I'm one of those totally anachronistic people who's never signed up to Tinder. Mainly, I guess, because at age 70, I was lucky enough to meet my life's partner 40 odd years ago at University, before apps were even a thing. So - I don't really have any recommendations. Although I do recall hearing a radio interview with a guy in his 40's who had made a huge amount of money in tech and didn't have to work. He was lonely, but then he got a dog. The dog itself, apart from being a companion, also allowed him to strike up conversations with other dog-owners at the park, and that's how he found some who went on to become his nearest friends. (I will add, like @T Clark above, my son too met his dear one on Tinder and they've been married 4 years. There's nothing the matter with that, but I imagine Tinder has, let's say, a poor noise-to-signal ratio.)

Perhaps what I truly need to face up to, is the fact that such a truth, if it exists and does not live up to human "reasoning" cannot be mutually pursued in a forum which necessarily prides itself in the mastery of human reason. — ENOAH

It’s called ‘the hard problem’ for a reason! You’re dealing with a question that is at the basis of a great many philosophical questions and there are no easy answers.

I take an idealist approach. I see philosophical materialism (physicalism, reductionism) as being part of the problem to which a properly-constituted idealist philosophy is the solution. And I will say there's support for this within cognitive science, or the type of cognitive science which stresses the sense in which the mind constructs our experienced reality. Take a look at my thread The Mind-Created World.

Also check this video out.

There is the real apple which I would have seen had my sensation not been mediated by mind's re-presentation of "apple" (fruit, shape, red, eat, doctor away, rotten at the core, not pear, not orange, not wax etc). — ENOAH

You're actually into a very tough problem here, which is the appearance and reality distinction. You're wanting to claim that 'the apple' (read: any object) has a 'real existence' (ultimate reality) which exists (is real) irrespective of and outside of our mediated experience of it.

The problem being, that if all experience and judgement of objects is mediated by our sensory and intellectual faculties (per Kant) then the apple (or object) as it is in itself, is not something we ever know.

So - how do you get outside that mediated experience to see things as they truly are? A natural answer might be that this is what science does, but when you get down to the fundamental constituents of physical reality, which are the objects of quantum physics, then the Observer Problem rears its head. And the philosophical import of that, is precisely that you cannot detect such entities as they are independently of any act of measurement (according to what is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics).

It is of course true that science explores and explains a vast panorama of phenomena, but recall that phenomena means 'what appears', and 'what appears' always appears to a subject, who him or herself is never disclosed in the observation (but whose presence is implicated in the above-mentioned 'observer problem'.)

My two cents worth is that David Chalmer's original paper, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, is pointing to a philosophical issue, which is not a problem that can be addressed by scientific means as a matter of principle. And this is because of the ineradicably first person nature of conscious experience, which is not amenable to the third person methodology of the natural sciences.

Whereas his opponents claim that:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science. — Daniel Dennett

(It's worth noting that the essay at the head of this OP was linked by Dennett in the first place, because Humphrey's theory is compatible with Dennett's, as they're both materialists.)

So Humphreys, Dennett, and the other advocates of 'naturalised epistemology' view the hard problem as something that can be solved. In that sense, they can fairly be accused of actually ignoring the root of the problem itself, which, according to David Chalmers and others, is not a problem to be solved, but a way of pointing out an unavoidable limitation of objectivity viz a viz the subjective nature of experience. Phenomenology and existentialism understands this in a way that the objective sciences cannot.

See Thomas Nagel's What Daniel Dennett Gets Wrong (Oct 2023) for an analysis of the in-principle shortcomings of materialism in philosophy of mind.

Also The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience (also in Aeon Magazine and now a book.)

A year later, what's the status of this potential solution to the hard problem? — RogueAI

If anyone cares to go back to the start of this thread, the article which is is about is in Aeon Magazine, How Blindsight Answers the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Nicholas Humphrey. That is the proposed solution in question. There's also an interesting book about the topic, The Ancient Origins of Consciousness (not related to Nicholas Humphrey but exploring similar themes), the abstract of which states 'Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.'

I think the orientation of his overall philosophy is clearly influenced by Protestantism. It wouldn't be accurate to say that he was Protestant, as he wouldn't even set foot in a church, but that his cultural and religious background establishes the parameters of the underlying assumptions of his ethical theory, as Maritain argues.

(By the way, John Calvin was Protestant, and Calvinism one of the main schools of Protestantism. I'm not sure where pietism fits into the scheme, though.)

I'm trying to configure where specifically, "Protestant" comes into view here.. — schopenhauer1

You can imagine that Kant would have no truck with Aquinas' 'five proofs' or any of the other argumentarium of Scholastic philosophy. They would all be subject to the kinds of critiques he had of other rationalist philosophers. He was famously dismissive of the ontological argument ('existence is not a predicate'). I think intellectually he was very much a product of the Reformation, even if he then went even further than the Reformers in questioning the very existence of the Church.

Aspect of Truth: A New Religious Metaphysics, Catherine Pickstock.
Thinking Being: An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric D Perl.

I watched excerpts of Garland’s response to the Jordan inquisition. While I agree with everything Garland said, his persona and delivery are weak. I wish there were a more forceful, telegenic and eloquent speaker in that vital role.

More and more, I'm understanding how the 'Western mindset' has lost a vital perspective, and that the resulting worldview is like a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional reality. (It is like the scenario that McIntyre describes at the beginning of After Virtue, with scattered fragments from a library lying about, that we no longer know how to connect.) That lost perspective *is* the qualitative dimension. But that claim is nearly always challenged on the basis that qualitative judgements are personal and subjective and that there is no scientific basis to them. I think this is what Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is addressing. But Vervaeke is - I would say first and foremost - a cognitive scientist, so he doesn't endorse any kind of sentimentality or romanticism. It's a factual issue, but it's also qualitative (in one of the last talks I listened to he rejects the 'fact-value' dichotomy).

Related to this - I have the sense that the One of Plotinus *is not* a concept. I think arriving at an understanding of it requires a kind of cognitive transformation although that too is very difficult to fathom. I recall from the IEP entry on Pierre Hadot: 'Hadot argues in Plotinus, or the Simplicity of Vision, that the famous Neoplatonic metaphysics of the One, the Ideas, and the world-psyche is not the abstract, purely theoretical, otherworldly construction it is often presented as being. Rather, Hadot claims, in Plotinus’ Enneads the language of metaphysics “is used to express an inner experience. All these levels of reality become levels of inner life, levels of the self” (PSV 27). For Hadot, Plotinus’ metaphysical discourse is animated by a “fundamental but inexpressible experience.” ' Later in the same article, Hadot distances himself from Plotinus' ascetic mysticism but nevertheless this is a recurring theme in his later studies of philosophy as a way of life. That also chimes with Vervaeke's continual stress on philosophy as a transformative understanding, albeit remaining fully conversant with and aware of natural science.

Physics is an abstraction. It is based on attending to physical phenomena while prescinding from the inseparable subjective phenomena. So, physics necessarily produces an incomplete picture of reality. — Dfpolis

:up: And how we got to 'physicalism' was by two steps: first, declare that 'the physical' and 'the mental' are two separate substances but exist basically side-by-side. Then, point out that there is no way to demonstrate the existence of a 'mental substance'. Voila.

It's a reasonable idea, but this kind of analysis barely falls under the general subject heading of philosophy. There is a very strong tendency to evoke evolutionary theory to account for all kinds of human traits but it often bears the risk of slipping into a 'just so' story.

I think a much more substantial figure with a somewhat similar idea is René Girard, who wrote extensively on the concepts of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, and sacrificial violence. His work explores how human desires are imitated from others, leading to rivalry and conflict, and how societies use sacrificial mechanisms to channel and resolve these conflicts. Some of his key works include "Violence and the Sacred" (1972) and "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" (1978).

Mimetic rivalry refers to the idea that human desires are not inherently original but are imitated (or "mimetic"). According to Girard, individuals often desire objects or goals not because of their intrinsic value, but because they see others desiring them. This imitation leads to rivalry and conflict, as multiple individuals or groups compete for the same objects or goals.

In Girard's view, mimetic rivalry is a fundamental aspect of human behavior and social dynamics. It can escalate to the point of violence, as individuals or groups struggle to assert their desires over others. Girard further argues that this rivalry can lead to social crises, which societies often manage through mechanisms such as scapegoating and sacrificial violence, redirecting the conflict onto a sacrificial victim to restore peace and order.

There are resonances with the 'Easterlin thesis' (which I acknowledge I hadn't heard of previously.)

I guess my challenges are meaningless in that context. — Paine

They're really not. I will always read the texts that are presented with interest. It's more that my interests are tangential to the topic and I'm ever mindful of derailing a discussion.

I think the matter belongs to a discussion of what Aristotle intended. Folding his efforts into an omlette of other ideas is what I am challenging. — Paine

And as I've said, I'm interested in Aristotle in the context of the history of ideas, which is the study of an omelette. It is nearer to what John Vervaeke is covering in his course materials.

I think it is clear that Vervaeke is a Platonist, but his relationship with naturalism seems a bit complicated. Maybe it would be better to say that he wishes to redirect naturalism away from its anti-Platonist history. It may all come down to the question of how Plato and Vervaeke understand God and transcendence. At the very least I would say that Vervaeke is opposed to the standard, reductionist tropes of naturalism, such as materialism. What do you think? — Leontiskos

Question from here.

The key idea is his 'levelling up' - rather a peculiar turn of phrase, but what it means is that there are different levels of description, and also reality, but that these all influence each other, upwards and downwards. He says that reductionism, which produces a 'flat ontology', wishes to account for everything in terms of its atomic or sub-atomic basis. Whereas in reality, top-down constraints are equally important in the actual processes of living beings. (This is the subject of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis>Episode 6>Aristotle Kant and Evolution.) He often mentions this book, Context Changes Everything, Alice Juarrero which also got a bit of attention here on the forum in years past.

(I also recently listened to a keynote lecture he gave on neoplatonism and levels of being. The problem with Vervaeke is there's so much of him! Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is, what, 52 hour-long lectures, and then there's numerous other interviews, guest appearances, panel discussions....life's too short....)

I've quoted your question in the Vervaeke thread so as not to divert this one.

there is a 'paradise lost' aspect to your versions of the history of ideas that I do not subscribe to. — Paine

It's not so much 'paradise lost' as 'forgotten wisdom'. That there was an 'sapiential wisdom teaching' that was original to Western culture, that has been occluded by scientistic technocracy and 'the instrumentalisation of reason'. But again, maybe better discussed in the other thread than this one.

Do you "buy" Mr. Maritain? — tim wood

Professor Maritain. It's not a matter of whether I "buy" the argument, @Moliere asked the question and I happened to know of that essay by him. I will say I've barely scratched the surface of Maritain, who was a monumental figure in 20th century Catholic philosophy, and not much more so of Kant, but I believe Maritain's analysis has merit.

I think most importantly to Kant is that he'd assert that being a religious man is not in conflict with being a rational, scientific man. It seems to me that's almost a "in a nutshell" explanation of Kant: How to believe in both science and religion without destroying either. — Moliere

My thoughts also.

///

Going back to the souce I quoted, there's a useful synopsis of Maritain's argument in footnotes 15-16, from which:

Kant tried to transpose revealed morality as the Judeo-Christian tradition presents it to us into the register of pure reason. He sought to retain the Judeo-Christian absolutization of morality in an ethics of Pure Reason, which rid itself of any properly supernatural or revealed element in order to replace it with the authority of a Reason not grounded on the real and on nature.

I am not familiar with Vervaeke. — Paine

You’ll find a thread that I’ve created about him here.

*

You have made much of the difference between ancient and modern ideas of the physical. — Paine

I’m very interested in history of ideas. That is not as vague a term as it sounds, it is an actual academic discipline, usually associated with comparative religion departments. The book which is said to have given rise to that discipline is The Great Chain of Being by Arthur Lovejoy (1936 - turns out to be rather a turgid read, but anyway…) I’m pursuing the theme of how physicalism became the ascendant philosophy in Western culture and what the changes were in ways of understanding that gave rise to that. Platonism and how it developed is obviously central to that.

For example - Werner Heisenberg’s adaption of Aristotle’s ‘potentia’ (as noted above). As it happens, Heisenberg was a lifelong student of philosophy, he was known for carrying around a copy of the Timeaus in his University days. His Physics and Philosophy and some of his other later writings are very philosophically insightful in my opinion.

I don’t want to expound on the minutiae of divergences between Aristotle and Plotinus, for example, as I’m not equipped to do so, and, as I said, I’m considering the issues at a high level. And I will generally defer on any close readings of the text, to those who have familiarity with them, although I might take issue with matters of interpretation from time to time.

And another

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/covid-origin-wuhan-lab-leak-alina-chan-mit-harvard/

Previous review of the above author's claims, saying she has an ax to grind. The review in question is of a book she co-authored a couple of years ago. The reviewer calls into question some of Chan's key claims.

It's a highly technical subject. :fear:

(Incidentally I don't know why this topic has been relegated to the Lounge, it is really an interesting question in history of philosophy.)

It is impossible to understand Kant's ethical doctrine if one does not take into account the convictions and the fundamental inspiration he derived from his pietist upbringing. He prided himself on founding an autonomous morality; he took great pains to that end. But in fact his accomplishment was dependent on fundamental religious ideas and a religious inspiration he had received in advance. That is why, however we may regret not being able to keep the analysis within exclusively philosophical bounds, we are obliged, if we wish to grasp the real significance of the moral philosophy of Kant, to take note of all the points of reference to traditional Christian ethics in its essential structure. It is not with the idea of opposing the two systems to each other that we shall have recourse to this kind of confrontation. We would have preferred to avoid it. But it is forced upon us in spite of ourselves by the exigencies of the subject, and because without it the historian of ideas cannot form an accurate notion of what Kant's moral system really is.

The religious background of which we have just spoken is the source of what characterizes Kantian ethics from the outset, namely, its absolutism, the privilege it assigns to morality as revealer of the absolute to man, the seal of the absolute which it impresses upon morality, the saintliness with which it is clothed. The saintly and absolute value of moral obligation and of the ought; the inverse value -- sacrilegious and absolute -- of moral wrong; the saintly and absolute value of good will; the saintly and absolute value of purity of ethical intention: so many traits whose origin lies in the influence of revealed ethics, and which have been transposed therefrom. But since at the same time the whole universe of objective realities on which that revealed ethics depended in its own order and in the supra-rational perspective of faith had been eliminated, along with the universe of objective realities which metaphysics imagined itself to know, the saintly absolutism of morality required a complete reversal of the bases of moral philosophy and rational ethics. Moral philosophy became a-cosmic. The world of morality had to be constituted purely on the basis of the interior data of the conscience, while severing itself from the world of objects -- confined in sense experience -- which our knowledge attains, and especially from that search for the good, the object of our desires, which also belongs to the empirical order, and to which up to this point the fate of ethics had been tied. — Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Philosophy - The Ethics of Kant

('while severing itself from the world of objects' is a point that John Vervaeke stresses about Kant in various of his lectures. )

Each side suspecting the other of the same things — Fooloso4

But don't fall for the 'equivalence' fallacy. Only one side is based wholly on lies, even though the other side might also not always be truthful.

This is to conflate two different ideas in Aristotle. What's usually translated as 'function' is 'ergon', the special nature of what is named, e.g. a knife cuts, humans engage in soul-based rational consideration. This is different to 'telos' or 'end', the purpose of an activity. — mcdoodle

However, Aristotle's fourfold causality - formal, final, material and efficient - was assumed to be operative at the level of organisms and in the activities of human agents such as builders, was it not?

A Brief Excursion into the History of Ideas.

There's a succint description of telos in an IEP article on Aristotle's 'telos', from which:

The word telos means something like purpose, or goal, or final end. According to Aristotle, everything has a purpose or final end. If we want to understand what something is, it must be understood in terms of that end, which we can discover through careful study. It is perhaps easiest to understand what a telos is by looking first at objects created by human beings. Consider a knife. If you wanted to describe a knife, you would talk about its size, and its shape, and what it is made out of, among other things. But Aristotle believes that you would also, as part of your description, have to say that it is made to cut things. And when you did, you would be describing its telos. The knife’s purpose, or reason for existing, is to cut things. And Aristotle would say that unless you included that telos in your description, you wouldn’t really have described – or understood – the knife. This is true not only of things made by humans, but of plants and animals as well. If you were to fully describe an acorn, you would include in your description that it will become an oak tree in the natural course of things – so acorns too have a telos. Suppose you were to describe an animal, like a thoroughbred foal. You would talk about its size, say it has four legs and hair, and a tail. Eventually you would say that it is meant to run fast. This is the horse’s telos, or purpose. If nothing thwarts that purpose, the young horse will indeed become a fast runner.

Notice that 'everything' in the above discussion seems to include only things made by humans (artifacts) and plants and animals. The concept is extended to the inorganic realm, in Physics, Book II, particularly chapters 1-3 and 8. This is where Aristotle argues that natural processes and objects have intrinsic purposes. For example, he discusses how natural elements like earth, water, air, and fire have natural places to which they move. This is where the now-infamous claim is made that stones 'prefer' to be nearer the earth. Earth moves downward, while fire moves upward, each seeking its natural position in the cosmos. This movement towards their natural places is considered their telos.

This is the aspect of Aristotelian physics that was overturned (or demolished!) by Galileo and the scientific revolution. Galileo, through his experiments and observations, demonstrated that the motion of inanimate objects could be explained without reference to inherent purposes or final causes. For instance, he showed that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their composition (when air resistance is negligible) and that an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an external force, laying the groundwork for Newton's first law of motion (inertia).

This shift marked the transition from a teleological view of nature, where purpose and final causes were central, to a mechanistic view, where natural phenomena are explained through efficient causes and mathematical laws. The mechanistic approach focuses on the material and efficient causes, emphasizing the interactions and forces that bring about motion and change without invoking intrinsic purposes. The broader context was the corresponding demolition of the Ptolmaic cosmology and the earth-centred universe, the collapse of the great 'medieval synthesis'.

But then the pendulum swung too far the other way. From everything being 'informed by purpose', modern science declared that nothing is. In the physicalist view, all biological processes, including those that seem goal-directed, are ultimately reducible to physical interactions and can be fully explained by the laws of physics and chemistry. From this standpoint, teleological language (such as "purpose" or "goal") is generally seen as a shorthand for describing complex processes that can, in principle, be fully understood in non-teleological terms, and specifically in mechanistic terms. Never mind that in reality, machines are only ever built by intelligent agents - Newton's deist god was sufficiently removed from the action to be practically imperceptible insignficant. It was only a matter of time until God became 'a ghost in his own machine', so to speak. (This is the subject of Karen Armstrong's excellent 2009 book A Case for God.)

Anyways, teleology proved indispensable for biology, so it made a comeback under the neologism teleonomy, the Wiki article on which (attached) is replete with hair-splitting distinctions between 'actual' and 'apparent' intentionality (which, notice, is also the keyword that kick-started the entire phenomenological tradition.)

As Etienne Gilson noted, philosophy always seems to live long enough to bury its undertakers.

MAGA commentary on the verdict: a ‘mirror universe’, a world of ‘alternative facts’, whereTrump is the aggrieved and cheated legitimate president, and Biden the vicious dictator and subverter of the rule of law. Except that mirrors invert and image along a horizontal axis, while the Trumpworld mirror actually inverts it or turns it upside down. Hence the appropriateness of the upside-down flag motif.

“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.

The replies were even more so.

“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”

That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.

Calls for revenge, retribution and violence littered the rightwing internet as soon as Trump’s guilty verdict came down, all predicated on the idea that the trial had been a sham designed to interfere with the 2024 election. Some posted online explicitly saying it was time for hangings, executions and civil wars.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/02/far-right-mobilizing-biden-presidency?CMP=share_btn_urs

Again, I question that this outlook is 'right wing' or 'conservative'. It's no longer 'Conservative v Liberal', but those attacking the rule of law vs those attempting to uphold it, which include at least some Republicans. But then, the Republican Party as a whole has bent the knee to Trump so they bear culpability for the consequences.

There's a major OP in today's New York Times presenting evidence for a laboratory-based origin of COVID19. Authored by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.” Gift link. I am still going through it, but most of the information it contains is new to me.

Regarding the significance of teleology and its place in Aristotle's metaphysics, I happened on a very succinct explanation in a video talk by cognitive scientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. She simply says that teleology is 'an explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose which they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise'. That says a lot in very few words, as it demonstrates the sense in which reason also encompasses purpose for Aristotle, in a way that it does not for modernity.

Actually there's considerable evidence that people on the left were responsible; namely, Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser, who denied Trump's request for the National Guard. And the J6 committee was a total politicized fraud. — fishfry

Utter nonsense but at least you've made clear what side you're on. Trump watched the whole thing unfold on TV and didn't call his attack dogs off.

She was fined over $100,000. Maybe you missed this story. — fishfry

I didn't 'miss the story'. There is no 'moral equivalence' between what Clinton did or didn't do, and the many crimes that Donald Trump is now facing indictments for, and what he was twice impeached for.

As for 'respecting the rule of law', it is Trump supporters who have been sending death threats to court officials and posting the names and addresses of jurors online to encourage attacks on them. It is Trump who is encouraging his followers and minions in Congress to turn on the FBI, and attacking any judicial officers who dare try to hold him accountable. It was Trump supporters who hounded electoral officials on the baseless grounds of election fraud. There is no equivalence. Nobody on 'the left' was responsible for that day of infamy.

There may be sharp criticisms from the left and right, but denying the result of elections and attacking the rule of law should be abhorrent to both.

As noted above, an upside-down US flag is emerging as a rallying symbol for Trump supporters.

Isn't this a spectacularly awful idea? What would the the widespread adoption of an upside-down US flag communicate to the public? Wouldn't it say that Trump and Trump supporters have everything the wrong way around? That rather than respecting the national flag, and by extension the Constitution and the rule of law, that they're turning it upside down? How could this be an effective piece of political communication?

Let's hope it really catches on as I'm sure it will be a dramatically effective vote-loser.

Like that Tom Cruise movie, The Firm, where Mitch (Cruise) manages to bust the Firm on the technicalities of mail fraud.

Meanwhile an upside-down US flag is emerging as a rallying symbol for MAGA.

Who in their right mind would think that flying the US flag upside down was a symbol for anything other than an attack on the US? Is that going to win the popular vote?

hat said, your comment about Kant's "confusing equivocation" raised the question in my simple mind : is there a third (non-quibbling) Ontological category of knowledge, other than Phenomenal (sensory) & Noumenal (inference) : perhaps Intuition (sixth sense) that bypasses both paths to knowledge? — Gnomon

In esoteric philosophy there are said to be forms of gnosis or Jñāna or direct insight. They're very difficult to assess for pretty obvious reasons, as esoteric philosophy is, well, esoteric. I sometimes have the intuition that there is a missing element in Kant's philosophy corresponding to an absence of this kind of insight, but I'm not able to really pinpoint or articulate it as after all we're dealing here with some of the most difficult questions of philosophy.

That table is from the wikipedia article on ‘the analogy of the divided line’ in the Republic. It is in the section adjacent to the Parable of the Cave. It’s certainly relevant, but it was Plato’s rather than Aristotle’s.

Thanks, that is a difficult passage, although something that comes to mind is Werner Heisenberg's appeal to Aristotle's 'potentia' as a way to understand the nature of the sub-atomic realm. See Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities (although I won't comment further for fear of dragging the thread into the insoluble conundrums of modern physics, other than to say that said conundrums show that metaphysics is far from dead.)

But, then one can ask, in what sense can P, a proposition made up of words, correspond with reality made up of objects? — 013zen

Yes, that's the point I was trying to make, and you've addressed it well.

Isn't there an especial significance attached to what is 'self-moving'? That applies to organisms, generally, which distinguishes them from artifacts, which exist because of an external cause i.e. the builder.

The Aristotelian tradition draws a distinction between three basic types of living substance. These form a hierarchy in which each type incorporates the basic powers of the types below it but also adds something novel of its own to them. The most basic kind of life is vegetative life, which involves the capacities of a living thing to take in nutrients, to go through a growth cycle, and to reproduce itself. Plants are obvious examples, but other forms of life, such as fungi, are also vegetative in the relevant sense. The second kind of life is animal life, which includes the vegetative capacities of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, but in addition involves the capacities of a thing to take in information through speciali]ed sense organs and to move itself around, where the sensory input and behavioral output is mediated by appetitive drives such as the desire to pursue something pleasant or to avoid something painful. These distinctively animal capacities are not only additional to and irreducible to the vegetative capacities, but also transform the latter. For example, nutrition in animals participates in their sensory, appetitive, and locomotive capacities insofar as they have to seek out food, take enMoyment in eating it, and so forth.

The third kind of life is the rational kind, which is the distinctively human form of life. This form of life incorporates both the vegetative and animal capacities, and adds to them the intellectual powers of forming abstract concepts, putting them together into propositions, and reasoning logically from one proposition to another, and also the volitional power to will or choose in light of what the intellect understands. These additional capacities are not only additional to and irreducible to the vegetative and animal capacities, but transform the latter. Given human rationality, a vegetative function like nutrition takes on the cultural significance we attach to the eating of meals; the reproductive capacity comes to be associated with romantic love and the institution of marriage; sensory experience comes to be infused with conceptual content; and so forth. — Aristotle's Revenge, Edward Feser, p 54-55

Thanks. But, can you clarify Kant's "equivocation" for me? — Gnomon

This is a thread about Aristotle's Metaphysics. There are two fairly recent threads on Kant which might be more suitable for discussion of that isssue:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14993/kant-and-the-unattainable-goal-of-empirical-investigation/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14616/kant-on-synthetic-a-prior-knowledge-and-experience

Perl's book, mentioned above, traces the origin of the Platonic forms or ideas with Parmenides and how it is developed first by Plato and then Aristotle. Kant is much later and belongs to the modern period.

I will say something about my understanding of 'noumenal' but within that context. According to the Wiki article on noumenon, it is derived from 'object of nous', 'nous' being that seminal word in Greek philosophy translated as 'intellect'. But like a lot of those basic terms of philosophy the connotations and implications have shifted over the centuries. 'Nous' in the Aristotelian sense has a much more active role.

From the wiki article on nous

In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. For Aristotle discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways. (Wayfarer: this is a reference to "universals".) Derived from this it was also sometimes argued, in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type. By this type of account, it also came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it.

From David Bentley Hart:

In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries.

Within this context, 'noumenal' means, basically, 'grasped by reason' while sensible means 'grasped by the sense organs'. In hylomorphic dualism, this means that nous apprehends the form or essence of a particular - what is really is - and the senses perceive its material appearance. That's the interplay of 'reality and appearance'. Again from the article on Noumenon:

Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses... This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy. — Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

According to Aristotelian philosophy (and others may correct me here if I'm wrong) animals, generally, only see the material forms of things as they lack reason, which is the ability to see the forms, principles or essence of things. (Hence Aristotle's designation of humans as 'rational animals'.) This is of course nowadays regarded as archaic and superseded. I believe there's a valid distinction being made but this is a constant source of controversy, not to mention repeated references to the cleverness of Caledonian crows.

And scientific dogmatism, those who insist that only what appears to 5 of the human senses can be data for constructing knowledge; ignoring that knowledge is constructed, and the data gathered was not immediate to the senses, but already mediated by mind and re-presented as if direct from the senses. — ENOAH

:ok:

Thank you, I shall have a look.

While we’re at it - the other obvious point is that Trump has no platform. He has no policies or policy proposals. His ‘campaign speeches’ only consist of grievances, threats and lies. No rational argument can be given for why he should be considered a candidate, beyond the fact of his identity.

The hush money case is a chickenshit case. Bragg's office already looked at it and decided it was a loser. They didn't bring the case. Then the Biden administration actively worked with Bragg's office to revive and prosecute the case. — fishfry

Not true. It was a very tawdry case but the facts presented to an impartial jury resulted in a guilty verdict. The Office of the President had nothing whatever to do with it, that is a MAGA lie. Here’s a factual account of the background to the case (gift link.)

Trump is facing numerous other felony indictments plus hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties. Regrettably many of these cases don’t look like starting before the election but in any case, his political fate will be decided at the ballot box, and despite all the hype, I believe he will be soundly beaten in November.

But what is really depressing is that Trump and his minions are actively attacking the rule of law and the constitutional order, every day. They are spewing lies and spawning attacks on jury members, voting office workers, and many other federal and state officials. And yet the representatives of one of the two major political parties in America are now all in on it and coming out in support of what amounts to a political personality cult. We are witnessing a real struggle for the survival of democracy in America. It’s no longer just a contest between Democrats and Republicans. Democracy itself is on the ballot.