I am still not sure what you're asking. The first thing that comes to mind is that there are many kinds of explanation. Aristotle distinguishes material, formal, efficient and final causes.

Materially, the ball moves because it retains its integrity and so is the principle of continuity in the change.

Formally, the ball moves as it does because of the laws of nature, approximately and partially described by F=ma.

The efficient cause of the ball moving is the strike of the cue, and beyond that the action of the player.

The final cause of the ball moving is, perhaps, the player's desire to win the game.

Is that what you are asking? In any event, F=ma is part of the explanation, but not all that can be said.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness loses its power when "physical" things are simply described as things that have causal power, and both "matter" and "ideas" have causal power. The Fallacy is in thinking that ideas and matter are different types of things. — Harry Hindu

I disagree. The fallacy is forgetting that, when we abstract, we leave contextual data on the table.

Things all share being, but they differ in how they share being. As matter and ideas have non-overlapping definitions, they are different.

Okay, so now it's "you" that has an intent that changes, just as an apple has a color that changes. — Harry Hindu

Yes. I am what has changed. One intent ended. Another came to be. I remained. The point in contention was whether there was continuity in the intent rather than in the intending subject.

In a change of intention, what is the same is not part of the original intention, but the intending subject. We simply stop believing in Santa, and start not believing in Santa. The Principle of Excluded Middle forbids a continuous transformation as in the physical case. Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous. — Dfpolis

Yes, but WHY did you believe in Santa in the first place, and now why do you not? For no reason at all? For no cause at all? — Harry Hindu

As I said, "Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous." So, not without cause.

If there were no parts outside of parts in reality, the mind would have no reason to separate them in thought. — Dfpolis

The mind is just another process of reality and functions at a certain frequency relative to the other processes in reality. Time speeds up and slows down based upon your mental state, just as lethargic lizards need to warm up in order to speed up their mental processing to become more aware of those fast-moving predators. Your relative location in space/time relative to the size and speed of everything will influence the minds perception of everything. Slow processes appear as stable solid objects, while fast processes appear as blurs, or popping in and out of existence. — Harry Hindu

How is any of this an argument against my claim that matter has parts outside of parts?

What is your take on evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind? — Harry Hindu

I think that our psychology is largely based on our physical nature, and that nature is largely the result of evolution. So, I have no problem with looking at evolution to find reasons for various psychological dispositions. I am, however, generally opposed to any approach that is confined to a single projection of reality.

As for the computational theory of mind, I agree that the brain is a data processing organ and control system, but the computational theory of mind goes beyond this well-founded conclusion. I see some major problems: (1) Confusing instrumental signs, such as computer states, with formal signs such as ideas. (See my response to @Sign above.) (2) Dealing only with the contents of awareness, and not with the act of awareness. (3) Physical states have no intrinsic meaning. What, for example, does an abbababa state mean? It depends on the conventions we use, such as assigning 1 or 0 to a or b and the order in which the bits are read (left to right, the reverse, or something else). As a result, to determine the meaning of a state we have to look beyond the machine to the mind(s) assigning the conventions.

What do you make of the pairing of 'meaning' and its 'vehicle'? For instance, the intelligible aspect of the voice as opposed to its arbitrary sound. Another example would be a chair grasped as a chair and the sensation organized by that grasping. One way to understand 'matter' would be as the opposite of pure meaning. Not mind but just meaning or form. These would be the poles of a continuum. — sign

The hylomorphic theory (the analysis of bodies into matter and form) has a long and venerable history. In my book, and in my article "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," I distinguish three incompatible versions (those of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas) and I am sure there are more. You seem to be hinting at another.

Your question opens the whole of semiotics for discussion, so there is not time for a complete answer. Clearly, there are natural signs like smoke and conventional signs like the spoken word. The meaning of natural signs is generally grounded in a causal relation and consequent mental association, a la Hume. Conventional signs also signify by association, but the association is grounded and acquired culturally.

My question to you is how would you understand meaning, without some implicit or explicit dependence on mind? It seems to me that the meaning of a sign is information it evokes in the mind of the recipient.

It's not clear to me that we ever have pure meaning. — sign

I am unsure what you have in mind when you speak of "pure meaning." For some, the term might invoke the idea of God as Pure Intelligibility. If you mean that we have difficulty in communicating exactly what is in our mind to the mind of another, I could hardly agree more. Because of our varying life experiences, even the most precise words can have different associations in you than in me.

To grasp something as a thing is already to grasp it as a unity, to install a boundary between it and not-it. — sign

Yes, that is Aristotle's understanding of a substance -- an ostensible unity -- a "one" we can point out.

I think that one can (not at all must) argue that the 'intellect' is one more sign within a steam of signs that refers to relationships between those signs. This is being as signs, including signs like 'consciousness' and 'physical.' These signs can occur in such a way that 'I' have the experience of being an 'I' or an intellect. — sign

Clearly, when we quote words, we mean to consider them as signs. Still, since words express thoughts, thoughts are logically and temporally prior to the words that express them. Thoughts again are signs, but as John of St. Thomas points out in his Ars Logica, a very different kind of sign. Physical signs have a physical form that needs to be recognized before we can grasp their meaning. If I can't read your writing, or if I mistake smoke for dust, they fail to signify. These are Instrumental Signs.

Ideas are very different. We do not need to recognize an idea as an idea for it to signify. It signifies transparently, as it were -- without the need to be "seen" first. It is only in retrospect, if at all, that we realize that to think of an apple, we employed an <apple> idea. Ideas are Formal Signs. While instrumental signs can do physical things (scatter light, vibrate membranes), all formal signs can do is signify.

So, while consciousness involves signs, they are not the instrumental signs we typically think of. The signs of consciousness are formal signs -- signs that do not involve what you are calling a vehicle.

Going deeper, since the formal signs that are our thoughts can do only one thing -- point beyond themselves to their potential referents -- no ultimate analysis can end at the sign. To get a fundamental understanding we need to consider the relation of sign and referent, and so the nature of the referent.

Thus, if there were no subject of experience, 'I' and the <I> idea it expresses would be empty. They might have meaning, but that meaning would lack an existential referent. Clearly, each of us is a continuing subject of experience. So, while 'I' is a sign, its referent is not.

My question is whether we can ever have pure information? Clearly we have the concept of information that is able to be 'encoded in any number of physical forms' via a 'shared convention.' But is this a merely theoretical sundering of a primordial unity? We might also ask if we ever experience the present as an instant or whether this too attaches a mathematical concept to something that is not a point. — sign

I think this is a very good question, and one that is difficult to articulate. If we take Claude Shannon's definition of information as the reduction of possibility, then information is essentially limiting and complete limitation results in non-being -- nothingness. But, we have a contrary notion of information, one about intelligibility, about being aware of reality. As opposed to Shannon's notion, this kind of information grows as our awareness increases, and reaches its ultimate realization in the awareness of Pure Being -- God.

We might also ask if we ever experience the present as an instant or whether this too attaches a mathematical concept to something that is not a point. — sign

I think mystical awareness might be what you are thinking of. If you're religious you might read St. John of the Cross. If you want a more philosophical account, W. T. Stace and D.T. Suzuki are good starting points. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness is an atheist perspective.

Forgetting this is a prime example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (thinking what exists only in abstraction is the concrete reality in its fullness). — Dfpolis

This seems important to me. I get a similar idea from Hegel. Do you have an opinion on Hegel? — sign

I'm not well-read in 19th century German philosophy, so any opinion I have would be ill-informed.

At the beginning of natural science, we abstract the object from the subject — Dfpolis

Would you not say that this happened even before natural science? The division of subject and object just seems so useful that it's hard to imagine it not being in play long before science as we know it. Along with it I'd expect there to be the 'ur-science' of unthematized induction. — sign

I am not talking about when the distinction came to be. It has a long history. You can find it in early Vedic works. I am talking about a conscious decision to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. This exclusion is not present in Aristotle, for example. In thinking about the mind, he includes both objective and subjective data. His analysis of intentional operations is paralleled with physical hypotheses about the mechanisms of sensation and first-hand anatomical work. The fact that he thought that the blood vessels were data conduits and the heart the central processing organ is incidental to the fact that he saw the need to understand physical and intentional data equally important.

This is great. What is maybe not addressed is the metaphoricity of language. While some meaning can be represented as a stream of bits, it's not obvious to me that meaning in general can be. — sign

Of course. We can only look at so much at any one time. In chapter 4 of my book, I deal with the rules of evidence and have a long discussion of analogical reasoning, of which metaphoric reasoning is a type.

I take consciousness to be awareness of present, typically neurophysiologically encoded, intelligibility. — Dfpolis

How do you differentiate this view from materialism or ‘brain-mind’ identity theory? — Wayfarer

It is different because those theories do not see the need for an intentional subsystem in their theory of mind. The brain clearly encodes and processes information. But, as discussed by Aristotle in De Anima iii, encoded information, while intelligible is not actually known. For actual knowing to occur we need more than the presence of intelligibility, we need the simultaneous actualization of two potencies: the object's intelligibility (as neurally encoded) needs to become actually known, and the subject's capacity to be informed (Aristotle calls it nous pathetikos = "passive intellect," because it is receptive) needs to be actually informed.

Until this dual actualization happens, we have a mere physical state -- something fully describable in terms of its intrinsic material properties. After the actualization, we have an intentional state -- one about the encoded contents.

This operation, the conversion of materially encoded intelligibility to a specific act of awareness, is not a physical operation, for such operations can only change the intrinsic form of states, they cannot make them directed to something else, as intentional states are. So, we need a subsystem of mind that is not describable by physics.

This view is fully compatible with all that we know from neuroscience. For example, it tells us why defective processing leads to defective thinking. (Awareness is presented with defectively encoded contents.) So, it represents no rejection of scientific understanding. It just says that to be aware we need not only contents to be aware of, but a subjective component aware of those contents.

I think the causality can run in either direction. As the placebo effect shows, what we think can affect our physical health. As neurophysical processing affects the contents we are aware of, defective processing can lead to defective thinking. — Dfpolis

How does one make sense of this? A causes B and B causes A? — Noah Te Stroete

The causality is not circular because it is not in the same act. In perception, material states inform intentional states (not as agents, but as formal causes). In volition, intentional states actualize possible material states as efficient and formal causes.

No question is dumb if it aids understanding.

The problem with "to specify a desire", or "to specify an intention", is as Tim woods alludes to above. Intentions and desires are derived from, and based in, something general and very unspecified, just like angst. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here, we need to apply the definition of an intentional state as one whose nature points beyond itself -- Brentano's "aboutness" criterion. If, as I've been discussing with Tim Wood, we understand "angst" to mean a purely neurophysiological condition, fully defined by objective symptoms, then it it is a material and not an intentional state. If we we define "angst" to include the awareness of such a material state, then angst, like many human conditions, is an integral effect involving both materiality and intentionality -- with our awareness being intentional because it is about the material condition.

Consider "hunger" for example. It might start as a strange feeling inside. Then the person may specify it from this general feeling, so as to associate the feeling with the stomach. Then one might further specify it as a want for food. From here the individual might consider possible food sources, and specify a particular food desired. Then the person might develop the very specific intention of getting a particular thing which is thought of, to eat. So intention's "intrinsic nature", is for something very general, and unspecific, but when we derive a specific intention, we go "beyond its intrinsic nature" (as you say) because intention is based in a general feeling. — Metaphysician Undercover

I made a similar point in the previous thread ("Fallacies of Strawson's Argument vs. Free Will"). Physical desires begin with a natural deficit signaled, neurally and/or endocrinologically, to the brain. There the response can be purely physical (not involving awareness and so not rising to the level of intentionality), or we can be aware of the signaled state, in which case intentionality enters.

Being aware of the state does not mean that we immediately know how to correct it. As you point out, over time we may come to know more clearly what object or kind of object will allow us to meet the deficit. That, then, is the object of the engendered desire -- and obtaining it is the thing we "ought" to do. Thus, "ought" is not divorced from "is," but is based on our nature, its end (telos), and the resulting hierarchy of needs described by Maslow.

I mean does your view of intentionality separate it out from the external stimuli that may have caused it? — Noah Te Stroete

No, an act of awareness is typically about the sensory contents that inform it.

Alternatively, information and matter make a pretty sound modern naturalism. What can be dubbed the pan-semiotic approach. — apokrisis

Naturalism is a vaguely defined and, in my considered and elaborated view, irrational movement motivated by an a priori prejudice against what its proponents call "spooky" realities. The invocation of such deprecatory language in its definition should be enough to place rational minds on high alert. Further, as I point out in my book, it is a Zombie theory -- no matter how many times it is killed, it keeps coming back to life. So, I am not one to judge what would or would not be a "sound" form of naturalism.

I can only ask what is a good and consistent framework for understanding the full range of human experience? Providing such a framework, rather than justifying prejudices, is my vision for philosophy. It seems to me that since experience is continually surprising us, no approach that begins with a priori exclusions can be such a framework. Rather we must examine human experience in many complementary projections to see if we've covered all the bases.

Semiotics has to do with signs, which are relational structures linking sign and meaning. Empirically meaning is found only in human thought. So, a semiotic theory that does not rest on a deep understanding of human thought is necessarily incomplete. While a perfectly fine field of study, it is necessarily limited by various abstractions. Thus, it cannot be the basis of a framework spanning the full range of experience.

Where we make a huge ontological mistake is to abstract the "mental" as a simple. A basic kind of substance or stuff. — apokrisis

Empirically, the human mind is limited in the number of "chunks" of information it can consider at one time. We must, then, choose to focus on some aspects of reality to the exclusion of others. Abstraction is the "stupid human trick" for dealing with this limitation. As far as I can tell, there is no intrinsic problem with this as long as we realize we are dealing with abstractions and so avoid Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

Reifying abstractions, as Descartes did, is an example of this fallacy. That we can separate mind in our thought, does not justify thinking that it is separate in reality. So, I agree with you. Further, he drew the line in the wrong place. How can we imagine extension, if at least part of the mind were not extended? So, there is not a line between matter and mind, but between material and intentional realities. The mind involves an interaction of matter and intentionality.

So while it is commonplace to set up physicalism in strawman fashion as a brute materialism, in fact science has moved on to a systems understanding of materiality in which information plays the role of developmental constraints. — apokrisis

I've argued previously that the laws of nature, intrinsic to physical operations, are in the same genus (Logical Propagators) as human committed intentions. So, in a way I agree, but I do not see science as having done more than abstract information as a kind of object to be processed. Intentionality, with its ontological dependence on an intending subject, goes beyond considering information as an object. It points to its intrinsically relational structure.

Information and matter produce this kind of composite ontology if materiality is understood as a radical instability. — apokrisis

But, information is an abstraction that leaves out the necessity of an informed intellect for its actualization. A sign (sema) is only informative when it actually informs an intellect to reduce logical possibility -- for that is the definition of information. So, intellect has logical and ontological priority over information, and therefore over signs as carriers of information. Consequently, semiotics in abstraction cannot be the ultimate foundation for a comprehensive framework -- even if we add matter.

So it is time to dump the theistic metaphysics. — apokrisis

This is a complete non sequitur, even on your premises. Taking matter and information as principles does not imply that they exist without further explanation. Indeed, assuming that some phenomena need no explanation undermines the whole structure of science, the logic of which will fail if anything is a brute, unexplained, fact.

To still speak of the material aspect of being as a stuff with inherent properties is the strawman. It fails to keep up with modern physics. We now take a structural approach to particle physics where particles are stabilities only to the degree that instabilities have been contextually suppressed or thermally decohered. — apokrisis

As a physicist, I do not see how the fact that quanta are dynamic instead of static atoma does anything to support your case or undermine my position.

Is F=ma part of the explanation for why billiard ball B moved in vector v or not? — Terrapin Station

Materially considered, which is to say as a piece of text, it has nothing to do with the motion of billiard balls. Formally considered, which is to say as indicating relevant the physics, rather than the proposition as a text, yes, it partly explains the motion.

On your view of LFW and intentionality, wouldn’t you say that the depressive thoughts cause a neurochemical imbalance? — Noah Te Stroete

I think the causality can run in either direction. As the placebo effect shows, what we think can affect our physical health. As neurophysical processing affects the contents we are aware of, defective processing can lead to defective thinking.

No, it is not about psychological satisfaction, even though that is usually involved. It is about having a logical structure in which the premises entail the datum to be explained. — Dfpolis

Aside from the fact that we'd still be talking about psychological satisfaction in response to some set of words, equations, etc. — Terrapin Station

Logical satisfaction need not reference human psychology. So, any psychological satisfaction is only related per accidens to an explanation being logically satisfactory.

in this case, what you're saying is kind of ridiculous, because all we'd have to do for anything, then--in order to have an explanation for it--would be to forward two modus ponens to the effect of:

If x is F, then x is G (premise 1).
X is F (premise 2)
X is G (modus ponens a)
If x is G, then F is G (premise 3)
F is G. (modus ponens b) — Terrapin Station

I find this line of thought puzzling. For an explanation to be satisfactory, it has to be sound, not merely valid. Being sound requires that the premises be either true, or at least believed to be true. To be true means that they are adequate to reality. Thus, the hypotheticals you posit need to be grounded in reality by sufficient evidence to warrant their actual or plausible truth. So, positing an abstract structure is not "all we'd have to do."

Are you separating intentionality from the rest of experience (outside stimuli specifically)? Wouldn’t that be a fallacy? — Noah Te Stroete

No, I am not. I am talking about the conceptual space spanned by concepts and how they relate logically. I am not saying that there is no relation between intentional and material operations. Experientially, we know that committed intentions can issue in actions that affect material states.

Thanks for the clarification and reference.

I really have no idea what "explanatory invariant" is supposed to amount to. — Terrapin Station

It amounts to the basis of scientific understanding. Every branch of science has unchanging principles, their explanatory invariants, in terms of which its phenomena are understood. For example, we understand physical processes in terms of invariant physical laws. In controlled experiments, we vary only one factor at a time, so we can isolate the invariant explanation from other factors. In evolution the invariant principles are unpredictable variation, inheritability, and natural selection.

Explanations are not the sorts of things that are invariant. Explanations are about language usage and especially how people interpret the same. So how would it make sense to attach the word "invariant" to "explanatory"? — Terrapin Station

That we use language to express explanations does not mean the explanations are about language (unless we are lingusits). Explanations are logical structures that we typically express in language.

I have just explained the role of invariance in theories.

All knowledge is a subject-object relation. — Dfpolis

There, I'd want to clear up if he's doing some sort of ontological analysis or propositional analysis. — Terrapin Station

I am discussing the ontological nature of knowledge, not how that knowledge may or may not be expressed propositionally.

The material and intentional aspects of reality are logically orthogonal. — Dfpolis


I understand at least some of the common definitions of "othogonal" in mathematics and physics. But as with "explanatory" and "invariant," I have no idea how things can be "logically orthogonal," especially not when we're talking about "aspects of reality," or really, empirical stuff in general, since that's not the purview of logic. — Terrapin Station

To be orthogonal is to have no basis vectors in common. Here I am following Carnap in thinking of independent judgements as spanning the space of human knowledge. In it, orthogonal subspaces do not overlap, and so cannot imply each other's elements.

The purview of logic, defined as the science of correct thinking, is the soundness of thought about reality, and reality is known empirically.

I hope this makes my meaning clearer to you.

Whatever coffee you're drinking this morning, please keep drinking it. — tim wood

Thank you. It's Kirkland Colombian.

Do you think this is why we have the current break between Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics and the strangeness of QM? — Harry Hindu

I think the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness plays a pivotal role in the confusion surrounding quantum theory, but explaining this would take us far afield. An outline of my position is at https://www.researchgate.net/project/A-Manifest-Varaibles-Approach-to-Quanum-Theory, and I have explained a lot of points in comments to my YouTube videos on quantum topics. (Dfpolis channel)

If you change your intent, you no longer the same intention, but a different intention. — Dfpolis

What do you mean by "no longer the same intention"? Wouldn't it just be the same intention that changed, just like everything else does, like "matter"? Everything changes. Change is the essence of time. — Harry Hindu

I meant to write "you no longer have the same intent." I have edited the post to correct this.

No, it would not be the same intention. In a physical change, the material in the initial state, which is an aspect of that state, is found, in different form, in the final state. In a change of intention, what is the same is not part of the original intention, but the intending subject. We simply stop believing in Santa, and start not believing in Santa. The Principle of Excluded Middle forbids a continuous transformation as in the physical case. Even though the weight of evidence may accumulate slowly, the change of intent is discontinuous.

Matter's appearance of having parts outside of parts is a result of how our minds categorize space. — Harry Hindu

If there were no parts outside of parts in reality, the mind would have no reason to separate them in thought.

A transmission takes time. You are talking about a causal relationship. All effects carry information about their causes. The tree rings in a tree stump still refers to the age of the tree even if no one is there to look at it. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

I am not denying the role of cause and effect. I am saying that matter is logically orthogonal to intent.

Information surely has causes, many of which are material. In my message example, the transmission process is described by physics, but the apprehension of information is not. Nothing described by physics involves awareness per se.

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology. — Terrapin Station

That is your belief. What is your justification?

"Explanatory invariant"? What's that? — Terrapin Station

The one principle explaining many cases. For example, the laws of nature are explanatory invariants because they, while unchanging, explain many, variable phenomena. It is by seeing what remains the same while the details vary that we come to an understanding of causality.

A thrown state, perhaps. — tim wood

"Thrown state" is a new term for me.

We know that one of the main causes of depression is neurochemical -- problems with the balance of our neurotransmitters. I'm thinking angst may be similar.

"This is material" in no way implies "This is able to be explained" first off. — Terrapin Station

I did not claim that it did. I am saying that material properties alone cannot be the explanation of intentional properties.

"This is able to be explained" is a claim about individuals considering some set of words (or equations or whatever) to provide psychological satisfaction in a way that quells a "this is a mystery" feeling that they otherwise had — Terrapin Station

No, it is not about psychological satisfaction, even though that is usually involved. It is about having a logical structure in which the premises entail the datum to be explained.

Something being a particular sort of existent has no implications for whether individuals will find some set of words psychologically satisfactory. — Terrapin Station

Even if I grant that, it is irrelevant to the question of logical adequacy.

Could you explain Whitehead’s Fallacy? I’m not familiar with it. — Noah Te Stroete

Whitehead discusses the fallacy in Science and the Modern World. as part of his defense of his theory of organism. The specific context is the fact that an electron acts in a certain way when considered in isolation, does not mean that it acts exactly the same way in its natural context. This is certainly true, as to know that electrons repel each other, you need to break the isolation by bringing in another electron, and, to describe the behavior of bulk matter, we need to consider the non-linear interactions and anti-symmetry relations between all the electrons.

But, the fallacy has a broader application. Whenever we abstract any content from experience, we leave contextual data on the table. Forgetting this is a logical error. For example, in abstracting the data of physics, we leave on the table the fact that matter occurs in living as well as nonliving beings. As a result, even if we do physics right, we cannot deduce specifically biological conclusions. We cannot logically reduce biology to physics. All that we can know from the best physics is that biology is possible. The reason is that the information which biology seeks is not what is physically possible (which physics might tell us), but the actual morphology, physiology and behavior of organisms in their actual evolutionary and ecological contents -- and that is precisely the information we leave on the table in abstracting physics. If we did not leave it on the table, we would be biologists, not physicists.

So, my application here is that, in doing natural science in general, we fix on physicality to the exclusion of intentionality, and so leave data essential to the understanding of consciousness on the table.

Also, could you explain what you mean by “information is not physically invariant”? — Noah Te Stroete

I mean that the identical information can be encoded in any number of physical forms, and so is not explained by the data describing its physical matrix. In any case of conventional signing (speaking, writing, Morse code, digital representations, etc.) the information depends not on its physical form, but on the shared convention agreed to, implicitly or explicitly, by the users.

Then you shouldn’t have agreed to it. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't think I did.

Anyway, which part of “needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own” don’t you understand? — Michael Ossipoff

I have no idea what the limitation "any context other than its own" means. Obviously, if we exclude the datum of actual existence, we have no basis for talking about actual existence, but that hardly seems fruitful

But yes, if you don’t know what “real” and “exist” mean, don’t feel bad — Michael Ossipoff

I have a good idea of what it means to exist. To exist is to be able to act in some, in any, way. Whatever can act necessarily exists, and what cannot act cannot act to make its existence known. If a putative thing can not act in any way, it is indistinguishable from nothing, and so is nothing. Clearly acting on us in experience is acting, so whatever acts on us exists, and is not merely hypothetical. How it exists depends on the details of the revelatory act(s).

We definitely agree about the questionable-ness and dubiousness of the meaning of “real” and “exist”. — Michael Ossipoff

No we do not.

A posteriori, it is necessary.

Well, it’s necessary component of your life-experience story, of which you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts. So yes. — Michael Ossipoff

While not denying that I have a life-experience story, "story" is an ambiguous term, for stories can be real or fictional. As life experience involves inter-actions, it necessarily places us in touch with existents, which alone are capable of acting.

I don’t make any claim about logic “existing”, whatever that would mean. — Michael Ossipoff

It's your call to make or not make claims, as it is mine. Logic exists, not as a separate being, but as a set of mental norms, in the minds of rational agents.

Though you aren’t a Materialist proper, you, along with the Materialists, believe that this physical universe is fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm. It’s a Materialist belief, though you aren’t entirely a Materialist. — Michael Ossipoff

No, that is not my position. I hold that the the universe has a derivative, dependent and participatory existence -- deriving its existence, on a continuing basis, form God Who alone is "fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm" (creatio continuo).

starting with “If there were experience of a life…”, the starting antecedent in the logically-interdependent realm. — Michael Ossipoff

Since there is the experience, we are no longer dealing with a hypothetical. Once the antecedent is affirmed, the conclusion is categorical by the modus ponens.

The question is one of the order of dependence. In that order, logic comes after the physical universe.
.
I get that that’s the belief of you and the Materialists. You believe that this physical universe has some kind of unspecified precedence, priority, primary-ness in the logically-interdependent realm. — Michael Ossipoff

I think you are mis-reading me. Logic is a human tool, existing in human minds, and abstracted from the nature of being as found in the experienced universe, which is ontologically dependent on God. God, knowing all reality at once and eternally, has no need of ratiocinative thought, and so no need of logic. Of course God does know the nature of being, and it is from that nature that we humans abstract logic.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and positions.

I don't entirely follow the argument in #1 — tim wood

Thanks for the heads-up. I edited it to make it clearer.

(To specify a desire, we have to say what is desired.) — Dfpolis

If we substitute "fear" for "desire," the result is the claim that to fear is always to fear something. Yet angst is usually understood as a kind of fear that is the fear of nothing in particular - 'though I accept the proposition that in this context the "nothing" is indeed a something. Not an argument, just a thought. — tim wood

Yes, a thought certainly worthy of reflection. I wonder if angst should be called an "intention." I think that angst might be a physiological state, while our awareness is of that state is the intentional reality.

Mentality is physiological, by the way. But I wouldn't say that there's any reason to believe that a desire, per se, can be nonmental. I don't buy the notion of unconscious mental content in general.

Also, needs always hinge on wants. — Terrapin Station

Mentality is physiological in the sense that it is normally supported by the neurophysiological processing of informative contents. It is equally clear that it is inadequate to explain awareness of contents.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. If A => B, then every case of A entails a case of B. So, if there is any case of neurophysiological data processing, and it explains our awareness of the processed data (consciousness) then we would be aware of all the data we process. Clearly, we are not aware of all the data we process.

2. All knowledge is a subject-object relation. There is always a knowing subject and a known object. At the beginning of natural science, we abstract the object from the subject -- we choose to attend to physical objects to the exclusion of the mental acts by which the subject knows those objects. In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness. Lacking these data and concepts, it has no way of connecting what it does know of the physical world, including neurophysiology, to the act of awareness. Thus it is logically impossible for natural science, as limited by its Fundamental Abstraction, to explain the act of awareness. Forgetting this is a prime example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (thinking what exists only in abstraction is the concrete reality in its fullness).

3. The material and intentional aspects of reality are logically orthogonal. That is to say, that, though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes. Matter is essentially extended and changeable. It is what it is because of intrinsic characteristics. As extended, matter has parts outside of parts, and so is measurable. As changeable, the same matter can take on different forms. As defined by intrinsic characteristics, we need not look beyond a sample to understand its nature.

Intentions do not have these characteristics. They are unextended, having no parts outside of parts. Instead they are indivisible unities. Further, there is no objective means of measuring them. They are not changeable. If you change your intent, you no longer the same intention, but a different intention. As Franz Brentano noted, an essential characteristic of intentionality is its aboutness, which is to to say that they involve some target that they are about. We do not just know, will or hope, we know, will and hope something. Thus, to fully understand/specify an intention we have to go beyond its intrinsic nature, and say what it is about. (To specify a desire, we have to say what is desired.) This is clearly different from what is needed to specify a sample of matter.

4. Intentional realities are information based. What we know, will, desire, etc. is specified by actual, not potential, information. By definition, information is the reduction of (logical) possibility. If a message is transmitted, but not yet fully received, then it is not physical possibility that is reduced in the course of its reception, but logical possibility. As each bit is received, the logical possibility that it could be other than it is, is reduced.

The explanatory invariant of information is not physical. The same information can be encoded in a panoply of physical forms that have only increased in number with the advance of technology. Thus, information is not physically invariant. So, we have to look beyond physicality to understand information, and so the intentional realities that are essentially dependent on information.

(I am posting most of this as a new thread.)

Thank you for the informative post. The citations are quite helpful.

Reflecting on them, we have used "desire" ambiguously. I was focusing on desire as based on a natural need, (call it "intrinsic desire"), while the passage you cite, and your subsequent discussion focuses on desire for a specific object (call it "directed desire"). If I thirst, I have a need for hydration, but that does not mean that I fixed on a particular beverage as the object to meet my need. So, we have intrinsic desire as a state of being (thirst) that we can be aware of, and an analogous use of "desire" as an intentional relation directed to an object, universal or specific, that we believe can meet that need in whole or in part.

Aristotle anticipates me on relation of desire and telos at 433a15: "And every appetite is directed to an end (to telei)."

The following passages also caused me to reflect:

Now thought is always right, but appetite and imagination may be either right or wrong.

I find this quite problematic as translated. Clearly, even in careful reflection, there is a chance for error. My Liddel and Soctt says orthos can also mean "norm." I can agree that the norm should be to follow thought over impulse.

To produce movement the object must be more than this: it must be good that can be brought into being by action; and only what can be otherwise than as it is can thus be brought into being.

This relates to what I sad about potential. Objects of desire have to have real potential if they are to advance the realization of our natural ends.

That then such a power in the soul as has been described, i.e. that called appetite, originates movement is clear. Those who distinguish parts in the soul, if they distinguish and divide in accordance with differences of power, find themselves with a very large number of parts, a nutritive, a sensitive, an intellective, a deliberative, and now an appetitive part; for these are more different from one another than the faculties of desire and passion.

These well-founded distinctions are lost in the projection of naturalist and purely neurophysiological thinking.

No, desires are generally physiological needs, accompanied by mental awareness of the need. — Dfpolis

I don't think that's quite right. According to Aristotle, desires are appearances of the good. If something is good because it fulfills a need, then desiring it betrays awareness that it indeed fulfills that need; if an agent is rational and self-conscious, she can self-ascribe the need that is being fulfilled by the desired object. But the intentional content of the desire is the proposition (true or false) that the desired object is good. — Pierre-Normand

I recall Aquinas saying that whatever we choose, we choose under the aspect (appearance?) of good. I would not be surprised to find that he derived this claim form Aristotle, but I do not recall the text. Do you?

While "aspect" and "appearance" can have the same denotation, their connotations are quite different. To see according to an aspect is to say that we see reality, but only partially, from a certain perspective. To say that we see an appearance leaves open the possibility that we are deceived -- that what we think see is not really there. Of course, we do err in judgements of perception, so we could choose something we think is good, but really is not. For example, one partner can deceive another in love, so the deceived commits for a sound, but false, reason.

If one has exercised due diligence, committing for a sound, but false reason, is not a culpable act, and culpability for sin is the context of Aquinas' discussion. So, "appearance" is not how I read Aquinas' (and presumably Aristotle's) main point. I think his main point is, that we do not choose evil acts because of their privative (evil) nature, but because of the actual, but lesser good, incorporating the privation. A suicide, for example, wishes the cessation of pain, which is a good, at the cost of deprivation of life, which is evil.

So, to return to my point, desires reflect states of need -- goods required for the realization of our potential that we lack. Thus, needs are based on our end-directed nature, some are physiological in origin, others intellectual or spritual. We know these by connaturality (as Maritain notes), by attending to the natural responses of our being to presented situations. Physiologically, the brain is informed of needs by neural and endocrine signals. Our awareness of this information, of the need for action directed to our natural self-realization, is, in my view, desire.

So, desire is an intentional state, but, as Brentano points out, the nature of intentional states it to point beyond themselves -- here to the need for action to continue toward our natural end (telos).

No, desires are generally physiological needs, accompanied by mental awareness of the need.

If you need a desire for that then there's nothing objective about it. — Terrapin Station

So, desires are not empirically knowable?

I am not saying that the experience of having a desire is intersubjectively available. I an saying that the desire itself is. Recently, a 7-year-old girl died of dehydration while in the custody of Trump's immigration goons. Was her desire for water not an objective fact?

I was trying to make the point that brain encoding, an objective phenomenon, gives rise to mental states as an emergent property. — Noah Te Stroete

The notion of "emergence" is that of an unexplained consequence and has no place in an explanatory or causal theory. It is clear that neural processing is a necessary part of most mental operations. It is unclear that such operations alone are an adequate explanation for them. Emergence is a claim that it is, while ducking the burden of an actual explanation.

I think the basis for norms is to be sought in what is known, rather in the mechanisms by which it is known. Thus, we know that we have natural needs and desires which are satisfied by determinate means. That is where I look for the basis of norms.

I was further discussing the objective fact that brains and their emergent mental states model reality through sense data, giving order to the chaotic natural world. Normatives are also an attempt to order human conduct, also a part of the natural world. — Noah Te Stroete

Does mean that you are looking to the means of knowing rather than what is known as the basis of norms? Perhaps in some neo-Kantian way?

Don't you have to desire to thrive rather than not thrive? — Terrapin Station

Of course, and we know that we do by what Jacques Maritain calls "knowledge by connaturality" -- by being aware of how we naturally respond in various situations. This knowledge of our objective nature is part of the basis in reality for norms of behavior.

Of course brains encode the contents we are aware of, but neither contents nor the processing of contents entails awareness of contents.

I am not sure how the brain encoding relates to whether norms have a basis in extramental reality, which was the point we were discussing.

Do they objectively justify the application of norms? — Terrapin Station

Yes. To thrive, you need to follow norms, not as rigid rules, but as defaults to be observed in the absence of overriding considerations.

You can't refer to or grasp the objective reality of anything that's only mental, because it's only mental--by definition not objective.

Are you claiming that normatives are referring to something non-mental that's anything like a normative? What objective thing? — Terrapin Station

No, I an saying norms have an objective foundation in reality, which though not themselves norms, justify the application of norms. For example, there is a biological basis for not eating 2-week old cream pie.

Any assessment has to be done by a mind, so, it seems that what you want, "a mind-independent assessment," is a contradiction in terms. — Dfpolis

Hence "If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them." — Terrapin Station

This is a non sequitur. The fact that thoughts depend on the mind for their being does not prevent them from referring to and grasping objective reality.

Thanks. There is nothing wrong with an open mind.

Any assessment has to be done by a mind, so, it seems that what you want, "a mind-independent assessment," is a contradiction in terms.

I may be missing something, but a more mature, educated, moral, healthier person, seems objectively more fully realized to me than one who is not. What am I missing?

Thank you.

I must object that the scientific method does not turn off belief, but seeks to justify it. The hypothetico-deductive method can only yield justified belief, never apodictic knowledge of our hypothesis. Consider the deep belief in the Newtonian system, expressed by LaPlace's statement of determinism, which was subsequently overturned by advances in physics. If we read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions we see just how prevalent the sociology of belief is in the acceptance of scientific theory. None of this denigrates the value of science. It generally provides us the best understanding available in its area of application at any point of time. Still it is a system of belief, not knowledge in the sense of awareness of present intelligibility.

he way we are is not our choice. Hmmm. — TheMadFool

This is not my position. I think that we are able to choose the kind of person we wish to be. I am unsure why you are addressing your questions to me, as I think we agree.

I agree that it was a horror, but I do not think that the definition of "anarchy" fits the kind of horror it was.

What's an example of mentally-independent advancement or retardation of self-realization? — Terrapin Station

For retardation: being killed, being inadequately fed, sheltered, clothed, educated, etc.

For advancement: having adequate food, shelter, medical care, education, etc.

I am thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of values as reflecting the ordering of intermediate goals toward the attainment of self-realization. The values in Maslow's hierarchy can be examined empirically for their relevance to bio-personal development. As for self-realization as the high order goal, it is recognized in a number of traditions, Eastern and Western, as the goal of a well-lived life.