So, the technology is clearly of non-human origin. — Tarskian

What technology are you referring to? I thought we were discussing biology.

Something that has a shape and measurement is a physical thing.

↪Wayfarer It (triangle) is finite and complete. — L'éléphant

But is it a physical thing? Certainly the picture of a triangle is physical, but the definition is a concept.

We call a triangle a mathematical object. — L'éléphant

But it's not a physical thing. It's an idea.

Designed by whom or what?

since I am trying to find object in the absence of language.
— noAxioms

Dinosaurs. — fdrake

Quinton Meillassoux introduced the concept of the "arche-fossil" in his book *After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency*. The term refers to objects or evidence, such as fossils, that indicate the existence of objects prior to human consciousness. Meillassoux uses this concept to challenge the correlationist position, which holds that we can only know the correlation between thought and being, rather than being itself independently of thought. The arche-fossil serves as the linch-pin for Meillassoux to assert that there is a reality independent of human perception and cognition. He argues that such objects, which existed long before humans and consciousness, demonstrate that the universe has a history that is not contingent on human observation. This challenges the idea that being is always tied to our experience.

A counter-argument to that, is that any meaningful conception of existence just is a human conception. That while it is empirically the case that dinosaurs and many other things pre-dated the evolution of h. Sapiens, the statement that ‘dinosaurs existed’ is only meaningful within the conceptual framework provided by an observing mind - with 'prior to' being part of that framework. Transcendental idealism, a target of Mellaissoux’ critique, holds that while we can have reliable empirical knowledge of phenomena (the world as we experience it), the world as it might be in the absence of any observation is unknowable as a matter of definition. Meaning that our understanding of existence, including the existence of dinosaurs, is implicitly dependent on the human conceptual framework. This doesn't mean that dinosaurs didn't exist or that an unbeheld object ceases to exist, which is another mental construction (namely, its imagined non-existence). It doesn't over-rule or invalidate empirical observation, but it serves to remind that empirical observations are made by humans. Whereas the speculative realism of Mellaissoux seems to want to 'reach beyond' human cognition.

sucrose counts as an object for amylase, and populations of amylase enzymes count as an object for the evolution of digestive systems. You might want to call those physical... — fdrake

I think this is where biosemiosis becomes relevant, isn't it? Biosemiotics provides a framework to understand such interactions not just as physical processes but involving the interpretation of signs and the generation of meaning within biological contexts. In this example, sucrose can be seen as a 'sign' that the amylase enzyme 'interprets' and acts upon. The amylase enzyme breaks down sucrose, 'recognizing it' as a specific substrate. This interaction involves a signaling process where the presence of sucrose triggers a specific biochemical response in the enzyme.

Fair point. But, it does add that ‘most people do not know’ it. And I’m still questioning the sense of it being identified as a ‘biological drive’. Humans are biologically the same everywhere, but culturally and intellectually they’re vastly different.

Sigh. It seems there’s no shortage of perplexities in metaphysics. It’s no wonder that it was ditched.

If that’s so, you should be able to provide a citation.

So why bring Islam into it? why not just stick to biology?

The term "fitrah" in Islam refers to all behavior that is innate. So, where else does it come from, if not from our biological firmware? — Tarskian

Do Muslims believe that it’s biological firmware? Or doesn’t it matter whether they believe it?

Do you think Muslims would agree that ‘fitrah’ is a biological drive?

[Edit: To them] The idea that the world is not intelligible seems not just wrong but disconcertingly so. — Fooloso4

Couldn’t classical philosophy ascribe the unintelligibility of the world to the treachery of the senses? It wouldn’t have regarded ‘the world’ as possessing intrinsic intelligibility in the first place, would it?

But then again, this does not invalidate the observation that every stomach consists of atoms at some deeper level of observation detail. — Tarskian

It doesn’t need to be invalidated. It’s simply irrelevant, even if it is the case.

Whenever a behavior is universal throughout history and throughout the world, it can only be biological. — Tarskian

I don’t know about that. Language has a biological component, insofar as spoken language requires the unique physiology of h. Sapiens. But I don’t know if on that basis you could say that language is biological feature, or that studying it through the perspective biology would be more suitable than through, say, linguistics or anthropology.

Could the essence not be a result of our evolutionary make up. — Gingethinkerrr

Don’t loose sight of the fact that evolutionary biology is a theory of the origin of species. It’s not necessarily a theory of the origin of everything about human nature, although it’s often assumed to be.

Therefore, the need eventually arose for religious scripture to appear which contains a copy in human language of the biologically preprogrammed rules that humans should not break and that government should never overrule. — Tarskian

I looked up that link provided, about ‘fitra’. It starts:

Fitra or fitrah (Arabic: فِطْرَة; ALA-LC: fiṭrah) is an Arabic word that means 'original disposition', 'natural constitution' or 'innate nature'. The concept somewhat resembles natural order in philosophy, although there are considerable differences as well. In Islam, fitra is the innate human nature that recognizes the oneness of God (tawhid). It may entail either the state of purity and innocence in which Muslims believe all humans to be born, or the ability to choose or reject God's guidance.

But why do you think that maps against biology? There’s nothing in biological theory that seems to correspond with that - it’s much more a religious idea, perhaps comparable to the ‘Buddha-nature’ of East Asian Buddhism.

There's so much to say on this topic but am limiting myself to only analyzing the reasons people take drugs. I find it an edifying discussion. — Shawn

Might also be useful to recognise the distinction between narcotics and hallucinogens. They’re very different. I don’t know where cannabis fits in the scheme.

One abused donkey left the ship, joined up with a herd of elk and found happiness at last — BC

The version I read, he wasn’t an abuse victim, he’d been hiking with his family in California and something frightened him and he ran away. They said they were thrilled to see that he’d been found (although it seems far from certain it’s the same donkey.)

I don't remember him (Deacon) positing that anything beyond the physical world exists, any transcendent reality. — Janus

I started on Deacon in earnest in January this year but stalled at around chapters 5 or 6. I see him more as trying to extend the scope of naturalism beyond physical reductionism.

Indeed, but in my view much of the ‘Christianity’ that is professed by Americans is bogus, like the ‘prosperity gospel’ nonsense that proclaims that the faithful will be rewarded with material riches. So in that mindset, religion and materialism are combined, which I’m sure is not in keeping with the intent of the Gospels. A lot of American Christianity seems an earnest parody to me.

We’re loosing sight of the OP. The question was ‘what is purpose, how does it arise’. My argument is that in ‘modern’ vision of the Cosmos, described by classical physics and Galilean science, purpose can only be understood in terms of intentional agents or agencies. The laws that ‘govern’ the cosmos, and also evolution, are devoid of intentionality and purpose. So it was presumed that the Cosmos and everything in it arises as a consequence of the ‘accidental collocation of atoms’ (Bertrand Russell’s term.)

I’ve been trying to point to more recent ‘philosophies of biology’ e.g. Terrence Deacon, Alice Juarrero, Steve Talbott, which question that form of materialism. One of the grounds on which it is questioned is the intentional nature of all organic life, which displays behaviours that can’t be explained in bald reductionist terms. I agree that these are not materialist or physicalist but they’re also not typical, although they’re becoming influential. But I take the fact that they exist to be evidence of the waning of materialism, which is welcome. (It’s also interesting that Brentano’s work on ‘intentionality’ was the original inspiration for phenomenology which is similarly opposed to reductionism.)

One kind would consist in the claim that everything can be explained in terms of physics. I find that claim ridiculous, because everything obviously cannot be explained in terms of physics. — Janus

A recent survey of academic philosophers shows that slightly more than 50% ‘accept or lean towards’ physicalism, presumably they don’t. (Another survey shows that around 66% ‘lean towards’ atheism. So the majority of academic philosophers ‘lean towards’ physicalism and atheism. No surprises there.)

As i see it a far bigger problem in today's world is materialism in the form of consumerism—the desire to acquire ever more and more possessions, the identification of the personal identity, of its worth, with material wealth. — Janus

They’re plainly related. It’s logical for a social philosophy that recognises nothing other than the physical.

*

Arche-fossils, you mean?

The difference between what you might say in a fight is different from the problems that belong to an idea as that idea.

That is what I think is at stake in the passage I quoted. — Paine

Thanks for that elaboration, but I’d like to return to the interpretation of the passage you quoted previously.

I was rather thinking that ‘what is at stake’ in that dialogue is the reality of the Ideas, and consequently what the implications would be if they are found not to be real. Denial is what ‘naturalism’, which you say is ‘hard to define’, is inclined towards, isn’t it? The denial of the reality of the ideas? I had thought that in the passage, that ‘the friends of the forms’ were defending the forms. The ‘earth-born’ represent those who are unable to reconcile the distinction between ‘being’ - what truly is - and ‘becoming’, the world of change, growth and decay, and so are calling ideas into question. (And indeed there are many ‘perplexities’ involved as has been mentioned already, as the reality of change and decay seems undeniable. It is not as if admitting the reality of the ideas is a simple matter.)

Consider this passage in particular:

And you say our communion with becoming is through the body, by means of sense perception, while it is by means of reasoning through the soul that we commune with actual being, which you say is always just the same as it is, while becoming is always changing. — Sophist, 248A, translated by Horan

I can’t help but be struck by the resemblance to a passage I’ve often quoted in the past here in respect of Aquinas:

….if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

Can you see the resemblance in those two passages? The differentiation between ‘sense perception’ and ‘ideas grasped by reason’? That in the platonic vision, the faculty of reason is able to grasp what is ‘always the case’? I know my attempt here might be a bit simplistic but I’m trying to get a handle on the big underlying issue as I see it.

I would say there is no physical basis. As someone remarked in a philosophical essay I once read, ‘there’s no such thing as a thing.’ Things or objects are designated as such by a subject for a purpose. But there is no ultimately-existing, discrete, and completely definable thing. No such thing.

That something is not explainable in physical terms does not entail that it is anything over and above its physical constitution, the relations between its parts and the global and local constraints it is subject to. — Janus

But such constraints are not considered in reductionism.

reject physicalism on this basis is to be working from and reacting to outmoded mechanistic conceptions of physicality. — Janus

Mechanistic materialism still prevails in or underlies many naturalistic accounts.

Of course, but in times past global and environmental conditions were thought to be given by God or determined by karma or some imagined supernatural principle. Are you now appealing to those kinds of ideas, and if not, just what are you appealing to? — Janus

I’m not ‘appealing to’ anything. The physicalist paradigm is just exactly that everything is ultimately reducible to the laws of physics. But it’s clear that these are abstractions that don’t describe the complexities of organic life.

That Talbot essay is really worth the effort.

It is also worth mentioning:

Terrence Deacon's concept of "ententionality," introduced in "Incomplete Nature," seeks to describe the unique properties and attributes of organisms and their goal-directed behaviors, which he believes are inadequately explained by traditional physical and intentional frameworks. Ententionality combines "intentionality" with "entelechy" (Aristotle's term for realizing potential), emphasizing that organisms inherently pursue goals and maintain themselves through a dynamic process of self-organization and adaptation. This idea highlights the complex interplay between biological structures and functions that give rise to purposeful behavior and consciousness, suggesting that life inherently possesses a form of directedness that goes beyond mere mechanistic explanations. — ChatGPT

I have a question or two about this. By "reducible to" do you mean 'explainable in terms of' or 'has its origin in'? Do you count global or environmental conditions as physical interactions? Do you claim there is "something more" metaphysically speaking than the physical world with its global and local conditions and interactions? If you do want to claim that, then what could that "something more" be in your opinion? — Janus

‘Physical reductionism’ is generally taken to mean ‘explainable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry.’ It is the kind of attitude which says that living organisms are ‘nothing but’ colllections of atoms or ‘nothing but’ the vehicles by which genes propagate. In practical terms, the desired reduction base is something that can, at least in theory, be explained and predicted in those terms.

‘Global and environmental conditions’ were not, in times past, considered to be physical interactions, or considered as part of the reduction base. That is what might be called a holistic approach which is the opposite to reductionism.

The ‘law of physics’ are context-free. They don’t need to take into account environmental factors but rather describe the behaviour of ideal objects under specified conditions. This is what makes them universal - the behaviour of a body with specific physical attributes will predictably act in accordance with physical laws under said conditions - like, the apple will fall at a given rate, provided nobody catches it, or the wind doesn’t blow and alter its path, or it isn’t in zero-gravity environments.

The ‘something more’ that biology has to consider is precisely the environment and the constant interaction of organisms with each other and their environment. That is where ‘physicalist reductionism’ has been found wanting, and why biosemiotics and systems science have gained traction in biology: living beings are far more ‘language-like’ than ‘machine like’, right down to the most fundamental levels of cellular biology.

Accordingly, I think it’s a mistake to try and conceive of the ‘something more ‘ - the aspects of organisms that can’t be reduced to the chemical and physical - as any kind of ‘something’. That leads to the misconception of an elan vital or spooky ethereal substance - in other words it’s a reification. As you know, I’ve often commented that I think one of the consequences of Cartesian dualism is exactly that kind of reification, by treating mind as a ‘thinking thing’, more or less on a similar plane to physical things, but of a different kind.

Whereas the dynamic systems theory approach of e.g. Terrence Deacon and Alice Juarrrero and others speaks in terms of the interaction of ‘bottom-up’, physical reactions with ‘top-down’, causal constraints. Those latter kinds of factors are precisely what reductionism fails to consider.

See From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning, Steve Talbott.

This post could benefit from a clearer thesis, more structured argumentation, and substantial references to support its claims. As it is, it’s a grab bag of ideas and catch-phrases. Each historical and cultural point should be connected with well-defined arguments and evidence. The analogies and comparisons need deeper exploration and should be grounded in specific examples and references to provide credibility and coherence. It also combines purportedly factual statements with opinions, and switches tone between formal and casual. The comparison between a popular rock band and one of the giants of classical music is interesting but is not sufficiently developed to make a compelling point. And any clear statement of what ‘the Enlightenment’ means, and why and in what way its effects are pernicious or beneficial, is not made clear. But then, that would require a thesis, not a post.

I’m not going to enlighten you — EdwardC

Plainly.

Homeostasis is a state where a human being is in a stable state functioning. This state is commonly known as 'sobriety.' — Shawn

Homeostasis is a technical term from biology. ‘Stasis’ is a more accurate description of the normal state. Which leads us to the etymological root of ‘ecstacy’, that is based on the same root word:

ecstacy: late Middle English: from Old French extasie, via late Latin from Greek ekstasis ‘standing outside oneself’, based on ek- ‘out’ + histanai ‘to place’.

But then apart from the etymology, the meaning is:

1. an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
"there was a look of ecstasy on his face"
Similar:
rapture
bliss
elation
euphoria
…
Opposite:
misery
2. an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state, originally one involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence.

So perhaps the interesting philosophical question would be, why would being ‘outside oneself’ result in ‘great happiness or joyful excitement’? And, do intoxicants or hallucinogens genuinely induce such states?

Face it 180, life would hardly be worth living without Christians to bait. :rofl:

lower" organisms obviously respond to their environments, but I don't see how that equates to intentional behavior.
Just address that question or we will be unable to proceed. — Janus

Organisms not only react to stimuli but often do so in ways that are adaptive and goal-directed, suggesting a form of intentionality. This is seen in behaviors that enhance survival and reproduction, such as finding food, avoiding predators, and seeking mates. These behaviors imply a level of agency and purposiveness that goes beyond the deterministic nature of physical laws.

Furthermore, the internal regulatory mechanisms of organisms, such as homeostasis, also exhibit intentional-like behavior. These systems maintain stability through feedback loops, dynamically adjusting to changes in the environment to sustain life. This regulatory process involves a form of self-organization and information processing that seems distinct from non-living physical processes.

Such adaptive, purposive behavior cannot be entirely reduced to physical interactions because it involves a level of complexity and coordination that physical laws alone do not account for. That suggests that the principles governing biological systems include emergent properties and processes that arise from, but are not reducible to, their physical and chemical constituents.

Those are the kinds of considerations that are behind Terrence Deacon's 'Incomplete Nature', although they're also addressed in diverse ways by the theorists listed on the Third Way website.

I believe “supernatural” is a vacuous term because we do not yet know the limits of the natural world. — Art48

'Miracles are not against nature but against what we know of nature' ~ St Augustine.

First, what exactly do you mean by saying that intentionality is active at every level of organic life? — Janus

How is it not clear? That every organism acts intentionally (although not with the conscious self-awareness that characterises higher organisms.) And it re-introduces intentionality at a fundamental level, in contrast to the physicalist model, which posits that organic life is understandable in terms of the same laws which govern physical and chemical reactions. If there's anything 'transcendent' about it, it is simply that.

How to demonstrate that - it's more like a philosophical framework or metaphorical model, a way of thinking about life. We're all looking at the same data, but some frameworks or metaphors might be more consonant with the observations than others. The physicalist/materialist model is mechanistic, whereas this line of thinking recognises a basic distinction between the organic and the mechanistic.

Perhaps there was a good reason that Gotama refused to answer metaphysical questions; not just because he thought that such preoccupations would distract people from practice, but perhaps also because he realized that such question are inherently unanswerable. — Janus

But this question was probably never even considered by the Buddha. This is a question about science and scientific models. It is being actively explored by many scientists - the Third Way Evolution site has an index of scientists that are exploring these ideas.

I think the underlying philosophical rift is between the materialism pushed by the so-called 'ultra-darwinists', which sees everything as being explicable in terms of physical laws, and an emerging holistic model of life and mind. It's part of the overall decline of materialism as a model, which is occuring in many areas of science.

Is such a shift in models itself a scientific matter? Are the conflicts about the interpretations of physics scientific questions? I would say not - they're all concerned with questions of meaning and interpretation, and that definitely overflows the bounds of scientific observation. Philosophy of science (Kuhn et al) have been documenting that since the 1960's. Is that 'metaphysics'? In a way it is, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered.

The philosophical point lurking behind this is the question of 'randomness'. There's a lot of heat generated around the idea that evolution is a 'random process' - which of course it actually isn't, even under neo-Darwinism, because natural selection is a far from random process. But there still is an element of chance in two senses - that the existence of life itself is posited by naturalism to be a kind of fluke occurence, the fortuitous combination of elements that happened to give rise to organic life. And that the process by which mutations occur is also largely fortuitous, with unfavourable mutations being eliminated while those favourable to replication of the genotype being preserved. But the overall paradigm is still one of the 'blind watchmaker', to use Richard Dawkin's memorable simile: the process itself is not driven by any kind of intelligence, but is ultimately reducible to, and explainable in terms of, physical principles, albeit represented in unique forms by the complexities of organic chemistry.

Notice that the 'Third Way' approach mentioned above is not an attempt to re-introduce an 'intelligent designer' or presiding intelligence. It's strangely similar to one ancient form of the Logos, namely, the Logos Spermatikos, similar to that described in the Catholic (New Advent) Encylopedia:

God, according to them (the Stoics), "did not make the world as an artisan does his work, but it is by wholly penetrating all matter that He is the demiurge of the universe" (Galen, "De qual. incorp." in "Fr. Stoic.", ed. von Arnim, II, 6); He penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He is called Logos; and inasmuch as He is the germ from which all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos spermatikos). This Logos is at the same time a force and a law, an irresistible force which bears along the entire world and all creatures to a common end, an inevitable and holy law from which nothing can withdraw itself, and which every reasonable man should follow willingly (Cleanthus, "Hymn to Zeus" in "Fr. Stoic." I, 527-cf. 537).

which I find a compelling metaphor (although I hasten to add, nothing like that is proposed on the Third Way site that I'm aware of.)

Teleology is a way of studying things which looks at things in relation to purpose, reason for being. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's correct: teleological explanations explain phenomena in terms of their purpose, rather than in terms of their antecedent causes. It seems a minor difference but a lot hinges on it.

The 'literal' question is as to whether evolution is directed and driven by an end goal or goals. If it would have this kind of purpose then the question becomes 'Whose purpose?" and of course the only intelligible answer would seem to be 'God's". — Janus

But this illustrates the very point I was making. The way we have to see it is that it must be either psychological - in the mind - or then it's theistic - as the agency of God. I'm attempting to deconstruct the worldview which makes it seem that these are the only choices. I think (and MU agrees in the above) that 'intentionality' is manifest at every level of organic life, and that it is purposeful.


The Forbes article:

Dennis Noble sees evidence of purposive and intentional evolution in our immune response to viruses. Detection of the invader triggers a flurry of rapid mutations in the genes of B cells, creating a legion of gene variants. These variants are antibodies, the most effective of which are deployed to combat the virus. In a defensive assault, the immune system self-modifies its own DNA. “It changes the genome. Not supposed to be possible,” says Noble. “Happens all the time.”

The conventional view is that this is still random natural selection—cranked up to warp speed inside the body during the lifetime of an individual organism. Noble agrees, but adds the observation that the organism’s immune system initiates and orchestrates the ramped up process, harnessing natural selection to fight off the invader. For Noble, this routine procedure offers clear evidence of the organism actively participating in its own evolution—it’s doing natural selection. This is an alternative theory of evolution where cognition is fundamental. In this theory, the smallest unit of life—cells—have some version of intelligence and intent that allows them to detect and respond to their environment. Noble clocks the immune response as a goal-directed pattern of behavior at the cellular level that scales to every level of organization within a living system. He believes we’re working ourselves into a sweat to exclude something so essential to evolution and to life as purpose and intention.

The article goes on:

Noble is part of The Third Way, a movement in evolutionary biology that views natural selection as part of a holistic, organism-centered process. He co-authored Evolution “on Purpose," published by MIT Press in 2023, which argues that organisms evolve with intention.

The Third Way site is here - I've been aware of it for a while, I read it from time to time. It's not aligned with any form of ID, but it's also sceptical of mainstream neo-darwinism. (I'm particularly drawn to the essays of Steve Talbott, which I encountered on The New Atlantis website.)

The historical background to the rejection of teleological explanations is tied to the advent of Galileo's physics which eliminated Aristotelian physics. But the idea of purpose and its absence is another matter.

What "naturalism" refers to is the loosest ball in this discussion. — Paine

What do you think is at stake in that passage you cited from The Sophist? Anything?

Of course he's no 'voice in the wilderness', he's a highly-respected scholar in his field. But don't you think that his declaration of the incompatibility of Platonism and naturalism might be considered 'dissident', or at least 'dissenting'? Banno often refers to surveys of academic philosophers who's views are overwhelmingly in favour of one or another form of naturalism. He's using his very well-earned seat at the table to question the mainstream.

I see what you’re saying, but I am inclined to think that the failure to think reflexively about what science does, and the methods a particular science uses, is not a limitation of a thing called science meant in some universal, ahistorical sense, but of a certain era of science which doesn’t recognize human becoming, including the wives we create, as open-ended, historical, and contextual. — Joshs

:100: That's where science, philosophy and culture are all going through massive changes. Science is becoming self aware! :party: The zenith of 'scientism' per se was probably around the end of the 19th to the middle of the last century. It still has considerable influence, but the times they are a'changin'.



wives...? :chin:

your view of what happened from then and now is more reliant upon recent scholarship than those who see no reason to question previous descriptions. — Paine

I've been upfront about my motivation and background, which is that I came to philosophy from a counter-cultural perspective, the quest for philosophical or spiritual illumination. My view is that some form of Platonism (specifically, realism about universals) is the real mainstream of Western philosophy, but that the tradition has been hijacked or subsumed by philosophical materialism. Hence my response when I saw the abstract of Gerson's Platonism and Naturalism (which I'm still only half-way finished):

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. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.

Consequently, I'm with 'the friends of the forms', whereas I think the predominant voice in modern philosophy is that of the 'earth-born ancestors'. As a result, much of what is taught in philosophy departments is in conflict with classical philosophy per se. (Which is why I said that Gerson is a 'dissident voice' in respect of many of his academic peers.)

Here's Gerson presenting the core of the ideas in that book, for those interested.

I took it to be implied by your earlier declaration that 'modernity is our cave'.
— Wayfarer

Fair point. I think we can be in the situation of the prisoner who becomes unshackled but has not escaped the cave. We can be aware of the sources that shape our understanding of things and also be aware that there are earlier sources that differ from these. — Fooloso4

:pray:

The idea that ancient texts were saying something other than established interpretations was through a recognition of their development through time. — Paine

That's getting close to the point that I've been pressing all along. And the reason for my interest in Gerson: he's a dissenting voice in the modern academy. (Thomas Nagel is another.)