I wonder what you mean when you say that numbers are real. — Janus

That they have a common reference, that the value of a number is not a matter of opinion or choice. I would like to say 'objective' but I don't think 'objective' is quite the right term - we refer to numbers to ascertain what is objective, but they are not really known as objects except for in the figurative sense of 'object of thought' (which actually is near to the original, as distinct from Kantian, view of the meaning of ’noumenal')

I'd love to agree. But where? Where can you show me innate good without walking me through constructs? — ENOAH

The part of you that would love to agree is an indication.

Republicans, led by former president Donald Trump, are refusing to commit to accept November’s election results with six months until voters head to the polls, raising concerns that the country could see a repeat of the violent aftermath of Trump’s loss four years ago.

The question has become something of a litmus test, particularly among the long list of possible running mates for Trump, whose relationship with his first vice president, Mike Pence, ruptured because Pence resisted Trump’s pressure to overturn the 2020 election.

In a vivid recent example, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was pressed at least six times in a TV interview Sunday on whether he would accept this November’s results. He repeatedly declined to do so, only saying he was looking forward to Trump being president again.

He continued to evade the question even as the interviewer, NBC News’s Kristen Welker, reminded him that a “hallmark of our democracy is that both candidates agree to a peaceful transfer of power.”


“This is why so many Americans believe that NBC is an extension of the Democrat party at the end of the day,” Scott said at one point. “… I believe that President Trump will be our next president. It’s that simple.” — Top Republicans, led by Trump, refuse to commit to accept 2024 election results, Washington Post

**THE COUP ATTEMPT IS ONGOING**

Of course, numbers are the currency of quantification. But I don't think my previous reply to you was 'a cop-out.' I think in all likelihood you skimmed over it, and that in reality it's a live issue and also related to the OP (although I will admit that I'm not well-trained in the lexicon (dare I say jargon) of analytic philosophy.)

Certainly counting may be an act, indeed I believe it is, but that doesn't address the issue of the realness or otherwise of numbers - which is the ontological issue. And why that is significant is because of the centrality of mathematics to science, mathematical physics in particular, and because of the challenge that poses to physicalism. (I'm baffled that this is regarded as trivial.) Again I'll refer to an IEP article The Indispensability Argument in the Philosophy of Mathematics which I'm sure will be amenable to you, as it is based around an argument by Putnam and Quine, whom you probably know better than I do. So I would like to get your view of the matter:

In his seminal 1973 paper, “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf presented a problem facing all accounts of mathematical truth and knowledge. Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible.

What are these 'best epistemic theories', and why are they irreconciliable with knowledge of mathematical objects? Well, the article goes on to explain:

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects. We do not see integers, or hold sets. Even geometric figures are not the kinds of things that we can sense. Consider any point in space; call it P. P is only a point, too small for us to see, or otherwise sense. Now imagine a precise fixed distance away from P, say an inch and a half. The collection of all points that are exactly an inch and a half away from P is a sphere. The points on the sphere are, like P, too small to sense. We have no sense experience of the geometric sphere.

And further along:

(Rationalist) philosophers claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.

I think this is the nub of the issue. Our 'best epistemic theories' are, of course, naturalist - as I'm sure Quine would affirm - and are underpinned by empiricism - that knowledge originates from sensory experience. And also, there is the suggestion that mathematical ability is innate - another strike against rationalism, from the empiricist point of view.

And yet, I can't help but think that it's obvious that humans do indeed have a 'non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths' and that if that does throw shade on the view of humans as 'physical creatures', then so much the worse for it.

What say you?

But whereas you seem to be saying that these individuals are "real", I'm pointing out that they remain shorthand for an activity we can perform. — Banno

Excellent point and I will respond soon.

Rather, they are something we do. — Banno

And I don't think you understand the argument, nor want to understand it.

Actually I'm relieved that there's at least one other contributor more voluble than I :yikes: .

The historical theme that I refer to is the long aftermath of the dispute between realism and nominalism amongst the Medievals. I say that nominalism won the argument, and that, as history is written by the victors, it is now so thoroughly embedded in the philosophical lexicon that we no longer notice it, it has become axiomatic.

Due to some long-ago epiphany, I became interested in Platonic and Aristotelian realism (as I've mentioned many times). The fact that numbers and the like exist as intelligible objects strikes me as having profound philosophical importance, because, while they're indispensable to natural science, they are transcendental in the sense of being 'true in all possible worlds'. I don't believe they have a naturalistic explanation, as they are epistemologically prior to any coherent naturalism (which must assume the soundness of logic and math to establish any of its claims.)

It seems to me much modern philosophy wants to ignore this or explain it away (hence the convoluted Indispensability of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences argument by Putnam and Quine.) This is subject of one of the stock articles I now refer to What is Math (Smithsonian Magazine). James Brown, a maths emeritus, argues for the Platonist view, while the representatives of empiricism pour scorn:

Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

I think that speaks volumes! It goes on....

"Platonism", as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Ain't that the truth.

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

See, they're all actually getting close to the issue I'm talking about, but they flee screaming, because of the metaphysical implications. And nobody likes metaphysics. It's like Basil Fawlty's, 'don't mention the war'. :wink:

↪Wayfarer seems to want two sorts of quantifiers, real and exist. He's immediately committed at least to some sort of free logic. He is this giving us permission to talk of things that do not exist, but are real - like numbers. — Banno

I say it's a real philosophical distinction which has become lost due to specifics of intellectual history. I can make the case for it, but it would be a very long one. I'm not 'content with mystisicm', a term generally spat out as a pejorative, especially by analytical philosophy. But it is a real and crucial issue which overflows the bounds of propositional language (as I believe Wittgenstein hints at in the mystical aphorisms at the end of his book.)

science presents us with a cosmos that seems to be almost infinitely older and larger than humanity, — Janus

Yes, science does that, and science is a human enterprise. Please try to understand this point, I am not trying to be confrontational or arguing for its own sake.

All the problems come up when someone then asks you, Why make that choice? I don't mean just you, I mean anyone who wants to say something using words like "real" and "exist". What sort of case are philosophers supposed to make for their choices here? — J

I say there is a crucial but neglected distinction between 'what is real' and 'what exists'. It is found in apophatic theology - the stance of Paul Tillich and others that 'God does not exist' (see this brief OP.) Ultimately this goes back to the distinguishing of reality from appearance - which is at the root of the Western philosophical tradition, although generally neglected in current philosophy. Philosophically, the root can be found in Parmenides and the subsequent Platonic tradition, in which 'the One' is understood to be 'beyond existence and non-existence'. But as all of that is now gone and forgotten to anyone other than a few specialist academics, I don't expect it to be understood.

Existence refers to what is finite and fallen and cut of from its true being. Within the finite realm issues of conflict between abound between autonomy and heteronomy. Resolution of these conflicts lies in the essential realm (the Ground of Meaning/the Ground of Being) which humans are both estranged and yet also dependent on. In existence man is that finite being who is aware both of his belonging to and separation from the infinite. Therefore existence is estrangement.

Do humans prefer altruism over selfishness? Is one ethically better than the other? — Joshs

Indeed. I think Richard Polt's point is perfectly clear, which is why I often refer to it, although Heidegger's obscurantism can be used to muddy any waters one chooses.

The point about appealing to evolutionary biology in support of an ethic is exactly an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy, identified by philosopher G. E. Moore in his work Principia Ethica, occurs when one tries to define what is "good" in terms of natural properties or states of affairs, such as what is "natural" or what has evolved biologically. For example, just because a behavior like altruism has evolved in certain species as beneficial for survival does not necessarily mean such behavior can be considered morally good. Ethical norms typically involve evaluative judgments that cannot be directly derived from facts about the natural world.

It’s also a version of the naturalistic fallacy.

I was responding to your appeal to 'DNA and evolutionary psychology'. Here, you're appealing to science to account for the faculty of conscience. But it may not throw much light. Science is concerned with what can be measured, with quantitative evaluation (what is) whereas ethical judgement by its very nature concerns 'oughts'. it is not at all coincidental that Hume, one of the founding figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, recognised this dilemma.

This is from an OP by a philosopher about the shortcomings of such an approach.

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense. — Anything but Human, Richard Polt

Yes, well if you really drill this down to the very DNA or evolutionary psychology…. — Shawn

…you will run into Hume’s is/ought problem.

Hand-waving to you might be sign language to someone else. ;-)

Couldn’t you say that the innate in conscience is where the good is gleaned, where the good is constructed? — Fire Ologist

I can see some sense in which it's a 'construct' but I also believe there is an innate good, although not everyone will agree.

Do you agree with this, namely that the notion of good in inherent in the primacy of experience, and not something that can be learned by simply looking up a definition and analyzing it? — Shawn

I had rather thought that discerning the good was the role traditionally assigned to conscience, and that those who do not do good have a deficiency in that respect. And also that while this is something that might be shaped by experience, it is still essentially innate, rather than acquired - in that, someone who lacks all conscience, such as a sociopath, is not going to acquire one through experience.

The botched and imperfect world we live in, full of design flaws and disease also seems to indicate sloppy work. — Tom Storm

Always seemed to me that there was never an expectation in Christianity that 'the world' could be other than a 'vale of tears'. The point of the Christian faith is not to fix that, but to transcend it. Heaven, or the Life Eternal, is where there is no suffering or evil or corruption ('there's no sickness, toil or danger in the place to which I go.') Whereas because there's no conception of that in secular culture, we expect earthly existence to be as perfect as possible, and then blame the God we don't believe in for spoiling it.

In order to always have a secure compass in hand so as to find one's way in life, and to see life always in the correct light without going astray, nothing is more suitable than getting used to seeing the world as something like a penal colony. This view finds its...justification not only in my philosophy, but also in the wisdom of all times, namely, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Empedocles, Pythagoras [...] Even in genuine and correctly understood Christianity, our existence is regarded as the result of a liability or a misstep. ... We will thus always keep our position in mind and regard every human, first and foremost, as a being that exists only on account of sinfulness, and who's life is an expiation of the offence committed through birth. Exactly this constitutes what Christianity calls the sinful nature of man. — Schopenhauer's Compass, Urs App

a distinction that I can't make sense of — Banno

So much the worse for the ‘linguistic turn’ in analytic philosophy. Ontology concerns bigger questions, although like metaphysics it’s often regarded as obsolete in the academy.

It's (potentially) a choice between grammars, between languages. — Banno

I prefer to think of it more as an ontological question. As the SEP article on Platonism in Philosophy of Maths says:

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.

Or as Rebecca Goldstein says of Gödel:

Gödel was a mathematical realist, a Platonist. He believed that what makes mathematics true is that it's descriptive—not of empirical reality, of course, but of an abstract reality. Mathematical intuition is something analogous to a kind of sense perception. In his essay "What Is Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis?", Gödel wrote that we're not seeing things that just happen to be true, we're seeing things that must be true. The world of abstract entities is a necessary world—that's why we can deduce our descriptions of it through pure reason.

I think the resistance to this idea is because it suggests that the non-physical reality of number, hence as the SEP excerpt says challenges the prevailing naturalist dogma. But then, in the SEP entry on Idealism, which you have previously quoted, it is said that:

the idealist, rather than being anti-realist, is in fact … a realist concerning elements more usually dismissed from reality.

All of this is a case in point.

I say “numbers exist”; you say “numbers do not exist”. — J

As mentioned in the other thread, I have been very interested in this question since first posting on forums (even though I can't really get my head around the technicalities of the arguments presented in the OP so my comments here might be tangential to those.)

My intuition about the matter is simply that numbers are real but that they don't exist.

In everyday speech, of course, it is fine to say 'the number 7 exists while the square root of 2 does not'. But if I ask you to point to the number 7, what you're pointing to is a symbol. It can as easily be symbolised 'seven', 'VII', 'seben', '0b111' and so on. But while the symbolic form exists, what it symbolises, a number, is an act, namely, the act of counting, which is grasped by the mind:

"in the same way", Frege says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

And the act of counting does not exist in the sense that phenomenal objects exist. But I don't know if there's provision in the current philosophical lexicon to allow for phenomenal and intelligible objects to exist in different ways (although perhaps that's a matter for modal metaphysics.) At any rate, I'm of the view that the unspoken assumption about the matter is that existence is univocal, i.e. something either exists or it does not, whereas here I'm pointing out entities that don't exist as do sensible objects.

About the only discussion I'm aware of that elucidates this distinction (albeit in relation to universals rather than number per se) is in Russell's Problems of Philosophy>The World of Universals:

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. ...We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'....In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.

We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless.

My bolds. My sense is that rational thought is shot through with these kinds of relations, that they hold reasoned argument together - something that we don't notice because we look through them, rather than at them. So in that sense, numbers and universals are real as the constituents of reason - athough not, as conceptualism says, as 'products of the mind', for the reason that Russell gives in the bolded phrase.

I believe that this supports what I am calling the philosophy of phenomenological idealism as outlined in The Mind-Created World op - that the so-called 'external world' is held together by such rational cognitive acts.

This is a way of looking at human consciousness and intelligence, but it doesn't mean much since we are such a tiny fraction of the cosmos, — Janus

We’re the only ‘tiny fraction of the cosmos’ who know what that means. It’s amusing in the extreme that objective science, which is a cognitive mode only available to h. Sapiens, then declares its authors insignificant in the ‘grand scheme’ - a grand scheme that is their own mental creation!

(I have read that that Tipler book is unbridled nonsense, but the Tipler and Barrow book The Cosmic Anthropic Principle seems reasonably well-regarded.)

I think I’m with Gödel (but it’s only a hunch.) I believe that there are real abstracts.

And whether there is or is not a ‘Platonic universe’ depends on who you ask, right?

So, if you want to accept N as a mathematically realist Platonic abstraction, it works. However, I have no counterargument to the idea that N can also be viewed as just abstract nonsense. — Tarskian

What about applied mathematics? The 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'? The fact that mathematical predictions enable discovery of natural facts otherwise unknowable? Don't they indicate that mathematics has some real traction? Get your sums wrong, and your lunar lander crashes. That ain't abstract.

So, N is a preexisting abstraction. The truth about N, called "true arithmetic", is also deemed to exist independently of any mathematical theory. — Tarskian

I have only a terminological question as unlike the other learned contributors here I have no formal training in mathematics. However I'm interested in the ontology of number.

You say that the 'truth about N is deemed to exist independently of any mathematical systems'. My terminological question is, is 'exist' a correct choice of words in this context? You could very well say it is real independently of mathematical theory, but in this context I think there's an intelligible distinction between 'exists' and 'is real'. I say this, because I question whether abstractions such as numbers can be said to exist in the sense that sensible phenomena exist. But they are real, as they're the same for any observer - but they're only perceivable to a rational intelligence, so they are real in a different sense to the proverbial tree or apple of metaphysical debates.

Hope it's not a daft question.

I have never encountered an idea of "cosmic purpose" in my readings of Buddhist texts — Janus

Nevertheless, 'dharma' is both 'duty' and also 'law'. In other words, it's not simply an individual prerogative or obligation, but is inherent in the natural order (the original root being 'what upholds' or 'holds together').

And besides, isn't science itself predicated on there being a natural order? I know nowadays that the whole concept of natural law is called into question, but in my view that's mainly because it's a metaphysical issue.

As a reality for us it remains an idea. What it might be as mind-independent reality is of course unknowable (per Kant). — Janus

I agree, with the caveat that it is not a personal idea existing in an individual mind.

Without that idea of intention, the notion of purpose seems reducible to simply the way things behave, or a kind of immanent cosmic balance as presented in the notions of dharma and Dao. — Janus

But as I pointed out, some degree of intentionality - not conscious intentionality, of course - is implicit in the activities of all organic life. That is what Aristotle and Greek philosophy classified as 'self-originated movement': organisms have an internal organising principle which acts towards an end, whereas the organising principle of artifacts, for example, is imposed from without by the artificer.

This kind of thinking was abandoned with the advent of Galilean physics, where the whole antiquated superstructure of Aristotelian physics, with it's 'natural places' for stones and the like, was discarded. The 'new science' sought to provide explanations solely in terms of the mechanical relations of measurable particulars, eschewing any idea of purpose. And that works fine as far as physics is concerned, but when it is applied to organic life, it is invariably reductionist, as it omits the purposeful activities that characterise even simple life-forms.

Subsequently, a neologism 'teleonomy' was devised by a biologist in 1958 to allow for the apparent purposeful activites of organisms (similar to Richard Dawkin's 'apparent' design in nature, which is not co-incidental.) But it was introduced to deal with the inescapably goal-directed nature of virtually all biological activity. 'Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.’ Today (written in the 1930's) the mistress has become a lawfully wedded wife. Biologists no longer feel obligated to apologize for their use of teleological language; they flaunt it. The only concession which they make to its disreputable past is to rename it ‘teleonomy’.

But all of these philosophical considerations seem out-of-scope for this OP, so I'll leave it for now.

Purpose is like the concept of cause and effect. It doesn't exist in the empirical world. It comes from the human mind i.e. imagination, desire, motives or will. It is psychological in nature.
— Corvus
I agree, pretty much. — tim wood

Right - like I said, nothing wrong with purpose, so long as it's mine. Anything like 'purpose' in the abstract - too hard.

Yes, not a good choice of links. I was thinking of 'man as microcosm' which is a theme in some philosophies. So I'll try again. The point of a 'cosmic philosophy' is not that it 'benefits' the cosmos, but that it makes sense of it, that mind and cosmos have some common ground or basis. It is of course a truism that the dissolution of the medieval synthesis and the scientific revolution completely shattered the traditional Western sense of the cosmos (per Alexander Koyré). And that the image of man in the early 20th century was widely understood as the 'outcome of chance and necessity' (per Jacques Monod), and that we became kind of exiles in an indifferent universe (per existentialism). How to re-imagine any kind of cosmic order, knowing what we now know? Actually the book title that comes to mind is 'At Home in the Universe', Stuart Kauffman, which attempts to do so on a scientific basis. Perhaps Terrence Deacon's book is another.

But there's something even deeper than that, but more simple: the resonance of mind and world as I tried to convey in that overlooked quote from David Bentley Hart - that 'the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect'. Considered alongside the argument in Pinter's book, Mind and the Cosmic Order, there is indeed an order, and mind is foundational to it. But it's never an object of analysis in the scientific sense (per David Chalmers). That's also where phenomenology and the emphasis on the reality of first-person experience is important.

I can make no sense of a grand scheme without positing a grand schemer, a grand designer without a grand designer or a grand purpose without a grand purposer. — Janus

That might be due to your cultural heritage, might it not? Buddhists have no such difficulty. Granted, they would also probably not talk in terms of a 'cosmic purpose', but it is at least implicit in their cosmologies, without a director to supervise the whole show. But in Western culture, we're caught up in this kind of Hegelian dialectic of theism (thesis), atheism (anti-thesis) and an emerging synthesis (whatever that turns out to be).

I've always been attracted to Keats's -- what? observation? suggestion? -- that the world is "a vale of soul-making". Through suffering we grow a soul, and thus become more fully human, more than we were when we were born. I think that's the idea, and it's interesting to cast that Greek idea in these terms -- it's the growth not of your body but of your soul, that matters. — Srap Tasmaner

:clap:

Whether this somehow benefits the universe in any way other than it possibly leading to you directly benefiting other proximal beings and/ or your environment, remains obscure to me. Would even benefiting the whole Earth make any appreciable difference to the Cosmos as a whole? I can't see any way to coherently understand how it could. Perhaps you can enlighten me? — Janus

Isn’t that the kind of intuition found in many forms? “Acting in accordance with the Tao”? There’s also such a thing as religious anthropology which asks precisely this question - see for instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kadmon . It won’t appeal to everyone but I mention it as representative of this theme.

I do notice the unquestioned adoption of subjectivism in much of the above. Purpose is OK, but only if it’s mine.

This dharma/logos, whence? — tim wood

It’s axial age philosophy, going back to the origins of historical cultures, and their attempt to discern reason, in the larger sense. Of course we can’t re-adopt or go back to that period, we’re separated from it by millenia, but I think in relation to the question posed in the OP, that it’s important to grasp what the question meant then, and what has changed. Which I tried to articulate in my first post, from the perrspective of the history of ideas, although I was rather disappointed by the initial response.

Thank you for your kind words. I will only (gently) observe my view that philosophy proper ought to be concerned with such deep questions, even if out of keeping with the zeitgeist.

that the lights come on when mind is. No mind no world. And purpose comes with – or is invented by – mind. — tim wood

I also want to circle back to this remark in the OP. As I will continue to say to anyone on this forum, a recent book by mathematics professor emeritus (now deceased) Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order throws this expression into much greater depth. But it also dispels the anthropocentric illusion that the mind of rational sentient beings alone generates this order. There’s a fascinating discussion of cognition in fruit-flies, showing how they are believed to perceive in gestalts, comprising the aspects of their world that are meaningful to them.

“The meaning of a sensation is something primary and biologically given. There is no need to interpret the feelings of hunger and thirst, for example. The meaning of a sensation is embedded in the sensation itself. It may be said that a sensation is its meaning. Primary feelings are genetically given, and constructed in the course of gestation just as organs are. They are “standard equipment” in every animal body.”

— Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics by Charles Pinter

He elaborates in detail how this is generally true for all organisms, h sapiens included. So the philosophical point I want to make is that this process is much more than a matter of the individual’s mind ‘creating’ or ‘inventing’ meaning or purpose. We are embedded in a psychosomatic process which stretches back to the origins of evolution itself. Of course nowadays, many biologists and philosophers of science realise this, but I still think it’s an under-appreciated point. The structure of the mind - yours, mine, anyone’s - comprises these layers of awareness and sensation, from the most basic organic functionality up to conscious thought (and beyond)! So while it’s true that mind is inexorably involved with this process, it’s simplistic to say that the mind simply invents it or devises it. There are ‘thoughts we can’t get outside of’, to allude to an essay by Thomas Nagel. As is well-known, I believe this line of thought leads inevitably to a kind of phenomenological idealism. And I see the shortcoming of the strictly naturalist attitude as not recognising our embeddedness in the process of living, of imagining that we’re standing apart from it and judging it as object to us, when in fact our minds have a fundamental role in creating that order.

Would you agree with me that teleology is an ancient attempt to make sense and that it is not of any great use today, nor since, say, Christians persuaded the world that God made nature? Or at least since Galileo? — tim wood

Nope.

However, you also ought to consider that purpose or intentional action also comes into existence with the very most primitive organisms, which act with purpose to preserve their existence.
— Wayfarer
And if I call this an anthropomorphic attribution? — tim wood

Not at all. It's the signal difference between any living and non-living thing. A crystal does nothing itself to maintain itself or to grow, even if it persists and grows. A cell must continuously act in order to do the same.

It all generally coalesces around the idea: "Oh, isn't the modern period hideously ugly and consumerist.' — Tom Storm

That is a caricature, and also not very perceptive. The modern world, and modern culture, offer more opportunities for growth, exploration, fulfilment, and individuation than any previous era. It is an incredible time to be alive. But it has it's shadow side, the things it doesn't see, or has lost, without really recalling what. (Although there is also no doubt that a great deal of modern consumer culture, like the Pacific Ocean's great Garbage Patch, *is* hideously ugly.)

Above I tried to say that my purpose is to be good (and not bad) and to be as perfect as chance will allow. But even with that, I have the question as to why that would become either a purpose, or even my purpose, thus strongly implying something primordial even to that. Suggestions? — tim wood

One can live a satisfactory life without a sense of over-arching purpose. Stoic philosophy for example didn't generally envisage an after-life, but still had a conception of eudomonia, right conduct leading to impeturbability. But again, very different to the hedonistic ethos native to liberalism (and maybe the reason why stoicism is attracting an audience.)

But I've always been drawn to cosmic philosophies, which are somewhat religious in nature. Not necessarily theistic, and in the sense of a cosmic-director God not at all, but something nearer the convergence of dharma and logos - that by discovering and being true to your purpose, you are doing your part in the grand scheme, and also discovering the reason of existence in a sense greater than the instrumental.

It’s often said – not in so many words – that there exists an X such that 1) X provides purpose in the world, and 2) if there be no X, then there is no purpose, that the world is without purpose. By purpose I tentatively mean, subject to adjustment, that which gives ultimate underlying meaning and significance. — tim wood

Hi Tim - splendid question. In response to the first part, consider this snippet (originally from David Bentley Hart's review of a book by Daniel Dennett, but serves admirably as a summary of the nub of the issue):

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.

I think the crucial change to the modern worldview co-incided with the scientific revolution and the advent of Galilean and Newtonian physics. The perspectival shift wasn't necessarily an intended consequence of that, but the world concieved as comprising fundamentally material bodies obeying solely physical laws, discernable by objective science, was a momentious shift in the conception of the Universe (and I won't say 'the Cosmos', because the Cosmos is by definition 'a unified whole', and today's universe is not that.)

The questions here are, then, what is purpose (in itself), where does it come from, what is its ground? Or, what exactly gives it all meaning, makes it all worthwhile? — tim wood

So, in the context of pre-modern philosophy, it was simply assumed that everything exists for a reason, and that this reason is discernable by nous, intellect. The philosopher, in particular, was one who discerned reason, but in the pre-modern sense, which included the telos of particulars, the reason why they came into being in the first place. Whereas the naturalist account comprises trying to discern only a material causal sequence, leaving out the broader sense of reason as the ancients understood it.

An anticipation of this distinction can actually be found in the Phaedo:

One day...Socrates happened to hear of Anaxagoras’ view that Mind directs and causes all things. He took this to mean that everything was arranged for the best. Therefore, if one wanted to know the explanation of something, one only had to know what was best for that thing. Suppose, for instance, that Socrates wanted to know why the heavenly bodies move the way they do. Anaxagoras would show him how this was the best possible way for each of them to be. And once he had taught Socrates what the best was for each thing individually, he then would explain the overall good that they all share in common. Yet upon studying Anaxagoras further, Socrates found these expectations disappointed. It turned out that Anaxagoras did not talk about Mind as cause at all, but rather about air and ether and other mechanistic explanations. For Socrates, however, this sort of explanation was simply unacceptable:

"To call those things causes is too absurd. If someone said that without bones and sinews and all such things, I should not be able to do what I decided, he would be right, but surely to say that they are the cause of what I do, and not that I have chosen the best course, even though I act with my mind, is to speak very lazily and carelessly. Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause. (99a-b)" — IEP

And in much ancient philosophy, it was taken for granted that there was, as Hart says, a kind of sympathy between nous and Cosmos. Again, the particular ability of the philosopher or sage was to discern this relationship. It is, of course, vastly different when mind is regarded as a consequence or output of the very material processes which it is seeking to discern - it reverses the perspective, which creates 'the hard problem'.

My own answer, briefly, is that the lights come on when mind is. No mind no world. And purpose comes with – or is invented by – mind — tim wood

However, you also ought to consider that purpose or intentional action also comes into existence with the very most primitive organisms, which act with purpose to preserve their existence. This is one of the insights of biosemiotics, and (from phenomenology) the idea of the 'lebenswelt' or living-world of organisms: their world (and ours) comprises lived meaning, which are neither precisely 'in' the world or 'in' the mind but arise as an interplay of self-and-world. Whereas, the objective stance naively assumes that the world really exists as no mind perceives it - the so-called 'mind-independent world' - and it is the sciences' task to ever enlarge the understanding of that, not seeing the hidden metaphysical flaw that this entails. (Although as noted, biosemiotics, and also phenomenology, are aware of that, an awareness which is gradually expanding.)

Does Kastrup view his 'dissociated alters' as Other Minds in that sense? — Gnomon

Are different bodies of water ‘other waters’? The theory is, that each individual’s particular memories, proclivities, likes and dislikes is what differentiates one from another. Hence the idea of union, henosis as the culmination of philosophy in Greek philosophy.

Henosis for Plotinus (204/5–270 CE) was defined in his works as a reversing of the ontological process of consciousness via meditation (or contemplation) toward no thought (nous or demiurge) and no division (dyad) within the individual (being). As is specified in the writings of Plotinus on Henology,[note 2] one can reach a tabula rasa, a blank state where the individual may grasp or merge with The One. This absolute simplicity means that the nous or the person is then dissolved, completely absorbed back into the Monad.

It was incorporated into Christian theology by the Greek-speaking Fathers, with the crucial caveat that according to the Christian doctrine, the individual soul eternally maintains its identity, which, according to them, is lost in other forms of mystical union, Plotinus included. Although that is a recondite argument!

Those "Other Minds" may filter information about True Reality through their own private or communal prejudices. — Gnomon

Kastrup's 'dissociated alters'.

But that doesn't make Theodosius Dobzhansky's statement any less valid, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." — wonderer1

Indeed not. Interesting that Dobzhansky also wrote quite a religious book called the Biology of Ultimate Concern which discusses religious and philosophical ideas in relation to evolution. Synopsis here.

while the universe is surely not geocentric, it may conceivably be anthropocentric. Man, this mysterious product of the world's evolution, may also be its protagonist, and eventually its pilot. In any case, the world is not fixed, not finished, and not unchangeable. Everything in it is engaged in evolutionary flow and development.

Human society and culture, mankind itself, the living world, the terrestrial globe, the solar system, and even the “indivisible” atoms arose from ancestral states which were radically different from the present states. Moreover, the changes are not all past history. The world has not only evolved, it is evolving.

That also resonates with Julian Huxley's evolutionary humanism:

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately — Julian Huxley, Evolution and Meaning

Even the randomness of mutations is questionable — wonderer1

So if it’s not random, and indeed these findings are

challenging the prevailing paradigm that mutation is a directionless force in evolution.

Then what is it that provides ‘direction’? Aren’t we back to orthogenesis, that being ‘evolution in which variations follow a particular direction and are not merely sporadic and fortuitous’? That is a very different picture to orthodox neo-Darwinism. I asked ChatGPT for a synopsis:

Neo-Darwinian theory, which is essentially the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics, focuses on natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow as the main drivers of evolution. It emphasizes the role of random mutations, which are then acted upon by natural selection, leading to adaptations that increase the fitness of organisms in their environments.

Orthogenesis, on the other hand, is an evolutionary hypothesis suggesting that life has an inherent tendency to evolve in a unilinear direction towards some kind of predetermined goal or ideal form. This concept implies that evolution is guided by an internal or directional force rather than by random mutations and environmental pressures.

The key divergences between these two viewpoints are:

1. **Directionality**: Neo-Darwinian theory views evolution as non-directional, driven by random mutations and natural selection based on environmental pressures. Orthogenesis posits a direction or goal to evolution, implying a kind of intrinsic purpose or end-state.

2. **Role of Mutations**: Neo-Darwinism sees mutations as random events that provide raw material for natural selection to act upon. Orthogenesis often downplays the role of random mutations, suggesting instead that evolutionary changes are guided by inherent trends.

3. **Adaptation**: Neo-Darwinian evolution emphasizes adaptation through natural selection as a key driver of species change, while orthogenesis might lead to traits that do not necessarily enhance survival or reproductive success but fit an internal direction or trend.

Orthogenesis has largely fallen out of favor in mainstream biology because it lacks empirical support and doesn't align well with our understanding of genetics and evolutionary processes. The neo-Darwinian framework, which is well-supported by genetic evidence, has become the dominant paradigm in evolutionary biology.

But the times they are a’ changing. I would say that orthogenetic has fallen out of favour more for philosophical reasons, than for empirical, as it re-introduces the whole idea of intentionality and indeed ( :yikes: ) something like intelligent design.

There have been a couple of references provided on the Forum the last year or so suggesting a shift in favour of a more orthogenetic view (I don’t have time to dig for them right now but might later.) And philosophically, that is definitely a challenge to the prevailing paradigm.