Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find? — Banno

Could it not be something we do in response to something we find? Counting is something we do, but the rules governing it are imposed on us by necessity.

Dividing the world into primary qualities (supposedly real) and secondary qualities (supposedly mere physic imaginative additions to reality) is the "artificial bifurcation of nature" a fundamental flaw in both scientific and philosophical thought. — prothero

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

Although there are those who take them deadly seriously.

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth. The only required feature is some amount of difference within reality. Again, even if minds do not exist, reality is still implicitly following the laws of logic through the fact that there are differentiated properties and things such as the gravitational force, electromagnetism, protons, higgs bosons, etc. — tom111

I would question the assumption in this passage. They are genuine distinctions as discerned through empirical inquiry, and they form the backbone of modern physics. But whether those distinctions entail that reality “follows the laws of logic” independently of any interpreting subject is far from settled.

As @Joshs quoted from Merleau-Ponty:

“...the identity of the thing with itself... is already a second interpretation of the experience... we arrive at the thing-object... only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores” (The Visible and the Invisible).

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

Because we are the phenomenon.
— Wayfarer
We are one phenomenon. — Relativist

The discussion is about the phenomenon of life, and about how physicalism omits some of its fundamental characteristics. Reductionism may be effective and useful in many scientific disciplines, but that doesn’t ameloriate its shortcomings when applied to philosophy. The ‘explanatory gap’ and the ‘problem of consciousness’ both refer to that shortcoming.

I believe materialism is justified on the basis that it provides the best explation for all the uncontroversial facts of the world. — Relativist

It is justifiable in respect of material phenomena over which science demonstrates considerable mastery. But this discussion has been what it leaves out - what happens when the methods of science are applied to questions of philosophy.

My question is: why assume an ontological basis for the epistemological paradigm? — Relativist

Because we are the phenomenon. We're not observing from a point outside life—we are living, embodied beings whose actions, thoughts, and values are suffused with purpose and normativity. That’s not just how we talk about life; it’s how we live it.

As already argued, physicalism arises from a methodological abstraction, intended for modeling inert matter (something it does very well!) It achieves explanatory power by systematically bracketing out qualities like meaning, value, and purpose. But this comes at a cost: these are not incidental features of life—they are constitutive of it. So when physicalism tries to "explain" life, it ends up trying to reconstruct the very things it had to exclude to get started. That’s the core of Jonas' argument: life and consciousness are not anomalies to be explained away—they’re clues to what physicalist ontology has left out.

How do you imbed this into an ontological theory of what actually exists? — Relativist

Start with the modest but radical move of taking the phenomena of life seriously, not as illusions or surface features, but as real indications of the nature of reality. The burden of proof doesn't rest solely with those who insist that life exhibits intrinsic purposiveness. The burden also falls on those who deny it—especially when their models can’t account for meaning, agency, or value except by explaining them away.

Should intelligibility be assumed? — Relativist

Science—and philosophy—both presuppose that the world is intelligible. Even raising the question of whether it should be assumes a rational order that allows the question to be posed in the first place. So rather than doubting intelligibility, the more pressing issue is: what kind of ontology can account for the fact that intelligibility is possible at all?

If physicalism treats intelligibility as an accidental byproduct of blind processes, then it risks undermining the rational basis of its own claims. This concern is related to what some have called the argument from reason (C.S. Lewis) or the evolutionary argument against naturalism (Alvin Plantinga): namely, that if our minds are solely the product of non-rational forces, we have little reason to trust their capacity for reason—including our belief in physicalism itself.

How do you account for it without a "God" (a being who acts with intent)? — Relativist

Understanding the nature of intent—or “God’s will,” if you like—is one of the most vexed questions in both theology and philosophy. Literalist religious frameworks often interpret history as a kind of script written in advance, culminating in divine intervention and final judgment. That’s not what I’m suggesting.

But it’s also not the only way to approach the idea of cosmic purpose or intelligence.

I lean toward what might be called a naturalistic philosophy of religion—if that isn’t too paradoxical. A good example is Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos (and Nagel, notably, doesn't write as a theist). He speculates that “each of our lives is a part of the cosmic process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming self-aware.” That’s not a doctrine, but a philosophical gesture toward an alternative vision—one in which mind and value are not intrusions into a meaningless cosmos, but intrinsic to its unfolding.

Yes, it’s vague when stated like that—but vagueness here may be appropriate considering the scale and subtlety of the question. What matters is that it opens a conceptual space between mechanistic materialism and supernatural intervention. It suggests that intentionality and consciousness may be expressions of something deeper in the fabric of reality, not inexplicable anomalies.

. Rather, you and Talbot seem to be arguing for using "teleology" as an epistemological paradigm for describing living things and their interactions. Sure, I see the utility for better understanding biological systems. But this wouldn't negate what I said, in terms of a metaphysical teleology. — Relativist

I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're right to say that there's a distinction between using teleology as an epistemological paradigm—i.e., as a way of understanding living systems—and asserting it as a metaphysical principle embedded in the structure of reality. But I think that very distinction deserves closer scrutiny.

The heart of the issue is this: Can we adequately account for living systems—and by extension, consciousness and agency—without appeal to any notion of purpose, directionality, or normativity? Or put differently: Is it plausible to treat teleological concepts as mere heuristics or metaphors, while denying their ontological basis?

When Talbott (and others like Thompson, Varela, Deacon, and Jonas) emphasize the meaningfulness, normativity, and goal-directedness inherent in organisms, they're not merely saying "this is a useful model." They're pointing out that organisms actually behave in ways that cannot be made intelligible in purely mechanistic terms. As soon as you describe a cell as regulating its internal state, or an animal as foraging, you're already invoking purpose-laden language—language that tracks something real in the nature of life.

So when you say my post didn't show your dichotomy to be false, I would say: the dichotomy between materialism and creationism is false precisely because there is a third option: namely, that telos is a real feature of life, but not in the anthropomorphic sense of an external designer with a blueprint. Instead, it emerges as a kind of immanent normativity—a principle of self-organization and purposiveness intrinsic to living systems themselves.

I've been reading Hans Jonas 'Phenomenology of Biology'. Jonas argues that life is the phenomenon that gives rise to value and meaning—not because it was pre-ordained by a deity, but because the very act of being alive entails a concern for continued existence, a directedness toward goals (however basic), and an interpretive relationship with the environment. That's not "epistemological teleology" in the narrow sense—it’s a recognition that teleological structures are built into the logic of life itself.

And once we admit that—even provisionally—then perhaps the modern exclusion of telos (and with it, qualities like value, intention, or meaning) from our ontology is not just a simplifying abstraction, but a serious (even catastrophic) omission.

And as Hans Jonas powerfully argues, since the ascent of mechanistic materialism, life and consciousness have become anomalies—features of reality that no longer fit within the explanatory framework that modern science inherited from Galileo and Newton. The success of mechanistic models in physics came at the cost of excluding precisely those qualities that constitute living, experiencing beings: purposiveness, value, and meaning. Materialism has to treat these as secondary effects or emergent illusions, but never as basic features of reality.

To return to your point: I agree that "intent" in the conscious human sense requires a subject capable of forming and acting on reasons. But perhaps that's an evolved expression of something more basic: the kind of intrinsic normativity that characterizes even the simplest organisms. That doesn’t entail an uncaused divine being—it entails rethinking what kind of ontology is required to make sense of life itself.

Trouble is of course that if something is beyond discursive thought then it cannot be said. We could not have an argument that reached such a conclusion. And indeed the ending of elenchus is often aporia - the method of dissection ends without resolution. — Banno

Aporia can be seen as precisely the points where dialectic ends and noetic insight is required. The fact that language and symbolic thought is inherently limited, is something that can and has been a subject of philosophical discourse. Wittgenstein’s aphorism at the end of the Tractatus ('that of which...') is often treated as a full stop — a way to shut down discussion of anything that can’t be stated in propositional terms (especially by you!) . But it can also be read as a threshold: an acknowledgment that there is something beyond what can be said — something that may be shown, enacted, or lived. Anyway, the idea that wisdom might transcend discursive articulation isn’t foreign to philosophy — it runs through Plato, Plotinus, and arguably into Wittgenstein himself. It’s also central to Eastern philosophy, where sometimes silence becomes the highest form of answer, akin to 'see for yourself!'

Mysticism is often a pejorative term, shorthand for vagueness or woolly-headedness. And, to be fair, it often is that. Theosophical Bookstore shelves are full of ‘mystical aphorisms,’ and it’s not hard to generate vague-sounding phrases that mimic profundity (we've had more than a few here, I remember 'Brother James'). But the actual mystics — whether Buddhist, Christian, or other — are people of of great discipline, clear insight, and spiritual rigor. What they describe is often not fuzzy at all, but the result of a highly refined insights. Easier to say than to enact.

There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject [of metaphysics]. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself...~ Plato, Seventh Letter — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting that the root of the word 'Upaniṣad' is 'sitting closely' - the relationship of chela to guru.

Philosophical type activity moves from naive common sense, to the analytic dissection Banno enjoys, to the metaphyisical more constructive type (building more things to be dissected), then to more mystical transcending type... — Fire Ologist

There's a stream that might be called 'analytical mysticism' in Catholic philosophy. At least, it has its mystical elements, from its inhereted neoplatonism and the presence of mystics in the Church (You've mentioned that you're Catholic). Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, William Desmond - all great philosophers in that tradition. There are many more.

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let's recall Lloyd Gerson's most recent book Platonism and Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy.

Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy.

Let's step back a bit. The question I was responding to was, 'is there good reason to believe teleology'? So to address that we need to clarify exactly what that means. (This could easily become a 5000 word essay, but I'll try to keep it brief as possible.)

The way I addressed the question of teleology was in the context of the emergence of the Galilean-Newtonian-Cartesian worldview (a.k.a. 'the scientific revolution'). It is here that the notion of telos or purpose was rejected in favour of mechanistic model, the understanding that the totality of the universe can be understood solely in terms of matter (since Einstein 'matter-energy') acting in accordance with natural laws over aeons of time. This is what gives rise to all phenomena, undirected by anything like a higher intelligence or divine intellect.

Background - teleology at the time of the scientific revolution had been intertwined with concepts from Aristotelian physics, such as 'natural place', and, in turn, with the Ptolmaic geocentric cosmology. This was superseded by Galileo and Newton's modern understanding of physics in terms of mass, velocity, intertia etc. So teleology was rejected, along with Aristotelian notions of final and formal causation (which also has major implications.) And that medieval conception of causation was bound up with the early modern conception of a 'divine architect' and 'ideas in the mind of God'.

Whereas, the way you phrase the question falls into what I see as a false dichotomy: either accepting the naturalist, mechanistic account or holding to a creationist or 'intelligent design' cosmology. This is precisely the predicament that the cultural dynamics of Western culture engineered for itself. (Karen Armstrong's 2009 book The Case for God lays this out very clearly.)

Whether we call this a "God", a trascendental oversoul, or anything else, it strikes me as a rather extreme assumption to think that such a being just happens to exist uncaused. By contrast, the gradual development of beings, somewhere in an old. vast universe, with the capacity for intentional behavior, but considerably more limited powers to act, seems considerably more plausible. — Relativist

I would suggest looking at telos differently, rather than in terms of a Grand Design presided over by a cosmic architect/engineer (which seems to me like God created in the image of man).

Recall that I said that physics begins with abstraction: this is the key point. Galileo's physics starts with the division of primary and secondary qualities, the primary qualities being those that can be both expressed and measured in mathematical terms, the fundamental ground of mathematical physics, which has grown so astoundingly since Galileo's day. How things appear to us, by contrast, is relegated to the 'secondary qualities' which are intrinsically subjective in nature. (Notice this is a re-statement of the ancient philosophical quandry of 'reality and appearance'.)

But what does that leave out? Already, intentionality and purpose have been excluded from the reckoning, as one of the grounding assumptions of the model. Physicalism' insists that in reality there are no purposes or intentionality - these are relegated to the personal or subjective domain. Whereas, in actuality, all of us, as human beings, and every single organism, are animated or driven by purposeful and intentional actions. The idea that the universe is 'devoid of meaning' is, therefore, a judgement: even the scientist studying the motions of planets has some aim in mind, if only just to understand. So this is the false dichotomy I'm refering to.

Consider the following, from philosopher of biology, Steve Talbott:

The physicist wants laws that are as universal as possible, true of all situations and therefore unable to tell us much about any particular situation — laws, in other words, that are true regardless of meaning and context. So far as a physical law is concerned, once we know it, every subsequent observation merely demonstrates something we already knew: the law will yet again be obeyed. This requires a severe abstraction from the presentational richness of the phenomenal world, which presents us at every moment with something new. Such abstraction shows up in the strong urge toward the mathematization of physical laws.

Nothing ever goes wrong with the physical laws that were operative in the system, but any given causal relation can always be sabotaged by a contextual change.

In biology a changing context does not interfere with some causal truth we are trying to see; contextual transformation is itself the truth we are after. Or, you could say: in the organism as a maker of meaning, interfering is the whole point! The ongoing construction and evolution of a context, with its continually modulated causal relationships, is what the biologist is trying to recognize and do justice to. Every creature lives by virtue of the dynamic, pattern-shifting play of a governing context, which extends into an open-ended environment. The organism gives expression, at every level of its being, to the unbounded because of reason, the tapestry of meaning... — Steve Talbott, What Do Organisms Mean?

So that is at least the direction in which an answer should be sought. Notice that it doesn't deny the efficacy of physical laws and physical causation, but recognises the inherent limitations of those principles when applied to a broader context, that being actual existence.

Yes, but then there isn’t some other substance which can receive potentiality. ‘Matter’ is not a substrate which receives form. The ‘material’ out of which something is created is the already existed stuff (objects) which can be made into a whole (by way of it receiving the form of the whole); so each object is both comprised of form and matter only insofar as its parts are the matter and its form is the actualizing principle of the structure that makes those parts its parts. There is no substrate of ‘matter’. — Bob Ross

The substrate is what is translated as 'prime matter'. In this, I will defer to the others here with greater knowledge of Aristotle, but based on encyclopedia entries: Aristotle's Prime Matter (prōtē hulē) is conceived as pure potentiality. Imagine the most basic "stuff" of the universe, utterly undifferentiated and without any inherent qualities, forms, or properties of its own. It's not actually anything specific, but has the potential to become anything (to 'take form', so to speak).

This idea of prime matter is crucial for Aristotle's explanation of change, especially what he called substantial change – when one thing completely transforms into another (like a plant decaying into earth). For change to occur, there must be something underlying that persists throughout the transformation. Prime matter serves as this ultimate, enduring substratum. Without it, Aristotle argued, things would have to come into being from absolute nothingness, which he rejected as impossible ('nothing comes from nothing').

But because prime matter possesses no form or qualities, it cannot be directly observed or even understood in isolation (like I said, 'not a thing'). It is only possible to encounter things that are already a combination of matter and form – actual objects with specific characteristics. Hence Prime Matter is often described by what it isn't, rather than what it is.

For Aristotle, prime matter was generally considered ungenerated and indestructible. It was an eternal principle underpinning all creation and destruction in the observable world.

Speculatively, there are parallels to this concept (if it is a concept) and the mysterious 'fields' of today's cosmological physics. Nowadays particles are said to be 'excitations of fields' rather than self-existent point-particles. It is at least analogically suggestive. (There are modern interpretations of hylomorphism in quantum physics but that would take us too far afield.)

The closest one can get to being consumed in doing philosophy, the way a master is consumed while practicing his trade, is the moment when philosophizing becomes mystical contemplation. Words and self-awareness dissipate at that point, so you are not really doing philosophy anymore, though you may be thinking about being, or self, or language qua language, or the thought of nothingness. — Fire Ologist

Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.

‘Thought’ is a deficient term, though, as it seems so quotidian; we all think incessantly, often to not much effect. I don’t know if there’s a proper English term for the kind of insight being referred to but it seems more a reference to a visionary insight, noesis, perhaps, or gnosis, or something of the kind.

And these may be ‘beyond discursive thought’ and so ‘philosophizing’ in the sense of verbal formulation. But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.)

In any case, Plotinus, the fountainhead of much of ancient philosophy, and even of much since, dwelt between those two worlds of mystical insight and philosophical exegesis. So too did many a classic philosopher. So the boundary is more a border, and a porous one at that.

If we are to focus on praxis, then what does the Grand Theory Of All provide? Why do we need an analysis of being in order to say that the flower is pretty? — Banno

I think a ‘grand theory of everything’ is a mischaracterization. It's insight into the nature of things. It may show itself in a gesture or an artwork.

And the guitarist practices outside of the performance. — Banno

Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria.

Might I suggest (pace Hadot) that in modern philosophy, the former is generally neglected.

(Incidentally, from what very little I know, Richard Bernstein was not one of those who neglected it.)

Supose that there is an actual good. Now supose that we are in a position to pass a judgement on some act - kicking a puppy or stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children or what ever - is that act Good? We look to the circumstances, to the consequences, to the intent of the participants. How would what we do in making that assessment differ, if there is no "actual good"?

Do we really need to understand the nature of being, to have the whole and complete truth before us, before we decide that the sunset is beautiful, or that kicking a pup is wrong, or that stealing to feed one's children is forgivable? — Banno

All the examples are artificial. It's like those endless discussions of the trolley problem. God knows what you would *actually* do in that circumstance. Useful for stimulating classroom discussion, but still artificial, because it's not a real trolley, and no actual lives are at stake.

Unlike our actual existence.

Even 'understanding the nature of being' sounds artificial, when expressed in such bald terms, but to see a real master at work, in whatever capacity or occupation they are engaged in, is to see what that understanding means.

I can't help but post this, the mods will probably remove it, but it's only 2:25 and there are actual philosophers (some since deceased) discussing this very point.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular
— Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see that this is so.
Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing? — Banno

I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. (So I’ll agree with the impulse while questioning the formulation.) I submit that there is an actual good — the good, in Platonist terms—and that being able to orient oneself toward it is essential to philosophy qua "love of wisdom." Naturally, there will be objections: “Who knows what that is?” or “How can there be such a thing in a pluralistic culture?”

But this doesn’t negate the point. Mary Midgley, whom you mention, was concerned to rescue morality from scientism and evolutionary reductionism. She writes about far more than just “philosophical plumbing.” In Evolution as Religion: Strange Hopes and Even Stranger Fears, she criticizes those who take evolutionary theory not just as biological explanation, but as a total account of human nature, ethics, and meaning—a trend she rightly sees as both philosophically naïve and culturally dangerous. Yet this reductionism, tacitly accepted, still underlies much philosophical discourse.

So what is the metaphysics of meaning? Of the good? Of what distinguishes the good from the merely useful? These are questions philosophy must engage with — indeed, they are what make philosophy more than intellectual hand-waving. And it must be holistic in some genuine sense.

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, pus and entrails. — Banno

The Pāli Buddhist texts acknowledge this very fact with clinical clarity:

In this body there are: head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, stomach contents, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin grease, saliva, mucus, joint fluid, and urine. — Majjhima Nikāya (MN 10) — Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta

Yet this frank realism does not cancel out the fact that Buddhism offers a transcendental philosophy—one that seeks liberation from precisely this embodied condition, not through denial, but through insight into its impermanence and lack of inherent selfhood.

Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body actually draws a comparison between the Holy Trinity and marriage and the procreative act for instance. When "everything is sacramental," romantic love must also reveal God. — Count Timothy von Icarus

However, I presume (not having read it) that he would maintain sanctions against pre- or extra-marital sex.

If one considers this from the perspective of a deflationary information theoretic process metaphysics, where all of the universe is a changing "code," it can be helpful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've had a long-running debate (sometimes very acrimonious) on the importance of maintaining the distinction between beings and things. I still believe that this is a basic ontological distinction, and precisely the distinction that materialism must erase.

But then matter is something — Bob Ross

Reword it like this: matter is some thing.

If it is 'a thing' then it has form. If it has no form, then it's not a thing.

I wouldn't attribute such an emphasis on "parts" to them. — Leontiskos

General question: I have the idea that Aristotle's biology is what we would call 'holistic'. He identifies that there is an animating principle which determines how all of the parts are organised for the benefit of the whole. Is that fair?

Animism' (ancestralism ... or daoism) seems the oldest, and really the only, "religion of the people" that's ever worked for any people. — 180 Proof

There’s shamanism, which is one of the very ancient roots of what was to become ‘religion’. So too yogic practices of mystical absorption. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of the ‘sramana’ movement in ancient India, which comprised heterodox (i.e. non-Vedic) ascetics who renounced society and lived in the forests (literally ‘forest-dwellers’.) And by what criterion would you judge that these had, or hadn’t, ‘worked’? All of the Indian religion, Vedic and other, were oriented around mokṣa, liberation from the eternal cycle of birth and death. If you don’t recognise that there is such a state, then of course the entire edifice will be, for you, a fiction, which seems to be how you regard it.

It’s instructive that biology, having rejected the Aristotelian idea of teleology, had to re-introduce telos, purpose, in a neologism, ‘teleonomy’, referring to the apparent purpose exhibited by organisms. That was because it was impossible to say much meaningful about biology without referring to purpose, as in a broad sense, intentionality animates organic life from the cellular level through every level above it. (Philosopher of biology Steve Talbott has a superb series of essays on this topic in The New Atlantis.)

The issue of purpose and intentionality, and it’s supposed absence from the world, is part and parcel of the scientific and Copernican revolution, grounded as it was in Galileo’s division of the mind and world into the two domains of primary measurable physical attributes, and secondary mental or qualitative attributes. This meant also the elimination of the relics of Aristotelian physics, with its ‘natural places’ and inherent tendencies, in favour of a world in which everything could be accounted for by material causation.

What is overlooked in all this, is the sense in which the Galilean-Newtonian view is a useful abstraction, within which life itself now appears as an anomaly, an oddity, something which has to be ‘explained’ in terms which have already intrinsically excluded it. That’s the plight of modern materialism in a nutshell.

I wonder how useful a ground of being is to us as a concept — Tom Storm

Reduced to the conceptual, it has very limited usefulness. The realisation of such a ‘ground’ is ecstatic, outside the conceptual or discursive intellect.

It's fake and manipulative, essentially regurgitating our style back to us to ingratiate itself and maximize engagement. — Baden

You’re correct, of course. A salutary admonition. I have noticed from time to time a dialog will appear ‘do you like this personality?’ All part of subscriber management.

They're still trying to politicize it regardless, check out the previous page. — Mr Bee

Remember what Michelle Obama said - ‘when they go low….’

I agree that Trump has been overall responsible for the atmosphere of threat and the promotion of violence.

A recent exchange:

Wayfarer: I quite like the philosophical theory called ’neutral monism’ but it’s such a jejune phrase. Reminds me of a middle-aged man in a grey overcoat with a bowler hat.


ChatGPT: That’s a perfect image—neutral monism does have a certain drab, bureaucratic air about it, doesn’t it? As if reality turned out to be a civil servant.

It’s unfortunate, really, because the underlying idea is far more radical than the name suggests: that the world is made of neither mind nor matter, but something more primordial—some third thing that becomes “mental” or “physical” depending on how it’s organized or related. In William James’s hands, it’s fluid and vivid; in Ernst Mach’s, almost visionary. But call it 'neutral monism', and it sounds like a colour swatch from a Soviet apartment block.

Still, there's something in its humility—especially compared to the grand metaphysical systems. It’s an attempt to avoid getting trapped by the old dualisms, without leaping straight into idealism or materialism. You might say it's metaphysical minimalism in a trench coat.

If it ever gets a rebrand, I hope it leans toward something more evocative—maybe primordial monism, or proto-experiential realism, or just eventualism, to pick up Whitehead’s scent. Anything but “neutral,” which always feels like it’s waiting for the train home.

"a colour swatch from a Soviet apartment block" :rofl:

There's also constructive criticism - those who are willing to have their ideas criticized so as to better understand both them and their critics, which I think is nearer the true spirit of philosophy.

Another Trump supporting lunatic out killing people. But I guess it was just another day of love. — Mikie

I wouldn’t politicise such a heinous act. Politicising it is the kind of thing MAGA would do, had the shoe been on the other foot.

DJT will be super annoyed tonight that the assassination and the Iran-Israel war will have stolen all the news minutes from his parade.

As I’ve said many a time, my interest in philosophy grew out of my search for enlightenment. This is partially because of when I came of age in the 1960’s, one of the Woodstock generation. Acid had some bearing. But there were also cultural and counter-cultural icons who embodied it, or seemed to (I was given a Krishnamurti book for my 17th birthday) Sgt Pepper’s was a bellwether moment (‘but first, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?’) When I (belatedly) went to University as an adult student, it was off the back of an old-fashioned ‘comprehension text’, the main body of which was a large slab of Betrand Russell’s Mysticism and Logic, which was right up my alley. Which misleadingly led me to believe that there was an interest in ‘enlightenment’ amongst the various sources I was going to study, when of course, the only instance of that word had ‘European’ in front of it - a vastly different thing, I was to find out.

Nevertheless I persisted (I’m reminded of Alan Watts’ frequent invocation ‘a fool who persists in his folly will become wise’ - a vain hope, in his case, as it turned out.) The idea being that not only was enlightenment real but that it would arrive as a kind of lightning bolt which would blast all of the residue of cultural conditioning off of one’s inherent ‘Buddha nature’. Not so easy, I was to learn. But that, anyway, was what was behind it.

Where that fitted in to philosophy per se, was ‘not at all’ - at least, since David Hume. David Stove, a well-known lecturer, took me aside after class one day, and said ‘you won’t find what you’re looking for in this Department, son.’ (‘Some healing thing’ was how he perceived my quest.) Sure enough, I soon absconded to Comparative Religion (emphatically not ‘divinity’, as I would tell anyone who asked.) I think that’s where I discovered classical philosophy and also what I know of Hegel, who was better represented in that department than in Philosophy proper.

But I still hold to the view that philosophy proper is or ought to be therapeutic - that it is aimed at ameliorating or healing or seeing through an ‘error in consciousness’, a deep, pervasive and widely-accepted misunderstanding as to the meaning of being in which practically all of us are unknowingly immersed. I think the nearest source to that in the modern canon is probably Heidegger, although Being and Time wasn’t on my curriculum and I’ve only read parts of it since. But overall existentialists, phenomenologists, and Buddhists speak to me much more than Anglo philosophers in that regard, as they’re concerned with the meaning, not of properly-formed sentences, but being as such.

eulogistics — Banno

No such word, according to my dictionary, although I suppose it could be the disciplined study of things said at funerals.

It's notable that there has already been a modification to the mass arrests and deportation strategy, due to the indisputable importance of undocumented migrant labour in agriculture and hospitality.

The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.

The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.

The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses. — Trump Shifts Deportation Focus, Pausing Most Raids on Farms, Hotels and Eateries

That didn't take long to surface. If ICE pulled the entire migrant workforce it would have massive economic downsides.

P.S. Maybe this is why Étienne Gilson quipped that “philosophy always buries its undertakers.” For generations, we were assured that glorious Science would eventually answer all these deep questions once and for all—but here we are, circling back to Aristotle and the metaphysical status of res potentia. As John Haldane notes in his essay Philosophy Lives! metaphysics has a way of outliving the confident predictions of its demise.

So let me ask you: what is it (matter)? — Bob Ross

Yes, great question—but I think there's actually a deep connection between what Count Timothy said about the immaterial intellect and the point I made about Heisenberg and res potentia.

If we’re asking, “what is matter?”, then one part of the Aristotelian answer is that matter is that which has the potential to take form. But then we can ask: what about things that are possible-but-not-yet-actual—do they count as material? Not necessarily. As Count Timothy pointed out, the active intellect is “potentially all things,” yet it too is immaterial.

That’s where I think the comparison with quantum theory is relevant. In Heisenberg’s interpretation of Aristotle, the wavefunction doesn’t describe an actual physical state, but a set of real possibilities—a kind of structured potentiality. He even likens this directly to Aristotle’s potentia. So here too we have a domain of potentiality that is not quite “material” in the classical usual sense, but also not nothing.

It raises the intriguing possibility that potentiality—whether in the intellect or in the quantum field—is an ontological category separate to what materially exists: neither actual nor material, but still real. Which might suggest that our usual modern categories—matter vs. spirit, physical vs. mental—don’t do justice to the subtle gradations that both Aristotle and quantum theory seem to be pointing to.

I think you're looking for an unequivocal definition of what matter is, but that its nature is actually very elusive - again, something that modern physics is all too aware of.

If the intellect, or anything, has no matter but has potential; then matter is not the substrate of being of a thing nor the parts which comprise it. So may main question to you is: what is matter? — Bob Ross

Hi Bob - if I may chip in here. I'm no expert but have been reading up on hylomorphism. First point is that the term 'hyle' literally meant 'lumber' or 'timber' - signifying the idea of 'raw material' or a substance that things are made or shaped from.

As regards potentiality and actuality, I've noticed an interesting line of thought which draws on Aristotle in this respect.

In his reflections on quantum theory, Werner Heisenberg appealed to Aristotle's metaphysics—specifically the distinction between potentia (potentiality) and actus (actuality)—as a way to make sense of the observed behavior of subatomic phenomena. He proposed that the quantum state, prior to measurement, should not be thought of as describing something actual in the classical sense, but rather as a set of potentialities—real tendencies or dispositions that can be actualized under specific conditions. As he put it:

The probability wave… was a quantitative version of the old concept of ‘potentia’ in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality. — Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p. 41

This line of thought has since inspired more recent philosophical developments, such as Ruth Kastner’s “Transactional Interpretation,” in which she elaborates on the notion of res potentia—real potentialities—as ontologically significant. Kastner and her colleagues argue that quantum states exist as a kind of non-actual reality (or pre-spatiotemporal structure) that becomes actualized through interaction (i.e., measurement). In this way, their work reactivates the Aristotelian framework in a thoroughly modern context - see Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities:

In the new paper, Ruth Kastner et al argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. ... At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of reality is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to actual objects or events in spacetime (i.e. things that actually exist). Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real constituents of existence.

It strikes me that Heisenberg’s appeal to potentia isn’t just a conceptual bridge to Aristotle—it may also subtly reintroduce the idea of degrees of being. In classical metaphysics, especially Neoplatonic and Aristotelian, existence was not a simple binary - particulars could be more or less actualized, more or less real. In contrast, modern metaphysics after Descartes and the rise of mechanism tends to treat existence as univocal—something either exists or it doesn't with no in-between.

But quantum theory, with its probability waves and superpositions, suggests a more graded or layered ontology. If a quantum state isn’t just a fiction but represents a real, albeit non-actual, mode of being, then this seems to reintroduce the idea that there are degrees of real-ness. The higher the probability, the greater the 'tendency to be'—to borrow a phrase Aristotle might have approved of. It’s an idea that hovers at the edge of physics and metaphysics, but it offers a glimpse of a richer ontological vocabulary than modern science typically permits, and also harks back to the classical 'scala naturae', the great chain of being.

You can't wave off the crushing criticism that brains house memory, a fact easily proven. — Hanover

It's not so clear cut as you believe. The amount of documentary evidence that Stephenson assembled can't simply be waved away, although as he says, the will not to believe it, is just as strong as the will to believe it.

I read the book. — Hanover

Which book?

It's sort of like how only Christians seem to see Jesus in their cereal bowl. — Hanover

See report on the case of Imad Elewar. Considerably more detail than in a cereal bowl.

Since we know memories are stored in the brain, and damage to the brain destroys memory in the living, that knowledge leads us to the conclusion that destruction of the brain entirely in death eliminates one's memories. — Hanover

As discussed previously in this thread, there are documented cases of children who appear to recall previous lives. Documented in the sense that steps were taken to validate the purported past-life memories by discovering documentary and historical records that corroborate (or disprove) the purported memories. There were many such cases gathered by a Dr Ian Stevenson. Stevenson does not posit a medium through which such memories may be transmitted however, collectively, there is a considerable amount of evidence for the veracity of some of these cases.

All of reality swings on the "hinge" of consciousness. — Sam26

Might that be on account of the fact that everything we know of reality is disclosed to, by and in consciousness? Not that consciousness is a constituent in an objective sense and indeed we don’t know it as an object of cognition. Which is also why testimony about conscious experience can only ever be anecdotal.

So yes - ‘hinge’ is apt.

Kant I do not think would entertain panpsychism in any form as an explanation of human mind whereas Whitehead sees primitive experience as a fundamental feature of all of reality and process. — prothero

I read a book by David Ray Griffin, (although was later dissappointed to learn he was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.)

The view I'm advocating also draws on Buddhism, specifically a 1955 book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti. Murti draws comparisons between Buddhist 'middle way' (madhyamaka) philosophy and Kant, Hegel, Bradley and other idealist philosophers.

The problematic that Buddhism begins with is not the nature of the constituents of reality, but the cause of dukkha (usually translated as 'suffering'). Within that framework, the nature and relation of subjective and objective reality is resolved in a completely different way to Whitehead's. It does not posit any kind of pan-experiential elementary constituents. My interpretation is that subjectivity emerges with the formation of organic life. Even very rudimentary life-forms possess a kind of subjectivity, if not subjective awareness in the sense humans do. Schopenhauer puts it like this, speaking in terms of the evolution of life (and bearing in mind, this was published before the Origin of Species):

each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.

The point I'm pressing is that, outside our consciousness of time, space, matter, and so on, the whole notion of existence or non-existence is meaningless. We know, of course, that there was an immense period of time prior to the evolution of h.sapiens (which is where this discussion started) - but Schopenhauer is pointing out that this whole conception is meaningful within the framework provided by the observing mind. So, while it's empirically true that the world existed prior to the evolution of h.sapiens, the true nature of that existence is unknowable apart from the cognitive and theoretical framework within which we imagine it. Hence, with Whitehead, I agree that 'outside the subject there is nothing', but within a different explanatory framework to the one he proposes.

Schopenhauer goes on:

Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself (i.e. the world as it is independently of perception), but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.

Murti's book points out the many parallels between Kant's 'antinomies of reason' and the Buddha's 'unanswereable questions' (i.e. whether the world is eternal, whether the mind and the body are the same or different, among other things.) So in this framework it is not necessary to posit a speculative 'pan-subjectivity'. It starts and ends with insight into the world-making activities of the mind.

Presumably races other than Boer.

I know they do, but the article from which that line was taken was very detailed — many thousands of words — and it spells out what that remark means in considerable depth.

I understand Whitehead's point, which is made quite explicit in that sentence: that there are no objects that exist in their own right, apart from or independent of any subject. I also understand that, for Whitehead, subjects are not necessarily human — or even organic — but are what he calls ‘actual occasions of experience’, which are the fundamental units of reality. So his aim is to restore subjectivity — the subject — which had been excluded or bracketed out by post-Cartesian dualism. He seeks to disclose subjectivity as a fundamental constituent of existence.

I understand and respect that project, but I would say I’m approaching the same issue from a different orientation. I’m criticizing the notion that objects possess inherent existence independently of any mind, as well — but whereas Whitehead’s approach is ontological (concerned with the constituents of being), the approach I’m exploring is epistemological (concerned with the conditions of knowing). That’s why I align more closely with a Kantian perspective.

While both philosophers are deeply engaged with the relationship between mind and world, Kant approaches it by asking how the mind structures experience and knowledge, whereas Whitehead approaches it by proposing that the world itself is composed of proto-subjective events or ‘prehensions’ at every level of reality.

But I'm open to considering it in more detail. And also exploring parallels between Whitehead and other pan-experientialist approaches.

Trump, himself, certainly doesn't seem like 'a racist'. — AmadeusD

They (illegal immigrants) are poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.” — Dec. 16, 2023, New Hampshire rally


“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know, insane asylums — that’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff.” — March 4, 2024, interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network


“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals’ … Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, ‘Please don’t use the word animals when you’re talking about these people.’ I said, ‘I’ll use the word animal because that’s what they are.’” — April 2, 2024, Grand Rapids, Michigan, campaign event.

many deep questions involved. I’ll revert to my initial post - material reality is an aspect of cognitive experience.

//although I will mention the title of the Whitehead article I mentioned yesterday, which I believe is a quote from the man himself - ‘ Apart from the Experiences of Subjects There Is Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Bare Nothingness’,//

Or if someone did he would be checked by the congress or the courts (may still happen). — prothero

Mitch McConnell must rue the day he voted not to confirm Trump's second impeachment, for the disgraceful assault on the Capital Building, on the grounds that it 'should be dealt with by the courts'.

You mean, the in itself, right?

I do not think this process however is confined to human measurement and instrumentation but that these interactions (collapses, potential to actual) are occurring all the time between events and processes thus the more seemingly concrete macro world we largely live in and observe. — prothero

That's the process of decoherence. It explains why we don't ever find a cat that is at once dead and alive, but it still doesn't totally solve the observer problem. What interests me in this context is the role of observation in the actualisation of potential.