend in part on our intentions, how does this undermine free will?

To imply that there could be an undiscovered law of nature which allows for free will is to state a deception intended to give an illusion that free will is possible under your assumptions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am saying no such thing.

I am saying, first, that we have known for millennia, that our willed intentions cause observable motions. We have simply not put 2 and 2 together to conclude that to do so, they need to perturb the laws of nature. (Although the Scholastics came close by saying that "man by reason participates in divine providence" and that we are "co-creators" of the natural order.) And, second, that scientists who have chosen not to restrict their studies by the Fundamental Abstraction have now established, to a statistical certainty, that our intentions do modify the laws of nature.

Thus, I'm positing no "undiscovered law," but pointing out the nomological implications of discoveries already made.

o, I think it's impossible that human actions are not fully determined by the laws of nature, or that human actions could modify the laws of nature, if the laws of nature inhere within matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since human beings are physical and intentional unities, our will, as part of that unity can be said to "inhere" in us. So, there is no intrinsic conflict a principle of action inhering in a physical being and exercising freedom.

I would like to know how you base this assumption that the laws of nature must act immanently. Traditionally, there is a duality between what you call "the laws of nature" (immaterial Forms), and material forms, (physical things). — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure what your objection to immanence is. Surely you reject the notion that there are substantial laws, extrinsic to the matter whose actions they order.

All forms are "immaterial" (not made of matter), even those that cannot exist without material support. I have never said that the laws of nature can be actual without material fields to order. Physical things are not forms, they are informed matter.

The Forms act to order natural processes because they are prior in time to these material processes, as God is prior to nature — Metaphysician Undercover

The laws of nature have an ontological rather than an temporal priority (as does God). To have ontological priority is to be an actualizing or an informing principle. But such principles must be concurrent with the processes they actualize and inform, or they could not fulfill their dynamic roles.

this move to materialism leaves intentionality unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

What "move to materialism"? Have I not been discussing the essential role of intentionality as an immaterial aspect of reality?

Without a separation between matter and that which causes matter to behave the way that it does (Forms, or laws of nature), there is no room for possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing "separation" which is a physical concept with "distinction" which is a well-grounded conceptual difference.

But the question is on what physical basis can we draw the distinction?

There is survival value to perceiving the world as it actually is (or at least a functionally accurate representation of it), since we have to interact with it to survive. What am I missing — Relativist

There is survival value in generating an "appropriate response." Whether you're moving in the right way in response to data on your internal state or on the state of the world makes no difference to survival.

It just is, and it does what it does without the need for any sort of support or guidance. No laws. No luck. Just reality, being real — Pattern-chaser

Of course, it is metaphysically impossible for nature to "just be" without a concomitant cause..

Why? Because an infallible sign of existence is the ability to act. If there is an action, then, necessarily, there is something acting. Nature changes, and its future states of nature are not actual in its present state. They are merely potential. As future states are not actual or operational, they cannot operate to make themselves actual; nonetheless, they are actualized, which is an action. So they need something else, something actual or operational to make them actual -- namely an operational cause.

Laws causing the regularity of nature is identical with the regularity of nature being caused by laws. — Dfpolis

No it isn't — Pattern-chaser

Of course it is. If A is doing B, necessarily, B is being done by A. There is no question here of master and disciple, only of different ways of stating the same reality.

cause and effect; they aren't interchangeable, as you seem to think they are. — Pattern-chaser

I do not think cause and effect are the same. Causes operate to actualize. Effects are operated upon to be actualized.

(2) Somehow we distinguish the object modifying our senses from the modification of our senses by the object -- even though both are encoded in a single neural representation. — Dfpolis

I would say that phenomena (physical actualities) are perceived, not encoded in neural representations.
Perception being the experience caused by sensation (sense function). — Galuchat

I like to project reality into different conceptual spaces -- to think about the same thing from different perspectives. I think doing so, and comparing the resulting "pictures," helps me understand an issue more fully. Often features that are prominent in one projection are missing in another. Trying to understand why this is so allows us to critique the alternate approaches. On the other hand, features common to different conceptual schemes are understood with greater depth.

Thus, I have no problem saying that we perceive physical reality (actualities), but I find it helpful to look at perception from from a neurophysical perspective as well. I third useful projection is semiotic, recognizing that neural states considered as instrumental signs are very different from concepts, which are formal signs. (A perspective gleaned from Henry Veatch's Intentional Logic: A logic based on philosophical realism.)

The problem I am discussing in (2) comes from reflecting on an observation of neurophysiologist Anthony Damasio that our knowledge of the external world started as neural representations of body state and evolved into representations of the external world as the source of changes in our body state:

... to ensure body survival as effectively as possible, nature, I suggest, stumbled on a highly effective solution: representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes in the body proper, that is representing the environment by modifying the primordial representations of the body proper whenever an interaction between organism and environment takes place. — Damasio, Descartes‘ Error, p. 230.

Now, for an animal merely processing data to generate adaptive responses, it makes no difference whether a neural state is conceived (by us) as representing a body state or a world state -- as an exteroception or interoception in your terminology. All that is required is that certain types of neural inputs generate corresponding adaptive outputs.

But for humans, with our powers of abstraction and conceptual representation, there is a world of difference between exteroception and interoception. Think of seeing an apple. The image projected on our retina results in a pattern of rod and cone activation that modifies our neural state. There is no difference between the neural state that would inform us of this pattern of rod and cone activation (and so be an interoception) and the neural state that would inform us of an apple being seen (and so an exteroception). Yet, when we see an apple, we become aware of the apple and not of our retinal state. How is this possible?

As I pointed out this distinction has no survival value, and so it is how to see how it could be selected by evolution. Further, there is no difference in the brain state encoding the exteroception and the interoception, so there can be no physical basis for the distinction. It is as if our intentionality, our interest in the apple rather than in our retina, is determinative of what we become aware of.

Of course, there is nothing mysterious about this when we think about seeing apples in the conceptual space of traditional epistemology or psychology. There, we have sensations and, in some cases, become aware of them -- perhaps abstracting concepts. What is problematic is how to integrate this projection of perception and ideogenesis with our neurophysical understanding of sensation.

I find the framework of communication it presents to be useful. — Galuchat

I agree both with the usefulness of the information theoretic framework and with the need to supplement it with semiotic considerations.

Thank you for the reference to Floridi's article. I confess complete ignorance of Merleau-Ponty.

1) Information becomes: communicated data (form), and
2) A process of physical communication provides a connection between phenomena and awareness. — Galuchat

I have no problem with this schema and only one problem with the example:

7) Received and decoded by the brain (Sensory Processing), — Galuchat

I have no idea what it means for the brain to "decode" the neural signal. It surely processes neural signals, but what difference can there be processing in which one form of neural signal is input and another form output, and "decoding" when the output is simple a neural signal?

A nitpicking objection is that I see the brain, with its data processing capabilities, as the information processing subsystem of the mind with awareness (the agent intellect) as part of another, intentional subsystem. So I would state (8) in a slightly different way, saying that the intelligible information carried by the neural signal is actualized by our awareness (aka the agent intellect).

I have no idea what a neural representation is. — Galuchat

A neural representation is a modification to our neural state that encodes information in the same way that an E-M signal carries a representation of transmitted information.

For my cognitive psychology project, I have found it very useful to maintain a physical/mental distinction in conceptual analysis — Galuchat

I agree. I suggest you look at John of St. Thomas' distinction between Instrumental and formal signs, which is quite useful in articulating this. I got it from Veatch and discuss it in my book. The most convenient place to see it is in my video "#25 Mind: Ideas vs. Brain States" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMiQKYCEj14). Failing to make this distinction can lead to considerable confusion.

i have no problem with your formulation. Mine attempts to accommodate a neuroscientific approach to mind as much as possible.

I see no point in continuing to beat the poor, dead equine.

I can't see how a science of being as being is possible, except perhaps as a phenomenology which would have to start, as Heidegger did, with dasein: human being. — Janus

I think of being in terms of what i call "Dynamic Ontology" in the hope of reducing confusion by being more explicit in the meaning of my terms. I was inspired in this by a suggestion of Plato in The Sophist 247e:

I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected, in however small a de-gree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once. I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power — Plato

Cornford points out that this is only a mark (horos) of being that would be acceptable to a materialist, not a definition (logos) of being, and that the question of what reality is remains open later in the dialogue. Still, I think we can make good use of it after a little refinement.

First, adding “or to be affected” to “to affect anything” is redundant. If I claim to be acting on x, but no effect is produced in x, then however much I am exerting myself, I am not acting on x at all. If I am not acting upon x, x is not being acted upon by me. Unless x is capable of re-acting in some way when acted upon by something, it is incapable of being acted upon by anything. So the condition “or to be affected” does nothing to increase extension. Second, “else” in “any sort of power either to affect anything else” is unnecessarily restrictive. If something can act on itself, then it exists, even though we may be unable to know its existence.

Being, then, is convertible with the capacity to act. Every thought of an existent involves some ability to act: to reflect light, to occupy space and so resist penetration, to affect thought. In fact, any “thing” unable to affect thought would be unknowable, and would never be considered an entity. Since this contrasts sharply with our unreflective concept of a minimal existent as a passive blob, it may help to recall that quantum field theory reveals all matter as constantly oscillating and abuzz with virtual particles.

In classical ontology, existence is the basis in reality for our saying that a being is, and essence that for our saying what a being is. In dynamic ontology, existence represents an unspecified capacity to act, and essence specifies an individual’s possible acts. Given these definitions, any act by an object (1) evidences its existence and (2), by being a specific act of which the object is capable, projects its essence.

If we can agree on these starting points, then at least some minimal science of being qua being is possible.

Collingwood also has good arguments to support the view that metaphysics can only be a science of the absolute presuppositions — Janus

I reject the notion of a priori knowledge, however fundamental. All that we know can be explained in terms of our awareness of interacting with reality. If I am aware of something acting on me, I am aware that it exists. Since it is acting on me in a specific way, I know it can act in that way and so have some minimal projection of its essence -- of its possible acts. In reflecting on my experience of existence, I see that existence entails principles such as identity, the impossibility of both being and not being at one and the same time in one and the same way, and that a possible being is either actual or not actual.

Then, I see that if my thinking is to apply to being, it must reflect these characteristics of being. These are not laws of thought. They are laws of thought about being. I can think that there is a plane figure that is both a triangle and a square, but there cannot be a plane figure that is both a triangle and a square.

Pure being is, as Hegel points out, coterminous with nothingness, and how could we have a science of nothingness? — Janus

No, being is not coterminous with nothingness. That's unreflective word play. No-thing has no properties, including terminal boundaries. Since it has no boundaries it cannot be co-terminus with anything.

Perhaps it could be said that mysticism is a science of nothingness; but in the domain of mysticism there would seem to be no possibility of the kind of definitive intersubjective corroboration that is necessary for a domain of inquiry to count as a science. — Janus

Being trained as a physicist, I used to poo-poo anything "mystical." Then I read W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy which provides a detailed phenomenology of mysticism. Since then, I have read extensively on mysticism and its cognitive value. While each experience is personal, many are tokens of a common transcultural typology.

St. John of the Cross, in reflecting on his mystical experience characterizes God as "todo y nada" (all and no-thing), and Eastern mystics frequently speak of and experience of "nothingness." I think mystics mean by this that that object of their experience cannot be classed as a phenomenal thing. Stace points out that one type of experience is completely free of sensory qualia, while his other type adds no sensory content to our perceptions. Both involve a profound awareness of unity.


To return to your basic thesis, could you give an argument for the impossibility of a science of being?

OK, so my point is, that if the thing being described is reality, then why not call that thing being described "reality" rather than "laws of reality"? And if the thing being described is nature, then why not call that thing "nature", rather than "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

Because "reality" and "nature" are so general no one would know which aspects we are referring to.

To say that the thing being described is "laws of nature", rather than "nature", just because the descriptions are formulated as "laws", makes no sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, the primary use of "law" in this context, (going back to Jeremiah) is to name the regularity of nature. It's derivative application (by an analogy of attribution) is to human approximate descriptions of the laws of nature. The underlying analogy is that as civil laws order social behavior, so laws of nature order natural behavior (an analogy of proportionality).

Matter behaves in particular ways which are regular, orderly, and which we describe with laws, the laws of physics. I think we both agree on this. Where I disagree is when you jump to the conclusion that there are another type of "laws", "laws of nature", which are inherent within matter acting within matter, causing it to act in these regular, and orderly ways. I've been asking you to support this conclusion, or assumption, whatever you want to call it, but you've been beating around the bush. — Metaphysician Undercover

When you say that "Matter behaves in particular ways which are regular," you are admitting the existence of laws of nature -- unless you go on to say that the observed regularity is purely fortuitous. So, are you saying that the regularity is purely fortuitous, occurring for no reason, or are you saying that there is some aspect of nature that makes it so? I am saying the latter.

"Laws of nature" does not name substantial things. It names the aspects of reality you are describing as regularity in behavior. So, there is no need for me to justify more than you have admitted in your first sentence above. Let me state it in the form of an identity: Laws causing the regularity of nature is identical with the regularity of nature being caused by laws. In other words, if nature is reliably orderly, whatever the explanation of that reliable order is, I am calling it "the laws of nature."

Here's the reason why I do not agree with you. If there are such laws inherent within, and acting within, matter, then free will is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wish you'd said this earlier. When I started this discussion, I pointed out that the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science prescinds from the consideration of the knowing subject. The knowing subject is also the willing subject. So, when I am discussing the laws of physics and the laws of nature they describe, I'm not discussing reality in all of its complexity, but only the aspects of reality delimited by the Fundamental Abstraction -- which does not have the data to justify conclusions on knowing and willing -- on subjective awareness and freedom.

To forget the self-imposed limitations of natural science is to commit Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. We cannot assume that a science adequate to the physical world in abstraction from the knowing and willing subject is adequate to dealing with subjects knowing and willing. I began turning my attention to this yesterday in an exchange with Janus beginning with:

I find nothing to disagree with here, unfortunately. — Janus

So, to respond to your objection, if the universal laws of nature, as described by physics, fully determined the actions of knowing subjects, then yes, free will would be of no avail. But, we have no reason to think that the laws, as described by physics, apply to more than the abstract world physicists have chosen to study. Specifically, we have no reason to think that these laws fully determine the actions of subjects, given that natural science has chosen, ab initio, to exclude subjects as such from its consideration.

As I discussed in more detail with Janus (and in even greater detail in my book), since both the laws of nature and human commitments are intentional (species of logical propagator), it is reasonable to ask whether human intentions might not perturb (modify) the "universal" laws of nature. Experiments provide us with statistical certitude that human intentions do perturb the so-called universal laws. So, we have every reason to believe that human actions are not fully determined by the "universal" laws of nature.

If instead, you want to continue with your position that there are real "laws of nature" acting in the universe, then you ought to place them outside of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly, the laws of mature must act immanently to order natural processes.

I have not suggested here that the intentional nature of the laws points to an ordering Mind (as Aquinas does in his fifth way, and I do in my book). As I have said before, I do not want to side-track the conversation by bringing up the contentious issue of the existence of God. Still, to make my position clear to you, I agree with Jeremiah in seeing the laws of nature as divine ordinances. So, theologically, we can say, with Aquinas, that "man, by reason, participates in Divine Providence." In other words, that we are granted the power to be co-creators so that our will, combined with the Divine Will, controls the course of nature. In this projection, the "universal" laws of nature are God's general will for matter and we are granted the limited power to add further specificity by making willed commitments.

I hope that this clarifies my position for you.

Thanks

the most basic quality of physicality, phenomenologically speaking, is extension. — Janus

That is arguable. What impressed the Greeks the most about nature (physis) is that it changes. Still, Aristotle might argue that change is only possible because natural bodies have parts outside of parts (are extended).

I would say that it is that but also much more than that, just as having a mind is much more than just being a subject. — Janus

Agreed.

At least, that is the way I am beginning to see it based on my reasonably fair familiarity with German Idealism and my admittedly scanty acquaintance with Scholastic thought. You seem to be making a similar point. — Janus

Yes, but my background is the reverse of yours -- I'm fairly well-versed in Platonic, Aristotelian and Augustinian and Scholastic thought, but have a sketchy knowledge of Kantian and post-Kantian European thought.

I find this passage intriguing, but I fear I am not familiar enough with the background against which you are making your suggestions to make any intelligent comment. — Janus

We're sailing in largely uncharted waters. So, I'd rely more on look-outs than charts.

I've mentioned a couple of problems. (1) In becoming aware of neurally encoded intelligibility, we have no idea at all of the neural matrix which encodes it. (2) Somehow we distinguish the object modifying our senses from the modification of our senses by the object -- even though both are encoded in a single neural representation.

The science specified by the primary nature was accordingly the one science that, under the aspect of being, treated universally of whatever is: it dealt with being qua being.

Yes. Aristotle calls First Science "theology." We only call it "metaphysics" because the book appears after the Physics in the corpus. First Science or theology is concerned with the most fundamental subject possible -- being as being.