Reason is inescapable in the context of discursive thinking insofar as to question reason, reason is required.

And if it is not valid we cannot say it is "inferential". — Metaphysician Undercover

This is absolute nonsense. You don't seem to understand the distinction between inductive and deductive logic. Validity is a deductive matter concerning the principle that the conclusion must follow from the premises. Validity is irrelevant to inductive logic. Inductive logic concerns plausibility, inductive inferences are plausible explanations, it is not a matter of conclusions following strictly from premises.To say on that account that therefore there are no such things as inductive inferences is ridiculous.

It seems implausible that the dog tired of sniffing; my familiarity with dogs informs me that they don't generally tire of sniffing, and in the story as told the dog had been tracking the rabbit by scent the whole time. So, there I have myself just made an inductive inference which could, I acknowledge, be incorrect (as can any inductive inference) but it seems to me. given my knowledge of dogs, the most plausible explanation.

I look at synthetic a priori knowledge as coming from reflection on the general nature of our experience. So I see it in a phenomenological sense as not being (always at least) apodeictally certain.

. The rabbit didn't necessarily go down a path, logically, it could have gone anywhere, therefore the dog's conclusion was not a logical conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Already addressed; read more carefully and you might avoid further misunderstandings.

Maladapt it is. :pray: — 180 Proof

If everyone stops responding, then he might stop whinging. Or if he continues, then stop paying any attention, and the problem disappears except for him who keeps stoking it.

Right, that Kant passage supports my earlier response to @Mww. The further thought in my response was that mathematics (arithmetic) certainly seems to begin synthetically in perceptual experience, but in its more highly abstracted form could still be analytic; that is derived by analyzing the logic inherent in the basic arithmetical functions. We don't necessarily have to think that mathematics is nothing but synthetic or nothing but analytic. Black and white, either/ or thinking very often leads us astray.

This is clearly not an example of simple logic, because it is invalid. Out of many possibilities, you cannot conclude that if it's not one it's necessarily a particular one of the others. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're conflating deductive with inductive logic. The classic example, given by an ancient Greek thinker whose name escapes me at the moment, describes a dog tracking a rabbit by scent along a path; when the single path forks into three she is observed sniffing down two paths and when no scent is detected on those, immediately continuing pursuit, without bothering to sniff, down the third. This is inferential: we would express it as "if the rabbit didn't go down either of those paths it went down this one". It doesn't matter that the dog could be mistaken and that the rabbit might have gone off into the bushes; not all inferences are correct; and not discounted as inferences if they are shown to be incorrect.

And the putting them together, just is that requirement, which represents the conception of synthesis. Maybe that is a modernized version of a philosophy predicated on intentionality. I suppose a guy putting seven things in series with five other things does it for a reason. But below that intention, is the consciousness of the possibility of actually doing it. Hence, the pure transcendental form of a priori justifications. — Mww

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. It seems to me that the "possibility of actually doing it" would have been realized quite early in human evolution, roe example, due to trading practices and planning hunting and gathering groups and other common tribal tasks. I think the realization of the possibility of grouping things together would plausibly have long before any "conception of synthesis" in the evolution of human understanding.

It's a paradoxical idea. I had a long discussion about this on another philosophy forum. The idea of a unique absolute reality originates in the Greek philosophers. — Hillary

I see the idea of a unique absolute reality as following logically from the idea of an absolute reality. And there can be no real contradictions in reality of any kind. much less in an absolute reality, it seems to me.

Maybe they can't but they want to have their worldview absolute existence. The particle physicist wants his preons to be true, the theist his gods, the astrologist his system of prediction, or the Aboriginal his dreamtime. — Hillary

I agree that people do imagine the stories they believe to be absolutely true. But they can't all be, so...most of them must be wrong if one of them is right; or else they are all wrong inasmuch as they are imagined to be absolutely true if there is an absolute reality which isn't any of the stories, and even if there isn't then imagining any story to be an absolute reality is wrong in any case.

....but Kant wanted to extent those to a priori conditions, which must have nothing to do with experience.

“....But to synthetical judgements à priori, such aid is entirely wanting. If I go out of and beyond the conception A, in order to recognize another B as connected with it, what foundation have I to rest on, whereby to render the synthesis possible? I have here no longer the advantage of looking out in the sphere of experience for what I want...” — Mww

I think a good example is mathematics. Some say it is analytic a priori, others, including Kant I believe, say it is synthetic a priori. Now you say that you can't get to a twelve if you just have a seven and a five. I presume you are implying that the concept of addition is also required. If so, true enough, I suppose: but if you have seven apples and you have five apples in a separate grouping, then if you put them together you get twelve apples.

I think the basis of mathematics is counting and the basic actions of grouping what is separate (addition) and separating what is together (substraction) are fundamental with division and multiplication being slightly more abstract. Perhaps once we have the symbols to represent numbers and the four basic arithmetical functions the rest of mathematics is analytic, meaning that it just logically follows; but I can't be sure about that since I am no mathematician or philosophy of mathematics buff.

True enough, but there is a section in E.C.H.U. where he posits feelings as just another kind of experience, which, naturally, Kant denies.

You ok with all that? — Mww

Sure, but then so is seeing a tree, or causation (if we could) or anything. Hume seems to be implying that if we could see causation then we would be (rationally, empirically?) justified in believing it is real. Why not then if we feel causation?

I don't think we are disagreeing about anything, but I'm not sure what you think.

The idea of many absolute realities contradicting one another makes no sense. So, if you claim, for example that some story of Gods creating the world is absolutely true, in the sense I outlined above, and science claims that it's Big Bang account is absolutely true; they can't both be right in any absolute sense. They might be able to be coherently thought to be both true in different contextual senses, though.

Many problems arise by claiming that your objective reality should be the same for everyone. — Hillary

In the sense I mean it, no one can have any absolute (context free) objective reality so the problem doesn't arise.

But we want them to. — Hillary

Some do. Others, like me, question the very idea that the idea of anything being objectively true in any absolute (context free) sense is even coherent.

Both are equally true and objective stories. — Hillary

I don't think any of the stories necessarily are, or can be shown to be, objectively true, if by "objective" is mean 'true regardless of belief or opinion'.

This is what woke Kant up: there’s got to be a way to show the relationship between cause and effect doesn’t have to come from experience, that understanding itself can show the relation as universally necessary. So he invented a way to make it so. — Mww

As far as I remember Kant acknowledges that synthetic a priori thinking cannot arise prior to any experience, but that once experience has established it (the "synthetic" part) it is no longer dependent on subsequent experience.

For me, Hume's statement that we never see causation is correct, but his excessive focus on the visual faculty blinds him to the fact that we feel the effects of forces; the wind, the sun, the rain and so on, on our bodies, and that we also feel ourselves exerting bodily forces on things; so the idea of causation does not come solely from observed constant correlations of events.

:up:

In the light of gods, reason can be given. — Hillary

Yes, but it can never be definitive, since it always relies on subjective faith. Note, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having faith, we all do it, just that such beliefs can never be demonstrated to be true in any "objective" sense. In fact, I think there is precious little than can be so demonstrated, and even that is always dependent on context and auxilliary hypotheses or assumptions, which are themselves not demonstrable.

Right, although I think the problem was more that the ancients did not understand hygiene in the ways that we moderns do; that is they did not realize that poorly serviced public baths could become breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria. Or to put it another way: they did not even understand what it means to be poorly serviced.

I am no nominalist; I don't think "universals", or as I prefer to call them "generalities" are merely names. This is because I believe that animals also see particulars as general kinds; they are alive to difference, similarity and pattern, just as we are. This is just what pre-linguistic semiosis consists in. So I agree with you that generalities are, in a sense, "guiderails" of cognition, and not just of 'reasoned cognition" if by that you mean linguistically mediated cognition.

But language is not just an adaption, like a tooth or a claw. If you think about what is required for language to really operate, then you get into the whole field of semiotics, linguistics, and theory of meaning. — Wayfarer

I think language is an evolved semiosis, or system of symbolic signification, that grew out of the much vaster realm of pre-linguistic semiosis; pre-symbolic signification, and that it remains moored to that vaster realm of sense, and in ways that we cannot consciously fully explicate.

Go back to the passage I quoted from Maritain and read it again. Here Maritain is making a crucial point about the nature of reason.

the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real). — Wayfarer

I favour a more phenomenological approach, whereby it is the body that is directed towards things, "makes sense" of them in a space of common embodiment, and that this is not an 'inner' process at all but comes about primordially in our "being-in-the-world" (per Heidegger and Merleau Ponty). So, to my way of thinking there is no "intellect" (conceived as a kind of hermetically sealed reified faculty) that grasps "universals" (as though they were disembodied entities) as it appears in the Scholastic conception.

It's just a thought! — Agent Smith

From the heart, I hope.

Public bath facilities were one of the best contributions of the ancients to the world. — L'éléphant

Apparently more like one of the greatest vectors of disease in the ancient world (well Rome at least), since they apparently were not cleaned and the water replaced often enough

That's why instead of logos, I advocate xin! — Agent Smith

:up: The heart of reason or reason of the heart.

Actually, on further reflection, I think that the ability of animals to plan and act according to goal-directed purposes supports the idea that reason, per se, is not solely confined to the conscious intellectual operations of h. sapiens, but rather is somehow latent or potentially existent throughout the organic world. But the 'something more' that h. sapiens has, is the ability to consciously recognise that. — Wayfarer

Now that I agree with, and I think it is solely on account of our unique (as far as we know) ability to use symbolic language that we can achieve such unique reflective recognitions of our condition.

very fascinating but not germane to the point I'm arguing, which I don't believe you have responded to. — Wayfarer

I don't know what point you are referring to.

but I'm not particularly interested in it, and furthermore I think it is easily exagerrated. — Wayfarer

Well, that's an easy out for you! Probably a good idea to exercise some intellectual modesty, and don't express ill-considered opinions about subjects you are not interested in.

For those who are interested in the question of animal reasoning (which I think is pertinent to the OP because if it exists it would seem to dispel the idea that logic is something more than an adaptive faculty that has evolved through lived animal experience, rather than some transcendental insight that only humans possess) this is another suggestive article.

My view is not human-centric, but based on a rational assessment of the nature of reason. Yours appears to be based on nothing more than sentiment. — Wayfarer

You haven't answered the question as to what you think intelligence actually consists in. Also the lack of other animals' ability to speak is irrelevant, since we are discussing pre-linguistic reasoning capacities. Other animals lack the physiological structures, i.e. vocal chords, required for speech, in any case.

What evidence do you have that my view is based on sentiment? Maybe I'm just more familiar with and/ or a closer observer of animals than you are, as well as not being blinded by otherworldly wishful thinking.

Perhaps your view would broaden and deepen if you investigated the issue yourself with an open mind. You could make a start here:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=reasoning+in+animals&atb=v216-1&ia=web

This is one of the many papers on the subject:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316890553_Causal_and_inferential_reasoning_in_animals

But I'm not denying for a moment that animals have intelligence; only that they don't engage in rational inference. I can't see how that is controversial. — Wayfarer

Since I don't believe basic rational inference is dependent on possessing language I see no problem in ascribing varying degrees of capacity for it to animals.

You are defining reason only as "abstract thought" so your position assumes its conclusion, since animals obviously don't possess language and if language is required for abstraction then there you go. It should be obvious, though, that I am talking about reasoning abilities which do not rely on language, and if you deny those to any and all non-human animals, then I can only conclude that you don't know much about animals and are stuck in human-centric thinking about them.

I think that you think that it's just 'common sense' that man is a kind of primate, and continuous with other species. — Wayfarer

Thanks for imputing reasons to me which I don't hold to be primary (although they might carry some weight). My reasoning about animals reasoning ability comes from observing the behavior of animals, and most notably dogs. Judging from your comments on this issue over the years I think you have spiritualist or otherworldly-based reasons for wanting to promote human exceptionalism.

I haven't denied that humans have 'crossed a threshold" with the development of linguistic capabilities; I acknowledge that all the time. Like any tool it allows its users to do things which those who do not possess the tool, or the ability to use the tool, cannot; that much is obvious. But if you think all thought, all reasoning whatsoever, is dependent on language use, then I think your view is poverty-stricken and lacking in depth.

Such behaviours can all be explained in terms of stimulus and response, without any requirement to introduce logic. — Wayfarer

the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent. ....

Point out specifically where I have done that, or the passage from Maritain does that. — Wayfarer

You say that animals do not reason at all but that it is all just "stimulus and response" without explaining how that could work to mimic reasoning, and Maritain says that the "merely sensory psychology of animals imitates intellectual knowledge".

What would you say that intelligence is then if it doesn't consist in any reasoning ability or intellectual knowledge? It's obvious that animals do not possess discursive knowledge since symbolic language is required for that; but I don't believe that basic reasoning requires language; do you?

While I don't want to derail the thread from the OP more it already has been, for the sake of historical accuracy, Darwin himself was a teleologist. — javra

Thanks, I'll take a look at that article when I find the time. :smile:

Logic on the basic level is just simple deduction like "if not this, then that", although obviously not expressed linguistically in the case of animals.

Such behaviours can all be explained in terms of stimulus and response, without any requirement to introduce logic. — Wayfarer

I don't think so. Perhaps you could explain how you think that might work, because the Maritain passage you quoted certainly doesn't. For me it is absurd to deny intelligence to animals, when the range of species so clearly show very different levels of intelligence..

Other animals and plants do not use logic and they still function. — Metaphysician Undercover

That other animals don't use logic is an implausible assumption in my view. When I used to throw the ball for the dog onto the verandah and it went over the edge to drop onto the ground below, and he didn't see it go over, he used to look everywhere on the verandah, and when the ball was not to be found would immediately run down to look on the ground below. he didn't run off somewhere else in the garden but only looked where the ball could plausibly be, since it could only have gone off the verandah in the direction I was able to throw it. And he did this from the very first time the ball went over the edge, so it wasn't merely an acquired habit.

Of course animals don't self-reflectively use logic; that is they are not aware that they are using logic, and they don't have thoughts like "I am using logic"; but logic is everywhere inherent, obviously to greater or lesser degrees, in the perceptions of both humans and animals, if the behavior of the latter is anything to go by.

:up:

Other animals and plants do not use logic and they still function. — Metaphysician Undercover

That other animals don't use logic is an implausible assumption in my view. When I used throw the ball for dog onto the verandah and it went over the edge to drop onto the ground below, he used to look everywhere on the verandah, and when the ball was not to be found would immediately run down to look on the ground below. he didn't run off somewhere else in the garden but only looked where the ball could plausibly be. And he did this from the very first time the ball went over the edge, so it wasn't merely an acquired habit.

Of course animals don't self-reflectively use logic; that is they are not aware that they are using logic, and they don't have thoughts like "I am using logic"; but logic is everywhere inherent, obviously to greater or lesser degrees, in the perceptions of both humans and animals, if the behavior of the latter is anything to go by.

Organisms display characteristics which snowflakes and crystals do not, first and foremost homeostasis. — Wayfarer

That seems to be true, but I'm not seeing the relevance to what is being discussed.

The passage you quoted from Darwin is metaphorical, as he acknowledges. and again it's not clear what you intended it to address.

I agree with what you say; it is mere supposition that the laws of nature are invariant. I also like Peirce's idea of law as evolving habits.

OK, I think I see where you are coming from now, and I agree that telos, considered as simply denoting the seemingly invariant tendencies of things to go certain ways (what we call "laws") is everywhere to be seen in nature as we perceive it.

You still refer to these as "aims", though and that is pushing the idea further than I would. It seems the actual concrete tendencies of things do begin to look like aims when we generalize and abstract them as laws. It is easy in thought to reify the notion of a law into something which stands over and above the actual things, the phenomena and processes of nature, directing them, so to speak.

Living forms are shot through with designs, and patterns, at every level from the microcellular to the ecological.

But this doesn't necessarily imply a conscious designer, some being or entity that sweats away on designing such patterns (or beetles for that matter). It might simply be conceived of as an inherent drive or tendency in nature to give rise to progressively more elaborate patterns and designs as pure play or sport (Lila of Hindu mythology. However, ideas of ‘inherence’ are usually forbidden on the grounds that they are ‘orthogenetic’.)

Furthermore, if the design in nature is only 'apparent', then does that mean that only human agents can produce real designs? I mean, designing is something that humans obviously do, but do only humans do that? Put another way, are the only actual designs in the Universe of human origin? And if that's not so, then is there really no actual, as distinct from apparent, design anywhere at all in the Universe? It seems an absurd proposition. — Wayfarer

I think you are equivocating somewhat on the meanings of 'design' and 'pattern'. The examples in the images you showed are all biological. Patterns also form in ice crystals, the weather, desert sands, clouds and so on.

I think you're implying something about design similar to what @Javra is implying about purpose. I don't see the concept of design or purpose being meaningful without the inclusion of intention. You speak of "inherent drives or tendencies" and this echoes something of what I said to @Javra above (although I think 'drive' is moving a tad too much towards the anthropomorphic). Your phrase "play or sport" is also anthropomorphic or more properly "animomorphic", since animals also play.

So, I would say the only phenomena we know of in the Universe that we could rightly count as designs (as opposed, of course, to 'mere' patterns) are of animal origin, because only animals have intentions. And humans are obviously far and away the most prolific designers among all the animals.

There's also the example of biological evolution as having a telos. Momentarily suppose this to be true. This telos pulls towards itself. — javra

I'm not clear on what this could mean other than that things have tendencies to go in certain ways. All animals strive to survive, for example.

That offered, can you form an argument for the logical necessity of all final causes being themselves driven by, or else dependent on, sentient agency? — javra

For me, final causes consist simply in the ways things have general tendencies to go, so I'm not arguing that such tendencies logically depend on sentient agency.

You've overlooked issues regarding the contradictions that unfold when considering such monotheistic deity the arbiter of purpose/telos. — javra

I think we are arguing for and/ or from and/ or about different conceptions of 'purpose'. I don't think of the general ways things tend to go as being purposes; I reserve the concept for those things that are either consciously planned. or at least sub-consciously driven by felt needs or wants.

You've also not offered a defense of nihilism. — javra

I'm not arguing for nihilism. I think that existence is replete with meaning, but only insofar as there are percipients.

We in fact can connect particular thoughts and feelings with particular processes. — Hillary

What you wrote after this claim is a generalized conjecture, not an example of a connection of a particular thought with a particular neural process.

I was thinking about the causes of some health conditions. But even in regard to the idea we might have that neural activity causes thoughts, we still cannot connect particular thoughts with specific neural processes.

As to the alternative I at least have in mind, it's a mouthful, but here goes: Cosmic purpose/teleology could be self-consistently upheld - though not in any materialist conceptualization - in what has been termed "the One" or "the Good" as an ultimate state of reality, which is not itself a mind that thinks, wants, perceives, and judges but a non-dual (hence, lacking any dichotomy between self and otherness; hence, perfectly selfless; hence, in an important sense, a perfectly objective and non-quantitative) state of awareness (think of the eastern notion of Nirvana for one possible example: in short, not a mind), one which serves as an Aristotelian final cause as the unmoved mover of all that exists in states of duality/quantity (the "unmoved mover" read as: not a mind that has goals and hence wants, hence ends it itself pursues, but a state of pure and selfless awareness devoid of all otherness and wants ... on which all else is in either direct or indirect manners dependent but which is itself fully unconditioned, instead just being) ... which individual, naturally dualistic minds such as our own can either choose to approach (via earnest love of truth, or goodness, or impartiality, etc.) or to further ourselves from (via attempts at benefiting by means of deception, falsehoods, egotism, etc.). — javra

I'll offer that "too vague to be of any use" would only apply to something that has little to no explanatory power. To the extent that value is important to us - inclusive of notions such as right/wrong and good/bad - teleology that is neither pivoted on the of ego-centrism of individual human minds nor on the imagined cosmic presence of such a human-like mind would be of considerable conceptual usefulness. — javra

Firstly I can't see how the notion of purpose has any purchase without the accompanying idea of conscious planning, and I can't see how we can imagine conscious planning occurring in the absence of an at least sentient, if not sapient, agent.

As to the vague idea of a teleology that is neither that of an individual mind or a "cosmic' mind; I fail to see how it could have any explanatory power when it comes to human values, which I think are readily explained as being formed on account of the significance that things and entities of the world commonly have for us as embodied beings.

I'm very open to having it explained to me.

Right, Comte was indeed a very different animal than the logical positivists.