Contrary to sentimentalists, Bambi burned with equanimity because he understood the necessity of his sacrifice. — BC

:lol:

The morbid justifications of the Pollyannas...

Bambi's bit-part nameless mother also experienced natural sacrificial immolation after Bambi was weaned. She was bitter and resentful about the whole deal. Her last words were "Fucking patriarchy!". Bambi's father didn't have to burn because his doe and fawning son fulfilled all of his debts--a good thing because he was the bearer of the Wisdom of the Forest.

It all worked out for the existential good of all. — BC

Echoes of Pangloss?

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, the concept of a creator, particularly a personal God, is essentially non-existent; he viewed the driving force behind the universe as a blind, aimless "Will" which does not correspond to any conscious or intentional creator, effectively negating the idea of a traditional God figure.

So, I believe that without a driving force guiding the universe apart from the Will, which determines how things happen, then my concern is over how to find happiness in a world where the Will is all encompassing. With regard to the totalizing nature of the Will, what are your thoughts about it? — Shawn

Ok, so you are focusing on Schopenhauer's Will, and not the idea that it can just be a metaphor, got it. I wasn't sure. As for the notion of the Will itself, I think it can simply be a metaphor as if we are "driven by an aimless "Will". As the fact of a metaphysical Will and the practicality of living as a conscious, and self-aware being is basically identical. That is to say, the reality of Will as some metaphysical entity at play, need not even have to be the case for Schopenhauer's conclusions about how life (from the perspective of a subject/lifeform) operates.

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn.

But even all this, which we might impute as the nature of Will (even as just a metaphor), is a contributing factor for a more general notion of Suffering. Schopenhauer, agreeing with various ancient wisdoms, thought that Suffering (capital "S") is the only way that this Will can be characterized. That is to say, this "lack" is equivalent to a profound form of Suffering. Playing into Platonic notions of completeness (in the Forms), and even more profoundly in Buddhist/Hindu notions of "Moksha/Nirvana", there is a sort of incompleteness to the animal that causes unfulfilled/neverending needs. But the cruel part is the "fooling" aspect. As the human animal, unlike mere instinct or simpler forms of experience that other animals exhibit, is that we make "goals" for ourselves. And those goals often are thwarted, and we are disappointed, or when they are reached, they are but temporary, and thus "the vanity" of Ecclesiastes. And throughout all this will-thwarting-temporary satiation, we have the anxieties and physical ailments of social and physical harms. We are self-aware, we know this. Yet what biases delude us?

The ever pursuit of stability (work/home). The ever pursuit of social bonds (love, relationships, friendships, family), and all sorts of self-limiting things to focus the mind (hobbies, interests, studies, and other toys and imaginative wonderings). But if Schopenhauer is right, these are temporary, not satiating, delusionary, and often lead to more pain. But even more tragic, is it prevents someone from understanding this very nature of Will which is so ever-present in the dialectic of self-awareness of existence itself. Life itself should not be imposed.

THAT IN FACT, SELF-AWARENESS ITSELF LED TO THE ANXIETIES THAT LED TO THE IMPOSITION OF MORE SELF-AWARENESS :scream:

Yes, well this is where Schopenhauer left this aspect out of the discussion about the axiology of the World itself. I believe that this aspect left out of the discussion about the nature of the Will is important to have. — Shawn

You'd have to explain more for me to respond to what you are actually saying.

This is the kind of question that only a species of animals that has the ability to conceptually know that it exists would ask or answer. What would be the value of a response from that kind of animal? — T Clark

I mean that's the point. The kind of species of animal with self-awareness of existence cannot but help but know this. And clearly I'm indicating that there is something entailed with this fact.

Yet, every act or deviation from the nature of the Will could be perceived as ignorance of a greater truth. — Shawn

:up: One of the hugest stones is the pursuit of X.. (love is a big one...but insert any lofty goal). Schopenhauer identified it as variations of Will fooling the hapless manifestation. But we need not take Will literally as a metaphysic for the metaphor to be true.

But it is the nature of this fooling that we should explore for biases.

What does existential self-awareness actually consist of? Does a recognition of mortality accompany it? When I first came to this realisation as a child my primary reaction was, why did I have to be born? In reversing the usual cliché about such matters, I often thought to myself that it might be bad luck to be born - to have to go through the laborious process of learning, growing, belonging (to a culture you dislike), experiencing loss, decline and ultimately death. It's not easy to identify an inherent benefit attached to any of this. — Tom Storm

:up: You've identified (informally, through example), the inevitable conclusion. And you even recognized some underlying factors for the diversions:

But there's a lot of noise called philosophy and religion which seeks to help us to manage our situation. — Tom Storm

There's also the Will. I think that's a pregnant topic which I haven't seen you often talking about. I made a shot in the dark about how wild nature is and how we struggle with our own inner instinct.

There's also the poor fawn in the burning forest that experienced what some might call gratuitous harm. — Shawn

So using the OP's point as a starting point, there is the "fact" that some animals are "self-aware". There is an indication that this leads to a certain set of conclusion, like an inevitable stream that can only be temporarily diverted, but never really moved from its final destination.

Indeed, Will is something to consider for "self-awareness". Will is part of the inevitability of the stream. There are diversions that try to make it seem like the conclusion is not inevitable, but these diversions are more psychological biases detracting from the logic of the dialectic of the fact of self-awareness.

Yes, well the trodden path is usually, according to Schopenhauer, that of the nature of desire and how it causes us harm.

Other paths include life affirmations and even the vanity of existence. — Shawn

:up:

Very good. But I want to actually see the deviations in action. You mentioned gratitude. There's an example. I want to see the the stones trying to divert the stream of the conclusion. Keep them coming. A compendium of stones.

Well, I don't like labeling things as totalizing or brute in terms of facts, and I think you may have a point. Even with the high propensity for beings with self awareness to feel grateful sometimes changes after learning and the growth period end.

It is perplexing that children just feel happy or not depressed most of the time; and yet such feelings subside as they grow up... Food for thought. — Shawn

Funny thing is, children are usually deemed not fully "self-aware", so that might be even more of a case against the initial claim.

But I'd like to take this down a path that I think there is a case that practical reasoning leads to various conclusions if one considers the fact of self-awareness. I'm wondering if others would get there too though. I'm wondering what side-trails people would take to deviate from the conclusions that it seems to inevitably lead to. The dialectic only leads one way, but then I want to know the psychological biases that lead the dialectic in a different direction from where the current is actually flowing.

In terms of axiology, being the science of value, you can find the predominantly expressed attitude of the earliest time of self-awareness as a highly valued state. Most beings express gratitude for being able to exist and enjoy their own existence. — Shawn

I mean, this is kind of circular. Being self-aware allows for gratitude in the first place. But also, it allows for so many other things, that to pick out gratitude alone would be a major selection bias. Certainly, self-awareness allows for one to have feelings (like gratitude) about self-awareness, but that's more accurate than the idea that the gratitude is necessary/automatic.

It's existential angst, isn't it? That's the subject of John Vervaeke's 52-episode lecture series on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which I'm part way through. — Wayfarer

Here's the thing, the angst-driven "What do I focus my attention on?" precedes everything. Even someone who represents naive physicalism, someone like say a "Dawkins type", someone who supposedly "only cares about facts", has to "care about" something, that precedes the "facts" that are deemed most important.

The supposedly hard-nosed person who admonishes the baroque-types and their fancies, still found a VALUE and PRIORITIZED, this is all prior to any "facts of experience" or "facts of nature" or "facts of reality".

The neural capacities that this provide are exponentially more powerful than anything possessed by other animals including our simian forbears. My claim is that due to this, h.sapiens crossed an evolutionary threshhold that cannot be explained purely in terms of biological theory, as we have realised 'horizons of being' that are simply not available to other animals. These include abstract reasoning, language, art, scientific invention, moral reflection, symbolic thought, and awareness of mortality, that are all uniquely human. They indicate a qualitative leap, a difference in kind, rather than a mere quantitative increase in cognitive ability. — Wayfarer

I think the throughline through all this is a self-awareness.. a sort of Russian Doll Effect, whereby a sort of awareness of "something" is gleaned, but never obtained. Art, Beauty, Elegant Theories of Math and Science, yet none of it is sustainable. It appeals to a sensibility that is aesthetic, but there is always a remainder leftover. This may be akin to Schopenhauer's Will.. We feel it most acutely, whereas other animals only feel the acuteness of perhaps at most boredom. They don't have the Russian Doll Effect though, which amplifies it. We have anxieties foisted upon ourselves, mental disorders even, and then we have ANGST. It's reflected in literature going back to Egypt and Babylonia, ancient China, India, and anywhere where man could write more than a few thoughts down beyond the transactional.

I guess part of the problem is that unifications are often misunderstood as reductions in popular science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This of course brings up metaphysical notions of emergence. This is taken for granted in naive physicalism / scientism.

My understanding of truth is that it is defined by the schema "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white, where "truth" is the correspondence between propositions in language and equations in mathematics and what is the case in the world.

If I am correct, then if a proposition in language or an equation in mathematics is independent of what is the case in the world, then by the definition of truth, such a proposition or equation can neither be true nor false. — RussellA

The problem I have with these definitions is it implicitly indicates a Kantian response, but then denies epistemology proper for some deflationary "logic-only" based answer. But this cannot be the case because implicitly by saying "independent of" and "case in the world", you are using epistemological considerations, even if implicitly. These epistemological explanations require meta-logical theory, not simply refer to the correspondence or (non-correspondence) itself, but why and what and how, etc. Otherwise it's just "I have believe" without an explanation, which though is valid in terms of asserting an idea, is not necessarily valid as an fully informed reason for why you think that way. Saying "Snow is white IFF it is the case that there is at least one case of snow being white", has many implications beyond the "satisfying" of snow being white. What is "case" mean? Why are we trusting what case means? Why would if it satisfies the case you assert something like logic is "independent of" the case? etc. etc.

Both. For 100 days we observe the sun rise in the east, and invent the rule "the sun rises in the east". The rule reflects past observations, but is no guarantee that the rule will still apply in the future. We impose the rule on the world, in the expectation that the rule will still apply in the future. — RussellA

Sure, but then, what of the propensity for uniformity or rules in the first place? The fact that it does act with regularities? Hume wants to skepticize this deriving or a rule as "habits of thought", but surely the habits are not like socially conventional habits like shaking hands or bowing. These are ones that nature is making, and we are taking note.

Some neo-Logos philosophies might say the mind cannot but help seeing the very patterns that shape itself.
— schopenhauer1

I'm with Kant on that. — RussellA

So you would be against the notion that the patterns are "of the world"? So, the neo-logos philosophies might say something like, "If nature has patterns, and our language has patterns, and we are derived from nature, it may be the case that our language is a necessary outcome of a more foundational logic". Thus, the logic would not be transcendental, but (for lack of a better term) "immanent" in nature, not some outside observing entity that is detached from it. There is a necessary connection proposed between noumena and phenomenal activities, but not in the "static" way of Kant, but perhaps evolutionarily conceived- there is no clear boundary as it is all derived from the same "logos".

I can imagine a type of pattern whereby the mind works (X), and a pattern whereby the world works Y, and X may be caused by Y, but X is not the same as Y.
— schopenhauer1

Exactly. A postbox emits a wavelength of 700nm ( Y) which travels to the eye which we perceive as the colour red (X), where our perceiving the colour red in the mind was caused by the wavelength of 700nm in the world.

There is the general principle that an effect may be different in kind to its cause. For example, the effect of a pane of glass breaking is different in kind to its cause of being hit by a stone. — RussellA

But my metaphor was not just of any cause, but of how language connects to reality. Neo-logos philosophies might indicate that language is structured such that it must see "reality" as it is, to be useful. It is not happenstance that language allows us to describe reality with a great degree of success. Kant never explains why our minds would compose such a world, but evolution does. Patterns of the world become sufficiently complex as to see their own patterns. Other animals are driven by the consequences of the patterns, but humans can see the causal connections, reasons, create plans, etc. All this is due to our linguo-conceptual framework our brains developed through evolutionary factors.

Aesthetics is perceiving a unity in the whole from a set of disparate parts. For example, the magic of a Monet derives from the artist's deliberate attempt to create a unity out of a set of spatially separate blobs of paint on a canvas. Such a unity exists only in the mind of the observer, not in the world, in that one blob of paint of the canvas has no "knowledge" as to the existence of any other blob of paint on the canvas. Patterns only exist in the mind, not the world.

As patterns don't ontology exist in the world, but do exist in the mind, to say that patterns in the mind have derived from patterns in the world is a figure of speech rather than the literal truth. — RussellA

This is exactly what is being questioned. Wouldn't evolution put a connection between the efficacy of the mind and the world? Prior to evolutionary theory, it was perhaps easier to detach the two and remain the ontological skeptic. Perhaps with evolutionary theory, we can think in terms of how ontology shapes epistemology.

Perhaps it is more the case that the aesthetic brings meaning out of the meaninglessness of nihilism. It is the aesthetic that discovers the unity of a whole within disparate parts, finds patterns in randomness and seeks sense out of senselessness. For example, the aesthetic of Picasso's Guernica shows us the possibility of a greater good born out of the nihilism of war, and the aesthetic of the mathematical equation shows us a greater understanding born out of a nihilistic Universe that is fundamentally isolated in time and space. — RussellA

This is true. Good observation. But what is the world outside of an observer? This goes back to the old realist/idealist debates. Is it just the case that we are simply "adding value" (in a literal and metaphorical way), or does the world already have this in itself. Think of things like "information theory", which puts information prior to the animal. But it need not be this, it just needs to be a sort of pattern that can create patterns that can understand itself. In this view, the "aesthetic" is holistic in that the observer is a natural component of the whole. In the Kantian view, however, the observer is this transcendental alien that transforms the "noumenal" into something understandable to itself. Whence this disconnect then? What to make of the two, their origins, and their connection?

Kant and a Transcendental Deduction that mathematical truths are necessary truths

In B276 of the CPR, Kant uses a Transcendental Deduction to prove the existence of objects in the world.

As the equation "d=0.5∗g∗t2

=
0.5
∗

∗

2
" does successfully and consistently predict what is observed in the world, we could use a similar Transcendental Deduction to prove that in the world is the underlying reality that d=0.5∗g∗t2

=
0.5
∗

∗

2
.

Using such a Transcendental Deduction, we could unify a world that imposes itself on the mind and a mind that imposes itself on the world. — RussellA

Good stuff, but the question becomes, "Are the equations being imposed or simply reflected in the mathematics?". Some neo-Logos philosophies might say the mind cannot but help seeing the very patterns that shape itself. However, it need not be so congruent.

I can imagine a type of pattern whereby the mind works (X), and a pattern whereby the world works Y, and X may be caused by Y, but X is not the same as Y. They may be contingently related, but one happens to "loosely" understand the other rather than necessarily understand the other. Does this distinction I am describing make sense? And then, if you get what I am saying, how do we make sense of it? Which is it? Is our language contingently relating with the world or necessarily relating to the world.

I can see a sort of holistic beauty in the aesthetic of the language reflecting the world because it is derived from (the patterns) of the world. The beauty of the golden ratio, the spiral, a pattern, a smooth surface, a continuation, etc.

However, I can see a sort of nihilistic "contingency" in the aesthetic of language never really derived from, but only loosely reflecting the world. There is a disconnect between the logics. This is the horror and anxiety of remoteness, disconnect, discrete, contingency.

It is the "I" that sees a relation between many different objects in the world. It is not the world that is relating a particular set of objects together. — RussellA

And yet the world presents to us regularities that we capture in empirical research. The regularities that our minds create and the regularities of nature is a tricky subject. Kant, for example, seemed to conflate the two as part of the same "transcendental" constraints that our minds impose on "the thing-itself". Yet, this seems to be at odds with our usual intuition that something empirical, is in some sense a part of "the world itself', not just our minds' way of translating the world. We aren't translating perhaps, but simply copying what is the case- the usual "idealist vs. realist" debate. So the math works because "the patterns are real", or the math works because our minds think in terms of these regularities when it imposes itself onto the universe. Well, certainly, our language-based minds create "objects" from the anarchy of the environmental input. Yet, when our minds impose such things, it also sees that there are various regularities that constantly present themselves that are NOT just patterns, concept-creation, and syntactic manipulation that our brain creates ("notepad".. "thing".. "blob".. "amorphous shape".. "weird unknown object" "car", etc. etc.). Gravity, electromagnetism, chemical interactions, biological interactions, etc. work ways that impose on us their workings, not the other way around.

Q2 is a linguistic problem and results from a particular definition of "object".

23 things can be evenly divided into three collections of 723
7
2
3
things.

But Q2 defines an object as something that is whole and unbroken, meaning that if a thing can be divided into parts, then by definition that thing cannot be an object.

Therefore, although 23 things can be evenly divided into three collections, by the given definition of "object", 23 objects cannot be evenly divided into three collections.

However, other definitions of "object" are possible.

For example, as the object "house" is the set of other objects, such as "roof", "chimney", "windows", etc, an "object" could have been defined as a set of three other objects, in which event 23 objects is evenly divisible into three collections of whole and unbroken objects. — RussellA

This seems to relate to what I was saying here:

I look at a notepad, and I think "notepad". A notepad is a conventional object. It is a socially created object, for all intents and purposes. But then there is various laws of mechanics that were used in the making of the machines that made the notepad. These are "laws of physics". Whilst the technological use is in a way conventional, the physical laws behind it, which we also derived, as humans reasoning, are supposedly the ones we are discussing, the "objective" ones "in nature". The "true mathematical laws" that we are not conventionalizing, but teasing out with our mathematical models, and cashing out in accurate predictions and technological usefulness. So it is those we are getting at. Yet, imposed on top of that, is the same brain that makes a conventional item like "notepad", into "something" real, something that I presuppose every time I look at a notepad. I don't just see a bunch of atoms grouped together- I see a type of object. Now this is the tricky part where Kant does come in. What is the part that is conventional, and what is the "objective"? How are we to really know? These are two very different types of capacities coming together and converging:

1) The ability to parse the world into discrete objects and arrange them and describe them.
2) The ability to parse out various empirical understandings of the world THROUGH THE PRISM of a kind of brain that does the capacity described in 1.

So Nagel might say something like, The 2 [objective laws/logic] has created the 1 [cognitive laws/logic]. There is something that connects the two.

A true agnostic or nihilist of this scheme would say 1 and 2 are not connected in any meaningful way. Kant, for example, will make the move that 2 is really a sub-species of 1 (or how I interpret Kant). — schopenhauer1

This seems to make the LNC, e.g., contingent on the way the world is. But don't we want something much stricter than that, some way we can talk about necessity and impossibility? Can we arrive at what you're calling "a necessary understanding of the world"?

I'll bring in Nagel any post now! :smile: — J

I know Nagel thinks that the universe is directed in some way to reveal objective truths, or something of this nature. It's sort of a neo-Logos philosophy, perhaps.

There are really sticky and interrelated problems here..

I look at a notepad, and I think "notepad". A notepad is a conventional object. It is a socially created object, for all intents and purposes. But then there is various laws of mechanics that were used in the making of the machines that made the notepad. These are "laws of physics". Whilst the technological use is in a way conventional, the physical laws behind it, which we also derived, as humans reasoning, are supposedly the ones we are discussing, the "objective" ones "in nature". The "true mathematical laws" that we are not conventionalizing, but teasing out with our mathematical models, and cashing out in accurate predictions and technological usefulness. So it is those we are getting at. Yet, imposed on top of that, is the same brain that makes a conventional item like "notepad", into "something" real, something that I presuppose every time I look at a notepad. I don't just see a bunch of atoms grouped together- I see a type of object. Now this is the tricky part where Kant does come in. What is the part that is conventional, and what is the "objective"? How are we to really know? These are two very different types of capacities coming together and converging:

1) The ability to parse the world into discrete objects and arrange them and describe them.
2) The ability to parse out various empirical understandings of the world THROUGH THE PRISM of a kind of brain that does the capacity described in 1.

So Nagel might say something like, The 2 [objective laws/logic] has created the 1 [cognitive laws/logic]. There is something that connects the two.

A true agnostic or nihilist of this scheme would say 1 and 2 are not connected in any meaningful way. Kant, for example, will make the move that 2 is really a sub-species of 1 (or how I interpret Kant).

Yes, and thanks for the summary. Is it clear to you that either Hume or Kant has the better explanation here? Are Jha et al. Kantians? (Note, too, that Kant did not think math was analytic, like logic. He thought it gave us synthetic knowledge about the intuitive concept of "magnitude" -- that is, number per se. This makes me wonder if he would allow math an explanatory role, as in the above discussion.) — J

Yeah, but remember Kant thought math was synthetic a priori. In other words, our minds are still structuring time and space and experience. The math wasn't "in the world", that would be violating his phenomenal/noumenal distinction.

Granted, I think we can move beyond Kant. He didn't seem to have a notion of evolutionary change, and I think this might have changed his theory a bit.

I will say, Schopenhauer was aware of evolutionary ideas (not Darwin yet as that came about around the last years of his life). Schopenhauer thought that any materialist/physicalist answer would always be discounting the way our minds presuppose the world in a sort of "If a tree falls..and no one there to hear" kind of way. But, moving those kind of debates aside, or perhaps returning to them, evolution does provide a certain flavor of answer whereby our brains could not but do otherwise. Evolution works contingently but not unconstrained. There is a bounded freedom that evolution can only allow perhaps, for so much tolerance but what survives perhaps, is a necessary kind of understanding of the world, that conforms with how it "really" works.

And though some posters on here dismissed my claims regarding evolution and logic in other discussions, I think it now comes right back into focus. That is to say, there is a "foundation" to logical reasoning that I might call a "primitive inferencing" that through the contingencies of cultural learning, can understand and refine more accurate versions of the world. The "primitive inferencing" was necessary to survival, but the contingent part was how accurate we were able to shape it through cultural learning.

I just want to add, that I don't see how this discussion can move forward without at least acknowledging the various debates of Hume and Kant. Kant, as we know, made the way humans conceive the world as "transcendental" and thus made it not only the limits, but necessary that we see this world the way it is. Our cognitive mechanisms can only engage the world in such a way, in other words.

On the other side of the spectrum is the notion that the world is amenable to numeracy and mathematical analysis, because indeed, there is a logic there in the world. We can call these "realist" theories, and can even take from ancient philosophies of the sort like Logos, Natural Reason, and the like. Pythagoreanism is another one.

I'm with you in terms of, I'm not much for evolutionary psychological "just so" theories, but if it's not some sort of naturalistic/biological reason we can reason, we still have some capacity that is there by the very fact that we can develop logic, so whatever way it got there, something is happening internally/cognitively that is going on prior to the formalization process of symbolic logic.

...mostly shows how poorly folk hereabouts deal with logic. — Banno

I get it, but I think this point still stands and is important:

ules without interpretation (possibly the natural logic?) used to make the content work (become sound/make sensible). And thus something else is going on that isn't just the formal logic (natural logic that is)...

Also, being a bit of a devil's advocate from my past positions (contra evolutionary psychology), there is no way our species evolved "to use formal logic", rather we have rationalization capacities that happened to be able to form formal logic. It is this rationalization capacity that I am interested in- empirically understood through various methods of anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, cognitive scientists, and the like (possibly).. I'll take even armchair theories as stand-ins for now, but that is the foundation I mean. — schopenhauer1

Check out Søren Brier's academic homepage (and I was alerted to him by Apokrisis) - titles like 'Information and consciousness: A critique of the mechanistic concept of information', 'Bateson and Peirce on the pattern that connects and the sacred'. I also found a paper by Marcello Barbieri on the history of biosemiosis and it's very wide-ranging. — Wayfarer

I'll take a look..

On the whole, I think physicalism is on the wane. It's real heyday was actually the late 19th century, I think the scientific justification for it was demolished by the introduction of quantum physics in 1927. — Wayfarer

:up:

As Baden was indicating, if you provide physicalism with the baggage of every phenonemon, it loses its explanatory power as to what "physical" even means.. However, a lot of the metaphysical questions belie the framework needed for physicalism. What does "perspective" even mean for a physicalist? The view from a place (somewhere/nowhere/everywhere) doesn't matter to physicalism, but it is important to us, the conscious human who knows there are perspectives. And then what does an a-perspectival philosophy entail? If it is math, forces, and energy/matter, what are we talking about without perspective really? Then we are back to things like panpsychism, object-oriented philosophy, process philosophy, and information theory.. all things that would stretch the concept of "physical" beyond what we often mean by a naive physicalism.

If you like. "Natural logic" will collapse into "formal logic" as soon as you take it seriously. The "rationalisations we make" are the very subject of formal logic. — Banno

Interestingly though, your joke post in the Lounge kind of proves a point where formal logics can lead to errors by simply abiding by the rules without interpretation (possibly the natural logic?) used to make the content work (become sound/make sensible). And thus something else is going on that isn't just the formal logic (natural logic that is)...

Also, being a bit of a devil's advocate from my past positions (contra evolutionary psychology), there is no way our species evolved "to use formal logic", rather we have rationalization capacities that happened to be able to form formal logic. It is this rationalization capacity that I am interested in- empirically understood through various methods of anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, cognitive scientists, and the like (possibly).. I'll take even armchair theories as stand-ins for now, but that is the foundation I mean.

I would contend that we have still not left intellection behind. Why? Because an inferential move or rule involves intellection. The manner in which we move from premises to conclusions is not endlessly discursive, or not entirely related to ratiocination. We must understand that the inference is valid in order to undertake it, and this understanding is part of intellection. Logic of course tends to calcify or standardize rules of inference, thus forgetting the importance of understanding them. Basically, the closer we move to that "binding" between the formal logical system and reality, the more immersed we are in intellection, and this includes an understanding of inference. — Leontiskos

Yes so I guess to equate with your terminology, "Whence intellection"?

That's kinda the point of logical pluralism. — Banno

Sure, but wouldn't that be if we believed that logic was completely conventional? Here we can split up something like "natural logic" (the rationalizing we can do as a certain species regarding the world), and "formal logic" (the kind of axiomatic (or non-axiomatic) based logics that we formalize with symbols and rules?

I was proposing that the foundation for formal logic can perhaps be found in a natural logic, or something like this.. a foundation outside the formalized logics themselves.

Yes, and if you "define down" sensing so that it becomes something a thermostat can do, then you're still minus a theory of consciousness, which now has to be defined as something else. — J

Yes. Also may I add, "sensing" is doing the work of two meanings that shouldn't be confused here.

1) Sensing- akin to "responding in a behavioral kind of way"
2) Sensing- akin to "feeling something".

Clearly we want to know how 1 and 2 are the same, or how 1 leads to 2, etc. That is the hard problem, more-or-less simplified.

Sure, if you like. Whether the binding between reality and logic is metalogical is largely dependent on how you conceive of logic. — Leontiskos

Glad we are on a philosophy forum and can adjust to the big picture and zoom in where necessary (and not stay in the weeds unnecessarily because- logic) then! :wink:.

On my view something with no relation to reality (and therefore knowledge) is not logic. Ergo: something without that binding is not logic. It is just the symbol manipulation that Banno mistakes for logic. More precisely, it is metamathematics. — Leontiskos

Nice idea. So for your understanding here you are saying that different mathematics are basically "arbitrary" forms of logic (that sometimes map to reality)? And then of course, my main question is "what is/how is it mapping to reality?"

When you want to call the binding metalogical that makes me think that you take logic to be something that is not necessarily bound to reality in any way at all. What I would grant is that it is a somehow different part of logic, but I do not think that these parts are as easily distinguishable as the modern mind supposes. — Leontiskos

I'm unclear what you are saying here...

Suppose you know nothing about consciousness, but you examine a human organism and find that there are sensors and nerves. Do you then ask yourself what this is good for? The answer will be that it must have a function. Perhaps you then think that it is there so that these beings can sense what they are doing. So that they are not eaten in the next moment. Sensing is nothing other than consciousness. In our case, this has now become more differentiated, so that we experience entire dramas. This does not change the principle. — Wolfgang

At heart, is how it is that "sensing" comes from physiological processes. The homunculus fallacy rears its head when you assume the process and sensing without making the connection (the hard problem!).

And then a "strong monism," would presuppose a "one true formal system?" But that doesn't seem particularly plausible either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I was saying to Leon, the "foundation" to logic would be a meta-logical theory, not the axioms/logical systems themselves.

I've learned a lot about biosemiotics from Apokrisis (including that it exists!) and benefitted a lot from it, although I don't agree with his metaphysics. Biosemiotics on the whole is not materialist in orientation so I don’t see biosemiotics as ‘scientistic’ in the sense that Dawkins/Dennett neo-darwinist materialism is. (Notice, though, that even though C S Peirce is categorised as an idealist philosopher in most directories, Apokrisis will generally downplay his idealist side.) — Wayfarer

Yes, I did notice that downplaying of idealism. The reason I bring up his philosophy is here we have an example of a scientifically-oriented philosophy that is not simply "scientism". Science is sifted through a sort of totalizing "information theory", which transcends and encapsulates it (and everything apparently). It does not appeal to supernatural, consciousness, or transcendental aspects of being (at least purposefully, but as you said, it is a kind of idealism at its root, based on a meta-logic, not a a traditional physicalist approach, though perhaps the "apeiron" with "symmetry-breaking" or whatnot might fall under a kind of very specific physicalism that follows a semiotic formula of Peirce, etc. etc.). But notice, like more traditional physicalist theories, there was no accounting for the terrain. It's all map. Whether you emphasize the arrangements of the physical or the physical substrates themselves (the form or the matter), none of that gets you closer to metaphysical questions regarding hard stuff, like consciousness. Clearly "being" a conscious entity and "describing" a conscious entity brings on a whole terrain of metaphysical questions about the nature of reality- what it means to "be".

Added more

Eh. If you take it to mean axiomatic, then it has nothing to do with a good place to start. If you take it to mean a good place to start, then it is not axiomatic. Axioms are not good places to start except in a purely formal or economical sense. This chimera is understandable, given that my use of "foundational" was nothing like "axiomatic." Quite the opposite.

Again, the PNC is a more universal foundation or first principle than modus ponens. It is a foundation in the same sense that the first few feet of the trunk of a Redwood is a foundation. It is stable in a way that the upper branches are not, and folks never directly contravene the PNC. They only do so indirectly when they have climbed out onto limbs and lost track of where they are. — Leontiskos

I get what you are saying, but I still think you are using foundation as "axiomatic", in the definitions I described- that is to say, "This seems like a good place to start". But really you must sus out the actual "foundation" from which this axiom derives. That takes a meta-theory beyond the axiom itself (of the PNC let's say). If we sus out what your particular theory is, it seems like something akin to either an evolutionary intuition or a Platonic necessity. Either way, the foundation is deeper than the principle itself.

Edit: Notice, I am not saying the axiomatic foundation is arbitrary. There is good reason it is selected. It seems to be the case everything revolves around it in logical workings, let's say. But I am saying what is this then grounded in? That is the foundation.

So my problem again here is the use of "foundational". This is a slippery word. The way you are all using it is basically "axiomatic". I take "axiomatic" to mean "don't ask me anything further, this is as far as I'm going", or simply "duh!". It really doesn't mean much except that we need to start "somewhere" and "this seems like a good place to start". Without getting into the obvious rejoinder of the problem of circularity or "brute fact", I see the problem as more complicated.

Axioms themselves are grounded in something. One might call them "intuitions". One might call them "Platonic truths" living in some divine realm (above the divided line!). Either way, it is that I believe to be foundational. Axioms then become a digital/crisper version of the intuition/natural reasoning. From THERE, you can then work out a whole bunch of complicated formal language rules. But only after the initial FOUNDATIONAL translation from NATURAL reasoning to the "crisp" axiomatic ones of formal logic.

The closer you get to the foundation, the surer it becomes. For example, modus ponens is arguably the most basic inference or law of propositional logic, and I don't see that it fails. — Leontiskos

What's the "foundation" mean here?

Presumably, natural human reasoning, something akin to inferencing, let's say, is of an imprecise nature. It just needed to be "good enough". However, the kind of reasoning we developed- generally intertwined with linguistic capacity, and certain kinds of episodic memory, can get formalized culturally into more precise logical thinking. This is especially helped by the ability to write out the symbols.

From here, these more precise "crisp" arguments, might be said to have a foundation, perhaps Platonically (pace Frege and Plato). And thus, you might mean some kind of transcendental foundation (Platonic). Or, perhaps, like Kant, you think that it is internally a priori, and simply part of the human cognitive faculties. I challenge this, as evolutionary vagueness seems to be at play. Math is contingent on cultural preciseness, not internal preciseness. However, even math's preciseness and internal logic in its own system, doesn't necessarily have a foundation outside itself. Newton's Calculus system is not as accurate as Riemann's system, for example. And thus "foundation" can thus mean:

1) Human cognition- I challenge this usually works in vague approximations, not crisp exactitude.
2) Platonic transcendentalism- I am not sure what this would mean other than logical truths are somehow existent in some real way.
3) Naturally occurring patterns- this might be physical laws, for example. But this isn't really the logic itself. Logical systems, like mathematics, are applied to observable phenomenon, and "cashes out" in experiments and technological use.

laws of logic — Leontiskos

I thought we agreed, formal logic is conventionalized ways of thinking :p. It can only be an approximation of our thinking, but not our thinking itself.

Well, at the very least it is a useful aid for error-checking, even if it is not infallible. It represents a form of calcified analysis that is useful but limited. And it is useful for conceptualizing extended arguments that are difficult to capture succinctly. There are probably other uses as well. — Leontiskos

Sure, but as this exercise shows, the logic can stifle the analysis as well, if not used correctly, or even if used correctly.

There are probably other uses as well. I have fought lots of battles against the folks in these parts who have a tendency to make formal logic an unimpeachable god, so I agree with the sort of objection you are considering. — Leontiskos

:up:

I think we should be very careful when we throw around the word "logic", just like the word "rational". I try not to use "rational" too much, because it's often just a coded word for "I'm the one with the correct thinking and you are not, you're just not 'rational'". Similarly, logic can stand in for one's rationale, it can mean a formal logical system like Frege developed, a Hegelian-like totalizing feature of metaphysics, and a whole bunch of things.

The OP is a fun way of exploiting this bug, among other things. I don't think it is meant to be more than that. — Leontiskos

I get it, but was trying to see if there is a takeaway. My question still stands, what’s the use of symbolic logic if the analysis comes before the logic? I know the classic reason is clarity of presentation. But it would be misleading if it it’s seen as the actual catalyst behind the actual reasoning, like a computer language.

I would give Banno the credit of levity here, not snark. It is a philosophical joke, aptly placed in the lounge. The justified decision to not pray turns out to prove God's existence, given a logical translation that is initially plausible. Hanover is reading all sorts of strange things into the OP. — Leontiskos

I ask you the same:
At what realm do you suppose symbolic logic makes sense besides mathematic proofs? Just philosophy journals as a way to gain street cred, that one knows the game?

Edit: I ask because clearly the reasoning and analysis matters more than turning the argument into symbolic logic. If anything, exercises like this show this.