I'm not sure why I would have to accept this. Some deflationist view could just say "to exist" is used in a variety of ways depending on what you mean. For example, numbers "exist" in some sense, idea exist in some ways, middle earth in the LOTR "exists" — Marty

We are speaking of existence in a metaphysical, not an intentional or fictional context. Yes, "existence" can be applied analogically in non-metaphysical contexts to numbers (which have intentional existence) and to Middle Earth (which has fictional existence), but say that these analogical usages mean the same as metaphysical or ontological "existence" is to equivocate.

Factually, it may very well be that every existent is actually acting, but logically, nothing can act unless it exists, so, it suffices to say that (metaphysical) existence is convertible with the capacity to act.

However, Kant had already demonstrated causation to be ideal at the point he addressed the idea of existence not being a real predicate. — Marty

Claiming to have demonstrated a thesis, is not the same as actually demonstrating a thesis.

If indeed existence wasn't a real predicate, then the application of concepts like, "the ability to act" could have applied t — Marty

It is not "the ability to act" in a being that's existence, it's merely existence itself separate from any predication for Kant. — Marty

It is absolutely uninformative to say that existence is "merely existence itself."

I am not defining "existence," because to define is to limit, and existence is unlimited in se. I am saying what it is convertible with rather than what it is. I am explicating existence by pointing out that it is dynamic, rather than passive. Nor am I saying the capacity to act is a "property" of existence. Properties are not convertible with what

how can their be a reality at all to experience, unless we have transcendental tools to experience it in the first place? — Marty

they are properties of.

That is why in order to form knoweldge, we cannot have concepts alone but also use our sensibility in receptivity. — Marty

Concepts are not knowledge because they make no assertions that can be true or false. To know something is to realize that what you are aware of is adequate to reality. Of course, this is exactly what Kant denies (that our awareness is adequate to noumenal reality). So, for Kantians there is no real knowledge.

So, we can have knowledge as acquaintance (e.g., "Yes, I know that house") because we realize that the subject sensing the object is the object being sensed by the subject. We can predicate properties of substances because we know that the same percept that elicits our concept of the subject elicits our concept of the predicate.

The question is worked backwards for Kant: how can their be a reality at all to experience, unless we have transcendental tools to experience it in the first place? — Marty

Simple. We are beings able first, to sense, and second, to be aware of what we sense. There is no need for an unparsimonious transcendental superstructure. Reality acts on us, and we are a of a part of its action -- and so informed of how it can and does act.

You would have to somehow create a theory in which we readily just receive the world without any cognitive tools. — Marty

We have cognitive tools (sensation and awareness), but they add nothing to what is perceived.

However, Kant has already told us that intuition without concepts are empty, as concepts without intuitions are blind. Such content could never get us any form of justification without the other, and never enter into the logical space of reasons. — Marty

If by intuition, you mean awareness, then yes, every act of cognition has an object which provides the intelligible contents we are aware of and a subject who is aware of that intelligibility. There is no need for the addition of any forms of understanding -- only an intelligible object (the noumenon) and a subject able to actualize that intelligibility.

The categories of space-time are constitutive of all experiences, as all experiences will include them. In terms of the pure concepts of understanding: quality, quantity, modality and relation are also contained as forms of existence. — Marty

1. Space and time are not fundamental -- extension (parts outside of parts) and change are fundamental. Space is an abstraction based on the fact that reality has parts outside of parts, and time is the measure of change according to before and after.

Now if noumena had no parts outside of parts we could never have a partial encounter with a noumenon, for all our encounters would be of unextended wholes. There would thus be no ontological basis for our experience of extension. The same is true for time. If there were no real changes, there would be nothing to measure according to before and after -- and no ontological basis for the concept of time.

Think of it this way. We exist, and so have a noumenal aspect. We can only be the basis (as Kant believes) for the concepts of space and time if we have parts outside of parts and are subject to change. Thus, some noumena have parts outside of parts and are subject to change. In other words, it is untrue that the forms of space and time never have a noumenal basis. But, if they sometimes have a noumenal basis, then there is no need to posit that they are more forms of understanding.

Thus, Kant's theory is self contradictory.

2. categories are not constitutive of experience. Categories are conceptual while experience is preconceptual. It is only by reflecting on experience and focusing on this or that note of intelligibility, that we forms concepts which can be used to categorize experience. So, the claim that "The categories of space-time are constitutive of all experiences" involves a category error.

3. Not all human experience involves space and time. Introvertive mystical experience is devoid of sensory contents that could form the basis for the concepts of space and time -- thus showing the claim to be based on a false premise.

It's not only that we have no concept of existence, it is that existence isn't a concept! — Marty

This depends on how you define "concept." If you require definable contents, the <existence> is not a concept. If you only require awareness of reality, then we do have a concept of existence.

For even you yourself changed the prediction of "existence" to mean "the ability to act" — something, in which for Kant, would have been independently applied to existence. — Marty

Showing that Kant does not understand existence. If the capacity to act were a property that can be added to existence, then hypothetically, we could have an instance of existence which cannot act. Such a thing could do nothing, including making itself known to us, and so it would be indistinguishable from nothing. But, what is indistinguishable from nothing is nothing. Thus, the hypothesis that it exists is false, and so there is no existent which cannot act in some way.

It means what I have now written above. — Marty

You have not written above why we cannot reason to existence.

If we do have such humility, it would already seem to point out some utter limitations. Thus creating the Noumea. — Marty

Noumena have nothing to do with humility. Obviously, human knowledge is limited and I willingly affirm that there are things humans may never know -- may be incable of knowing. For example, if there are other universes in a multiverse that are dynamically disjoint with our universe, then we have know way of knowing them.

This is not the case with noumena as the source of phenomena. Any noumenon that acts to make itself appear to us (as a phenomenon) must have the capacity so to act, and we know that it has this capacity. No matter how much hypothetical spaghetti Kant inserts between the knower and the noumenon, we still know that the noumenon can act to effect the phenomena we perceive. Thus, his reasoning, with all of its hypothetical convolutions, is doomed to fail.

As I take it the only reasonable interpretation of Kant is the dual-aspect interpretation. — Marty

Such an interpretation leaves Kant utterly irrational. Why posit something (noumena) that has no role in forming our thought in a theory whose aim is to explain human thought? It would be as if I went on for pages about Winkies and then said we cannot know them or even the possibility of them, but we must still consider them in discussing human experience.

Teleology is more complex than necessary. — TheMadFool

Really? How?

The pure concepts of understanding don't "exist". They are transcendental. — Marty

Taking my lead from Plato in the Sophist, I understand "to exist" as convertible with "to be able to act.". If "pure concepts of understanding" do not exist, they can do nothing. So, we can safely ignore them in all contexts. On the other hand, if you insist that they do something, it is a corruption of language to say that they do not exist.

By the way, existence is transcendental, applying to all reality.

They merely create the conditions of possibility for us to understand/experience nature. — Marty

Nothing can "create" anything unless it is operational -- and nothing can be operational unless it actually exists. Thus, it is incoherent to say they do not exist. How can anyone say anything relevant to reality about what does not exist?

We realize the form of the concepts in the possibility of any experience whatsoever being constitutive of them. — Marty

I can't relate this sentence to anything in my experience. Perhaps you could illustrate it with an example?

They are natural insofar as nature is just merely the phenomenal character of these concepts applied. — Marty

Which is to say that nature is derivative on concepts, and so immaterial. But, if it is immaterial, we are faced with Parmenides' argument that change is impossible -- for the possibility of change is dependent on matter as a principle of continuity.

The argument to prove this is just transcendental: X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y—where then, given that Y is the case, it logically follows that X must be the case too. — Marty

This is called petitio principii or begging the question. No one doubting the existence of "pure concepts of understanding" would grant that they are the necessary condition for anything. You need an argument based on premises accepted by people not sharing your faith in Kant.

From a logical perspective, since you deny that "pure concepts of understanding" exist, it is hard to see what you want to convince us of. I already agree that they do not exist, but I am at a loss to what it means to say that a non-existent conditions anything, or that such conditioning "is the case" (given that "is" does not apply).

They have no Being. They are ideal. — Marty

This is a contradiction in terms. To be ideal is to have intentional existence.

Being isn't a real predicate in Kantian metaphysics. — Marty

It is not a predicate in Aristotelian metaphysics either. That does not mean that we have no concept of existence. The concept of existence reflects an indeterminate capacity to act. The specification of a being's capacity to act is given by its essence.

We reason from existence, and not to it. That is, we don't apply it. — Marty

I have no idea what this means. We reason to the existence of God. And, we can reason hypothetically, prescinding from the question of actual existence. I will grant that we cannot reason to existence except from existence.

We know it as a form of limitation of our understanding — as something that we're not. — Marty

This sentence is incoherent. To know something specific (a tode ti -- a "this something"), we must have some means of ostentation, of identification, of pointing "it" out. If we cannot do that, and Kant says we can't with noumena, then we can't know "it" vs. something else. We can know, by analogy with our continuing experience of novelty, that there are things we do not know, but absent some means of identification, we cannot say it is a this rather than that that we do not know.

The same sentence assumes facts not in evidence. We do not know that there are any intrinsic limitations to our understanding, nor is it clear that we ever could know that there were such limits. To know that there were such limits we would have to know that there were facts we could not know -- a contradiction in terms.

I sometimes think of it in the way Aquinas conceived of what God is by what he's not. The difference is that Kant just bars the idea of any positive description. — Marty

Yes, Aquinas says we can only know what God is not, because finite minds are not proportioned to infinite being. So, we can know, for example that God is not limited, and so has unlimited being, knowledge, good and so on. This is not analogous to what Kant is doing because we have a reasoned identification of God as the Source of necessity, actualization, order and so on. In Kant's case there is no reasoned identification. There is only a de fide division of phenomena and noumena and the unparsimonious positing of "pure concepts of understanding" that do not exist, and therefore can effect nothing.

I wasn't talking about divine psychology. I'm merely stipulating that subjects do not have the power to know in the same way that a God would — that includes intellectual intuition. Which if we don't, we run back towards the noumenon for Kant — Marty

Perhaps, but not to the separation of noumena and phenomena that Kant posits. I know of no sound argument that would lead us to reject the notion that phenomena are how noumena reveal their reality to us. Do you have even one?

I accept that you are not a Kantian, but I do not see that I am misunderstanding Kant.

I'm not saying mechanistic and teleological explanations are at odds. I'm asking why even have teleological explanations at all? — Marty

The more general question is why have any explanations at all? Aristotle is on the right track in beginning his Metaphysics by observing that "All humans by nature desire to know." To be human is to be knowledge-seeking. That is the reason that many young children tire parents out with incessant "Whys?" Aristotle, after years of studying his predecessors, found that there are four basic types of explanation: material, formal, efficient and final. What stands before us, the given (datum), is because it is made of this stuff, in this form, by this agent, for this end.

Of course, not everyone notices, or cares, about the same projections of reality. If you go to a good movie with articulate friends, the conversation after can turn to plotting, character development, set design, costuming, cinematography, scoring or a myriad of other aspects which integrate to give the movie its impact. Not everyone will notice or care about many of these aspects, but they are still part of what is given in the movie. What anyone notices or cares about will depend on their nature and experiential background. It is the same with modes of explanation.

You said earlier because the complexity of certain phenomenon would be too complex to explain mechanistically, but that seems to appeal to the under-determination of the relevant facts. That isn't enough to then say that we ought to have teleological explanations. — Marty

I did not say that some phenomena yield more readily to a teleological approach to prediction than to a mechanistic one to justify teleology generally, but to rebut the often-heard objection that it has no predictive value. Of course it does. Most predictions of human behavior are based on understanding individual goals.

While increasing predictability gives theories (modes of understanding) utility and evolutionary survival value, there is more to the human desire to know. We not only seek utility, but intellectual satisfaction. That is why humans study fields such as theoretical physics, mathematics, metaphysics and theology without hope of application.

That isn't enough to then say that we ought to have teleological explanations. — Marty

As I just said, it was not intended to be. "Ought" is based on the relation of means to ends. If we are ordered to some natural completion, to some end, then we ought to effect adequate means. (This is, itself, a teleological argument.) As we have a natural desire to know, then we ought to employ the means of satisfying that need. Aristotle's study of his predecessors can be seen as an empirical study of the modes of explanation that satisfy human curiosity. Among them is the teleological mode.

How do we know the heart was selected for too circulate blood throughout the body, as oppose to it being a by-product of another form: the heart going "bump-bump-bump". How do we devise a hypothesis that can test for which was selected instead of merely being a by-product? — Marty

Not all knowledge is the result of the hypothetico-deductive method. Much results from abstraction. The difference is this: hypothetical reasoning adds an unknown thesis to the data. Abstraction removes irrelevant notes of comprehension from the data. For example, in abstracting natural numbers, we come to see that what is counted is irrelevant to counting.

If you accept the theory of evolution, the only reason the heart evolved as it did, why greater pumping capacity was selected over lesser pumping capacity, was that the pumping capacity contributed to the success of the organism as a whole -- and it did so by circulating blood, and with it an energy supply. So, if the heart did not circulate blood, it would not have evolved as it did.

Thus, the evolution of the heart is essentially, not accidentally, related to the circulation of blood. To say that it was a mere by-product of some unpredictable mutation is to ignore this essential relation.

In my article, I point out the analogy between the artificial intelligence strategy of generated and test and the evolutionary mechanism of mutate and select. If you know that there will be so many mutations that you are certain of getting the one you are seeking, then determining the selection process determines the outcome. Here the selection of pumping capacity is determined by the laws of survival.

Since the laws of nature are essentially intentional, the results of their operation, the result of natural selection, bears the same intentional character.

The question was how do we differentiate between non-teleological ends such as the one I mentioned, and teleological ones? — Marty

If we have an end (telos), how can we not have teleology? The idea of teleology is that the end is latent in a prior state because the on-going operation of some intentionality (e.g. a human commitment, or the laws of nature) will bring it to fruition. How can we even speak of an end if this is not so?

How do we know whether something has a result of x, rather than x is the intended consequence of certain processes? — Marty

I assume you meant to write "the unintended consequence of certain processes."

Because determination to a definite state is, by its very nature, intentional. I make this argument in detail in my paper. The short version is that intentionality is characterized by aboutness. Thus, my intention to go to the store is about arriving at the store. In the same way, determination to a definite state is about attaining that state. So, any determinate process is essentially intentional.

Perhaps the question you have in mind is: does teleology imply an intending mind? I offer what I think is a sound (deductive, not hypothetical) argument that it does in my evolution paper.

1. Why would the complexity of mechanical explanation be a reason to then opt out for teleological explanations? Wouldn't that be a form of appealing to consequence because our mechanical explanations as of now under-determined the relevant facts? Many mechanists claim that there have been advances in biology/evolutionary theory that replace teleological explanations before. Could it not just occur later? — Marty

This question seems to assume what I deny, i,e, that mechanical explanations are opposed to teleological explanations. So, in employing teleological reasoning, there is no denial of the necessity of mechanisms to attain ends in the natural world. Choosing one form of explanation has nothing to do with denying the relevance of the other. When we do choose, we typically whatever is the simplest or most efficient mode of explanation. If you want to know how a spider will respond to a fly caught in its web, it is much more efficient to ask what is the end of a web than to model the neural state of the spider and its response to visual inputs and vibrations of its web.

I am unsure what you are asking about evolution, but as I show in my paper (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution), one can fully accept the mechanisms of evolution while concluding that it has targets (ends). Nor is evolution based, as is often claimed, on pure randomness. So, it is not an example of order emerging from mindless randomness.

2. How do you generally answer people who offer the argument that we couldn't differentiate between something in evolution as being a by-product of selection (spandrels), or an actual form of adaptive selection? That is, what is adapted for, or what can be a suppose end of adaption, is not falsifiable? — Marty

Falsifiability applies to hypotheses. The relevant hypothesis is that evolution is random, not deterministic. This is incompatible with the mechanistic position that evolution is fully compatible with physics. In physics, the only random process is quantum measurement -- which cannot have occurred before the emergence of intelligent observers. So, if one holds that evolution is compatible with physics, then it is not random, but fully deterministic. In other words, at least up to the advent of intelligent life, the species that have evolved are fully latent in the initial state of the cosmos and the laws of nature.

How are these determinate ends achieved? By applying the laws of nature, microscopically and macroscopically, to initial states. The microscopic application is relevant to the mechanisms of genetic mutation, while the macroscopic application is relevant to the mechanisms of natural selection.

So, there is no need to choose between the existence of determinate ends and the operation of fixed laws. They are different ways of conceptualizing the same reality.

3. Similar to (2), how do we differentiate between seemingly teleological events, and teleological events? Such as a snowfall rolling down a hill isn't going down the hill because it's end is the bottom. But it seems like, say, metabolism is directed towards converting food for-the-sake-of energy. — Marty

Not every event is teleological in the sense of being "for the sake of" something else. Every event is teleological in the sense of being determined either by the laws of nature in general or by some rational agent. As Aristotle points out, some events are accidental in the sense of resulting from the coincidence of lines of action directed to other ends. You and I might meet at the store because I need eggs and you need peas, and then become friends, but our becoming friends was not the end of either of us in going to the store. So, snowballs might roll down hill because gravity is necessary for life to evolve (as shown by the physics behind the fine-tuning argument.)

Let me add that the existence of ends, even for the sake of something else, does not imply that we understand, or even can understand, the ordering of the proximate to the final ends.

4. How do you generally response to the statement that, "Given that things are set up in a certain way, x just happens." I know you could theoretically offer a compatible teleological explanation, but why would one want to even begin to do so? — Marty

The fact that things are determined to x means that x is the end of the system. So, the problem is not whether there is an end, for that is a given. The problem is why should we think of x as an end? Often there is no reason to think of x as an end, as there is often no reason to think of an end as effected by detailed mechanisms. We humans have limited powers of representation, and so we abstract those features of a situation we consider to be most relevant. If we do not consider the attainment of x as important, we will generally not consider it as an end. If we see its attainment as important, we are more likely to see it as at least a proximate end.

5. What books do you particularly feel are the best for getting a handle on teleology? — Marty

I have developed my views of teleology by comparing Aristotle's views (scattered through the corpus. usually in connection with the four causes) with modern discussions. The question I had in mind in reading critiques is: Does this really rebut the idea of ends, or does it merely offer a different way of conceptualizing the same reality?

The pure concepts of understanding are synthesized with the sensible intuitions. They are not projected onto nature, but have a structure such that there's continuity between the subject and object. — Marty

If there were "pure concepts of understanding," then synthesizing them with what is sensed before we are aware of it would leave us confused as to what belongs to the "pure concept" and what belongs to nature as we are sensing it. Thus, they would be projected upon our understanding of nature.

As there is no evidence whatsoever for any "pure concepts of understanding," there is no reason tor believe that the object of awareness is other than nature. Of course to say that it is nature is not to say it is nature exhaustively, but only that it is nature as interacting with us as subjects.

We can consider them neither as subjective, nor objective, as they are rightfully called transcendental — the conditions of possibility for either as such. — Marty

To consider them to be anything, we must first have evidence of their being. Kant's authority is not evidence.

It then follows that we do have knoweldge of the world, simply through certain conceptual and intutional categories (always in pairs), just not things-in-themselves. — Marty

There is a difference between a valid conclusion of questionable premises and what follows from a sound argument.

If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the term.

But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be 'noumenon' in the positive sense of the term.

If noumena cannot be known by sensory experience, if they are "not an object of our sensible intuition," then the only way of knowing them is by some direct, mystical intuition ("the intellectual"). But, Kant tells us that "we cannot comprehend even the possibility" of this. (This is a most peculiar claim, for if he cannot comprehend the possibility, he cannot sensibly write about the possibility.)

What cannot be known by the only two ways we have of knowing (sensory and mystical experience) cannot be known in any way. So, Kant's noumena are epistemologically indistinguishable from nonbeing. How is it rational to take as a principle of one's theory, of one's understanding, the existence of something you claim to be absolutely unknowable?

When Kant says we can't know the noumenon he means we do not have the capacity of an intellectual intuition. Which is a type of non-conceptual, non-sensory intuition of the world as it is that God would supposedly have. — Marty

Clearly, we do not know as God knows. God knows by knowing His own act of sustaining creation in existence (creatio continuo). We know by interacting, in a limited way. with a portion of creation. It does not follow from this that we do not know some of the same objects, the same noumena, that God knows. Indeed, if we are to know at all, we must know the being God knows Hew holds in existence.

So, I can grant that "we do not have the capacity of an intellectual intuition," taken as "a type of non-conceptual, non-sensory intuition of the world as it is that God" has, without denying that we know, in a limited way, what God knows exhaustively.

I meant texts written by Kant.

I don't think that's correct. Newton's theory of gravity isn't incompatible with Einstein's relativity. — TheMadFool

Of course it is. That is why we have general relativity. Newton's theory assumes instantaneous action at a distance, because it has two masses attracted to the each others present location, not their location in the past (as delayed by the speed of light). This violates the principle that no signal can travel faster then the speed of light.

Newton's theory is approximately correct, but does not predict the precession of the perihelion of Mercury properly, which Eistein's does.

The choice between the two in favor of Einstein was, in part, based on the simplicity of Einstein's which explained away the force of gravity as a curvature of space due to mass. — TheMadFool

If you studied both theories, you would find that Einstein's is much more complex -- so much so that Einstein himself needed the aid of a mathematician in formulating it. Its equations are nonlinear and require a thorough understanding of tensor analysis. As late as 1920 Eddington bragged (falsely) that he was one of only two people in the world who understood it. So, accuracy of prediction, rather then simplicity is the reason for accepting Einstein's theory over Newton's.

I am sorry that you think we must choose between views that are logically compatible.

My understanding:

You're claiming that as an explanation, teleology is as good as the mechanistic.

Am I correct? — TheMadFool

In the sense that both are equally true, they are as "good." But, being equally true does not mean that they provide us with the same information. So, depending on what you want to understand, one is better than the other. If you want to harvest wheat, then you need to understand that the end of a wheat grain is a mature wheat plant. If you want to predict an eclipse, then you need to understand the laws of celestial motion.

If yes, then it must be a choice between the two explanations. Ockham's razor directs us to choose the simpler model. — TheMadFool

Nonsense! As I said Okham's razor (the Principle of Parsimony) only applies when we must choose between alternate hypotheses. That is not the case here. For you to justify the application of parsimony, you need to show that mechanism is logically incompatible with teleology. Of course, it is not, as they are related as means and ends. How can we employ means without effecting ends? How can we attain ends without employing means?

So, we reject teleology because it's more complicated than the alternative mechanistic explanation. — TheMadFool

This is equally nonsensical. Consider how complicated it would be to calculate mechanically the growth of a grain of wheat into a mature plant, or the response of a spider to a fly caught in its web. These calculations are so complicated and require so much data, that no one even attempts them. Given the fact that these processes can be nonlinear and so chaotic, it is not even clear that the calculation is possible. On the other hand, the outcomes are obvious when we consider the ends of seeds and of webs.

Thus, you case falls apart on two grounds:
1. The teleological and mechanistic approaches are not incompatible, but related as ends and means.
2. It is often the case that teleologically based predictions are simpler and more reliable than mechanical calculations. (I say more reliable because in chaos theory any small error in the initial conditions can lead to huge erros int he final state.)

Well, both mechanistic and teleogical explanations seem derivable from known facts. — TheMadFool

Yes.

Ockham's razor is in order.

Which theory is simpler? — TheMadFool

The application of Ockham's razor would only apply if mechanism and teleology were alternate, incompatible views. One of my main points is that they are not. We need means (mechanisms) to effect ends. Also, any determinate mechanisms will yield determinate states (ends). So, rather than being incompatible, mechanism and teleology are mutually implying.

Given that there is no intrinsic conflict, and that both are derivable from known facts, the only conflict here is mental -- having one's mind closed to projections of reality other than the one a person is fixed upon.

Thank you for your suggested corrections. Do you have any texts to support them?

I'm missing your point here because I said that Science will need to have the Explanation for the How and Why, and not merely the fact that it is. — SteveKlinko

OK. I misunderstood what you were saying. To me there is data, and the data might show that there is intentionality in the neurons, and there is theory, which would explain the data in terms of how and why. But, you agree that there is no experimental test for finding intentionality in neurons, so, there can be no data to explain. That leaves us with the question: What kind of evidentiary support can there be for a theory that supposedly explains something that cannot be observed? If this theory predicts that some set of physical circumstances will produce intentionality in neurons, and we cannot observe intentionality in neurons, doesn't that make the theory unfalsifiable, and so unscientific? In short, I have difficulty in seeing how such a theory can be part of science.

I disagree that we know anything about what Intentionality is. We know we have it, but what really is it? This is similar to how we Experience the Redness of Red. We certainly know that we have the Experience but we have no idea what it is. — SteveKlinko

If you mean that we cannot reduce these things to a physical basis, that is the very point I am making. But that is not the same as not knowing what a thing is. If we can define intentionality well enough for other people to recognize it when they encounter it, we know what it is.

I think you need to ask yourself what you mean by knowing "what a thing is?" What things are is fully defined by what they can do. If we know what things can do -- how they scatter light, interact with other objects, and so on -- we know all there is to know about what they are. We pretty much know what various kinds of intentions do. So, in what way do we not know what they are?

If you have an intention to do something then that intention must ultimately be turned into a Volitional command to the Brain that will lead to the firing of Neurons that will activate the muscles of the Physical Body to do something. I believe you called that a Committed Intention. — SteveKlinko

Agreed. And that means that committed intentions must modify the laws that control how our neurophysiology works. How else could they do what they do?

When you say the Laws of Nature are Intentional, it sounds like you are talking about some kind of Intelligent Design. I'm not sure how this is even relevant to the discussion. — SteveKlinko

I am not an advocate of Intelligent Design. I think it gravely misunderstands the laws of nature. ID assumes that God is not intelligent enough to create a cosmos that effects His ends without recurrent diddling. That is insulting to God.

The arguments I give in my paper for the laws of nature being intentional are based solely on our empirical knowledge, and do not assume the existence of an intending God. The relevance here of the laws being intentional is that they are in the same theater of operations as human commitments. Since they are in the same theater of operation, our commitments can affect the general laws, perturbing them to effect our ends. Material operations, on the other hand, are not in the same theater of operation and so cannot affect the laws of nature.

When you hang your argument for eliminating the Hard Problem on an abstract Intentions concept being Material you are setting up a straw man. — SteveKlinko

This seems confused. First, I an not saying intentions are material. Second, the Hard Problem is about the production of consciousness (of intellect) and not, in the first instance about volition (will).

We have no intentions without consciousness, which is awareness of present intelligibility. It makes what was merely intelligible actually known. The brain can process data in amazing ways, but processing data does not raise data from being merely intelligible to being actually known. To make what is intelligible actually known requires a power that is not merely potential, but operational. So, nothing that is merely intelligible, that is only potentially an intention, can produce an intention. Thus, data encoded in the brain cannot make itself actually known -- it cannot produce consciousness.

What is already operational in the intentional theater is awareness -- what Aristotle called the agent intellect. It is when we turn our awareness to present intelligibility that the neurally encoded contents become known. So, while the brain can produce the contents of awareness, it cannot produce awareness of those contents.

Even if your Intention argument is true, this Redness Experience Explanatory Gap must be solved. This is what the Hard Problem is really all about. — SteveKlinko

If that were so, then every instance of consciousness, even the most abstract, would involve some quale. It does not. So, quale are not an essential aspect of consciousness. On the other hand, there is no instance of consciousness without awareness and some intelligible object. So, the essential features of consciousness are awareness/subjectivity and the the contents of awareness/objectivity.

Of course there are qualia, but we do know what they are. All qualia are the contingent forms of sensory awareness. We know, for example, that redness is the form of our awareness of certain spectral distributions of light. There is nothing else to know about redness. If you think there is, what would it be?

I think you are saying that there is only an Explanatory Gap if the Intentional Reality is found to be in the Neurons — SteveKlinko

I am not sure what, operationally, it would mean to find intentional reality "in the neurons." If intentions are to be effective, if I am actually able to go to the store because I intend to go to store, then clearly my intentions need to modify the behavior of neurons and are in them in the sense of being operative in them. Yet, for the hard problem to make sense requires more than this, for it assumes that the operation of our neurophysiology is the cause of intentionality. What kind of observation could possibly confirm this?

But if it is found to be in the Neurons then that means that Science has an Explanation for How and Why it is in the Neurons — SteveKlinko

Knowing what is, is not the same as knowing how or why it is. We know that electrons have a charge of -1 in natural units. We have no idea of how and why this is so.

If Intentional Reality is not found in the Neurons then there would exist a Huge Explanatory Gap as to what it could be. — SteveKlinko

Not at all. We already know what intentionality is. We can define it, describe it, and give uncounted examples of it. What we do not know is what we cannot know, i.e. how something that cannot be its cause is its cause. That is no more a gap than not knowing how to trisect an arbitrary angle with a compass and straightedge is a gap in our knowledge of Euclidean geometry. There is no gap if there is no reality to understand.

. How does this non-Material Intention ultimately interact with the Neurons, as it must, to produce Intentional or Volitional effects? — SteveKlinko

I think the problem here is how you are conceiving the issue. You seem to be thinking of intentional reality as a a quasi-material reality that "interacts" with material reality. It is not a different thing, it is a way of thinking about one thing -- about humans and how humans act. It makes no sense to ask how one kind of human activity "interacts" with being human, for it is simply part of being human.

I have argued elsewhere on this forum and in my paper (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution), that the laws of nature are intentional. The laws of nature are not a thing separate from the material states they act to transform. Rather, both are aspects of nature that we are able to distinguish mentally and so discuss in abstraction from each other. That we discuss them independently does not mean that they exist, or can exist, separately.

Would it make any sense to ask how the laws of nature (which are intentional), "interact" with material states? No, that would be a category error, for the laws of nature are simply how material states act and it makes no sense to ask how a state acts "interacts" with the state acting. In the same way it makes no sense to ask how an effective intention, how my commitment to go to the store, interacts with my going to the store -- it is simply a mentally distinguishable aspect of my going to the store.

I know this does not sound very satisfactory. So, think of it this way. If I have not decided to go to the store, my neurophysiology obeys certain laws of nature. Once I commit to going, it can no longer be obeying laws that will not get me to the store, so it must be obeying slightly different laws -- laws that are modified by my intentions. So, my committed intentions must modify the laws controlling my neurophysiology. That is how they act to get me to the store.

Am I correct in saying that Volition is the same as Intention in your analysis? — SteveKlinko

Volition produces what I am calling "committed intentions." There are many other kinds of intentions like knowing, hoping, believing, etc.

So I'm expecting that you are going to show how the Hard Problem goes away. — SteveKlinko

No, my claim is that the Hard Problem is a chimera based on the fallacious assumption that intentional reality can be reduced to a material phenomenon. It's solution is to realize that there is no solution, because it is not a real problem.

I think you are missing an important aspect of Consciousness by dismissing the experience of Qualia as you do. What is that Redness that you experience when you look at a Red object or when you Dream about a Red Object? — SteveKlinko

I am not dismissing qualia. They are quite real. I am saying that they are not essential to being conscious as they only occur in some cases. For example, we know abstract intelligibility without being aware of qualia. For example, what quale is associated with knowing that the rational numbers are countably infinite or that the real numbers are uncountably infinite? So, I see qualia as real, but not essential to being conscious.

Sounds like you are saying that there are two separate subsystems of the Material Mind (the Neurons). — SteveKlinko

No, I am saying that there is a material data processing subsystem composed of neurons, glia, and neurotransmitters, but that it cannot account for the intentional aspects of mind, so we also need an additional, immaterial, subsystem to account for intentional operations.

This sounds like you are saying that you are going to show that Intentional Reality cannot be found in the Neurons. — SteveKlinko

As intentional realities are immaterial, it is a category error to think of them as having a location, as being "in" something. You can think of immaterial realities being where they act, but that does not confine them to a single location.

Sound like Ontological Dualism to me. — SteveKlinko

Saying that the material operations of mind are not the intentional operations of mind is no more dualistic than saying that the sphericity of a ball is not its material. There is one substance (ostensible unity) -- the ball or the person -- but we can mentally distinguish different aspects of that substance. As it is foolish to think that we can reduce the sphericity of the ball to its being rubber, so it it is foolish to think we can reduce the intentional operations of a person to being material. They are simply different ways of thinking of one and the same thing.

You are just assuming that Neural Activity must imply Conscious Activity in all cases. — SteveKlinko

No, I am not. I am saying that if A explains B, then every case of A implies a case of B. If we find a counterexample, then by the modus tollens, A does not A explain B. This leaves open the possibility that A plus something else might explain B. Still, it takes more than A to explain B. I am suggesting that the "something else" is an intentional subsystem.

Yes but this seems to imply that the Conscious Activity of Intention can not be found in the Neurons by Science yet. — SteveKlinko

No. It implies that that as long as it begins with the Fundamental Abstraction, natural science is unequipped to deal with intentional operations.

I did not see any solution to the Hard Problem in all this. If Intentional Realities are not reducible to the Material Neurons then what are Intentional Realities? Where are Intentional Realities? How can this be Explained? There is a big Explanatory Gap here. This Explanatory Gap is the Chalmers Hard Problem. — SteveKlinko

There is only a gap if you assume that intentional operations can be reduced to physical operations. If you do not make this assumption, there is no gap to bridge.

We know, from experience that humans can perform both physical and intentional operations. That is a datum, a given, in the same way that protons can engage in strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational interactions is a given. Knowing these things does not mean that we can or should be seeking ways of reducing one to the other. It does mean that we should seek to understand how these kinds of interactions relate to each other. To do that requires that we employ the best methods to investigate them separately and in combination.

I've read you post several times and am at a loss. As I intend "ultimately a posteriori," it means that the principles in question are learned from experience, and are not known innately. I did not see you objecting to this, so I still don't know what you think we are disagreeing about.

This in effect re-grounds the knowledge of the thing into the process of the discovery of the thing, while demolishing the status of the knowledge as knowledge. — tim wood

I do not see how grounding knowledge in experience can involve anything retrograde -- anything that can be called "re-grounding." Nor do I see how anything that has origins can be "demolished" by giving an account of its origins. I can only conclude that some turn of phrase has connotations for you that it does not have for me.

Once done, and the thing known/defined/named, never again need it be discovered: we know it. — tim wood

Have I implied otherwise? How?

Does that imply that all knowledge is a priori? I answer yes, with respect to the criteria that establishes the knowledge as knowledge. — tim wood

No, it does not, because some knowledge is purely contingent, and has no a priori component. That Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812 will never be an a priori fact however well known it is. If we know something in light of general principles, not contingent on the case at hand -- as we know that if I have two apples and am given two more apples, I will have four apples -- then we may be said to know it "a priori" even though we learn arithmetic from experience. But, if the very reason that we know something, as Dickens' birth date, is contingent, then there is nothing a priori about it, however long we may have known it.

Still, if this is not how you wish to use the terms "a priori" and "a posteriori," that is your choice and not a matter that can be settled by argument.

So far your argument is a claim. But I do not find that you have argued it in substantive terms. — tim wood

It seems to me that no such argument is called for. We see how children learn, say, arithmetic. We give them different hings to count until they have the flash of insight (which is an abstraction) by which they see that the counting process does not depend on what is counted. We see the same kinds of abstractions occurring in other areas -- for example if something is happening, something is acting to make it happen -- and so, in a higher-order abstraction, we see that the principles of abstract sciences are grasped by abstraction. In light of this, it seems to me that the burden is on the camp of innate knowledge to show that such abstraction is impossible.

Is referencing <being> a flight to being, or an explication of experience/phenomena? — tim wood

I an not sure what "a flight to being" would mean. We are immersed in being, we can't fly from it or to it.

I would see it more as a penetration of experience -- drilling down to its transcendental core. One might think of seeing the forest instead of the trees.

You have <being> as "something that can act." (I note too you have <being> that we experience, and "a concept of <being>... there to help us.") How does it act? Would it both simplify and demystify to rebrand this <being> as just a capacity of the human mind? — tim wood

I got the explication of being as anything that can act or be acted upon from Plato in the Sophist. I believe it is F. M. Cornford who remarked that Plato sees this as sign/mark of being rather than a definition of being. In any event, we can drop the passive part because if we are acting on a putative being, and it does not re-act in some way, then no matter how much we are exerting our self, we are not acting on it at all.

I would see the power to act not as a definition, or as a mark, of being, but as convertible with being. It prevents us from mistaking being with passive persistence, but it does not define being because there is no more definition of "to act" than there is of "to be." It does help us clarify the distinction of essence as a specification of possible acts and existence as the indeterminate capacity to act.

If we reduce being to a capacity of the human mind, then we have made the ultimate anthropomorphic error and are on the slippery slope to solipsism. Also, we have fundamentally misunderstood mind, which is at one pole of the subject-object relation of knowing.

Nor is being is well-understood as the other (objective) pole. Being is only known to the extent that it has revealed itself to us by deigning to interact with us -- to include us in its game, as it were.

The problem is that consciousness is not at all emergent in the sense in which viscosity and surface tension are. — Dfpolis

No, but if viscosity and surface tension prove emergence itself is possible, and with the admitted lack of complete understanding of neurophysiology, neuroplasticity, must the possibility of consciousness emerging from mere neural complexity, in principle, be granted? — Mww

As I tried to explain in my last response, the kind of "emergence" viscosity and surface tension and surface tension illustrate is not the kind of "emergence" one finds in the neural complexity claim. In the first case, specific mechanisms are used to derive macro-properties from micro-properties. What emerges is not the macro-properties, which are co-occurrant, but our understanding of the relation of the properties. In the second case, no such understanding is proposed and none emerges.

Indeed, it is hard to parse out any precise meaning for "emergent" in the second case. Instead, it seems to voice an ill-defined attachment to materialism or physicalism. It is not a causal claim. We know what causal claims look like, and there is none of the usual reasoning offered in support of causal claims. It is not a claim of analytic reduction, for we see no argument that "consciousness" names or hides some species of complexity. It is not even a claim that a certain class of phenomena will invariable lead to a second class of phenomena, for subjectivity is not a phenomenon, but the awareness of phenomena.

Like many unscientific claims, it is also unfalsifiable -- and on many counts. Not only is there so much wiggle room in the idea of "complexity" that any falsifying observation can be thrown out on the basis of being "insufficiently" complex, or the "wrong kind" of complexity (for the right kind is undefined), but we also have to deal with the fact that since consciousness is not intersubjectively observable we have no idea what kind of phenomena to examine to confirm or falsify the claim.

Since this kind of "emergence" is ill-defined, so is the possibility of its being instantiated.

Interesting. Why would you qualify some truths as so-called “a priori”? Are you thinking the term is mis-used? It’s value mis-applied? The whole schema doubtful? — Mww

As I have explained, some truths are "a priori" in the sense of being transcendentally true, and so not dependent on contingent conditions. That does not mean that we come to know them independently of having experienced being.

What do you mean by transcendental principle, and what is an example of one? — Mww

I use "transcendental" in the sense of applying to all reality. The principles of being (Identity, Contradiction and Excluded Middle) are transcendental in scope. There is also a transcendental relation between essence and existence, so that whatever is, is intrinsically well-specified.

What is meant by “our experience of being”, and what additional/supplemental information could be packed into my own personal experience of being, that isn’t already there? — Mww

I appreciate trying to give a different perspective.

Whenever we experience anything, we are necessarily experiencing being. That does not mean that we appreciate the metaphysical implications of what we experience. Mostly, we don't abstract away information of more immediate interest, so we rarely consider being as being, instead of, say, as a well-prepared meal. Sill, being is always there, waiting to be reflected upon.

So, there is nothing that is not "already there," but there is a lot that is not seen. As the being we experience has no intrinsic necessity, how is it that it assumes necessity as it becomes part of the past? What is the source of this necessity? Or, looking forward, how can being that is merely potential now become actual? Since it is not yet operational, it cannot actualize its own potential.

Thank you for your comments.

My background, while fairly broad, is quite limited with respect to contemporary European philosophy. I do think that each projection of reality has the potential for illuminating aspects missed by other projections. Please feel free to illuminate any corners you think may have been missed.

Abstraction from experience is adequate for a priori knowledge, but doesn’t address whether any other methodology is possible — Mww

Of course other methods are available and useful. I was only taking about how we come to know so-called "a priori" truths.

Whether that matters or not depends on what we intend to do about how far astray we find ourselves in thinking about the world of things. — Mww

We agree.

The cultural invariant is the concept <five>, not what is counted — Dfpolis

Agreed. Which merely begs the question......from where did sure cultural invariant arise? It must be a condition of all similarly constituted rationalities, n’est pas? All that is counted, and the labels assigned to each unit of substance in the series of counting are immediately dismissed. What is left, both necessarily and sufficiently enabling a thoroughly mental exercise? It is nothing but the pure, a priori concepts, thought by the understanding alone, rising from the constitution of the mind**, the categories of quantity (plurality), quality (reality), relation (causality) and modality (existence). — Mww

I agree that there is question begging here, but it occurs when you equate, without supporting argument, "the pure" with "a priori" concepts. We know that people did not always count. Counting is an invented and learned skill, which we see transmitted from parent to child to this day. If enumeration were, as you say, "a condition of all similarly constituted rationalities," then there would never be a time when this culture could not count, but that could, and there would be no need to teach counting to children. Yet, there are still anumeric tribes such as the Piraha of the Amazon.

You may wish to consult Lorraine Boissoneault, "How Humans Invented Numbers -- And How Numbers Reshaped Our World" (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-humans-invented-numbersand-how-numbers-reshaped-our-world-180962485/) or Caleb Everett, Numbers and the Making Of Us. In the later you can read of the Piraha and other anumeric tribes.

So, the anthropological facts do not conform to your theoretical claims.

the concept of car alone is insufficient to justify the truth of the consequent (a guy will die). The synthetic requirement for an outstanding force is also necessary. — Mww

Yes, we need to have culturally shared experiences to appreciate danger. We do not give adequate weight to merely possible risks. I don't see how this helps you case.

That’s what I’m talking about!!!!!! Odd though, you acknowledge that which we know applies to all reality, yet balk at the realization they are the ground of all empirical exercise. Like counting. — Mww

Let's be clear. There are two questions here. (1) Where does our knowledge come from? I my claim is that abstraction from experience is adequate to give rise to so-called "a priori" knowledge. (2) What are the conditions for applying such knowledge once acquired? I affirm that there are no restrictions on applying transcendental principles to reality once we know them, and the only restriction for applying mathematical principles is that we are dealing with countable or measurable realities. (Of course the case has to meet the conditions of application of the principle).

This does not make having a concept of <two> a condition for meeting a husband and wife.

In many cases how we think of things does not matter.

Thus everything that is discovered is first and finally, empirical, i.e., revealed." Thus how I read it. — tim wood

Yes, but I was also trying to say how insights based on the nature of being may appear to be a priori.

For your argument to stand, you have to define empiricism idiosyncratically and in a way that itself "proves" your case, in short, begs the question. And at the same time destroys its common meaning. — tim wood

I was not trying to define "empiricism" at all. I am happy to admit it has many flavors. I was talking about "experience" -- about the world as it interacts with us and so reveals itself to us. So, I am unsure where you see question begging. Could you please explain?

I read it - you - as having the a priori being just a case of the a posteriori, a subset, a species. I argue that they're different animals. It is as if you wished to characterize people as apes. In evolutionary terms, yes, but not now. Not without violence to all the terms in use. — tim wood

I really do not follow this. Could you expand?

Let me say what I mean. Whenever we experience anything, we experience being -- something that can act to effect the experience we are having. We usually don't strip out all of the specifics to arrive at existence as the unspecified power to act; nonetheless, it is there, at the corner of awareness, ready to be examined and reflected upon if we choose to do so. So, there is a concept of <being> hovering in the background, and when we reflect on principles such as Identity or Excluded Middle, it is there to help us judge them.

and that requires something already operative in the intentional/logical order.
Thus, intentional being is ontologically prior to material being. — Dfpolis

In opposition to Sartre's "existence precedes essence"? But I'm not asking for argument here, either. — tim wood

Aquinas took the position on existence long before Sartre was a twinkle.

I don't see Material and Intentional as on the same order of abstraction as Essence and Existence. So, no such opposition was intended.

It is "ontologically" I request you briefly define. In particular and more simply, that ontological priority is not to be confused with temporal priority, yes? — tim wood

Exactly. A is ontologically prior to B is the actuality/operationality of B requires that of A, but not the reverse.

The challenge is to recapitulate for the rest of us in perhaps five sentences or less, the main point(s) of this thread. (Or to treat this challenge contemptuously, which in fact it may deserve!) — tim wood

Thank you for your appreciation. It would be unfair of me to summarize the careful reflections of others, especially in those cases where I see things differently.

I wanted to add that the reason sensible representations cannot make themselves known is that they are not operation in the intentional theater. Sensible representations are only potentially active at the level of thought and logic. To be actually operative, their latent intelligibility must become actualized, and that requires something already operative in the intentional/logical order.

Thus, intentional being is ontologically prior to material being.

We learn by abstraction from experience. — Dfpolis

Hmmmm, yes. I see. I see you’re talking about learning, I’m talking about understanding. — Mww

As we have no reason to think that babies understand counting, the understanding of counting found in older children comes to be. The coming to be of understanding is learning, and we can investigate it by seeing how children come to understand counting.

how do you suppose culturally differentiated systems find a commonality in their respective analysis? What is the same for a child here and now arriving at “5”, and a medieval Roman child arriving at “V”? — Mww

Each child, in any time and culture, has to count four instances before properly applying the fifth count. The cultural invariant is the concept <five>, not what is counted, or the words or signs used to express that concept.

One reason to believe would be, the world of experience satisfies some prerogatives that belong to a priori truths, re: one doesn’t need the experience of a severe car crash to know a severe car crash can kill him. — Mww

It is quite true that we do not need to have experiences to understand them, but we do need analogous experiences. If we had no experience of cars, it would be difficult to understand the concept of a car crash.

My point is this: to understand that I am dealing with an instance of supposed a priori knowledge, say <All As are Bs>, I have to recognize that that I have a instance of A before me. That means that my experience has to be able to evoke the concept <A>. But, if the concept <A> can be evoked by experiencing concrete As, I have no reason the think that the <A> must be given a priori. Since this argument works for any instance of knowledge that can be applied to experience, there is no reason to think that anything we can say of experience is given a priori.

Of course the concept <A> is not the judgement <All As are Bs>. Still, the usual justification for the claim that such a judgement is known a priori is that if one understand the concept <A> then one sees that <B> is somehow "contained" in it. So, if our understanding of <A> is a posteriori, then so is our understanding of <All As are Bs>.

But general a priori truths have nothing whatsoever to do with experience (hence the standing definition), but are sustained by the principles of universality and necessity, for which experience can never suffice, re: two parallel lines can never enclose a space. I think it’s more significant, not that we do know some truths a priori, but that we can. — Mww

I think that there is a great deal more information packed into our experience of being than you seem to. To my mind, any experience of being is adequate grounds for a transcendental understanding of being -- one that necessarily applies to whatever is. Such an understanding in turn adequately grounds the principles of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle. (Any "thing" that could violate these principles cannot confirm to our understanding of what a being is.)

Since, once we have such transcendental principles we know they apply to all reality, they may be thought of as a priori, but as they are grounded in our experiential understanding of being, they are, in the first instance, and ultimately, a posteriori.

Please excuse the delay, I've had some sort of a tiring "bug."

So, something like aristotelian realism about universals? — aporiap

Exactly.

I'm not familiar with terms like 'notes of comprehension' or 'essential notes'. — aporiap

You might think of an object's notes of intelligibility as things that can be known and predicated of the object. Notes of comprehension would be those actually understood and constituting some abstraction. "Essential notes" would be notes defining an object -- placing it into a sortal.

You say that logical distinction is predicated on the fact that intentional objects like concepts are different from materiality not ontologically but by virtue of not sharing these notes of comprehension. — aporiap

Yes. Most of what we think about are ostensible unities. We can "point them out" in some way, and they have some intrinsic integrity these are Aristotle's substances (ousia). Examples are humans, galaxies, quanta, societies, etc. Clearly some are more unified than others, but all have some dynamic that allows us to think of them as wholes.

Extended wholes can be divided and so their potential parts are separable. Logical distinction does not depend on physical separability, but on having different notes of comprehension. The material and form of a ball are inseparable, but they are distinct, because the idea of form abstracts away the object's matter and that of matter abstracts away its form. So, that we can think of humans as material and intentional does not mean that that are composed of two substances any more than balls are.

I mentioned in the post that it poses a problem for programs which require continual looping or continual sampling. In this instance the program would cease being an atmospheric sampler if it lost the capability of iteratively looping because it would then loose the capability to sample [i.e. it would cease being a sampler.] — aporiap

This is incorrect. Nothing in my argument prevents any algorithm from working. Another way of thinking about the argument is that it shows that consciousness is not algorithmic. In this particular case, if we want to sample every 10 ms. and removing and replacing the instruction takes 1 ms (a very long time in the computer world), all we need to do is speed up the clock by 10%.

The critical question is whether it is the presence or the operation of the program that would cause consciousness. It it is difficult to believe that the non-operational presence of the algorithm could do anything. It is also hard to think of a scenario in which the execution of one step (the last step of the minimal program) could effect consciousness.

Let's reflect on this last. All executing a computer step does is effect a state transition from the prior state S1 to a successor state S2. So if the program is to effect consciousness, all we need to do is start the machine in S1 and effect the transition to S2. Now it is either the S1-S2 transition itself that effects consciousness, or it is being in S2 that effects consciousness. If it is being in S2 that effects consciousness, we do not need a program at all, we only need to start the machine in S2 and leave it there. It is hard to see how see how such a static state could model, let alone effect consciousness.

So, we are left with the possibility that a single step, that which effects the S1-S2 transition magically causes consciousness. This is the very opposite of the original idea that a program of sufficient complexity might consciousness. It shows that complexity is not a fruitful hypothesis.

What do you mean they solve mathematical problems only? There are reinforcement learning algorithms out now which can learn your buying and internet surfing habits and suggest adverts based on those preferences. There are learning algorithms which -from scratch, without hard coded instruction- can defeat players at high-level strategy games, without using mathematical algorithms. — aporiap

They do use mathematical algorithms, even if they are unclear to the end user. At the most fundamental level, every modern computer is a finite state machine, representable by a Turing machine. Every instruction can be represented by a matrix which specifies, for every state, that if the machine is in state Sx it will transition to state Sy. Specific programs may also be more or less mathematical at higher levels of abstraction. The internet advertizing programs you mention represent interests by numerical bins and see which products best fit your numerical distribution of interests. Machine learning programs often use mathematical models of neural nets, generate and test algorithms and host of other mathematical methods depending on the problem faced.

Also I don't get the point about why operating on reality representations somehow makes data-processing unable to be itself conscious. The kind of data-processing going on in the brain is identical to the consciousness in my account. It's either that or the thing doing the data processing [i.e. the brain] which is [has the property of] consciousness by virtue of the data processing. — aporiap

If does not mean that machines cannot be consciousness. It is aimed that the notion that if we model the processes that naturalists believe cause consciousness we would generate consciousness. An example of this is the so-called Simulation Hypothesis.

Take an algorithm which plays movies for instance. Any one iteration of the loop outputs one frame of the movie... The movie, here, is made by viewing the frames in a sequential order. — aporiap

I think my logic is exhaustive, but I will consider your example. The analogy fails because of the nature of consciousness, which is the actualization of intelligibility. While much is written about the flow of consciousness, the only reason it flows is because the intelligibility presented to it changes over time. To have consciousness, we need two factors: contents, and awareness of contents. There is no need for the contents to change to have consciousness so defined. The computational and representational theories of mind have a good model of contents, but no model of awareness.

But, if it can't be physical, and it's not data processing, what is the supposed cause?

I don't think the multiple realization argument holds here.. it could just be something like a case of convergent evolution, where you have different configurations independently giving rise to the same phenomenon - in this case consciousness. Eg. cathode ray tube TV vs digital TV vs some other TV operate under different mechanisms and yet result in the same output phenomenon - image on a screen. — aporiap

Convergent evolution generally occurs because certain forms are best suited to certain ends/niches and because of the presumably limited range of expression of toolkit genes. In other words because of physical causal factors.

Still, I don't think your response addresses my question which was if the cause of hypothetical machine consciousness is not physical and it is not data processing, what is it?

What makes different implementations of TV pictures equally TV pictures is not some accident, but that they are products with a common design goal. So, I have two questions:
1. What do you see as the explanatory invariant in the different physical implementations?
2. If the production of consciousness is not a function of the algorithm alone, in what sense is this (hypothetical) production of consciousness algorithmic?

I am not in the field of computer science but from just this site I can see there are at least three different kinds of abstract computational models. Is it true that physical properties of the machine are necessary for all the other models described? — aporiap

Yes, there are different models of computation. Even in the seminal days of computation, there were analogue and digital computers. Physical properties are not part of the computation models in the article you cite. If you read the definitions of the model types, you will see that, after Turing Machines, they the are abstract methods, not even (abstract) machine descriptions.

I have been talking about finite state machines, because modern computers are the inspiration of computational theories of mind, and about Turing machines because all finite state machine computations can be done on a Turing machine, and its simplicity removes the possibility if confusing complex machine design with actual data processing. I think few people would be inspired to think machines could be conscious if they had to watch a Turing machine shuttle its tape back and forth.

Even if consciousness required certain physical features of hardware, why would that matter for the argument since your ultimate goal is not to argue for the necessity of certain physical properties for consciousness but instead for consciousness as being fundamentally intentional and (2) that intentionality is fundamentally distinct from [albeit co-present with] materiality. — aporiap

All the missing instruction argument does is force one to think though why, in a particular case, materiality cannot provide us with intentionality. It moves the focus from the abstract to the concrete.

I actually think my personal thought is not that different to yours but I don't think of intentionality as so distinct as to not be realized by [or, a fundamental property of] the activity of the physical substrate. My view is essentially that of Searle but I don't think consciousness is only limited to biological systems. — aporiap

We are indeed close. The problem is that there are no abstract "physical substrates." The datum, the given, is that there are human beings who perform physical and intentional acts. Why shoehorn intentionality into physicality with ideas such as emergence or supervenience? Doing so might have social benefits in some circles, but neither provides an explanation or insight into the relevant dynamics. All these ideas do is confuse two logically distinct concepts.

Naturalists would like to point to an example of artificial consciousness, and say "Here, that was not so hard, was it? We don't need any more than a good understanding of (physics, computer science, neural nets, ...) {choose one}. Of course, there is no example to point to, and if there were one, how could we possibly know there was?

If you want a computer to tell you it's self-aware, I can write you a program in under five minutes that will do so. If you find that too unconvincing, I could write you one that outputs a large random of digits of pi before outputting "I wonder why I'm doing this?" Would such "first-person testimony" count as evidence of consciousness? If not, what would? Not the "Turing test," which Turing recognized was only a game.

I don't understand why a neuron not being conscious but a collection of neurons being conscious automatically leads to the hard problem. — aporiap

I don't think it does. I think Chalmers came to the notion of the "Hard Problem" by historical reflection -- seeing the lack of progress over the last 2500 years. I am arguing on the basis of philosophical analysis that it is not a problem, but a chimera.

Searle provides a clear intuitive solution here in which it's an emergent property of a physical system in the same way viscosity or surface tension are emergent from lower-level interactions- it's the interactions [electrostatic attraction/repulsion] which, summatively result in an emergent phenomenon [surface tension] . — aporiap

The problem is that consciousness is not at all emergent in the sense in which viscosity and surface tension are. We know the microscopic properties that cause these microscopic properties, and can at least outline how calculate them. They are not at all emergent in the sense of appearing de novo.

We understand, fairly well, how neurons behave. We know the biomechanics of pulse propagation and understand how vescules burst to produce release neurotransmitters. We have neural net models that combine many such neurons to provide differential responses to different sorts of stimulation and understand how positive and negative feed back can be used to improve performance -- modelling "learning" in the sense of useful adaptation.

None of this gives us any hint as to how any combination of neurons and/or neural nets can make the leap into the realm of intentionality -- for the simple reason that none of our neuroscientific knowledge addresses the "aboutness" (reference) relevant to the intentional order.

There is an equivocation on "emergence" here. In the case of viscosity and surface tension, what "emerges" is known to be potential at the microlevel. In the case of consciousness, nothing in our fairly complete understanding of neurons and neural nets hints at the "emergence" of consciousness. Instead of the realization of a known potential, we have the coming to be of a property with no discernible relation to known microstructure.

Well the retinal state is encoded by a different set of cells than the intentional state of 'seeing the cat' - the latter would be encoded by neurons within a higher-level layer of cells [i.e. cells which receive iteratively processed input from lower-level cells] whereas the raw visual information is encoded in the retinal cells and immediate downstream area of early visual cortex. You could have two different 'intentional states' encoded by different layers of the brain or different sets of interacting cells. The brain processes in parallel and sequentially — aporiap

Let's think this through. The image of the cat modifies my retinal rods and cones, which modification is detected by the nervous system in whatever detail you wish to consider. So, every subsequent neural event inseparably caries information about both my modified retinal state and about the image of the cat because they are one and the same physical state. I cannot have an image of the cat without a modification of my retinal state, and the light from the cat can't modify my retinal state without producing an image of the cat.

So, we have one physical state in my eye, which is physically inseparatable from itself, but which can give rise to two intentional states <the image of the cat> and <the modification of my retinal state>.

Of course, once the intellect has distinguished the diverse understandings into distinct intentional states and we start to articulate them, the articulations will have different physical representations. But, my point is that no purely physical operation can separate one physical state into two intentional states. Any physical operation will be performed equally on the state as the foundation for both intentional states, and so cannot separate them.

Okay but you seem to imply in some statements that the intentional is not determined by or realized by activity of the brain. — aporiap

That is because I hold, as a matter of experience and analysis, that the physical does not fully determine the intentional. I first saw this point pressed by Augustine in connection with sense data not being able to force itself on the intellect.. Once I saw the claim, I spent considerable time reflecting on it.

Consider cases of automatic processing, which show that we can respond appropriately to complex sensory stimuli without the need for intellectual intervention. Ibn Sina gives citara players as his example, Lotze offers writing and piano playing as his, Penrose points to people who carry on conversations without paying attention, J. J. C. Smart proffers bicycle riding. So, clearly sensory data and its processing does not force itself on awareness.

The evidence for "the unconscious mind" similarly shows that data processing and response can occur without awareness. Most of us have been exposed to Freudian case studies at some point. Graham Reed has published studies of time-gap experiences in which we become aware of the passage of time after being lost in thought. Jacques Hadamard provides us with an example of unconscious processing in Poincare's solution to the problem of Fuchsian functions.

In Augustine's model, rather then the physical forcing itself on the intellect, we do not become aware until the will turns the intellect's attention to the intelligible contents. This seems to me to best fit experience.

I would say intentional state can be understood as some phenomenon that is caused by / emerges from a certain kind of activity pattern of the brain. — aporiap

What kind?

Of course the measurables are real and so are their relations- which are characterized in equations; but the actual entities may just be theoretical. — aporiap

While I know what theoretical constructs are, I am unsure what you mean by the measurables if not the "actual entities." How can you measure what does not exist?

I was trying to say that introspection is not the only way to get knowledge of conscious experience. I'm saying it will be possible [one day] to scan someone's brain, decode some of their mental contents and figure out what they are feeling or thinking. — aporiap

I never give much weight to "future science."
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The more accurate thing to say is that there are neurons in higher-level brain regions which fire selectively to seemingly abstract stimuli. — aporiap

I have no problem with this in principle. Neural nets can be programed to do this. That does not make either subjectively aware of anything.

That seems to account for the intentional component no? — aporiap

How? You need to show that this actualizes the intelligible content of the conscious act.

What mechanism is the child using to relate a word he hears to an object he sees, in a system of quantitative analysis, that doesn’t have an a priori component? How does he understand exactly what he’s doing, as opposed to simple learning by rote? What do I say to my child, if after saying, “count this as one, these as two.....”, he asks, “what’s a two?” — Mww

We learn by abstraction from experience. What the child learns in the first instance is sequence of words ("one," "two," "three," etc.) In the second phase of learning to count, the child learns that these words can be put into one-to-one correspondence with pennies, apples, oranges, etc. In the third phase the child abstracts, and comes to see that the act of counting is independent of what is counted. This is the basis of abstract numbers.

At no point do we need to look beyond experience to some a priori intuition.

As with many question children ask, we must defer the answers until they have the background to understand them.

You are right, the I see no need for any a priori assumption. My question would be, if we had a priori "knowledge," what reason would we have to believe that it applied to the world of experience?

I would say these states are correlated with awareness, or even that they are awareness looked at in an objective, as opposed to a subjective, way. — Janus

Yes, I think it is an error to see sensory (purely physical) and intellectual representations as separate. They are the same physical state considered without and with awareness, not two separate representations (awareness being the source of subjectivity).

We are informed by what we see and our reasons for saying what we do about what we see are on account of what we see, not on account of those objective processes, of which we are completely unaware until we have understood some science of optics, visual perception and neuroscience. — Janus

Yes, we are informed by what we see. And, yes, we have no immediate awareness of neural processes. My seeing the apple is identically the apple being see by me. Still, as physical-intentional unities, my process of being informed does involve neural representation, transmission and processing. If we ignore this, then we leave the impression that we see mind as separate from matter, instead as merely distinct.

The neural processing is not the ultimate source of the information we are aware of, but it is an instrumental cause. As I said previously, the semiology involved is unlike any other, and so bears further reflection. So, I sympathize with your desire to further parse this out. Still, I think "correlation" and the denial of causality is not moving us in right direction.

I suppose counting could be construed as an intellectual operation, in as much as I am connecting an a priori representation of quantity to spatially distinguishable objects. On the other hand, I don’t agree that seeing is a physical operation, in as much as an object impressed on a bunch of optic nerves can be called seeing. Is it merely convention that the intellect is required to call up an internal object to correspond to the impression, in order to say I am in fact seeing — Mww

Since we have to teach children to count by counting specific kinds of things, I see no reason to think that there is any a priori component to counting.

As for seeing, there are many discussions in the literature of complex "automatic" operations such as bicycle riding and driving, which require visual processing, but which can occur while we are "lost in thought." Many of us have had the experience of reading a page, and having no idea what we read because we were thinking of something else. So, it seems clear that seeing, including visual processing and appropriate physical responses, can occur without awareness.

Kant is a complex thinker, and I should not have brought him up in an offhand way. So, my apologies for that. If we are to discuss him, it should be from the foundations up.

As for Aquinas, there is no doubt that he saw reason as serving faith. That does not mean that he saw reason as subservient in the sense of yielding sound conclusions to blind faith. Rather, following Augustine, Aquinas saw theology as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), and reason as the tool providing that understanding.

No, I have been saying they are correlated; which obviously means they are not unrelated. What I am saying is that the relationship is not causal. — Janus

I agree that these physical states are not efficient causes of thought; however, as bearing intelligibility, they can inform awareness and so may be seen as informing causes.

(I think "presented" would be a better term here). — Janus

I agree. "Presented" is much better.

awareness of the states is not the same as the states — Janus

We have to be careful here lest we create an epistic gap. Awareness of the states is not the states in the sense that it is more than the states. Physical states are merely intelligible. Our awareness of them is that intelligibility actually known. Still, one and the same intelligibility that is latent in the presented states is actual in awareness.

There is a tricky analogy here, for the actualization of potential is analogous to the informing of matter. As the matter that was unformed remains in the formed product, so the information latent in the physical presentation remains as the contents of consciousness. Of course, information is immaterial, and that is what makes the analogy tricky. Still, the persistence of presented information in the conscious state is more than correlation. The information plays a dynamic role, even though that role is not efficient causality.

If the states are preconceptual then they cannot serve as reasons for action. — Janus

I do not think this follows. As long as it plays an essential role in determining the form of our thought, preconceptual intelligibility is part of the reason we act as we do. I walk over to the preconceptual apple because it will allay my hunger. It is an essential part of the reason I'm walking toward it.

By brain will represent these facts in a way that can inform me that I am hungry; however, it cannot force me to turn my attention to, to be come aware of, this intelligible representation. — Dfpolis

I think this is an example of anthropomorphic thinking. — Janus

Maybe I'm thinking anthropomorphically because I'm thinking of humans?

Your mind may "represent" the facts or it may not; I don't think it is right to say that that the brain "represents" anything. Often you will simply eat without being aware of any reason to do so, but of course it is possible to think something like "I am hungry, I should eat something". — Janus

I am not sure how you're defining/thinking of "representing." I agree that there are senses that do not work, and the sense that does work is an unusual one. So, I would like to see why you object before deciding to agree or disagree.

The reason I am using the term is that it is clear that information is transmitted and processed by our nervous system and brain. Since the information is not the nervous system or its physiology, I think it is fair to say it is represented by it.

Of course we can and do act at an automatic level. I mentioned that earlier in distinguishing sensory and conscious activity.

I'm not claiming that the brain is a deterministic machine; it may well be an indeterministic organ, but the point is that there is no "I" that is directly aware of neural processes such that it could direct them. — Janus

The "problem" is not that there is no "I," the problem is that it is beyond my power as a human subject to know my brain state. There are many consequences of this. For example, it rules out hypotheses which see consciousness as a form of proprioception.

It also relates to the issue of representation we have been discussing, for neural representations are neither formal nor instrumental signs. Instrumental signs, such as words and smoke, have to be recognized for what they are in themselves before they can signify. If I can't make our your writing, or think the smudge on the horizon is dust, then they cannot signify your intent or the distant fire. Thus, since we do not know our brainstate, it cannot represent as instrumental signs do.

At the same time, while brainstates may encode information, the information they encode is only intelligible unless it is the focus of awareness. That means that brain states cannot be formal signs, as ideas are. The whole being of an idea, all that it can do, is refer. As long as our neurally encoded information is only intelligible and not actually known, it is not a formal sign, either.

That is why I held back in discussing your objection to neural states as representations -- for they are neither instrumental nor formal signs. Perhaps, the problem is thinking of neural representations as signs. Or, if we do think of them as signs, we need a third category of sign -- one that bears information, but need not be recognized for what it is to inform.

So, the succession of brain states is determined by nature, not by ourselves, and thus, as far as we are concerned, it is a deterministic process. — Janus

I don't think this is the right formulation either. As I said earlier, we have some control over what contents the brain activates. If I want to find something to eat now, my brain will activate contents related to possible food sources. If I do not, it will not. This does not mean that we tell each neuron how to respond, but only that we set goals to which our brain tries to respond. That part of nature is part of myself.

It is much more rational to say that my decision to eat now causes the brain to activate neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now. — Dfpolis

This is where the category error comes in. Your decision to eat now has its own correlated brain state from which the "neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now" ensues causally. This is a deterministic process (as far as we are concerned because we are not directly aware of it and cannot direct it). — Janus

I think this is a confusing notion of determinism. Determinism means that our actions is completely defined by the state of the world prior to my conception. If my brain is responsive to the the goals set by my will, it is not so determined. Even if I do not control the means in detail, the brain is responding to my will. No upper level manager wants to control the fine details required to implement a decision.

But, your decision to eat now gives you reason to seek what there is to eat now. These are two different ways of understanding what is going on; the first in terms of causes, the second in terms of reasons. — Janus

While I agree that intentional reasons and physical causes are distinct, they are not unrelated. There is more than correlation here. I know that I need nourishment because I am neurophysically informed that I do. My brain activates complexes storing data on possible things to eat because I have decided to eat. We may need to discuss the nature of the causal links betokened by these two "becauses," but that is no reason to deny that such links exist.

Once we commit to a single course of action among the many we may have considered, its physical implementation has begun -- in other words the act of intentional commitment and the act of physical initiation are inseparable. Aquinas observes that we know we are committed to an intentionality when we will the means of realizing it -- or in modern parlance, when we walk the walk.

You speak of correlated brainstates as though they "just happen." Why should my brainstates be correlated with my intentional state if there is no interaction? Why should my awareness of the the sensed "just happen" to have the content transmitted to my brain by my peripheral nervous system? Such "correlations" cry for a causal explanation.

I think the two are co-arising and co-dependent. In other words, the "zero point field" or "quantum foam" or "akashic field" or "implicate order" or whatever you want to call it, cannot be without there being a correlated material existence. — Janus

I agree with you on this specific point. It is logically impossible to have laws operative on material reality (laws of nature) without a material reality for them to be operative on. Thus is not the ground on which the issue of ontological priority is to be settled.

Still, the fact that we know and can affect physical reality shows that, unlike mathematics and poetry, they are dynamically linked. — Dfpolis

To my mind you are still thinking dualistically here. We are 'part and parcel" of the physical world and the informational world; I would say there is no real separation; and dynamism abounds but it is not ultimately in the form of "links" between things which are separate or separable. — Janus

You are attributing to me a dualism I am not espousing. Humans are integral beings capable of physical and intentional acts. That does not mean that our physicality is separate from our intentionality, only that they are logically distinct. Whether some residual power of intentional operation is separable, whether our awareness can survive death, is a separate question to be decided on its own merits.

Experience falsifies the claim if I’d said “reason’s sole domain is to *force* thinking correctly”. A set of logical rules doesn’t come with the promise of their use, only that we’re better off if we do. — Mww

Excuse me, I misunderstood you.

counting does not depend on what is counted — Dfpolis

Why isn’t this just like “seeing does not depend on what is seen”? Seeing or counting is an actual physical act, and mandates that the objects consistent with the act be present. Now, “the ability to see or to count does not depend on what is seen or counted” seems to be true, for I do not lose my visual receptivity simply because my eyes are closed. Otherwise, I would be forced into the absurdity of having to learn each and every object presented to sensibility after each and every interruption of it.
Are you saying counting and the ability to count are the same thing? — Mww

First, because counting is an intellectual operation, while seeing is a physical operation,. Second, because counting is the basis of the natural numbers, which in turn are the basis of arithmetic, while no science is based on seeing in the same way. It is because counting does not depend on what is counted that we may think of numbers, and their intrinsic relations abstractly. Thus, arithmetic is abstracted from experience, and not given a priori.

Counting is a mental act, that may or may not supported by a physical act. Of course, to count, we need countable objects -- discrete unities of some kind.

No, I am not confusing actuality with potency.

The categories are the same for Kant as they were for Aristotle. My mistake if I got the impression you were a fan of Aristotle, hence I didn’t feel the need to define them. — Mww

Kant's categories are not those of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the categories are different ways in which something can be said to "be." This does not appear to be the case for Kant. Also, Aristotle develops his list a posteriori, by reflecting on actual usage, while Kant wants an a priori list.

What is Cosmogenesis and who is the authority for it? What is ideogenesis and who is te authority for that? — Mww

"Cosmogenesis" means the process by which the cosmos came to be and "ideogenesis" is the process by which concepts come to me. I don't think either is a matter to be settled by an appeal to authority.

That said, I accept the standard Aristotelian-Thomist account of ideogenesis as abstraction from a physically-encoded representation (the "phantasm").

As an example, your reasons for doing something or thinking something is not intelligible in terms of neural processes. — Janus

If you mean that they are irreducible to neural processes, alone, I agree. But, if you mean that they are unrelated to neurophysical processes, I cannot agree. Many desires are biologically based and neurophysically represented. These representations are not the reasons, but awareness of the represented states may well be reasons for my choosing to act in a specific way. So, neurophysical representations and processing play a causal role in the reasons I consider.

You think what you do for reasons, neural processes do not cause you to think the way you do, even though neural processes are arguably correlated with your thinking. — Janus

Now we come to will, and the physical-intentional interface. Suppose my blood sugar is low and my stomach is growling. By brain will represent these facts in a way that can inform me that I am hungry; however, it cannot force me to turn my attention to, to be come aware of, this intelligible representation. I may be meditating, solving a complex problem, or doing something else that is engaging my attention. So, you are right that the neural state cannot cause me to think <I am hungry>. However, if I will to turn my attention from what was previously occupying it to my bodily state, the representation will determine the content of what I think of my body state is. I will think <I am hungry> and not, say, <I am thirsty>.

So, the efficient cause of my thought will be my will-directed awareness, but its formal cause will typically be neurophysically encoded information. That is why brain trauma can affect thought.

we cannot parse any relationship between causes and reasons, because the former is predicated on determinism and the latter on freedom; neither of which can be understood in terms of the other. — Janus

I don't think this is a question of determinism vs freedom, though free-will directs our awareness. To continue with the hunger example, once I become aware of my hunger, I can decide to ignore it for the moment, or to do something about it. If I decide to act, I may think of what is on hand to eat. This will cause the activation of various physically encoded memories. Since these memories are activated in response to a free decision, it is inadequate to think of the brain as a deterministic machine. It has to be responsive to my decision to think about this, and not that. So, if we have freedom, it cannot end at the edge of intentionality.

We might be able to give an intelligible account of the succession of neural states, and although they may be understood to be in a causal series, they cannot be meaningfully mapped as causes onto the successive phases of the movement of thought in a way that explains a relationship between the physical succession of causes and the intentional succession of associations and reasons. — Janus

If this were so, we would be left with some form of intentional-physical parallelism a la Leibnitzian Monadology. It is much more rational to say that my decision to eat now causes the brain to activate neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now. Then, being presented with this encoded intelligibility we become aware of the options and can will to eat one rather than another. If I had decided to ignore my hunger, and return to my prior engrossing activity, none of my food memories would have been activated.

Are you thinking of cosmogenesis or ideogenesis? — Dfpolis

I'm thinking of cosmogenesis. — Janus

OK, we could write several books on this. Here is a short reflection. Several naturalist cosmologists have posited that it is physically possible that the universe could have begun as nothing -- by which they mean a state with no matter or energy. This might happen as the result of a quantum fluctuation in which positive and negative energy states net out to zero total energy.

If we reflect on this hypothesis, we see that it equivocates on "no-thing." In fact, they are assuming that there are operative laws which at least allow quantum fluctuations to occur and which require energy to be conserved. As I have argued previously, the laws of nature are essentially intentional. So, their "nothing" is not the absence of any operative existent, but only the absence of empirical matter.

Of course this is not a general analysis of cosmogenesis, but it does point to intentional reality as more fundamental than material reality.

The point is that being distinct ways of thinking, any attempt to unite them breeds confusion. — Janus

I agree that trying to unite the intentional and physical perspectives can, in fact, lead to confusion. Still, the fact that we know and can affect physical reality shows that, unlike mathematics and poetry, they are dynamically linked.

I haven't said that the two processes, the intentional and the physical, are identical. I have said they are correlated, and that each has its own respective account which is unintelligible in terms of the other. — Janus

We agree: they are correlated. I cannot agree that they are unintelligible in terms of each other. If they were, we would not recognize that they are related. Yet, their relation has been recognized for two and a half millennia. Aristotle recognized that our experience of sensation implied the existence of data conduits, a combined representation (the phantasm), and a central processing organ to integrate various sensory modalities into that representation. He then undertook anatomical studies to find these structures.

When we read neuroscience, we are generally satisfied that is account of sensation agrees with our experience. This is not the case with naturalistic accounts of awareness.

Whether the intentional is dependent on the physical or the physical on the intentional is ultimately an unanswerable question. — Janus

On what basis and in what context? Are you thinking of cosmogenesis or ideogenesis? Of course there are divergent views, but there ave been divergent views on all important matters. That does not make them undecidable.

It's not a matter of "keeping them separate"; they are separate. — Janus

No, they are not separate. They are distinct ways of thinking about one and the same topic, just as wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are different ways of conceptualizing quantum events, or aerodynamics and manufacturing logistics are different approaches the production of an airplane. Different ways of thinking are complementary.

Yes, it is, because a priori knowledge derives from universality and necessity, which Hume’s empirical grounds, with respect to cause and effect, do not and can not possibly afford. — Mww

While Hume's model of universalization though association is clearly inadequate, we need not invoke a priori knowledge to remedy this. As I pointed out in my last post, abstraction (seeing, for example, that counting does not depend on what is counted) is adequate underwrite necessary truths.

(No, not literally unthinkable, for reason has no power to not think. Reason’s sole domain is to enable thinking correctly, which means understanding does not confuse itself with contradictions.) — Mww

I think experience falsifies this claim. We all make errors in reasoning. Logic enables us to discover those errors.

The data of pure reason are categories, without which reason and indeed all thought, is impossible

This requires some justification, beginning with a definition of "categories."

Reason does not conclude, that being the sole domain of judgement. While judgement is a part of the total faculty of reason, it is improper to attribute to the whole that which properly belongs to the particular function of one of its parts. In this much I grant: without categories reason has no means to, and therefore cannot, derive transcendental principles. — Mww

It seems that we are going deep into Kant, which is far from the thread topic. I would be happy to discuss Kant with you, but I think the proper place would be another thread.

These are two descriptions of the one process. From a phenomenological perspective we can say that something about the tree caught your attention, and to stop and look at it, which in turn triggered associations which led to you having a series of thought about it. — Janus

While they describe the same process, they describe different aspects of that process. The physical description deals with the actualization of sensibility, while the phenomenal description requires the actualization of intelligibility. This difference is critical. To think of the tree, I need not only sense the tree, but also actualize its intelligibility to form the idea <tree>. Describing how light scattered from the tree modifies my neurophysical state, and how that state is neurally processed, elaborates the sensory aspect of the process, but says nothing of the actualization of intelligibility required to think <tree>.

There is no doubt that these processes are correlated, and since the time of Aristotle, it has been recognized that the intentional state (the idea) is dependent on the sensory representation (which he called the phantasm). But, correlation and dependence are not identity.

The point is that it is a category error to say that the physical and physiological process cause you to think certain thoughts, because it is other thought and memory associations which cause that. — Janus

We cannot have any association of thoughts without first actualizing the intelligibility latent in sensory representations. Coming at this more phenomenologically, there is a considerable literature, going back to at least to Ibn Sina, showing that humans engage in automatic behavior, being "lost in thought," while engaging in complex tasks such as playing musical instruments, bicycle riding or driving -- all without a shred of task-related awareness. (I can provide a long list of citations if you like.) Such reports show that even complex sensory processing need not involve awareness and the actualization of intelligibility.

I would not say that thoughts cause other thoughts. We have neurally-based associations, and we have logical processes which allow us to evaluate such associations. In both cases it is the thinking subject, and not thoughts, that are causal.

The point is that they are two different types of analysis best kept separate, and confusion and aporias often result when talk of causation operating across the two kinds of analysis is indulged in. — Janus

I see not reason to keep them separate. They are two projections of the same reality. Each is partial and incomplete. The best thing to do is compare them for points of agreement, and then determine what each projection grasps that the other misses. Doing so leads to a more complete model of reality.

They're empirically supported — aporiap

No, they are hypothetical. Your Wikipedia reference says "The grandmother cell, sometimes called the "Jennifer Aniston neuron," is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object."

The support cited in the article is behavioral (which is to say physical), with no intentional component. I am happy to agree that behavioral events require the firing of specific neural complexes. The problem is, a concept is not a behavior, but the awareness of well-defined notes of intelligibility. The article offers no evidence of awareness of the requisite sort.

If for every intentional state, there is a corresponding physical state and vice versa, then it could be said, as Spinoza does, that they are the same thing seen from two different perspectives. If this is right then to say either that physical states cause intentional states or that intentional states inform physical states would be to commit a category error. — Janus

This is fails on two counts.

The first has to do with the fact that that every instance of sensory awareness has a twofold object, violating your assumption of a one-to-one correspondence of physical and intentional states. As I noted in a previous post in this thread, every instance of sensory cognition has an objective object, which informs of the sensed object, and a subjective object, which informs us of the sensing subject. One and the same modification to my neural state grounds both the fact that there is an apple, and that I am seeing. Thus, a single physical state (the apple's modification of my neural state) grounds two intention states -- <there is an apple> and <I am seeing>.

The second is that concurrence does not preclude causality. Of course, it provides no ground for time sequence by rule or accidental causality -- which requires two separate events. Still it is a necessary condition for concurrent or essential causality, as exemplified by Aristotle's paradigm case of the builder building the house. In that case there is agency unless the builder is actually building and no effect unless the house is actually being built. In the present case the material state is intelligible, but not actually understood unless it is actually known by the intellect. So, the intellect is an actualizing concurrent cause.

I am unsure what category error you are contemplating, unless it is the requirement for two separate events, which does not apply in cases of essential causality.

Which is PRECISELY the error Kant points out regarding Hume’s characterization of the principle cause and effect. — Mww

Kant's assumption that we have a priori knowledge is inadequate grounds for calling Hume's position an error. While I am a determinist in physics, I am one on a posteriori grounds -- because I see determinism as working to explain the physical universe, and not because I think that physical indeterminism is logically or metaphysical impossible. God could change the laws of nature from second to second. He seems to have chosen to leave them fixed.

But, Kant wants more than the principle of causality to be known a priori. He wants it to be imposed by the mind so that its contrary is literally unthinkable. The number of reflective people who believe in the ontological indeterminism of quantum theory shows that this is simply wrong. Indeterminism is quite thinkable, even if I disagree with it -- as are alternate views of space and time. So, causality, space and time are not forms imposed on reality by the mind, but empirically derived concepts.

a principle being grounded in pure reason, as are all principles whatsoever, absolutely **must** have it’s proof also given from pure reason. — Mww

Pure reason is reason without data. Lacking grist, it can conclude nothing, not even transcendental principles. It is when reason is exposed to being, when it has reflected on the nature of being as encountered, that it comes to understand the principles of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle -- and seeing that they are grounded in the nature of being, understands that they apply transcendentally.

Kant’s argument wasn’t that there IS a proof per se, but rather no empirical predicates at all can be attributed to a possible formulation of it. — Mww

This is because the experience grounding these principle is the experience of existence, and existence is not a predicate. The fact that it is not a predicate does not mean that it is not found in experience -- for it is found in any and all experience.

Kant’s argument was that the thesis of which Hume was aware (a priori judgements do exist), having been considered, was summarily rejected (slave of the passions and all that happy crappy) because it wasn’t considered **as it ought to have been**. In other words, he didn’t consider it the right way. — Mww

In other words, Hume did not agree with Kant's assumptions.

I shall not insult your intelligence by informing you the human cognitive system is already in possession of a myriad of pure a priori principles of the kind Hume failed to address, first and foremost of which is, quite inarguably, mathematics. — Mww

It would not insult my intelligence. There is no reason to think that mathematics is not grounded in experience. For example, arithmetic, which cannot be proven to be consistent, is consistent because it is grounded in the experience of counting. So, its consistency reflects the self-consistency of the countable reality from which we abstract it.

On the other hand, Euclid's parallel postulate, involving as it does infinity, cannot be adequately grounded in experience, and its inadequate experiential grounding was why it was questioned. If mathematics were known a priori, there would be no reason to question it.

The problem with Hume's empiricism is not that he saw all knowledge as based on experiences, but that he did not recognize the limits of association as a tool of generalization. When we generate universal conclusions on the Hume-Mill model of induction, we must always add the assumption that the cases we have not seen are like the cases we have seen. As a result Hume-Mill inductions are always dubious -- even though of practical utility.

Coming to universal conclusions by abstraction is quite different. For example, the central insight of arithmetic is that counting is independent of what is counted. Once we see this, we can deal with numeric relations abstractly and universally. Thus, while Hume-Mill induction requires the addition of a dubious hypothesis, abstractive induction subtracts irrelevant factors and so adds nothing to the data.

And as a final contribution, I submit there is no logical reason to suppose cause and effect should lend itself to being differentiated between kinds, with all due respect to Aristotle. — Mww

I am not sure what you mean. Surely the sculptor, her material, the from she imposes on it, and the motivation for her work are all different kinds of explanatory factors in the creation of a statue.

Isn’t a proposition where the subject and predicate describe the same event and contain the same information a mere tautology? — Mww

If they contain the same information, it surely is a tautology. When I was saying why propositions are true, I did not say that the subject and predicate contained the same information, but that they had the identical object as their referent. In general, they will have different aspects of the same object as their referents, as "The 16th president of the U.S. was bearded." If the person who was the 16th president was not the same person who is bearded, this would be false.

It’s not that the relationships are contingent; it’s that instances that sustain a principle governing them are. If cause and effect is an intelligible relationship prior to our knowledge of it’s instances, doesn’t it’s very intelligibility mandate such relationship be necessarily a priori? — Mww

I take the position that, while we may have uninstantiated ideas, abstract relations are not real, only their instances are. <Fatherhood> is not a relation, but the idea of a relation. If there are no actual fathers, then <fatherhood> would only be an uninstantiated idea.

Knowledge being a priori or a posteriori depends on how we come to know it. Something may be true transcendentally (true of all existents), but it is not a priori unless we know it without the experience of an existent informing us. Once we see it in one case, then like the insight that counting does not depend on what we count, we may see that the principle does not depend on the kind of being we apply it to, but only on the fact that we are applying it to a being.

I mean to assert that concepts and intentions exist and are distinct from their material instances and yet to then say these things are somehow still of same ontological type [i.e. physical] as physical objects seems difficult to reconcile [what makes them physical if they're not composed of or caused by physical material?]. It just seems like an unsubstantiated assertion that they are ontologically the same. — aporiap

I'm unsure what I said that led to this interpretation. It does not reflect my view. Concepts, whether of intentions or of physical objects, are intentional realities. I am calling concepts "orthogonal" if they share no notes of comprehension. That the concept of materiality does not share notes of comprehension with the concept of intentionality does not mean that the concept of materiality is itself material. The concept of materiality points to what extended and mutable. It is not itself extended and mutable.

Once you make the implicit assumption they are ontologically distinct then it becomes clear that any interaction between intentional states and physical substance serves as a counterargument to their being distinct from materiality [since material and nonmaterial have no common fundamental properties with which to interact with each other (charge; mass; etc)]. — aporiap

When I use "distinct" I mean aspects that can be separated in thought, but not in reality.

What logical orthogonality prevents is an analytically true connection. It does not prevent contingent connections. We know from experience that material objects are intelligible and that their intelligibility informs concepts. We also know, from experience, that our committed intentions can be embodied in material states. These are contingent, not analytic truths. So, orthogonality does not preclude interaction. It means that we have to look to experience to find it. It also means that the orthogonal concepts are mutually irreducible.

Intentional states inform physical states but I mentioned before [and I think this is important] that this is always by virtue of a physical-material mechanism. — aporiap

I don't think that your claim is possible. Of course, our intentional physical acts are neurally mediated, but if we follow the causal chain back to its intentional origin, the first step must involve the direct modification of the physical by the intentional. If this were not so, then intentionality could have no physical effects. Michelangelo's intention to sculpt could never have produced the David.

How is this possible? As I have discussed many times{1}, the laws operative in nature are essentially intentional. Characterizing the laws of nature as intentional acts is concurrent with their first mention in Western literature. Jeremiah, apparently relying on a cultural consensus, used the Lord’s “covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth” (Jer. 31:35-36) as a sign of His faithfulness to Israel. The same insight is the basis of Aquinas' Fifth Way to prove the existence of God. So, I claim no originality in seeing the laws of nature as intentional, although the arguments supporting my case are my own.

There is no dynamics linking the laws of nature to the material states evolving in response to them, for they themselves are the dynamics. Thus, in physics we explain time development by appeal to what turns out to be an intentional reality. Of course, it is not described as such in physics, because the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science leaves physics devoid of intentional concepts. Still, once we understand the nature of intentionality, it is easy to see that it applies to the laws of nature.

So, it is not unreasonable to see human committed intentions as effecting their embodiment in the same way -- by being the very dynamics by which intentional processes are driven. If the general laws of nature are intentional, then they, and committed human intentions, act in the same, intentional, theater of operations. Thus, our intentions could perturb the general laws of nature.

Of course, this line of reasoning only motivates a hypothesis. It does not prove that human intentions can modify the operation of the laws of nature. However, there is an overwhelming mass of empirical data confirming the hypothesis that human intentions can modify physical processes. I have discussed this data before in the thread on "Fallacies of Strawson's Argument vs. Free Will":

Dean Radin and Roger Nelson (1989) reviewed 832 experiments by 68 investigators in which subjects were asked to control random number generators, typically driven by radioactive decay. They subjected the results to meta-analysis, a method for combining data from many experiments. While control runs showed no significant effect, the mean effect of subjects trying to influence the outcome was 3.2 x 10^-4 with Stouffer’s z = 4.1. In other words, subjects controlled an average of 32 of every 100,000 random numbers, and this effect is 4.1 standard deviations from pure chance. The odds against this are about 24,000 to 1.

Radin and Diane C. Ferrari (1991) analyzed 148 studies of dice throwing by 52 investigators involving 2,592,817 throws, found an effect size (weighted by methodological quality ) of 0.00723 ± 0.00071 with z = 18.2 (1.94 x 10^73 to 1). Radin and Nelson (2003) updated their 1989 work by adding 84 studies missed earlier and 92 studies published from 1987 to mid-2000. This gave 515 experiments by 91 different principal investigators with a total of 1.4 billion random numbers. They calculated an average effect size of 0.007 with z = 16.1 (3.92 x 10^57 to 1).

Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller (2006) did a meta-analysis of 380 studies in an article placing experiments in the context spoon bending and séances. They excluded two-thirds of the studies considered. Nonetheless, they found high methodological quality, and a small, but statistically significant effect.

So, the hypothesis that human intentions can perturb the general laws of nature is confirmed beyond a statistical doubt.

The 'seeming' ontological jump from intentional state [not-physical] to physical change in muscle activity is what I argue never happens because there must ultimately be some physical nature to that intentional state in order for it to lead to a physical change. — aporiap

Yes, there must be. While the concept of <matter> is orthogonal to the concept of <intention> physical processes are more than material. They are also intentional via the operation of the laws of nature. So, I try to be very careful not to confuse "material," which voices matter as an abstraction, with "physical" which includes not only matter, but the (intentional) laws under which material states evolve over time.

In physics we have material states |psi(t1)> which are defined by the values of physical variables at time t1. These states evolve over time into later states, |psi(t2)>, in response to a time-development operator, exp-iH(I2-t1) which expresses the laws of nature with their intrinsic intentionality. I give the formalism not to confuse, but to show that physics distinguishes material states, |psi(t)>, from the intentionality (time development operators) under which they evolve. What physics does not do is point out that time-development operators express intentionality.

And in fact it is currently made sense of in terms of physical mechanisms [albeit coarse grained and drafted at present] - as a hypothetical mechanism: some web of 'concept-cells' [higher level cells in a feedforward neural circuit that invariantly fire in response to a very specific stimulus or object class] are activated in conjunction with reward circuitry and a motor-command sequence is initiated. — aporiap

The problem with this kind model is its lack of intentional concepts. We can fully describe its operation in physical terms. So, it does not tell us how, for example, the idea <awareness> can give rise to the physical act of saying "awareness." That speech act can only occur if intentional states can modify physical states. So, the model is clearly inadequate.

Hiding this inadequacy in "concept cells" does nothing to advance our understanding.

Right but all of this goal directed decision making is ultimately mediated by physical processes happening in the brain. It also doesn't need to be determinate to be mediated by physical process. — aporiap

We agree. Where we disagree is on the causal effectiveness of intentions. The inability to understand how this can happen is not an argument against the observational datum that it does happen.

I don't know biophysically how these types of things are encoded in a distributed, non localized fashion or in a temporal pattern of activity that doesn't have spatial dimension or etc so I couldn't say they are one or the other but I guess I'd say they could be spatially decomposable. — aporiap

I think you are confusing intelligibility, which can certainly be spatially distributed, as these words are, which what is actually known. The concept <apple> has one and only one operation: it refers to actual and potential apples. It does not resist pressure, scatter light or generate electrochemical pulses. It only refers. Of course, it has physical support that encodes information. Still, the idea is not the encoded information that supports it. Encoded information is not known information unless its intelligibility is actualized by a knowing mind -- which is to say that it has to become operational in the intentional, not the physical, order.

How do you define 'biophysical support'? What in addition to that support would you say is needed for a full explanation? — aporiap

To form and execute my intention to go to the store I need physically encoded memories, physical senses, and a brain capable of processing the relevant data. All of that is necessary, but none of it is a goal, which is an intentional commitment. As Brentano points out, intentions are about something beyond themselves. Physical states are fully described by their intrinsic character -- we need not look beyond them to understand their operation.

I can program a robot or a computer with a goal, but the goal is mine, not the machine's. All the machine does is make state transitions that require no understanding of its goal to predict. On the other hand, my arrival at the store can be predicted independently of the detailed mechanisms that get me there. A set of state transitions that were not predetermined will get me to the store.

the contexts are different but, again they are both [the invariance of the goal and the ball's deterministic behavior] explainable by physical processes - some neurons are realizing a [physically instantiated] goal which is influencing via [probabilistic] physical interactions some other set of neurons which are informing behavior via other [probabilistic] physical interactions. The ball is a simple physical system which is directly being impacted by a relatively deterministic process. — aporiap

You seem to be arguing against a position that is not mine. I see humans as physical beings, requiring physical means to effect physical ends. The question is, is the paradigm of physics, as applied in various fields, including neuroscience, adequate to our experience? The case for the affirmative starts with a huge obstacle, because the fundamental abstraction of natural science leaves behind a good half of human experience -- the part informing of us of the subjective object. So, we have no reason to believe that any science that begins with the Fundamental Abstraction will be adequate to our experience as subjects.

As to the case in point. The paradigm of physical explanation is that applying a time development operator to the initial state gives us the final state. It does not matter if the initial state is simple, as a canon ball, or complex, involving millions of neurons, glia and psychoactive compounds.

Your hypothesis is that an adequate explanation of goal directed behavior is encoded (somehow) in our initial brain state. Yet, as soon as we encounter an obstacle, the initial brain state hypothesis becomes inadequate. We are no longer operating on our original representation of the world, but on a new representation not part of our initial brain state. That means that your original assumption can no longer explain what happens.

What does remain constant, the explanatory invariant, it an intentional state -- my commitment to go to the store. Now, you will say that that commitment is somehow explained by a physical (non-referential) brain state. But, how can what is non-referential explain an intention that is intrinsically referential?

I am making broad-band metaphysical assumptions of materialism and emergentism which implies I take things like 'valence' and 'concepts' to be materially realized in physical systems. — aporiap

That is precisely the point! These are assumptions with no rational support and many rational doubts. I explained, via the Fundamental Abstraction, why physicalist approaches to philosophy cannot deal with the full range of human experience. I showed you evidence for the causal effectiveness of intentionality. So, you can assume what you like, but doing so closes you, a priori, to possibilities the evidence leaves open. Such a stance rejects the scientific mindset in which data trumps belief.

Say you want a pizza. Pizza can be thought of as a circuit interaction between 'concept cells' [which -in turn- have activated the relevant visual, tactile, olfactory circuits that usually come online whenever you come into contact sensorily with pizza], particular reward pathway cells, cells which encode sets of motor commands. — aporiap

A key position in the Age of Reason was the rejection of "occult" properties, but here you are positing "concept cells" as a cover for abject ignorance of how any purely material structure can explain the referential nature of intentional realities. Where are these concept cells? How do they work? They are as irrational and ungrounded as the assumption of homunculi.

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{1} For example in my video "#14 Laws of Nature 6: Intentionality" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Ac7rTbWB4); in my article "Mind or Randomness in Evolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (2010) XXII, 1/2, pp. 32-66 (www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution); in my book, God, Science and Mind: the Irrationality of Naturalism, pp. 55ff; and in a number of posts on this forum.

Fair enough, but since, as you point out, we do not know the laws of nature, how do we know they obey the Principle of conservation of energy? And is the Principle of conservation of energy, a Principle of physics or of nature? — Inis

The whole point of physics is to learn as much as we can about the laws of nature by studying their actual operation. Experimentally, we know that the law of conservation of mass-energy applies with great accuracy over the the domain in which it has been tested. Of course, no measurement can be completely accurate. So, all that we really know is that it provides with a very accurate description of physical events.

And is the Principle of conservation of energy, a Principle of physics or of nature? — Inis

Both. It is a description of a regularity in nature, but a very accurate one. As an essential cause it is a law of nature.

Also, I'm not sure the Principle of conservation of energy even tells you how to measure whether energy is conserved or not. — Inis

Yes, the law of physics is part of a large theoretical framework, including methods for making measurements and calculating quantities such as mass and energy from them.

I assume the quote is from Kant. Note that he contradicts himself saying "did not distinguish these two kinds of judgements, as he ought to have done." If this were the case, he could not have specifically addressed a priori arguments, by "regard[ing] this augmentation of conceptions, ... independently of the impregnation of experience, as altogether impossible." No one can reject a thesis that was never considered.

How is the builder building identically being the building built any different than the ball hitting identically being the hit ball? — Mww

"The builder building the house" describes the identical event, with the same information, as "The house being built by the builder." I am not sure what you mean by the "ball hitting," but certainly the bat hitting the ball is identically the ball being hit by the bat. Have I missed your point?

all empirical relationships concerning cause and effect are contingent with respect to human knowledge, which implies if any absolute necessity, that is to say, the falsification of which is impossible, must arise from a priori conditions. — Mww

It seems to me that relationships need to be intelligible in order to be the object of human knowledge. So the relations are logically prior to our knowledge of them -- and not contingent on our knowledge.

It is not that the events of house building or ball hitting are necessary. The necessity is in the linkd between an essential cause and its effect. While there may well be no builder building or house being built, given that there is a builder building, necessarily something is being built. Likewise, given that something is being built, necessarily something is building it. In other words, every happening is a doing, and every doing is a happening.

Relating this to your quotation, I see no reason to suppose that this principle is known a priori. It suffices to think that, having once grasped it a posteriori, in an experienced example, we can see, that it applies in all future cases "a priori."

Have I addressed your concern?

But energy is not conserved by the Principle of energy conservation. It is conserved due to the dynamics undergone by a system obeying the laws of physics. — Inis

To avoid any confusion, let us distinguish the laws of nature, which are operative in nature, and the laws of physics, which are approximate human descriptions of the laws operative in nature.

When we speak in the plural of the laws of nature, it is not because there are many different laws in nature, but because the dynamics of nature, which is its law, is understood by us in many partial ways. What I mean is that the same unified dynamics conserves mass-energy, momentum, angular momentum, attracts masses, repels like charges, and so on. Nonetheless, when we think and write of it, we do so in terms of abstractions as though these various aspects were separate laws.

So, to say that mass-energy is conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy is to speak of one aspect of the unified dynamics in abstraction -- and does not deny that in reality there is one, many faceted dynamics at work in nature.

I hope this addresses your point. If not, let me know.

what is your idea of Hume’s thesis that Kant was bullheaded about, with respect to “time-ordered causality”? — Mww

Hume showed that we could not know that there was any intrinsic necessity to time-ordered causal sequences. This was not a new discovery, as Ibn Sina used the observation as a basis for proving the existence of God. Still, it seems to have shocked Hume's contemporaries, many of whom were beginning to coalesce around the mechanistic determinism later articulated by Laplace.

Kant seems to have felt that, since time-ordered causality was known to be necessary, Hume's analysis must be flawed. The result was the separation of noumena and phenomena and the whole system of Transcendental Idealism with the supposed imposition of the forms of time, space and causality by the mind. Of course, there were many other factors motivating Kant, some of them from the mystical tradition, but I do think the causality issue was the crucial one.

I’d guess A.) you’re talking about the effect on our knowledge of a thing being antecedent to the causality of the thing’s impression given to us by sense, or, B.) you’re talking about the simultaneity of the external impression on sense and the internal knowledge of the object so impressing. — Mww

I have in mind the distinction of Accidental and Essential Causality, which goes back at least of Aristotle, and which was common in Scholastic analysis. What contemporary philosopher's mean by "causality" is time-ordered or accidental causality. E.g.. the cue striking a billiard ball in the appropriate way is the cause of it going in the corner pocket. Kant defined this notion of causality as "time sequence by rule," and it is what Hume showed to have no intrinsic necessity. Since it links two separate events, intervention is always possible in principle, and so such sequences cannot be absolutely necessary.

The other type of causality, (essential causality) might be called concurrent causality. It does not involve separate events but is the result of analyzing a single event into agent and patient. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. In it the builder building is the cause and the house being build is the effect. The analysis of this event reveals an identity that serves as the basis of necessity. (The builder building the house is identically the house being build by the builder.) As there is only one event there is no possibility the separation of cause and effect or of intervention. So, essential causality has an intrinsic necessity.

Lest one think that essential causality plays no role in modern thought, the laws of nature operate by essential or concurrent causality. Mass-energy being conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy is identically the law of conservation of mass-energy conserving mass-energy. So essential causality is alive and well today. It is just not discussed by most contemporary philosophers.

Further, the two types of causality are linked. The the general sequence of causal and caused events is explained by integrating the essential causality of the laws of nature over time.

Again, no honest question id bothersome. Thank you for your kind words and interest in my thoughts.