I've read most of the article. As I too am generally critical of physicalism and reductionism, then I'm onside with your general approach ('the enemy of the enemy is my friend ;-) ) - although there are a few specific points with which I will take issue, when I've spent a bit more time digesting it. — Wayfarer

I look forward to your comments.

To start, it's very well written. Clear and thorough. I don't think I've read a better one here on the forum. — T Clark

Thank you.

This indicates the problems with the scientific study of consciousness are philosophical, logical, not scientific. — T Clark

Exactly. Nothing in the proposed paradigm places any restriction on scientific work. I only seek to re-contextualize it.

You make a quick arm-wave to current cognitive scientific study of consciousness without showing you have given them a fair hearing. — T Clark

As you pointed out, I am not disputing any science. So, I saw no need to say more than what the studies conclude.

You talk about a Standard Model of neurophysiology which, as far as I can tell, is a concept you came up with yourself. — T Clark

It is my term. I define it. I think it is a fair description of a general, but not universal, view. If you think it is not, please say why.

Thank you for the reference to Merleau-Ponty. While I do not agree with all of what he says, I agree with much of it. Our knowledge is not "objective." It is human knowledge -- a knowledge of how reality relates to us as humans, and not a divine knowledge -- not one of nature simply as it is.

First, this paper needs more focus. About half way through I forgot what you were even trying to show. You jump from this idea, to that idea from this philosopher, to over here, and I don't see a lot of commonality between them. You could probably cut your paper by quite a bit and still get to the point that you want. — Philosophim

Thank you. I wanted to connect all the points I made because they build one upon another. The reviewers had no problem with that, accepting the paper in 12 days.

First, are you a neuroscientist? This is an incredibly bold claim — Philosophim

No, I am a theoretical physicist by training, a generalist by work experience, and a philosopher by inclination. I am aware of the boldness of my claim. For that reason I needed to I needed to start from the ground and build up, dealing with logically successive topics.

A neuroscientist will tell you, "We don't yet understand everything about the brain yet." — Philosophim

I neither expect nor assume that they do. I do assume that they will not abandon the view that the brain represents and processes data. The need for representation and processing was seen by Aristotle, and the fact that the brain is the data processing organ was established by Galen. So, it is unlikely that further discoveries will change this fundamental fact after all this time.

There is more than enough evidence that consciousness results from a physical basis. — Philosophim

There is no such evidence. There is lots of evidence that the contents of awareness depend on physical processing, but contents are not our awareness of contents (which is what subjective, not medical, consciousness is).

The hard problem really boils down to "What is it like to be another conscious being?" — Philosophim

I suggest you re-read the section of the paper in which I quote Chalmers on the Hard Problem. There is no problem of what it is like to be a bat, because problems are about understanding experience, not about having experiences we cannot have.

Does that mean that we don't need physical medium for consciousness to exist? No, we do. — Philosophim

This is a different problem -- that of "immortality of the soul." It is one that natural science does not have the means to resolve. I do agree, however, that rational thought requires the physical representation of data.

The hard problem reflects the failure in our ability to experience what it is like to be another conscious being. — Philosophim

You do not understand what the Hard Problem is. Chalmers said, "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect." This is not a problem about the experience of others, but of subjectivity per se. To be a subject is to be one pole in the subject-object relation we call "knowing" -- the pole that is aware of the object's intelligibility.

This is not what emergence means. — Philosophim

The point that contextualizes my definition is that "emergence" is ill-defined. You quote one definition, but there are others. I say what I mean by "emergence" to avoid confusion in what follows. We are all allowed to define our technical terms as we wish.

And yet we find plants react to the world in a way that we consider to be conscious. — Philosophim

This is equivocating on "consciousness". There is medical consciousness, which is a state of responsiveness, and this is seen, in an analogous way, in plants. That kind of consciousness need not entail subjectivity -- the awareness of the stimuli to which we are responding. You made the point earlier. We cannot know what it is like to be a bat or a plant, or even if it s "like" anything, instead of something purely mechanical -- devoid of an experiential aspect.

Almost certainly AI will inevitably, if not somewhere already, be labeled as conscious. — Philosophim

This non-fact is non-evidence.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading and responding to my work.

Well, that is one opinion. Law of nature are not some outside force that acts on nature. Surely you are aware that not all physicists hold to your concept of laws. It is because things behave in an orderly way that formulating laws is possible. — Fooloso4

First, the laws of nature are not "outside." They are intrinsic -- coextensive with what they control. Second, the existence of alternate opinions is not an argument against a view. The question is what is required to explain the facts of experience. Third, the question is: why do "things behave in an orderly way"? Surely, it is neither a coincidence nor because we describe them as doing so. Rather, it is because something makes them do so. The name given to that something is "the laws of nature."

Why do you think it is? — Fooloso4

Because nature has an intentional, law-like aspect.

Perhaps consciousness does not transcend the bounds of physics either, only our current understanding of physics. — Fooloso4

It depends on how you define physics. That is the point of the article. As long as you limit physics by the fundamental abstraction, it cannot explain the facts that abstraction prescinds from.

Surely you know that some physicists hold that the laws are the descriptions of the behavior of matter. — Fooloso4

The laws of physics are such descriptions. Still, if there were not some reality (the laws of nature) making matter behave that way, the descriptions would have no predictive value. Suppose I accurately described your behavior on a particular day. I could only use it to predict your future behavior if the description revealed some consistent dynamic -- perhaps a habit. So my ability to predict would not be based on having a description per se, (for most of it would not be repeated), but on the dynamic the description revealed. In the same way, without the assumption of universal laws of nature guiding the behavior of matter, theoretical physics would be inapplicable to new cases.

When I say physical I mean that consciousness is not given to or added on to beings that are conscious. They are physical beings that have developed the capacities of knowing, willing, hoping, etc. — Fooloso4

Yes. Yet, that is saying what is, not why it is. The idea of reductionism, which I am opposing, is that we can deduce consciousness by applying the laws of physics to the physical structure of human beings. I am saying that we could only do so if physics predicted intentional effects, and it does not.

I have but you rejected it. The theory is that matter is self-organizing. At higher levels of organization capacities that were not present at lower levels emerge. — Fooloso4

Let's put aside how matter comes to be organized (whether by itself, or by the laws of nature). We can agree that over time, more complex structures have evolved. Most people (including me) would agree that evolution is fully consistent with physics. I agree also that new capacities, such as nutrition, growth and reproduction, have resulted.

These are physical, not intentional, capacities. So, there is no reason to think that they transcend the bounds of physics. Consciousness is not physical, but intentional, and so it is beyond the capacity of physics to explain. This does not tell us how consciousness comes to be. It only tells us that however it comes to be, physics is inadequate to explain it. Consciousness is correlated with a high level of physical organization, but correlation is not causation. So, complex organization is not an explanation either.

So you want to say something like that the source of the concept "the rock is hard" is not a predication but an identity? — Banno

I said what I wanted to say in my article: One and the same reality must be the source of both the subject and predicate concepts for the judgement to be true. If one reality elicits <This rock> and a different reality elicits <hard>, the judgement (not concept) <This rock is hard> is unjustified.

You keep saying, despite the text of my article, that I am claiming the subject and predicate are identical. They are not. Perhaps you believe that concepts can only be different if the object eliciting them is different. That is a misconception. One and the same object can elicit many concepts: e.g. <spherical>, <red>, <rubber>, <soft>, <elastic>, etc., etc.

Nor is it at all clear what the source of a concept might be. — Banno

Again, reading my article resolves this: "If we are aware of feeling a stone, we can abstract the concept <hard>. Then, being aware that the identical object elicits both <the stone> and <hard>, we link these concepts to judge <the stone is hard>, giving propositional knowledge." (p. 110) Clearly, the stone we are feeling is the source of the relevant concepts.

Concepts are sometimes erroneously conceived of as mental furniture, as things inside the mind to be pushed around, repositioned in different arrangements. Concepts are sometimes better understood as abilities than as abstract objects. There then need be no discreet concept of "hard" situated somewhere in the mind, or in the brain, but instead a propensity to certain outputs from a neural net, which includes the construction of certain sentences such as "this rock is hard" - along connectionist lines. — Banno

I have taken none of these positions. I said, "the concept <apple> is not a thing, but an activity, viz. the actualization of an apple representation’s intelligibility." (p. 109). Surely, you will agree that we have neural representations and are aware of some of their contents.

Indeed, I'll offer connectionist models of representation as far superior to a regression to Aristotelian models. — Banno

You seem to think that connectionism is an alternative to my analysis. It is not. I have no fundamental problem with connectionism. In fact, I invoked it to make one of my points (p. 99). What connectionism tells us, if true, is how representations are generated, instantiated and activated. It does not even attempt to explain how we become aware of the contents they encode -- how their intelligibility becomes actually known.

Are you claiming that those laws are not simply descriptive? That matter is somehow made to conform to laws that exist prior to and independent of it? — Fooloso4

If there were no laws of nature in reality to describe, then the descriptions of physics (call them "the laws of physics") would be fictions. Further, the laws are not invented, but discovered, and you cannot discover what does not exist.

As for priority, there can be no actual laws without matter for them to operate on, and matter would be formless without laws to specify its forms. So, they have to be concurrent.

it does not become whatever it becomes haphazardly and randomly. — Fooloso4

We agree. It is informed by the laws of nature.

Neither does it rule out the possibility that the physical system has the capability for consciousness. — Fooloso4

Obviously, whole humans are normally conscious beings, and they are physical. Still, the concept <physical> is an abstraction, and generally what is abstracted away is intentional reality. So, the question is: does your concept <physical> contain intentional notes of comprehension? In other words, when you say "physical" do you mean to include intentional realities such as knowing, willing, hoping, etc.? As "physical" is used in the context of physics, intentional realities are excluded. That is what I meant when I wrote that physics has no intentional effects. Since human life includes such realities, "physical" does not exhaust human nature. So, we are more than "physical" in this sense.

So, to say that a purely "physical" system can preform intentional operations, you have to redefine "physical." If you do not, you are equivocating.

So what is "identical"? — Banno

The source of the concepts <This rock> and <hard>.

"the rock is hard" sure looks like a predication — Banno

I am not denying that it is a predication, only your reading of what is identical.

An excellent essay. — Paine

Thank you. I look forward to your further comments.

I agree with this too. — RogueAI

I am glad we are of like mind.

Although a heap of building materials is not self organizing, matter might be. If so then to have sufficient knowledge of the parts is know the ways in which they can form higher orders of organization, including organisms that are conscious. — Fooloso4

I see some problems here. First, matter is not self-organizing. It is organized by laws of nature, which are logically distinct from the matter whose time-development they control. Those laws are immaterial, for it is a category error to ask what they are made of. Second, knowing what matter can become is insufficient to say what it will or does become. The matter that composed the primordial soup could become a brain, but that does not mean that it will, any more than a pile of building materials will become a Swiss Chalet. Finally, even if we could predict which atoms of the primordial soup will come to compose my brain, that does not reduce consciousness to a physical basis. As I note in the article, physics has no intentional effects, and consciousness is the actualization of intelligibility -- which is an intentional operation.

it is quite another to argue that there has always been wholes such as human beings. — Fooloso4

I do not argue or believe that.

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. Explanations of why "you can't get there from here" are common and occur before it becomes clear how to get there from here. — Fooloso4

I did not just "declare" the failure of reductionism. I showed why it must fail -- first in biology, where physicists (I am one) ignore the very data that biologists (such as my brother) study, and second in the intentional realm, where we do the same thing. If you think I am wrong, it would be helpful to say why my arguments fail. I am not proposing that you accept my views on faith.

Also, I how long do we need to wait before it is not "premature" to say reductionism fails? Materialists have been around for about 2500 years and have yet to devise a viable theory of mind.

It's too early to claim that the "Standard Model" fails. — Banno

Then you should be able to use it to outline how consciousness can be both causally impotent, and reported by those who experience it. Didn't the causal efficacy of Jupiter's moons play an essential role in Galileo's reports of them?

"The rock is hard" is not an identity. It's not "Rock = hard". Nor "Rock ≡ Hard". — Banno

I suggest you reread the text. "The copula, <is>, betokens identity – not between subject and predicate, but of their common source. Indeed, ‘a is b’ is unjustified if a is not identically an object which elicits <b>."

If I've understood the article aright, the mooted failure of the "Standard Model" supposedly can only be remedied by a return to Aristotelian concepts of the mind. — Banno

I would not dare say "only." There may well be other approaches, but I have yet to find one in ancient or modern authors, and I have read many of all persuasions. I only say that it can be so remedied.

2. Realize that subjective experience from the first person perspective cannot be scientifically investigated — Wolfgang

Why would you say that? Can't we type-replicate introspective reports to reach general conclusions, as we type-replicate any other kind of observation?

Consciousness is a property of the individual, more precisely, of the brain. — Wolfgang

Consciousness is not physical in the sense that the objects studied by physics are. It cannot be defined using concepts such as mass, energy, momentum, charge, and extension. While we can say that thought depends on the brain, that does not mean that it is a property of the brain. Thought also depends on adequate blood flow and respiration, but it is not a property of the heart or lungs. So, dependence of y on x does not make y a property of x.

Biologically, consciousness can be described as the orientation performance of a (central nervous) living being. — Wolfgang

That would be what I call "medical consciousness." It is not what my article is about. I am discussing the subjective awareness -- that which makes the merely intelligible actually understood.

So whoever tries to explain consciousness physically commits a category error. ... Conclusion: the hard problem of consciousness is a chimera! — Wolfgang

We agree.

Chalmers accepts consciousness as fundamental and universal. — Fooloso4

That is not my position.

Ethically, each thief is required to return what was stolen, if it was taken unjustly. So, there is no paradox. Thinking that there is a paradox implies that one subscribes to consequentialism, which is untenable.

Note that stealing, while against the law, might not be unjust.

I might start a thread on it if that's OK with you. — bert1

Sure. Let me know.

What I mean is more that these scientists, because of their religious beliefs, have a religious mindset, and therefore all of them have to actively fight the filter of religious belief in order for it not to undermine their own scientific and philosophical findings. — Christoffer

This misunderstands the "religious mindset." Recent scholarship has shown that the medieval church, not merely tolerated, but actively encouraged, scientific inquiry. (E.g. James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (2011).) The rationale, the doctrine of the "Two Books," was that God not only reveals Himself in Scripture, but also in the Book of Nature. Thus, the medieval religious mind was convinced that a true understanding of nature inevitably led to a deeper understanding of God. This tradition continues in Catholic circles. For example, early on the dominant interpretation of Genesis was literal. (Exceptions included such notables as Sts. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.) However, late 19th c. geology convinced theologians that a literal interpretation was wrong, as the actual age of the earth was too great. Consequently, the dominant Catholic interpretation of Genesis became non-literal to better conform to scientific findings.

Darwin did not think it necessary to reject God to do science, but instead followed a line of thought advanced by Suarez, viz. that science deals with "secondary causes." The idea is that God is the ultimate cause, continually keeping everything in existence, but that what is kept in being has real causal efficacy, namely, secondary causality. (Look at the quotations opposite the title page of the 1st ed. of On the Origin of Species.)

This is not to deny the existence of religious literalists. We all know of creationists and so-called "intelligent design" advocates. (ID is really unintelligent design, because it assumes that God is not smart enough to create initial states and laws of nature adequate to His ends.) Still, literal belief is not universal, and so it is not an essential characteristic of a faith commitment.

Congratulations for your publication! — javi2541997

Thank You

My article is now published. Polis, D. F., "The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction," Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research. (14) 2, pp. 96-114. https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/1042/1035

Mind/body should be examined together with the 'what is information' question..

Brain information is in the brain only.
Genetic information...I don't think it exists other than a shorthand for the people who study it and a pop culture concept.
Signal information...of the Claude Shannon type seems to reduce to physical matter only.
Physical information...such as distant galaxies, stars and planets having physical information associated with them...shorthand by practitioners but migrated to pop culture. — Mark Nyquist

To quote from my paper:

Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, defined information as a reduction of possibility, but there are many kinds of possibility. Imagine a binary message transmitted over such a distance that it is entirely transmitted before any of it is received. As each bit is received, the number of possible messages is reduced by one half, but physical possibility is not reduced, because the signal already exists. What has changed is logical possibility. Before reception, it is logically possible for a bit to be an a or a b, but not after reception. Thus, information is a logical, not a physical property.

We may speak of physical processes that bring us closer to understanding in terms of sending and receiving ‘information,’ but not univocally, because logical possibility is not reduced until the received bit is known. What exists before then is intelligibility, not knowledge. So, it is equivocating to say that both computers and minds process ‘information.’ — Dennis F. Polis

I'm not trying to get too focused on information other than observing that brain information and consciousness are inseparable.

So my view is brain information is the only information that should be relevant to mind. — Mark Nyquist

First, I agree that the information we are conscious of is neurally encoded, and so concepts are inseparable from neural representations. Aristotle and Aquinas both recognized that rational thought is impossible without a sensory representation (their phantasm). Galen saw that brain trauma alone could lead to cognitive disease. Still, there is nothing about a neural representation that entails our consciousness of it, and we are unaware of most neural representations. So, while concepts are inseparable from representations, they are not identical. Something needs to be "done" to a representation to make us aware of it -- its intelligibility must be actualized if it is to be known. The aspect of us that does this is what Aristotle and Aquinas called the "agent intellect." Daniel Dennett represents this as a homunculus in his Cartesian Theater, but shows it cannot be physical. That is also the conclusion of Aristotle and Aquinas. It must be non-physical because physics has no intentional effects, and knowing what is represented is an intentional act. So, actually knowing neurally encoded information requires us to have an immaterial aspect, the agent intellect.

Second, if all we knew were "brain information," then external reality could not inform us, and "knowing" would be imagining. Any theory of mind worth its salt needs to show how nature can inform us. The Aristotelian-Thomistic view does. It notes that an object informing our senses is identically our senses being informed by the object. In other words, the sensed object's modification of our neural state is identically our neural representation of the sensed object. So, neural representation is shared existence. It is both the object's modification of our neural state, and our representation of the object. The same is true when we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. Our awareness being informed by the neural representation is identically the neural representation (and so the object) informing our awareness.

Christopher,

Yes, although the idea of conceptual spaces and subspaces is not limited to science and religion. I'd say that cognitive biases are embodied in limited conceptual spaces and that there is a feedback loop linking them. Because we conceptualize reality in a certain way, we tend to look for evidence consistent with that framework, ignoring or minimizing evidence that would undermine the framework. In the other direction, as selected evidence confirms our conceptual framework, it becomes more embedded in our neural net, and so more habitual and less reflective. The rejection of Wegner's views on continental drift exemplifies the selective use of evidence.

Representational artifacts are structures that must be constructed to bridge the gap between a limited conceptual space and reality. In pre-relativity physics, we have absolute time. In the rejection of continental drift, we have infinite forces holding the continents in place. In the representation of physicality and intentionality, we have dualism with its so-called problems (mind-body and free will). In the supposed conflict of science and religion, we have the constructs of "the scientific mind" and "the religious mind." This ignores the fact that some of the greatest scientists (e.g. Galileo, Newton and Laplace) were faithfully religious, and some deeply religious people (e.g. Bishop Robert Grosstesta, who defined the scientific method, and St. Albert the Great, the greatest botanist of the era) were excellent scientists. Even Darwin believed in God and "designed laws" of nature.

Wayfarer,
Quoting from my paper:
A conceptual space is the set of ideas onto which we normally project experience. The Fundamental Abstraction is a generally useful narrowing of mental focus which can limit our conceptual space. An inadequate conceptual space can create problematic representational artifacts, such as the pre-relativistic notion of simultaneity. While hard to see from within a tradition, representational problems can be identified by comparing diverse cultural, disciplinary and historical perspectives.
...
The human mind has limited representational resources. Eric of Auxerre (841-76) was per­haps the first to recognize that these limitations force the resort to abstract, universal con­cepts. Our working memories can only maintain 5-9 ‘chunks’ of information. Unable to apprehend the overwhelming complex­ity of nature, we employ abstrac­tions – attending to features of interest while ignoring others. Thus, natural science begins with a Fundamental Abstraction.

Knowledge is a subject-object relation, entailing a knowing subject and a known object. The initial moment of natural science is the abstraction of the object from the subject – our choice to attend to physical objects to the exclusion of inseparable subjectivity. Natural scien­tists care about what was experienced, not the act of experiencing. Thus, sci­ence is, by design and appropriately, is bereft of data and concepts on knowing subjects and their mental acts. Yet, these data and concepts are required to connect phys­ical fin­dings to awareness. Consequently, physics lacks intentional causes and effects – not because the physical and intentional are independent, but because we have abstracted their interdependence away in constructing physics.

I have a paper coming out shortly in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, "The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Fundamental Abstraction". It discusses the very point made by the OP at length. If anyone would like a preprint, let me know.

NOS4A2,

Thanks for the mention. Yes, my degree is in theoretical physics, but I have published more in philosophy. A new paper was recently accepted: "The Hard Problem of Consciousness and
the Fundamental Abstraction," which will appear in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research.

There's no law preventing us from thinking the words square circle, but we can't form a concept corresponding to these words. — Dusty of Sky

We can't form an image of a square circle, but we can add the modifying concept <square> (not just the word "square") to the concept <circle>.

However, if a posteriori means contingent upon experience and a priori means knowable as true or false regardless of particular experiences, then I think you are incorrect. — Dusty of Sky

I mean a posteriori with respect to the experiences required to learn, and a priori in is subsequent application, So, I think we agree.

Even if I had no experiences to abstract from but the consciousness of my own existence, I should be able to deduce that I exist, therefore I don't not exist, and since not not existing is the same as existing, my only options are to exist or not exist. — Dusty of Sky

I think we only learn about ourselves as knowing subjects from reflecting on our acts of knowing. So, I don't think that what you envision is possible.

I think it is possible for a being capable of ideation and understanding to perform this deduction regardless of his particular experiences. — Dusty of Sky

I agree if you mean any specific kind of experience, but not if you mean with absolutely no experience of knowing, as then we would have no means of grasping that we can know, This is because we can only understand what is actual/operational, not what is merely potential.

My objection to a priori, is that see no reason to believe that we know anything prior to all experience.

In my view, which is based on Aristotle, Aquinas and John of St. Thomas, the rules of logic are not given a priori, but are abstracted from experience.

To understand this, we must distinguish what Henry Veatch calls "intentional logic" from modern logic, which is quite different. The kind of logic I am discussing is the art and science of correct thinking, not a set of rules for symbolic manipulation.

The rules of modern logic cannot be applied without thinking an Aristotelian syllogism:
Every case with these characteristics is a case in which this rule applies.
This case (the one I am thinking about) has these characteristics.
Therefore, this is a case in which this rule applies.
This is simply Aristotle syllogism in Barbara, and is what we must think to apply any scientific knowledge we have. Hence, despite the vigorous protestations of modern logicians, they have not done away with Aristotle's logic, but rely on it whenever they apply the rules of manipulation they have developed.

So, we need to consider how it is that we think when we think correctly. Robert Boole, the founder of Boolean logic, entitled his masterwork The Laws of Thought, but it you reflect, there is no law preventing us from thinking "square circle," or "triangles have four sides." It is only if we want our thought to apply to reality, to what is, that we should not think these kinds of thoughts.

So, let me suggest that we abstract from our experience an understanding of what it means to be -- an understanding of the nature of existence. And, implicit in this a posteriori understanding are laws of being that must be reflected in our thought, if our thought is to apply to what is. For example, we come to understand that nothing can both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way, and, from this we derive the logical rule that we cannot both assert and deny the same thing at the same time. So we come to grasp the logical principles of Identity, Contradiction and Excluded Middle from the corresponding ontological principles -- and we abstract those from our experience of being.

In counting different kinds of things (pennies, apples, Legos), abstraction allows us to see that counting, and so the relationship between numbers, does not depend on what we count. In the same way, we can see from our experience with different kinds of being, that some relations (the ontological principles above) do not depend on what kind of being we are dealing with, but are true of being per se.

Please do not be so harsh on Ken.

You appear to want both process and a stopping of process. — tim wood

Not quite. I want to know what is. I see processes, and processes coming to completion. Plants sprout, grow, disseminate seed and die. People are conceived, born, mature, do good and/or evil, and die. Processes and ends are equally real.

you want it to be the essential cause of something that it cannot be the essential cause of. — tim wood

I have no idea what this means or how it relates to what I said. What is the "it" I want? What is the "something that it cannot be the essential cause of"?

If you wish to say that the commitment to choose an action - these broadly defined - is the genesis of moral agency, — tim wood

I do not. I wish to say that humans are moral agents because our commitments are the radical origin of new lines of action that can do good or evil. By "radical origin," I mean that the new lines of action are not fully determined before we commit to them.

But as caused essentially, not so. Either you have process yielding a result not the process - an accidental cause, or you have instantaneous result from an incomplete process. — tim wood

Let me be clear, accidental and essential causality are distinct, but not mutually exclusive. Processes always involve the actualization of potency over time. The pile of building materials does not suddenly and discontinuously become a house. Rather a building process turns it, bit by bit, into a house. At every instant the house is being built, there is an essential cause in operation (the builder building). If the essential cause ceases to operate, the house ceases being built. When the house is again being built, its essential cause is again operative -- some builder is once again building.

What we learn from this is that accidental causality, the linking of an initial event (say the signing of a construction contract) to its subsequent outcome (the completion of the house), is simply the integral effect of essential causality over time. At each instant that the process is progressing, it is doing so because an agent is concurrently actualizing some potential.

Imagine I decide to go to the store. If at any subsequent time my intention changes, I will no longer be going to the store. I might still be driving in the same direction, but I will not longer be driving to the store, but to a point where I can implement my new intention.

All of which argues that what cause is, is what someone says it is — tim wood

Again, not quite. What the term "cause" refers to is what someone says it refers to when they use it. Still, what is (the actual process of building, deciding or whatever) is what it is independently of what anyone says it is.

Momentary essential cause as producing per process a finished product isn't consistent. — tim wood

It is not consistent if you abstract away the continuity of processes. While you may think of moments of essential causality as discrete and isolated points of action, in reality they are neither discrete nor isolated. Rather, each moment of action is dynamically linked to its predecessor and successor.

If we reflect, it is clear that no change can occur in a single point of time, and so no process can progress in an instant. Rather, if we are to capture the notion of change, and of progression of a process, we must think in terms of finite intervals, however infinitesimal. Still, there can be an instant of completion.

Or another way: building is the essential cause of building, that which links builder and built. But the linking is itself not constitutive of the building. — tim wood

No, the builder building (an agent in operation -- not an abstract operation) is the essential cause, not of an abstract operation (building), but of the building being built (a concrete reality).

But by itself, no building was ever built by building by- and in-itself — tim wood

We agree.

Your moral agency, then, is from accidental causes, but no less caused for that. — tim wood

As I pointed out above, accidental causality is derivative on essential causality, being its integral effect over time. At each point in the process that links the initial to the final event, there is an agent operating to actualize some potential -- taking the process to the next stage.

writing style reeks of fundamentalist Christianity, — Banno

Were I a fundamentalist, I would not accept evolution as sound science.

I think what you find unusual in my style is the open, rational consideration of evidence from anyone interested in truth. I read people I disagree with to understand why they think as they do -- and discuss philosophy with any person willing to engage in rational and civil discourse.

Good bye

By contrast, if I buy some dynamite to blast a stump out of the ground and having accomplished my goal then ask what caused the explosion, I will find that the Greek will not yield a modern answer. — tim wood

Aristotle would, I think, say that you were the efficient cause (having actualized the relevant potentials) and that the dynamite was an instrumental cause, as it was the instrument you used to effect your will to blow the stump up.

On the other hand, the modern account tends to freeze the moment to when the burning fuse touches the explosive material, at that moment starting the rapid reaction that just (statically) is the explosion. — tim wood

If we narrow our focus by abstracting the part from the whole, fixing on this to the neglect of that, the result is not to change the reality, but to limit our understanding of reality. This is a bad habit easily corrected by taking the time to see the abstract in context -- thus avoiding Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness (which consists in seeing our abstractions as the concrete reality).

And so I find the essential cause as the building of the house being built by the builder building the house not directly translatable — tim wood

?. Didn't you just say we have gerunds and participles with which to translate it? We understand that building is in the active mood of the present progressive tense and being built in its passive mood. more importantly we know that building and being built are always inseparable, being two sides of the same coin -- and that is Aristotle's point: that there is no happening without a doing, and so any actualization of a potential requires the act of an operational agent.

He, Aristotle, imo was making a simple grammatical point about the identity of passive and active description while retaining the dynamism, the process(es) and agency. — tim wood

He was never interested in abstract grammar, but did linguistic analysis to tease out the ontology it expresses. You can see this in the Categories, the point of which was to clarify the confusions Platonism traded upon. So, he was doing more than making a grammatical point. He was asking us to look at the grammar and see the reality that motivates it, viz. that there is no acting without something being acted upon, and no being acted upon without something acting.

The question, then, if essential causality is the cause of moral agency, is it in the Greek temporal sense of an agent-performed process that produces a result? Or in a modern and static sense, wherein responsibility is extracted and regarded in a frozen moment prior to which it isn't, and at which moment it is. It seems to me that you cannot extract from the Greek sense, without losing it completely and creating a different meaning. — tim wood

I believe you think too little of Greek comprehension. Yes, there is a process of building, but it is not interminable. There comes a moment when the process is complete, when it has reached its telos, and the house is finished.

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle shares his vision of the process leading to a choice, which he calls proairesis. It is rational, starting with the end we desire, determining means adequate to that end, then what is required to effect those means, and so on iteratively until we come to what must be done now. Aquinas adds that we only know that we are committed to the end when we will the means -- in other words, when we begin to walk the walk.

Superior animals look purposefully for data, in an active manner, they don't collect them passively. They are looking. This indicates an awareness of the world out there and of their presence in it. — Olivier5

This does not argue intentionality. Looking for predators, food and water is adaptive behavior selected by evolution. It is not evidence of a rational decision-making process.

All data has a source and a cost (beyond the most basic and passive systems) and therefore it has a darwinian advantage, or it wouldn't be collected and analysed in the first place. — Olivier5

This is true of practical knowledge, but not of wanting to know for the sake of knowing, i.e. theoretical knowledge.

There's no data without some import or another, and therefore there's no data without some possibility of a referent. Data is always about something, or it won't get collected by a living organism at all. — Olivier5

We humans see that neural states as representational, but that does not mean that they need to be recognized as representational by the organism they belong to, to generate adaptive behavior.

What you are saying is that the mental system of a porpoise or donkeys may not include this mirror effect we call consciousness. — Olivier5

Awareness is what I am discussing, and awareness is not mirroring, but knowing. Awareness does not reflect anything back. We are aware when what was merely intelligible is actually known. Actualizing the knowability of neurally encoded data gives those contents something new, a relation to a knowing subject. This is a relation no amount of physical processing can achieve because the subject is not part of, or even latent in, the representation.

I'm making that up as I speak of course. Still chewing on it. — Olivier5

I appreciate your time and considered reflections.

Philosophical naturalists claim macroevolution shows order emerging by pure chance.

The very first sentence!!! — Kenosha Kid

1. That does not say what you claimed I said, i.e. that evolution is purely random.
When you take one sentence out of context, you can twist its meaning. That is why you need to read articles instead of twisting the first line of an abstract.

2. "Random" has many meanings, one of which is mindless. It should be evident to anyone who read the title ("Mind or Randomness in Evolution") that the meaning of "purely random" in the abstract is totally mindless. That evolution is mindless is the argument that naturalists use against William Paley's watchmaker argument.

Surely, you are not saying that Dawkins supports Mind in nature?

3. Had you read the article, as a fair-mined person would have before criticizing it, you would have read:
"Evolution rests on three points. (1) The existence of variant genotypes. These result from “random” mutations and transcription errors; (2) A selection mechanism favoring variations enhancing reproduction and survival; and (3) Inheritability – the capacity to pass on variations that lead to enhanced survival and reproduction."

This is not saying that evolution is purely random as you claim I did. Only the first point involves randomness. In fact, the article spends pages on the role of deterministic laws of nature in evolution.

4. I explicitly quote Dawkins discussing the non-random aspect of evolution:
"In nature, the usual selecting agent is direct, stark and simple. It is the grim reaper. Of course, the reasons for survival are anything but simple – that is why natural selection can build up animals and plants of such formidable complexity. But there is something very crude and simple about death itself. And nonrandom death is all it takes to select phenotypes, and hence the genes that they contain, in nature (Dawkins 1996a: 87)."

So, once again, you have shown your willingness to criticize what you have not taken the trouble to understand.

Yeah but somebody keyed it in, or connected to the computer a camera or another sensor, itself designed by some folk at pointed somewhere by another. Data means "given" and it's given by something or somebody. There's always a source to the data and it is always collected for a reason or another. — Olivier5

Yes, data is the given, but it is not a cognitive given for the computer, but for to us. As you note, someone, some human, has keyed it in or arranged some other input. It is to that person that the physical state of the computer has meaning and reference.

We can explain every operation of a computer without the slightest appeal to the meaning of the data it is operating upon. Thus, meaning is irrelevant to computers.

It may be that some other species has consciousness, perhaps porpoises. If so, it is not because they can process data, but because they are aware of some of the data they process.

As I have argued in an earlier thread, it is impossible to reduce intentional operations such as knowing and willing, to physical operations. And, because evolution is a theory about the physical world, it does not have the power, by itself, to explain the emergence of knowing and willing as opposed to processing sensory inputs to produce adaptive responses.

Rocks are not been chased by predators. It's easier for them. — Olivier5

Yes, but even amoebas respond to their environment.

I read the part of your paper that claimed that philosophical naturalists characterise evolution as a purely random process, which is a lie. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, you wrote a lie. You can quote nothing in my paper saying that. Please do not lie about my work again.

Data means something. It's provided by the senses, and it therefore refers to the world out there, or rather to our perception of it. — Olivier5

Data means something to humans, not in its physical representations. Data in a computer is simply a physical state, typically accumulations of electrons or sets of magnetic orientations. Data in neural systems is also a physical state, typically neuron firing rates and dendritic connections. No purely physical state has intrinsic reference. It is simply what it is, without being "about" anything else.

To protect something, one needs to be aware of that something — Olivier5

No, to intend to protect, one needs to be aware of it. Mere protection requires no awareness. Overlaying rocks protect underlying rocks without a hint of intent or awareness.

Dawkins who takes great pains to explain that evolution is not, nor could be, a random process, you charlatan. — Kenosha Kid

I have read Dawkins, and I stand by my claim. I said neither that evolution is entirely random, nor that Dawkins claimed that it was. If you read my paper, you would know that. As you refuse to open your mind and consider any evidence or arguments that might shake your prejudices, there is no point in spending more of my time responding to you.

A 'superior data processing and response' system must include self-reference. — Olivier5

Data processing contains no reference whatsoever. It is simply the physical manipulation of input signals to produce output signals. Evolution selects for systems that produce more adaptive outputs (actions give an advantage in the survival of offspring).

It is we, as thinking beings, who give input and output signals reference -- who see them as meaning something. There is no warrant for imbuing data processing systems, whether organic or artificial with such human attributes. To do so is anthropomorphizing them.

You can see that reference plays no role in signal processing, because whatever the signal means, it will be processed in the same way. Say a signal has a wave form. It will be processed in exactly the same way regardless of whether we see that form as referring to a water, light, sound or seismic wave.

This requires a mental 3D map, the modelisation of movements within that 3D map, and therefore I think some sense of self vs the rest of the world. — Olivier5

You are confusing having data or manipulable representations with knowing data or representations. A physical data processing system will produce the same outputs whether we assume that it is aware of the data it processes or not. So, the assumed awareness can have no physical effect. If it has no physical effect, there is no way for natural selection to prefer it.

Self preservation requires a sense of self. — Olivier5

No, it does not. It only requires adaptive physical behavior. We may identify them and project our human experience, our sense of self, into them, but there is no evidence requiring us to do so.

I have read and rebutted Dawkins's nonsense. If you think he has a sound argument, provide it.

You appear to argue that free choice is essentially caused. But I think there's a slip, here - and I wonder if you mean efficient cause — tim wood

I think I said in the OP that essential and accidental are two types of efficient causality.

Because what, exactly, is the essential cause? It is the builder's building of the house being built. It is not in any way the builder's choice/decision to build the house. — tim wood

The difference Aristotle is illustrating is that while accidental causality links successive events, essential causality occurs in a single event. It is an agent actualizing some potential here and now. Not every instance of essential causality is a willed choice, but every willed choice is an instance of essential causality. So, the building example illustrates the general concept of essential causality, not willing in particular.

The choice to build and the building two different things. — tim wood

Yes, but building willingly and willing to build ate inseparable

If you want to associate moral agency with free choice, then you have to decide or figure out when the moral agency kicks in (and what kicks it). — tim wood

It kicks in as soon as one commits to a line of action and continues as long as one continues to be committed. What commits is a unified person. We abstract out of that unity the capacity to commit and call it "the will," but the will is not a thing, it is only a person's capacity to make commitments. So, we should not reify the will.

you shall have to decide what moral agency means. — tim wood

It means that we can make rational commitments. It is not an artifact of legislation, but legislation can reflect the fact that persons can and do act as moral agents.

And then there is Mathew 5:28, wherein the thought alone would seem to establish moral agency, no choice having been made. — tim wood

Matt 5:28: "But I say unto you, that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Note that the text envisions actually looking as a means to the end of lusting. It does not condemn looking, or feeling, but acting to an immoral end. We know that we are committed to an end when we are executing the means to that end. (Walking the walk, not merely talking the talk.) This is not thinking of the act only, but starting to act on the thought.

And moral agency/responsibility seems a capacity people have to assign certain meanings to actions, — tim wood

No, I can assign a meaning to an act without committing to the act. I can think <if I get closer, that would violate the Jane's personal space> and then commit to staying where I am.

And relativism avoided by appeal to and acceptance of reason, by most people. — tim wood

One can commit in the framework of a universalist ethics, or in that of a relativistic ethics, so relativism is irrelevant to the fact of moral agency.

I pointed out that the very first sentence of your paper is factually wrong — Kenosha Kid

I suggest you read the works of naturalists such as Huxley and Dawkins, who explicitly argue that we do not need mind in nature as evolution exemplifies order emerging from randomness.

So we need free will in order to feel comfortable in administering punishment. — Banno

Not at all. Despite free will, we should feel very uncomfortable in administering punishment.
1. The act we might punish might not be a free act. For example, we can't get into other people's minds to know whether they acted freely or as the result of some pathology.
2. Why do we have the moral right to administer punishment?
3. Is committing an evil act a moral warrant for punishment?
4. Even if we are justified in administering it, what is proportional punishment?
I could go on.

Hence, we do not need to appeal to free will. — Banno

Agreed. Whether free will is possible, and whether it is real, have nothing to do with punishment. We might justify negative reinforcement without assuming free will, and we might accept free will without thinking that it justifies the administration of punishment.

Would some kind soul offer a two or three sentence precis of just what this thread is about? The title of the thread is, "Compatibilism Misunderstands both Free Will and Causality." In as much as most of the words in the title are terms-of-art, and no definitions have been offered (please direct me if I've overlooked them), it is not clear to me the discussion can arise to the level of coherence. — tim wood

Definitions:
Free will:

To be responsible for an act, one must be the origin of that act. If the act is predetermined before we were born, as determinism claims, clearly it does not originate in us or anything we did. So, compatibilism is fraud. — Dfpolis

While this is not a definition, it implies the kind of free will I am defending, i.e. one that sees acts as having their causal origin in the moral agent. So, "free will" means that at least some of our moral choices are not predetermined, but originate in an informed act of the moral agent.

The Compatibilist Notion of Free Will

... the idea that "free will" means we can do or choose what we desire (or something similar), — Dfpolis

Causality:

for over 1800 years, philosophers distinguished two kinds of efficient causality: accidental (Humean-Kantian time sequence by rule) and essential (the actualization of potency). — Dfpolis

I then go on to discuss each type at length providing examples.

The notion of cause as in cause-and-effect is a presupposition of differing ways of thinking and means different things in the several ways. Thus if one argues with it, one needs the right one, and in the right sense and application. Lacking that the argument cannot be correct. And even when correctly argued, only correct in its home context. — tim wood

That is why the OP is not short.

As to the possibility of free will, bumblebees fly and people have the capability for free will. And no account of either is of much real use unless grounded somehow somewhere someway. — tim wood

There is no evidence that bees have the kind of free will that makes them responsible.

I did not offer evidence that humans do, because whether we actually have free will in the sense I am using is irrelevant to the point under discussion.

My thesis:

Compatibilism is an example of the old "bait and switch" sales tactic applied to moral philosophy. The bait is that you can have your moral cake (responsibility stemming from free-will) and Humean-Kantian causality (time sequence by rule) too. The switch is that the kind of "free will" that is compatible with time sequence by rule does not support human responsibility. — Dfpolis

Still, it is clear that we have the kind of free will that makes us responsible, that makes us the origin of lines of action not fully predetermined. To have free will in the required sense is to be capable of actualizing one of a number of incompatible choices equally in our power. Clearly, it is equally in my power to go to the store or to stay home, and my choice actualizes one of these possibilities.

I prefer 'free choice'. — Olivier5

That is my preferred term.

And at the end of this evolution, there's some 'pilot in the plane' that gets generated, some navigating system for the animal, that allows full integration of sense data, memory, analysis, etc, within the same space to make for better piloting. — Olivier5

While I agree with the evolutionary advantages of cephalization for ambulatory organisms, there is no reason to think that the evolutionary advantages lead to anything but superior data processing and response to the environment -- no reason to think that it leads to subjective awareness, and no reason to think it leads to free will/choice.