If telos characterizes everything in existence, simply in virtue of the definition that you give it, then it is a vacuous concept — SophistiCat

I am not discussing it as a concept, but as a mode of explanation -- and that makes its great extension very useful. The fact that every existent is involved in efficient causality makes efficient causality an equally useful tool of understanding.

Your analysis of teleology is wholly inadequate, or rather it is wholly absent. Once again, I recommend that you actually read something on the subject — SophistiCat

If you look at my article, "Mind or Randomness in Evolution" (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution) you'll find it well-referenced. If you read my book, God, Science and Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism, you'll find hundreds of detailed citations. So, I have read "something" on the subject. The positions I "rail" against are specific and documented.

Of course, there is always more to learn. So, if you'd care to make a substantive criticism, or point me in a direction I've missed, that would be appreciated.

Have you heard of teleonomy? It is teleology evolved. Teleology was left — VoidDetector

Have you heard of teleonomy? It is teleology evolved. Teleology was left behind after the scientific revolution. — VoidDetector

Yes, I have. Wayfarer brought it up in the 6th post of this tread and we discussed it. I suggest you read that discussion so that I don't have to go over the same ground again.

That teleology was left behind by the scientific revolution is a historical observation of no probative value.

Wikipedia Teleonomy vs Teleology: "Teleonomy is sometimes contrasted with teleology, where the latter is understood as a purposeful goal-directedness brought about through human or divine intention." — VoidDetector

While "teleology" may be used in that restricted sense by proponents of teleonomy, that is not the general definition of the term, nor is it the definition I used in the OP. For example:

Teleology, (from Greek telos, “end,” and logos, “reason”), explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function. Traditionally, it was also described as final causality, in contrast with explanation solely in terms of efficient causes (the origin of a change or a state of rest in something). — The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Teleology concerns religious endeavour. — VoidDetector

In your mind, perhaps. To me this is a discussion about one of Aristotle's four "causes." I do not recall any previous mention of religion in this thread. So, perhaps you have missed the secular aspects of teleology.

So we know religion is obsolete — VoidDetector

Thank you for sharing your faith position so clearly.

if everything is perception (in Kant's sense, which is not as simple as here represented), then how do you get beyond or outside of it? — tim wood

As I've pointed out, everything can't be perceptions because a perception is always perception of an object by a subject. To say "everything is a perception" is like saying "everything is higher." Both "perception" and "higher" are relational terms and can't be instantiated absent the correlative relata.

To answer you question, because I'm informed by perceptions/appearances/phenomena, I can conclude with apodictic certainty that whatever I am perceiving has the power to so inform me. What does that tell me? Following Plato's suggestion in the Sophist, I think we can agree that whatever can act in any way exists. So, anything that acts to inform me exists. Further, as I have argued previously, what an object is (its individual essence) is convertible with the specification of its possible acts. If it informs me thusly, it must be able to inform me thusly -- giving me some minimal knowledge of its essence.

Thus, perception invariably informs me about the existence and essence of its object. I may add to this actual information a lot of constructive filler and wind up thinking a pink elephant is an Indian elephant, but that error is in judgement, not in the data of experience.

The question amounts to asking how we can pierce the barrier that perception interposes between us and out there. Kant's answer: we cannot. — tim wood

And Kant, like Locke before him, was dead wrong! There is no barrier to be pierced, no gap to be bridged. Had they only read De Anima iii, this whole debate would not be happening. I ask that you carefully consider and respond to the following:
(1) The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object. Because of this identity, there is never a gap to be bridged. I have put this in neurophysiological terms by pointing out that, in any act of perception, the object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. In other words, the one modification of my neural state belongs both to the object (as its action) and to me (as my state). There is shared existence here, or, if you will, existential or dynamical penetration of me by the object of perception. There is no room for a gap and no barrier given this identity.
(2) A second way of grasping the unity here, is to consider the actualization the relevant potentials in the object and subject. The object is sensible/intelligible. The subject able to sense/know. The one act of sensation actualizes both the object's sensibility (making it actually sensed) and the subject's power to sense (making it actually sensing). Similarly, one act of cognition actualizes both the object's intelligibility (making it actually known) and the subject's ability to be informed (making in actually informed). Thus, in each case, the subject and object are joined by a single act -- leaving no space for a barrier or epistic gap.
The fundamental error here is reifying the act of perception. Phenomena are not things to be known, but means of knowing noumena.

You refuse. And it would seem the reason for your refusal - which I find sophistic - is that you define "perception" differently, as "relational." — tim wood

OK, you define a perception in a way that does not implicitly or explicitly include a subject and an object. Alternately, give me an example of a perception that is not a perception of something. You can speak of perceptions in abstraction from their subjects and objects, but there cannot be a perception without an actual subject and object. To forget this is to commit Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

What, exactly, do you mean by "relational"? — tim wood

When I say that a term is relational, mean that it cannot be instantiated without appropriate relata -- without additional existents that it links in some way. For example, "greater than" can be understood in the abstract without reference to concrete values, but any instance of "greater than" is a link between such values.

If it's relational, then it's "out there." Out there invokes the Humean problem. — tim wood

I don't know what you mean by "the Humean problem" here, or even what you mean my "out there." Relations occur in reality, and we form abstract ideas of them by abstracting away individualizing characteristics.

That's just as I said: your ideas about science and the PSR are idiosyncratic, and I expect that you will find few allies, regardless of their position on naturalism. And when you add boasts like this, you, frankly, sound like a crank. — SophistiCat

I was telling what happened, not boasting. The facts are what they are. It doesn't bother me that I am "idiosyncratic." It would bother me if I contradicted the data of experience or if my reasoning were unsound. If you find errors of that sort, please point them out. If you're merely saying that not many people agree with me, I don't consider that a problem.

If you want to make a persuasive case, you don't want to explicitly hinge it on extreme foundational positions that few are likely to accept as an unconditional ultimatum. — SophistiCat

Again, I'm not running for office. I'm trying to be logical and consistent with the facts.

It depends on what you mean by "supernatural and theological explanations." — Dfpolis

I mean the kind of explanations that hinge on the existence of a powerful and largely inscrutable personal agent. — SophistiCat

It would be a philosophical error to begin by positing the existence of God. On the other hand, it is utterly prejudicial to exclude certain kinds of conclusions a priori, as you seem to be doing. We need to follow the facts where they lead, not exclude conclusions before investigating the relevant issues.

Any system that exhibits any regularity has "telos" in this sense, but so what? Any connection to intelligence is far from obvious. — SophistiCat

I am glad that we agree. But, if biological systems do tend toward determinant ends and there is no immediate implication of intelligence, why do naturalists insist that their students say "turtles come ashore and lay eggs," rather than "turtles come ashore to lay eggs"? Isn't this irrational thought control? Clearly, coming ashore is a required step, a means, toward the end of testudine reproduction.

As Emrys Westacott says, it is simply an observation about the conditional nature of knowledge - that all human knowledge is in some sense constructed and mediated - we're not 'all-knowing', even in respect of those things that we seem to know exactly. And that actually is quite in keeping with what you then go onto say about Aquinas. I think from the perspective of Christian philosophy, we only see 'through a glass darkly' - that this is an inevitable consequence of the human condition. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with this as a view of reality. My problem lies with the claim that we have no knowledge of noumena -- and that is a widely held interpretation of Kant. (As illustrated by a number of quotations I posted yesterday.) As I also observed, this seems to reflect Locke's view that we only know our ideas -- and the concomitant failure to see that ideas are primarily the means, rather than the object, of knowledge. (I'm not saying that Kant follows Locke in other respects.)

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ it as an object from the raw material of perception — Wayfarer

Yes. In daily life, we take what is given and typically fill in a lot of gaps with constructs. If we're careful, we can sort data from constructs, but usually we don't.

... That is the background to the question 'what is the real X' and the distinction between reality and appearance - a distinction which manifests in Kant as the difference between the noumenal and phenomenal domains. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with your historical thumbnail. My problem is that Kant has put together an incoherent and even parochial system. I think I understand his goals and even his outlook, and obviously he has thought deeply, but he seems to have researched no further back than Descartes, Wolff and Locke. The abandonment of historical research in philosophy, of learning "the state of the question," began with Descartes and continues in Kant -- which is what I mean in saying they're parochial.

Thanks for the reference.

Your question is, why there is anything other than the phenomenal chair? I do not think anyone claims that there is any thing other than the phenomenal chair. What separate chair would there be? The only chair is the phenomenal chair. But let's try a quick thought experiment. As it happens, the chair is red. But we turn out the lights. What color is the chair now? And we might as well ask, what makes it a chair? Is it a chair, in its own self? — tim wood

As I read Kant, the noumenal chair cannot be the phenomenal chair because in knowing the phenomenal chair, we know nothing of the noumenal chair. If they were the same being, in knowing one, we would necessarily know the other. So, why add a noumenal chair, when, ex hypothesis, we have no way of knowing it?

As to your specific question: To say "the chair is red" means that the identical percept that evokes the concept <chair> evokes the concept <red>. It does not mean that every percept that evokes the concept <chair> will evoke the concept <red>. That is why Aristotle classed red is an accident, but chairs as substances.

We know, scientifically, that if we illuminate an object that appears red in normal light with pure green light, it will be black. Does this mean that our perception of color tells us nothing of the of the chair in itself? Of course not. It is just that what it tells us is a bit more complex than naive realists think. Both the red and black colors have the same foundation in reality: They are different manifestations of the chair's spectral response (what percentage of each wave length of light is absorbed and what percentage is scattered back). So our perception of color adds to our knowledge of the chair in itself, just not in the way we may have thought naively. The same applies to a number of the chairs other Aristotelian accidents. E.g. its dimensions and mass change with our frame of reference. This does not make them ill-defined in themselves, just more complex than we used to think.

Still, in all light conditions and frames of reference, the chair remains a chair. It is still a piece of furniture designed and built to be sat upon. That's because being a particular kind of substance does not depend on the conditions of observation. We know what kind of thing it is from experience, and so appearances can and do tell us about the substantial nature of things -- although not exhaustively.

Lewis White Beck, in a preface to one of his translations of one of Kant's Critiques makes an illuminating point. His (Kant's) more frequent phrase is not ding an sich, but rather ding an sich selbst, translated as "thing in itself as it is in itself." Distinguishing it from what our perception renders it to our consciousness. — tim wood

Distinguishing object coram intuiti intellectuali (before intellectual perception -- a phase Kant uses) and the object in the act of perception is hardly a Kantian innovation. Aristotle goes on at length on the distinction between sensibility, measurability and intelligibility one the one hand, and actual sensations, measure numbers and concepts on the other. These distinctions were well-known to Aquinas and continue to be used in the Aristotelian-Thomistic community today.

The difference is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition recognizes that when we actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility we are informed about reality, but the Kantian tradition misses this obvious point. So, how can it be that phenomena, which actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility, are incapable of informing us of the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of reality?

Now try to say something, anything, about the chair that is not in any way conditioned and informed by (your) perception. I think Kant would argue that you can't. That is to say that science, which has in itself no perception, can say nothing about the chair. What do you say? — tim wood

There is no reason why I should avoid what is "conditioned and informed by ... perception." What your formulation abstracts away is that perception is relational. We never have abstract perceptions. our perceptions are always perceptions of ..., which is to say perceptions are relational. They relate subjects to their objects. So, my question back to you is what right to I have to speak of anything I have never encountered? As doing so is utterly ridiculous, so, your question is equally absurd.

Let me put it in a different way, perception, in actualizing the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of objects, is our standard way of knowing reality. So, your question question seems to assume that we can know reality without employing the standard means of knowing reality. That is why my question, "How do we know noumena?" is critical -- because it must be some non-standard way of knowing, if it is knowing at all.

Finally, how can it be knowing at all unless it actualizes the intelligibility of the noumenon? For doesn't knowing require making what was merely intelligible actually known?

Thank you, but you still did not explain why there is anything other than the phenomenological chair. Why should there be a separate, unknowable, chair in itself and how do we know that there is?

my question is, if noumena can't be know scientifically, how can they be known? — Dfpolis

Now there's a big statement. You're aware that Coppleson, in his chapter on modern philosophy, says that the attitude that 'all that can be known, can be known by means of science', is the essential meaning of positivism. When I first read that, forty years ago, it inspired me to enroll in philosophy to articulate what's wrong with it - I've been working on it ever since. — Wayfarer

It was a question, not a statement. I'm not a positivist. We can know some things with more certitude than the hypothetico-deductive method can ever provide. Yet, Kant denies the efficacy of any experience-based approach to noumena. So, again, how can they be known, not postulated?

we can't perceive any object as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us, as it is 'given to us in appearances'. — Wayfarer

I have no problem with this claim in isolation if it is taken to mean that we cannot know objects exhaustively, as God knows them. Aquinas is also quite firm on this point, saying that we do not know essences directly, but via accidents (forms of appearance). The problem is that, as I and many others read Kant, he is not only denying God-like knowledge in humans, but any true knowledge of things in themselves. Yet, if noumena stand behind phenomena, 'affecting' us (as Kant says), then we certainly know that they have the power to so affect is -- to induce our experience of their correlative phenomena. So, while I sympathize with much of what Kant seems to be struggling toward, I think he has it wrong -- and disastrously so.

knowledge is limited to appearances, given to us by the senses, judged according to the categories. — Wayfarer

This is where Locke got it wrong, saying we only know our ideas. As I have explained previously, this confuses formal and instrumental signs. We first know things via ideas, then, in a second movement of thought, realize that our means of knowing things are ideas. Ideas are thus formal signs -- existents that only do one thing: signify. Locke, and Kant after him, conceived of ideas as instrumental signs -- as things that must first must be discerned in themselves before they can signify -- just has we need to make out the form of letters before we can know what a word means.

So, it is not that phenomena/appearances/ideas stand between us and the ting in its self. Rather they are the means whereby we know the ding an sich.

when we passively experience the “external” world, what comes to us immediately is already merely an “appearance” rather than the thing in itself.

This is either-or thinking. We don't experience either the thing in itself, or the appearance. Rather, the appearance is the thing in itself as revealed to us. As I have also said previously, the sensible object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. Thus, the thing in itself existentially penetrates me -- the same neural content is both the object's action on me and my sensory image of the object.

this leaves perfectly open to us to think the same objects as things in themselves, though we cannot know them.

Yes, it does, but it gives us no more reason to believe in their reality than we have to believe in the reality of Harry Potter. On the other hand, Aristotle's insight that the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object eliminates the epistic gap that so troubled Locke and Kant.

I don't see how anything that has been subsequently been discovered by physics or any form of science, can undermine that essential understanding. — Wayfarer

It can't. But, it can confirm the analysis showing that it was ill-conceive ab initio. Appearances are not obstacles but means of knowing. Ideas do not stand in the way of knowing, they are the instruments of knowledge. There is no epistic gap, there is a partial identity of knower and known in the act of knowing.

While the world is mysterious, it also reveals itself to us -- often in surprising ways.

Read Physics Bk.4, Ch. 11, 219a:
"Time then is a kind of number (Number we must note is used in two senses--both of what is counted or the countable, and also of that with which we count. Time obviously is what is counted, not that with which we count: these are different kinds of things)" — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you for the reference, but note that it is not the conclusion, only a step in a two chapter analysis of the nature of time. The conclusion at the end of ch, 11, is: "It is clear, then, that time is 'number of movement in respect of the before and after', and is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous." "Number of movement" is "measure of change" in other translations.

. What these clocks are measuring is the passing of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite. Since we cannot see time, we can't measure it. We can see change, so that is what we measure to determine the passage of time.

What he denied was that it could be known scientifically. — tim wood

I do not pretend to be an expert on Kant. I read the Prolegomena, notThe Critique of Pure Reason, so I rely on secondary sources.

The contradictoriness of the Kantian doctrine of things in themselves is indubitable... — T. I. Oizerman, I. Kant's Doctrine of the 'Things in Themselves' and Noumena

Since the thing in itself (Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm. — The Philosophy Pages by Garth Kemerling

Though the noumenal holds the contents of the intelligible world, Kant claimed that man’s speculative reason can only know phenomena and can never penetrate to the noumenon. Man, however, is not altogether excluded from the noumenal because practical reason—i.e., the capacity for acting as a moral agent—makes no sense unless a noumenal world is postulated in which freedom, God, and immortality abide. — The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

I note that what is merely postulated is not in any sense known. So, my question is, if noumena can't be know scientifically, how can they be known?

I'm not saying that Kant doubted the self-consistency of phenomenal reality -- upon which practical reason relies. I 'm saying that Kant invents noumena that necessarily stand behind appearances, while, contradictorily, are not what appears. The theory is utterly incoherent.

Whether or not Kant's physics is now entirely exploded is more than I know. I'm guessing that it has a Newtonian aspect, in that whatever precision it may have seemed to have then, is now at best approximation — tim wood

The question is not one of accuracy. It is one of substantial misunderstanding. Time is supposed to be a form imposed by the mind. Surely the time Kant thought so imposed was not something that could develop a spatial component. Yet, that is precisely what Special Relativity tells us happens when we change frames of reference. So, the form of time Kant believed to be imposed on experience is not really imposed on experience. Experience has shown us that time is at least partially convertable with space.

Given that your ideas of what constitutes foundations of science are rather idiosyncratic, I suspect that what you interpret as patent irrationality in the service of "maintaining faith positions" is simply a case of disagreement over those matters — SophistiCat

The point in question was special pleading by naturalists on the principle of sufficient reason. My position, stated by Freud in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, is that if you allow any exception to the principle, you undermine the whole structure of science. For example, suppose that Becquerel announces his discovery of radioactivity at a conference, describing the observations that support his conclusion. Everyone is impressed, except for a naturalist who stands up in the back of the rooms and says, "My dear Professor Becquerel, that is all very impressive, but you forget that your observation may simply be a brute fact -- one of those phenomena requiring no explanation." What is Becquerel to say, but, "Every phenomenon has a sufficient cause"?

I am not surprised at the hostile reception from self-professed naturalists who engage with you in Youtube comments. — SophistiCat

Actually, the explicit renunciation was in the late 1990s on a discussion board sponsored by Victor J. Stenger. It occurred after no one could rebut my argument for the existence of God in a manner consistent with the foundations of science.

Teleology, rightly or wrongly, is commonly associated with intelligent agency, making it a poor fit for anything that doesn't have to do with human psychology, except in the context of supernatural and theological explanations. — SophistiCat

It depends on what you mean by "supernatural and theological explanations." If you mean faith-based explanations, they do not belong in philosophy, and I do not propose to put them there. If you mean to exclude "theology" in the sense used by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, I see no reason to exclude, a priori, any rational reflection on human experience. Do you?

It is clear from physics, chemistry and biology that many systems have a potential to a determinate end. That is all it means to have a telos. It is a separate question whether the existence of teloi implies the existence of an originating mind. Of course the safe, but intellectually dishonest, move is to deny the existence of teloi, so that one need never face the origin question.

If you're a naturalist, then you see no clear demarcation between rational beings and any other being. They are all simply points on a scale of increasing complexity. So, there is no rationale for allowing goals for humans while denying them to other natural systems.

in epistemology I favor pluralism — SophistiCat

I do as well with my Projection Paradigm, seeing all human knowledge as dimensionally diminished maps of reality. We each have a standpoint from which we experience and one or more conceptual spaces onto which we project our experience. We can enrich our model of reality by seeking diverse projections in an effort to overcome our cultural and historical limitations.

Why would a naturalist have an issue with a complex systems analysis of teleology, for example? — SophistiCat

It is a contingent fact of experience that they generally do. I strongly suspect it is because they see telloi as strong evidence of intelligence -- which they reject on a priori grounds.

My point was that if you want to engage those whom you want to convince, you don't want to open the discussion by poisoning the well with such an obnoxious and unfair accusation. — SophistiCat

I am sorry for offending you. My remark was not personal. It was based on my experience of discussions with naturalists. Some have even rejected the foundations of science in order to maintain their faith positions.

you don't appear to be familiar with secular thought on this subject. — SophistiCat

I suppose time will tell. Have I made some specific error of biological fact, or ignored some obvious rejoinder? If so, I welcome your correction.

You may, of course, engage with whom you wish.

Don't forget though, Aristotle also said that in another sense, time is that which is measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't recall such a statement, which seems very unaristotelian. Do you have a reference?

I don't think it is appropriate to say that the thing which is measured is "time-like" because as the thing measured, it is the real thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, what is measured is some change, like the apparent motion of the heavens, the flow of sand, or atomic oscillations. If we stay in one place and measure only the time between two events, a different observer, moving with respect to us, will see the same two events as separated by space and by a different time interval. So, time is not a fixed thing, but depends on the relation between observers and events.

"Space-like" and "time-like" are terms of art in physics which characterize space-time intervals.

I think the thrust of this comment is not directed at Aristotelian realism, but at the then-emerging modern empiricists, for whom the 'mind-independence' of phenomena was (and remains) an axiom. — Wayfarer

That makes a lot of sense. I think there are strains of modern thought that reject this "axiom" -- such as the "collapse on awareness" interpretation of quantum theory.

Both relativity and quantum theory tell us that measure numbers depend jointly on the prior state of the system and the type of measurement being made. — Dfpolis

Why then did Einstein famously ask the question, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' — Wayfarer

Because for something to be measurable, it must exist. There are no abstract potencies. Rather potencies are latent in actual beings. That is why Aristotle was able to avoid Parmenides' argument against change: The new aspect that emerges from change neither comes from nothing, nor is it fully formed before the change. It is potential in actual being.

I don't think that Platonic realism has much to do with that particular problem — Wayfarer

Yes, it does. Plato, following the Pythagorean tradition, believed that the world was made of mathematical objects -- actual numbers and/or regular polyhedrons. The importance of Aristotle's insight is that, because measure numbers only result from measurements, one must reflect on measuring operations to fully understand them.

what is being called into question by quantum physics is whether particles exist before they're observed, and these particles had been presumed to be the 'fundamental constituents of reality'. — Wayfarer

These are two important but different problems.

As a physicist, I see absolutely no evidence that there are any particles in the sense of point masses or something that can be reasonably modeled by a point mass. Just as Young's experiment falsified Newton's corpuscular theory of light, so the Davisson-Germer experiment, inspired by A. C Lunn's wave model of the hydrogen spectrum and independently confirmed by George Paget Thomson's thin metal diffraction experiment, falsified the particulate theory of electrons.

Following up on the idea that one must understand the measurement process if one is to understand the results, remember that all detectors are made of bulk matter, composed of aggregations of atoms. Atomic electrons are localized by the attraction of the nucleus. Detection events occur when an atomic electron makes a certain kind of transition -- typically an ionization event. Because the atoms are localized, so are ionization events. As a result, the detection of electrons is localized, and they appear to have particulate properties. They do not. They are, however, quantized by some unknown mechanism, perhaps involving Mobius-like topology.

The idea that there are "fundamental constituents of reality" goes back to the Greek atomists, and seems unsupported by evidence. Rather, as we increase the energy of our experiments, we encounter higher and higher energy resonances. Empirically, these resonances are entirely wave-like; nevertheless, they are conventionally called "particles." There are mathematical models, such as the Regge pole model, that suggest that there are an unbounded number of such resonances.

Kant introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. — Emrys Westacott

No, the idea of a reality prior to sensation was clearly spelled out by the Greeks, and definitively by Aristotle (especially in De Anima iii). What Kant did was to maintain the existence of noumenal reality while denying that it could be known -- thus staking a fundamentally irrational position.

As for a more sympathetic reading, Kant was born into a family that followed a mystical religious tradition. It is a common place in the mystical tradition that the object of mystical experience (God, Brahman, the Transcendent) is more real than the world of empirical experience. I have no problem with that view, but the greater reality of Ultimate Being does not mean that empirical reality is either illusory or obscured by our means of knowing -- as Kant proposed.

First, as regard Kant's text, Aristotelian moderate realists do not fit the straw man definition of "transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." Aristotle says:

Things are 'relative' (1) as double to half, and treble to a third, and in general that which contains something else many times to that which is contained many times in something else, and that which exceeds to that which is exceeded; (2) as that which can heat to that which can be heated, and that which can cut to that which can be cut, and in general the active to the passive; (3) as the measurable to the measure, and the knowable to knowledge, and the perceptible to perception. — Metaphysics, Delta, 15

Thus, Aristotle never considers actual appearances "as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." For him, being perceptible is not a stand-alone feature. It exists only relative to a perceiving subject. Specifically, space and time do not exist independently of being measured. Aristotle famously defines time as "the measure of change according to before and after." So, space and time are not independent existents (a la Newton), but the result of measuring space-like and time-like measurability, in conformity with Aristotle's general understanding of quantity:

'Quantity' means that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts of which each is by nature a 'one' and a 'this'. A quantity is a plurality if it is numerable, a magnitude if it is a measurable. — Metaphysics, Delta, 13

It is exactly the 'mind-independence of sensible objects' which has been called into question by physics - which is why I think Kant's basic thesis is still directly relevant. — Wayfarer

Not at all. What is called into question is the Platonic notion that numbers exist prior to counting and measuring operations. Rather, they are the result of measuring and counting operations. Measure numbers in particular are the result of an interaction between the measurable and the measuring operation. Both relativity and quantum theory tell us that measure numbers depend jointly on the prior state of the system and the type of measurement being made.

Specifically, with regard to quantum measurements, it is often forgotten that the measure number is the result of an interaction between an unknown system state, and a detector whose precise quantum state is equally unknown. Obviously, one measure number is inadequate to determine two unknowns.

I pretty much agree with your closing observations.

The entire structure of Kantian philosophy has been rebutted by modern physics. — Dfpolis

I'm sorry, but I think that is entirely mistaken — Wayfarer

Then you will not mind explaining how what Kant thought to be literally unthinkable (alternate views of space, time and causality) were thought and accepted in light of empirical discoveries. To say that advances in physics falsified Kant's conjectures is not to say that everyone realizes that it did so.

I do not know the philosophy of all the luminaries you mention, but i have read enough of Heisenberg and Bohr to know that their views on observation are Aristotelian, not Kantian. Heisenberg even wrote a paper in which he proposed that energy was Aristotelian prime matter.

Because of what methodological naturalism deals with. Its job is to consider causal relationships evident in empirical experience, not to seek first principles or ultimate causes. — Wayfarer

Yes, science is not concerned with metaphysical first principles, but in reviewing the work of his predecessors in Metaphysics A, 3-7, Aristotle is not considering transcendent matters, but the work of the physikoi -- those who sought to understand nature. So, material, formal, efficient and final modes of explanation are approaches to the understanding of empirical reality in terms of immanent, not transcendent, principles. Thus, there is no reason to exclude them when we observe them on a daily basis in the lived world.

We see material modes of explanation in the atomic theory of chemistry, in nuclear and high-energy physics, and in DNA-based genetics. We see formal modes of explanation in the equations of mathematical physics, in the biological role of the geometric structure of compounds and in the dynamics of gene expression. Efficient causality plays a role in every branch of science. Still the role of final causality, though real, is denied.

For example, I wrote my dissertation on the S-Matrix Formulation of the Neutral Kaon System. S-Matrices are mathematical structures that link initial and final states directly, without explicit consideration of the intervening dynamics. Thus, they are the mathematical expression of final causality -- telling us that this initial state is, immanently, that final state.

I have already given simpler, but equally empirical, examples involving spider webs and the determinate potential of seeds. Let me expand a bit on the modeling of neurophysical processes. We know for a fact that the response of neurons to stimuli is nonlinear. So, the mathematical models of neural processes puts us in the realm of chaos theory, and its concomitant unpredictability. As confirmation of this, we have chaotic models of epileptic seizures. This means that not only can we not now predict the behavior of spiders' neural systems via efficient or formal causality, we have no expectation of doing so in the future. Still, we can predict using final causality. It is utterly irrational to refuse to do so because it offends naturalists' belief system.

it is not at all clear to me that the seed has any potential anywhere (or, where is it?). In other words, the potential is all ours. — tim wood

As Aristotle points out, potencies are known by analogy. We don't see the potential. If we did it would not be potential, but actual. Still, we've seen that tomato seeds sprout into totato plants, grains of wheat into wheat stalks, and acorns into oak trees. So when we see another tomato seed, grain of wheat or acorn we know, by analogy, that it has a determinate potential to grow into a certain kind of plant. That is how all scientific knowledge is applied -- by analogy. We've never seen the exact new case before, but we've seen cases very like it, and, in analogy with those cases, we know what to expect.

So, the potential is not ours. It is immanent in the seed. Given the the structure of the seed and the laws of nature (which are also immanent), the seed will, under the proper conditions, germinate and grow into a plant.

a description is not what it describes — tim wood

A description is a fiction unless it is adequate to some reality.

Non-human things are not human things. — tim wood

Are not humans part of nature? If we have real ends, then ends exist in nature, and the only question is their extent of application.

But do you agree with my limitation on teleology? It may help if you distinguish "nature" from human nature - perhaps one as genus, the other as species. — tim wood

I agree that we are part of nature, not the whole of nature. That does not mean that seeds lack a determinate potential (telos) to become mature plants.

Nowhere in this is the idea that any bird ever "wanted" to leave, say, Northern Saskatchewan and fly to Tierra del Fuego - and back. But teleology, in invoking purpose and attributing it to the living thing, supposes exactly this. — tim wood

I think this confuses purpose and conscious purpose. Aristotelian teleology is not limited to conscious purpose. The telos of a seed is the mature plant it can become. It need have no knowledge of its end.

I was never a biology student (and neither were you, AFAIK), — SophistiCat

Actually, my brother Gary was a world-famous biologist (and philosophical naturalist), and we had many detailed discussions on these issues.

You know, when you write something as obnoxious as that, one is discouraged from reading further. — SophistiCat

By not engaging, you confirm me in my position that we are discussing a faith position, not a rational conclusion.

The biologists long-standing confusion would be removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, e.g., 'teleonomic', in order to emphasize that recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle.

Talk about fighting straw men! Aristotle never claimed ends were efficient causes. The author lacks the most rudimentary understanding of Aristotle's four "causes." Take building a house as an example. The final cause or end (telos) of house building is, say, to provide shelter. The formal cause is the plan of the house -- how its parts are arranged to effect that end. The material cause is the parts assembled according to that plan. The efficient cause is the building crew that assembles the parts according to the plan to effect the end. No "cause" is in conflict with any other, nor does any "cause" alone explain the building of the house. Specifically, the goal of providing shelter is not the building crew -- as implied by the quotation above.

Changing name of goal directed explanation from "teleologic" to "teleonomic" does no more than force one to Google two terms when one would do nicely.

Pittendrigh's purpose was to enable biologists who had become overly cautious about goal-oriented language to have a way of discussing the goals and orientations of an organism's behaviors without inadvertently invoking teleology.

This is very amusing! Pittendrigh, a biological organism, is assigned the goal of preventing the inadvertent invocation of goals in biological organisms. On what rational grounds would anyone, including the author, want to avoid goal talk? Clearly the author sees the rationality of Pittendrigh having, and acting upon, a goal. This is a clear case of performance belying doctrine.

evolutionary research has found no evidence whatsoever for a "goal-seeking" of evolutionary lines, as postulated in that kind of teleology which sees "plan and design" in nature. The harmony of the living universe, so far as it exists, is an a posteriori product of natural selection.

On the contrary, as explained in my article, evolutionary biology has discovered copious evidence of goal seeking. First, the existence of numerous examples of convergent evolution shows that certain biological forms are naturally preferred over others. Second, the advent of refractory toolkit genes before there is any evolutionary pressure for their latent modes of expression provides us with many examples of means being laid down before they are required to effect their ends. Third, the discovery of punctuated equilibrium in evolution shows that there are "ends" ecosystems tend to and remain at in response to new environmental circumstances. Of course, these phenomena are explained by the normal operation of the laws of nature, but the operation of adequate means is evidence for, rather than against, the existence of ends.

Kant's position is that, even though we cannot know whether there are final causes in nature, we are constrained by the peculiar nature of the human understanding to view organisms teleologically. Thus the Kantian view sees teleology as a necessary principle for the study of organisms, but only as a regulative principle, and with no ontological implications.

The entire structure of Kantian philosophy has been rebutted by modern physics. Kant saw space, time, and time-sequenced causality as forms of thought necessarily imposed on reality by the mind. That makes alternate understandings of space, time and causality literally unthinkable. Yet, Special Relativity falsifies this by conceiving space and time in radically different ways. Similarly, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, whether true or false, rejects the universality of causality in nature -- showing that a revised understanding of causality is not unthinkable. Thus, space, time and causality are not forms of thought imposed a priori, but empirically derived concepts. The fact that many biologists question teleology shows that it, too, is not an a priori form, but empirically derived.

Of course, what is empirically derived has ontological implications. Whatever informs the mind is existentially adequate to so inform it.

the biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or 'driving force'.

Clearly, this is part of the picture. The laws of nature and refractory toolkit genes are internal principles that partly determine the line evolutionary development will take. Another major factor is the set of challenges imposed by the environment. As we now know, evolution is not a matter of endless and aimless genetic drift, but of the rapid convergence on a new stasis described by the theory of punctuated equilibrium.

My view is that methodological naturalism certainly must put aside or bracket out any consideration of an overarching purpose or intentionality. — Wayfarer

Why? If humans are natural and teleological explanation applies to us, why should methodological naturalism exclude it a priori? This seems a very arbitrary dogma. It is far better to take an empirical approach and let nature tell us the limits of goal seeking.

I agree with your closing. Ultra-Darwinism is ultra irrational.

Simply, as description, it can't be. And as explanation in human terms, it cannot be (because the subjects are not human). — tim wood

It seems that you are offering no argument, merely a claim. If humans are part of nature (and why should we not be?) then goal orientation is part of nature, and the only question is its range of application.

The existent, that which operates in reality, behind teleological explanation is some form of intentionality -- either a law of nature, or a committed human intention.

As for the truth of teleology as an explanation, the only question is: Is teleology adequate to reality. Obviously no human truth is exhaustive, but many provided us with insights adequate to various intellectual needs. The fact that we can use teleology to predict how a hungry spider will respond to an insect being caught in its web (while we still can't model it neural net adequately to make the same prediction), shows that teleological explanation is often adequate to reality.

In biology in general, though, it's built into the way we talk about organisms. We think of them as causally closed systems. — frank

As the teleological nature of biology is baked into the laws of nature, there is no question of going outside of the natural order. So, again, this is not an either/or issue. It is a matter of viewing the same data from various perspectives. Still, thinking of anything in a certain way, say as a causally closed system, does not make them that way.

Thank you for the kind words.

Are you saying that teleology doesn't entail vitalism since it is consistent, on your view, with "physical determinism"? Are you thus committed to defend a form of compatibilism regarding teleology and (nomological or physicalist) determinism? — Pierre-Normand

Yes, I see teleology as compatible with physical determinism, which says, essentially, that ends are implicit is present states and the laws of nature. However, this has to be contextualized by two other positions I have defended on this form:
(1) That natural science is self-limited to objective physicality by the Fundamental Abstraction of science. This leaves natural science bereft of data on the subject as an intentional agent. So, the physical sciences lack the data and concepts to connect what they know of the physical world to the intentional operations of knowing subjects. Thus, we have no rational basis for extending conclusions about the purely physical to questions involving human intentionality.
(2) That the laws of nature are a species of intentionality:
(a) They and committed human intentions are the only known species in the genus of logical propagators.
(b) They and committed human intentions both are intentional in virtue of exhibiting Brentano's essential characteristic of "aboutness." Just as my intention of getting to the store is about by arriving at the store, so the laws of nature are about the final states they effect.

So, my commitment to determinism in the realm of physics does not commit me to determinism in the realm of intentional operations of knowing subjects.

Evolution offers a triumph over teleology by providing a causal explanation for teleology, thus clarifying the primacy of causality over teleology. — Hanover

How does it establish primacy? Human beings are part of nature and are clearly goal-seeking organisms. In us, goals have a clear primacy. I first decide to go to the store, then employ the means (mechanisms) required to effect getting to the store. If my car is not working, I may walk, take a bus, or call a Lyft or taxi. It is because of this temporal and dynamical primacy that finality is called "the cause of causes." The same is seen in other organisms, but with less variety. The end of obtaining food is prior to spiders spinning webs. The desire to mate is prior to mating behavior.

As mentioned in the OP, specific capabilities, such as the ability to develop wrists (found in Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million year old fossil land-exploring fish), vision (encoded in Pax6, which controls vision in organisms as diverse as verte­brates, mol­lusks, and fruit flies) or specific beak and jaw forms (diverse expressions of BMP4), are latent in toolkit genes, but unexpres­sed until needed. In other words, toolkit genes develop adaptive flexibility before the environmental pressure to express that flexibility.

The only priority I see is epistemological. We developed an understanding of physics and chemistry before we understood evo-devo.

If I want to know why the bird flies south in the winter, and all I am told are the details related to how the bird's neurons fire and muscles contract, surely I know less than if I'm told "so he can find food when it gets cold." — Hanover

And surely you know more if you are told both. Remember, I am not saying that mechanism and teleology are opposed. My thesis is that they are complimentary. I think it is fair to say that the need for adequate nutrition drove the evolution of the animals' migratory capabilities, rather than say that the advent of migratory capabilities led to migrate.

if I want to know why the bird wants to eat and I keep asking these "why" questions, at some point I'm going to resort to causality (namely evolution). — Hanover

I suggest you read Aristotle's discussion of his four "causes" in Metaphysics A, 3-7. As he makes clear, "why" is not a univocal question. It can seek a variety of distinct modes of explanation. You can tell me all of the mechanisms involved in eating, but I would still have no idea what purposes these mechanisms serve.

If one took a different approach and thought of teleological explanations as primary, one would demand to know the purpose of one's life, not just demand a recitation of the meandering path that led one to one's dead end job — Hanover

Yes, one would. The purpose of life is one of the main questions driving philosophical reflection and religious meditation. Further, while why anyone in particular ended up in a dead-end job is outside the purview of scientific thinking, which deals with universals, it is surely explained by the ends or motives that led them to take the job.

And isn't that where the theological/scientific compatibility arises, where the theologian finally concedes the existence of evolution, but then asks for what great purpose did our Creator implement the existence of evolution? — Hanover

No, not really. Historically, the compatibility of science and theology can be traced back at least to the doctrine of the two books in which God reveals Himself: the book of revelation and the book of nature. Medieval Christendom promoted science as a way of understanding God via His work. (See, e.g., James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution.)

'Real' is like saying a computer game is real, but not ultimately real — TWI

Please, define "ultimately real." If you are talking about God as the ultimate reality, then I would agree..

How can you offer an argument from authority, when you do not even believe the authority is real?

We have an idea <reality> which we form as a result of our experience. That idea signifies what it is that we encounter in experience. So, to say what we experience is not real is to say that what we experience is not what we experience -- it is an oxymoron and a contradiction in terms. It uses the term "real" in a sentence without thinking what it really means. That is why I asked you to define real.

Is "angst" a problem that philosophy faces and has to remedy? — Posty McPostface

If the angst has a rational basis, philosophy can deal with it. Usually it has a neurochemical basis that is more likely to yield to cognitive therapy and/or pharmaceutical treatment.

“There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
.
I think this requires argument.
.
Well, when I say that there’s no reason to believe something, then the burden is on someone who disagrees, to produce a reason to believe it. — Michael Ossipoff

Despite the negative phrasing, you are claiming "your life and experience are ... your hypothetical life-experience-story." By refusing to provide an argument in support of this peculiar view, you leave the impression that you have none.

On the realist side, I have provided a number of arguments that you have chosen not to respond to. So, There is no point in continuing to discuss a position that has no support with a person who will not respond to counter arguments.

Since the the time of the Greeks, people have recognized invariant principles explaining changing phenomena. I think that is what Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan:was saying in your quotation.

There is a vast difference between being real, and being the ultimate reality. To be real, something need only be able o act in some way -- any way -- to be ultimate is to be the end of the line in some relevant sense, as God is.

But, back to my question:

If it constrains our existence and choices, if it forms the very fabric of the lived world, then how, precisely, does it differ from reality? If there is no discernible, experiential, difference between A and B, then what does it mean to say A is not B -- that this so-called "dream" is not reality? — Dfpolis

My real question is:

If it constrains our existence and choices, if it forms the very fabric of the lived world, then how, precisely, does it differ from reality? If there is no discernible, experiential, difference between A and B, then what does it mean to say A is not B -- that this so-called "dream" is not reality? — Dfpolis

We only know what dreams are when we they are viewed from the vantage point of wakefulness. — TWI

Not quite. I, for example, am a lucid dreamer. I know when I am dreaming, and if I do not like how a dream is going, I wake myself up. So, when we are talking about dreams in the context of skepticism, we are not talking about actual dreams, but something that is not a dream at all. So, what is it? It seems to me it is undefined -- hiding behind an equivocal use of "dream," but actually not a dream at all. If it is something we cannot wake from, if it constrains our existence and choices, if it forms the very fabric of the lived world, then how, precisely, does it differ from reality? If there is no discernible, experiential, difference between A and B, then what does it mean to say A is not B -- that this so-called "dream" is not reality? It seems to me that such claims are utterly meaningless.

I think the "illogic" of the quantum world is baggage brought the seers of paradox, not presented to us by reality.

What you are talking about is not knowing the present. It is making predictions about the future.

The objective world we seem to occupy could all be an illusion or dream, we don't know, — TWI

We do know. I know what dreams are. They span but a short time. What is an illusion except something that is not real, but what we mean by "real" is the world we know via experience. So to say reality is not real is a further abuse of language.

To think reality is an illusion is to say it is not reality -- again a contradiction in terms. Still, we know that whatever informs our experience has the power to so inform it -- because nothing can do what it cannot do.

So, what is it that we don't know? We don't know what reality can do beyond informing us as it does. So, we form hypotheses. Descartes entertained the hypothesis that it could also act as an evil spirit -- a demon. Others suggest we are a brain in a vat or a simulation. All such hypotheses are unfalsifiable, and so unscientific. Science offers falsifiable hypotheses such as general relativity and quantum field theory.

So, I admit that we do not know the deep structure of material reality, but we have a methodology that prefers falsifiable to unfalsifiable hypotheses and we have made a great deal of progress by applying that methodology.

But,we do know! "Knowing" names a human activity. To say we do not know is an abuse of language. It is effectively saying that we do not do what we do.

Of course, we can discuss what kind of activity "knowing" names, but that is an empirical question, and one that we cannot engage in unless we know relevant evidence.

Why would you believe that? It seems to me that if we are informed, there must be something adequate to informing us at work.

it's impossible to experience it as it occurs. — TWI

But don't we experience it as it occurs within us?

Yes, time reflects the continuity of the change it measures.

I think that few, if any, who claim to know what is, claim that we know it exhaustively. We all realize that there is a delay between the emission of information and its reception. If you read the Medieval Scholastic accounts of sensation, you will see extended discussions of the "sensible species" which was their term for the carrier of sensible information. At the say tine, they did not blush at saying that we know what is.

Part of this was certainly based on the experience of persistence and the dynamic continuity of physical reality. But, I think, another part if it, clearly seen in Aristotelian philosophy going back to the Categories, is a far more expansive view of being that you seem to be taking. Action has always been seen by Aristotelians as inhering in the being that acts. Thus, the Aristotelian tradition sees beings not only as the core object thought of by materialists, but also as that object's radiance of action.

Aristotle was perceptive enough to see that in sensation as well as in cognitive perception, subject and object are linked by an indivisible identity. The object being sensed by me is identically me sensing the object. The object being known by me is identically me knowing the object. As he discusses at length in De Anima, both sensation and perceptual cognition involve the joint actualization of two potentials in a single act (or event). The act of sensing simultaneously actualizes both the object's sensibility and the subject's power to sense. The act of perceptual cognition simultaneously actualizes both the object's intelligibility and the subject's capacity to be informed.

We can see this in the neuroscience of perception. My neural representation of a being is identically the the being's modification of my neural state. For example, the light scattered by an object (its sensible species) modifies the state of rods and cone and cones in my retina. That modified state is identically mine visual image and the object's modification of my retinal state. This dual citizenship continues in effect as the neural signal propagates to the various centers of visual processing in my brain. The information is both mine and the object's continuing action within me. It is literally an existential penetration of me by the being I am perceiving.

So, the projection of being I'm aware of is identically the being's concurrent dynamical projection with in (its existential penetration of) me. Of course, the present information, existing concurrent within me, has a past origin, but that is hardly surprising to any student of nature. Whatever is now bears the imprint of a history going back to the big bang.