It turned out I was wrong about that. The actual story concerned students at some medical faculty who were convinced by Descartes' philosophy that animals don't feel pain, and flayed them alive, which then got mis-translated as something Descartes did. It wasn't Descartes himself, which I did note that at the time.

Not sure what is being asked. I mean, what aspects of physical processes would, if absent, not in some way degrade the subjective experience? — noAxioms

When you say:

It presumes that human consciousness is a purely physical process (physicalism), and thus a sufficiently detailed simulation of that physics would produce humans that are conscious — noAxioms

This runs smack into the 'hard problem of consciousness', which is that no description of physical processes provides an account of the first-person nature of consciousness. Put another way, there are no subjects of experience modelled in physics or physical descriptions, physics is wholly concerned with objects.

//another way of putting it is, if it's a simulation, then who is subject to the illusion? A simulation is not what it appears to be, it is comparable to an illusion in that respect. But illusions and simulations only effect a consciousness that mistakes them for being real.//

It presumes that human consciousness is a purely physical process (physicalism), and thus a sufficiently detailed simulation of that physics would produce humans that are conscious — noAxioms

Which aspects of physical processes correspond with subjectivity?

It's true, there would be no fools gold, were there no actual gold.

I would explain my position further but it would be a complete digression from the thrust of this thread.

And at the end of the day, he'd be lionized. :lol:

CNN reports that Donald Trump is running on the platform of defending January 6th, promising to release those jailed for ransacking the Capital if he is elected.

Are a majority of electors really going to endorse the January 6th assault on the Capital as a legitimate political protest? He's turning the election into a referendum on whether Biden really won. Sure a percentage of Republican voters accept that he didn't, but that percentage in no way comprises a majority of the electorate. Trump only won 60% of the vote in many of the primaries he carried, meaning there's a large percentage of Republican voters who won't vote for him, let alone the swing vote and independents. On top of all that, he's declaring that if he isn't elected, 'it's going to be a bloodbath'. 'IF I DON'T GET WHAT I WANT EVERYONE IS GOING TO SUFFER!!!' How can that amount to a winning strategy?

Is that so? Sobering. Anyway, probably not the place for this discussion, I just had the urge to draw JGill's attention to that article. (Oh, and there's also the infamous incident where he allegedly threatened Karl Popper with a poker.)

See this. Originally published and endorsed by the UK Wittgenstein Society.

:clap: Fantastic ideas, if you have the literary chops I'm sure it would make a riveting read, although I daresay difficult to craft.

the elevation of man's ideas to divine status. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's one of the themes of Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, which I mentioned.

But when I think about what preceded it, I do not find myself longing to return to the Good Old Days. — Ludwig V

Quite. I'm not pushing for a return to a golden past. It's more along the lines of a forgotten wisdom.

Language is pragmatic, and has nothing to "say" about the world. It is a tool for discovery. It "stands in" for things in the world. It is not that enigmatic terms like ineffability, ultimate reality, nirvana, the sacred, the holy, and so on are nonsense. — Astrophel

I think Buddhism is far better at mapping these ideas of what can and cannot be said - much more so than 20th century philosophy, although to explore it would be beyond the scope of the thread. Suffice to point to the 'parable of the raft', an early Buddhist text, in which the Buddha compares his instruction to a raft, thrown together out of twigs and branches, necessary to cross the river, but not to be clung to as an ultimate. I think it contrasts with the absolutism of Judeo-Christian culture. Anyway, that's a major digression as far as this thread is concerned, I won't pursue it, but thanks for your replies.

I will let one of the logicians tackle that one!

Well, it's on the right track, although it's highly truncated, isn't it? Agree that Feser's articles are useful on the subject.

Regarding potentiality and actuality, there's a Wikipedia entry on that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality

I'm interested in Aristotle's idea of 'potentia' as things which might exist, but are latent or potential until they're actualised. It describes the 'domain of possibility', which is different to things that can't or will never exist. See the article for further discussion.

hmmm. I kind of see what you mean but I think it's tangential to their main point. There is a preview available via Amazon, that might cast a bit more light on the book's aim.

I can't see it as being relevant to pure mathematics. It's more about the tendency towards objectification and quantification dominating our worldview. It's basically a criticism of 'scientism'.

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, Evan Thompson, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser - published 5th March.

I wonder if there should be (if there isn't already) a thread on (dare I say it) alternative accounts of god which are not personal or anthropomorphic? — Tom Storm

Good idea, although on a secular forum, it's rather like tossing bits of bloodied meat into the Piranha River. ;-)

In addition to Leontiskos' suggestions above, I found a rather good text-book excerpt on the topic, see here (.pdf).

BTW for some light entertainment I'm sure anyone interested in this thread will like this trailer:

Derrida and his criticism of Heidegger is the "final" critique, isn't it. — Astrophel

It might be in some worlds, but not in mine.

What is it we are liberated from? Knowledge assumptions that clutter perception. What is knowledge? It is essentially pragmatic. To know is to enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world. — Astrophel

The over-arching issue of modernity, and of human existence generally, is the illusion of otherness, the sense of separateness and apart-ness that is part of the very condition of being born. As you suggest, Zen has bearing on this - which is why, I think, Heidegger acknowledges it (in the well-known anecdote of him being found reading one of D T Suzuki's books and praising it. Recall that Suzuki was lecturing at Columbia University during the latter half of Heidegger's career and was a contemporary. There was also a considerable exchange of ideas between Heidegger and the Kyoto School.)

But Zen is an exotic tradition and can't simply be assimilated or appropriated by Western culture, while Heidegger, as I understand it, wished to maintain the philosophical dialogue within the bounds of the Western tradition. But nevertheless the convergence of phenomenology and existentialism with Buddhist praxis has become a factor in current discourse (mainly through publication of The Embodied Mind but also in other works.)

Anyway, I've spent some time with Japanese Buddhists, and the point of their culture is precisely to 'enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world' but to do so whilst fully mindful of both its transience and its beauty. They have ways of understanding the centrality of 'the unmanifest' (mu) without absolutizing it. That is what their culture is, being able to maintain that, and it's still largely lacking in Western culture, and one of the main reasons the West has turned to Zen as a meaningful philosophy.

Agree you're not preaching positivism, but the 'all metaphysics is bad metaphysics' comes dangerously close. Many depictions of metaphysics in modern philosophy are poisoned in my view.

I think the idea of meaning being defined by social practice causes particular problems for nominalists. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That essay, by Hochschild, is about the momentous implications of the defeat of Aristotelian realism for Western culture. History being written by the victors, we tend not to be able to see that, because of course nominalism is true. It is foundational to modern culture.

Here's a rather abstruse idea but bear with me. I've noticed that there's a topic in history of ideas, under the heading of 'the union of knower and known'. If you google that phrase, nearly all the returns are about Thomism, Averroes, and other medievals. Of course a very large and abstruse topic, but the gist is this: that in classical metaphysics, and in hylomorphic dualism, the ability to 'grok' the Forms, which is the sole prerogative of reason, is an antidote to the 'illusion of otherness' that I mention in my reply above. It is a holistic vision, which is very much the thrust of that Hoschschild quote. Metaphysics, in that context, is not a dry textbook of scholastic definitions and dogmas, but a grounding vision, a way of being-in-the-world, but one that has been long forgotten, on the whole.

There's a copy of Secular Philosophy online here. I wouldn't recommend the book, the title chapter is the only one of interest in my view, the remainder are essays on various topics.

(Technically, I think Barfield was an 'anthroposophist', a follower of Rudolf Steiner, who broke with the Theosophical Society. I have his Saving the Appearances in my pile of unread books ;-) )

I frequently refer to that book, particularly the chapter Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which I have reproduced online for the sake of discussion. His arguments in that chapter for the sovereignty of reason are important and can also be related to the 'argument from reason', which is significant especially because Nagel himself doesn't defend belief in God.

As to the plight of contemporary philosophy, I have benefitted greatly from one of the first books I read when I started posting on forums, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. There's a useful abstract here which also contains links to other reviews. (I suppose Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is of a similar ilk.) But then, I started reading philosophy as part of a youthful quest for enlightenment, my overall approach is more influenced by theosophy (small t, I was never a member of the Society) than philosophy proper. The main historical narrative that I'm following are the reasons behind the philosophical ascendancy of scientific materialism. I find *some* convergence with themes in postmodern philosophy, but I'm not well read in it, or in modern philosophy generally - my undergraduate honours were in comparative religion.

What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement. — Janus

:up: Couldn’t have said it better.

so the idea here is this: True, reality ha(s) an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole, but reality is phenomena. All phenomena. Anything posited beyond this is just bad metaphysics. Where is the justification to invent realities beyond what is given? — Astrophel

You're familiar with the 'myth of the given'? It critiques the view that knowledge is based on a foundation of given sensory experience, saying that all perception is conceptually mediated; that is, our understanding and interpretation of sensory data are always shaped by our prior knowledge, beliefs, and concepts. So there can be no pure or immediate knowledge derived directly from sense data. I don't see how that can be avoided. And your reference to 'bad metaphysics' sounds like A J Ayer!

Sorry about that, got caught by an editing glitch. I was only going to add that the image of 'our father in heaven' is ubiquitous in ancient religions, as I think I've said before, the name 'Jupiter' is an adaption of the proto Indo-European 'dyaus-pitar', which means 'sky-father'. (A 'pagan' deity but nevertheless what many have in mind.) But then for a great part of its history, Biblical religion was addressed to illiterate agrarian and farming communities, and had to be presented through myth and allegories that this audience would understand. It's anachronistic in our post-industrial technocratic culture. The mystical stream within Christianity is somewhat detached from that, which is why the mystics often skirt with, or even are accussed of, heresy.

The meaning of Aquinas ceasing from writing is conjecture but it has parallels in other religious traditions.

My bad for mentioning qm. It has derailed many a thread.

f god is the creator and sustainer of our reality then it must be that case that before creation, before existance and causality, there was nothing but god. — Tom Storm

(I'm bracketing this response as I don't want to derail the conversation about the OP. The popular image of God as a kind of cosmic director or literal sky-father is deeply entrenched in culture and is typically the target of athiest polemics. But it's telling that David Bentley Hart, whom you mentioned, is generally dismissive of theistic populism and personalism and its representations in such movements as intelligent design and creationism. The crucial and difficult thing to understand, is the sense in which God is not any thing. The 'nothing' that is at the ground of 'creation from nothing', is not 'before the big bang' in a temporal sense, but a fecund field which appears to us as nothing because of not being situated or existent in time or space. But it is nevertheless that (not that there is a 'that') from which everything emanates and to which everything returns. 'When (Augustine) cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?” he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.' (The Divine Nature: Being and Goodness, Scott McDonald, in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine.) It is not a 'that' or a 'this' of any kind, certainly not a 'divine engineer' or the deistic 'first cause' who kick-starts a process but then lets it run on its own accord (which is where so many atheist polemics, and theistic apologetics, are far off base). My intuition about Aquinas is that at the end of his career, when he fell into an ecstatic state and declared 'compared with that I have seen, all I have written seems as straw', it was because of direct realisation of that reality. In Aquinas this is naturally interpreted through the prism of Christian faith, but there are comparable realisations of the 'divine no-thing' in the philosophy of Plotinus and even the śūnyatā of Buddhism - which is not to say they're "all the same" as the subject matter is beyond comparison.)

The way I've come to think of 'intelligible objects' is through the expression that they are 'in the mind, but not of it'. This suggests that while forms (or essences) can only be known or apprehended by a rational mind, they are not simply constructs or inventions of the mind; they are not 'the product of' the human mind. Instead, forms have a reality independent of the human mind; they inhere in things themselves, and our minds have the capability to grasp or recognize these forms through observation, reasoning, and abstraction.

The mistake of modern thinking is to regard particular objects (the proverbial tree or apple or chair) as 'mind-independent', when the act of knowing what each thing is, is itself an intellectual act, which is obviously mind-dependent. This error relies on the so-called 'view from nowhere', the conceit that one can rise above all particular acts of knowing to see material things as they are in themselves. It is a foundational error within empiricism, because particulars are not anything 'in themselves' in the sense that modern objectivism posits. They have no inherent reality, their reality is imputed to them by the observer. (This also shows up, needless to say, in quantum physics.)

Speaking of Frege, he obtains to a somewhat similar view with respect to the reality of intelligible objects:

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he 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." '

Furthermore in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic he says that 'the laws of truth are authoritative because of their timelessness: "[the laws of truth] are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this, that they are authority for our thought if it would attain to truth." — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm,Tyler Burge

Plato lives! :party:

IT is over there, but this intimation of real Being is somehow IN the "presence" of the encounter. Where does this come from? It comes from me, the perceiver. This "sense" of "absolute being" is me. — Astrophel

Is it because you know what it is? I've been reading a book on classical metaphysics, which says that the basis of the forms is that they are the what-it-is-ness of a particular. So you know a post as a post, because you recognise it as such. To a post itself, it is nothing, of course, because it's an inanimate object, so its form is imposed on it by the fencemaker, but the same general idea applies to particulars of other kinds - they exist insofar as they exemplify a form, which is what makes them intelligible. If they had no form, they wouldn't be anything. Of course, all of this is nowadays regarded as archaic, but often without much knowledge of what, precisely, has been rejected. Suffice to say for the purposes of this discussion, and your comment above in particular, that the pre-moderns did not regard the world as being 'mind-independent' in the way that moderns reflexively do, which is what engenders the modern 'problem of knowledge' that we're all continually running up against. A comment from an essay on the consequences of nominalism in modern thought:

In doing away with forms, Ockham did away with formal causality. Formal causality secures teleology—the ends or purposes of things follow from what they are and what is in accord with or capable of fulfilling their natures. In the natural world, this realist framework secures an intrinsic connection between efficient causes and their effects—an efficient cause produces its effects by communicating some formality: fire warms by informing objects with its heat. ....

Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional (i.e. scholastic) realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. — What's Wrong with Ockham, Joshua Hochschild

The Speck of Dust, Leonid and Friends

At the same time, I think Aquinas is a really smart dude, so I'm like "what am I missing about his argument?" — NotAristotle

Does he say 'there could have been a time when nothing existed?' or are you imputing that to him. The argument, as you've provided, and which is a fair paraphrase, doesn't claim that.

We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not.

He's simply observing that all things 'found in nature' are temporally de-limited, i.e. they have a beginning and an end in time. They don't exist 'by necessity' but only as a matter of contingency. He goes on:

Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now, if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing.

I concede, the 'at one time there could have been....' might be speculative. But something to consider is that, if the Universe had existed eternally, and everything in it has a finite lifespan, then again, nothing would exist now, as everything that could have existed, would have already perished, as the amount of time involved is infinite, and no addition of finite durations can add up to an infinite sequence of time. (This is not stated explicitly in the argument, but it is part of the background to the family of arguments).

(You might also peruse this essay, which provides some more background on Aquinas' interpretation of creation.)

//ps// - there's a remark at the end of the Third Way, "Now it is impossible to go on to
infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes" - I belive that reference to 'has already been proved' is to another of the arguments. //

Some modern humans, with modern ethics now cheerfully cherry pick the 'nicer' parts of religious morality, — Tom Storm

And vice versa. Agree with you about Luther, though, I've never been able to stomach Luther or Calvin. Far prefer Rinzai and Dogen.

That's OK, and sorry for my outburst. But Aquinas' arguments are exceedingly difficult, in their own way - and I'm not saying that as any kind of expert, either. I've only read parts of the Summae and various articles about Aquinas, but this metaphysical argument rings true to me (for reasons I can't really put my finger on.)

Let's go back a few steps. Your paragraph beginning 'An objection to Aquinas' argument....' is not, as I said, an objection. Aquinas argues that if every being were contingent (i.e., could either exist or not exist), there must have been a time when nothing existed, because contingent beings are not the necessary cause of their existence. If nothing existed at some point in time, nothing would exist now, since something cannot come from nothing without a cause. Therefore, the existence of contingent beings today implies the existence of a necessary being that initiated the chain of existence. (Note that this is very similar to, and probably built around, Aristotle's argument for the First Cause in Metaphysics.)

Simply asserting "there could have been 'possible beings' in existence at all times" does not effectively counter Aquinas's argument, because you have not provided a logical alternative to the necessity of a first, uncaused cause. To effectively challenge Aquinas's Third Way, you would need to demonstrate logically - rather than simply assert - how an infinite regression of contingent causes could exist without a prime mover or uncaused cause, or to provide an alternative explanation.

I removed it. But I was vexed by the fact that after you introduce the topic you then declare that it doesn't say anything, i.e. that it's meaningless. It gives me the impression that you don't understand the point of the argument, so I'm asking, if you think it's a pointless argument, then why go to the trouble of starting a thread about it?

So why bring it up?

An objection to Aquinas' argument, in my opinion, is that, while there could have been a time when nothing was in existence, there also could have been "possible beings" in existence at all times. — NotAristotle

But not by the logic of the argument. In other words, you're simply asserting that Aquinas' reasoning is wrong. In order to show why it is wrong, you would have to establish that there can be an infinite sequence of contingent causes, without an initial uncaused cause to ground them. Simply asserting that 'there could have been' doesn't amount to an argument against it.

Beats me!

Why would clothes also survive death? And sometimes there are ghost trains, cars and horses and dogs with their drivers or masters. What makes animals or machines come along for the undead journey? — Tom Storm

Aren't they presumed to be ethereal? As distinct from corporeal, to use another archaic term. They're denizens of another plane of existence, the ethereal realms that are normally only accessible to mediums or shamans or others of that ilk. I suppose Swedenborg was an example from relatively recent history (although I've never studied his writings). So they're not ever going to leave remnants, they're nearer in nature to rainbows than to materially-existent things.

I recall the main characters in H P Lovecrafts' novels entering into spirit worlds through dreams. It's not too distant from that Christopher Nolan film, Inception. These kinds of stories highlight the idea of parallel realms of existence, which we mortals aren't aware of. It's curious now that with the idea of the multiverse which originated with quantum physics, many (like David Deutsch) are willing to contemplate the possibility of other worlds in that physical sense. But the so-called ethereal realms, akashic records, and the like, are of a different order of being, not detectable to scientific instruments which are ultimately just extended versions of our natural senses.

(Many years ago I read an interesting media studies review of the attraction of films like Matrix, Inception, etc, being so attractive to audiences because of their suggestion of parallel realities. Wasn't ever able to find it again, but it made a compelling case.)

The disagreement you're having is very similar to the Katz-Forman debate. This debate centers around the contrasting views of two scholars: Steven T. Katz and Robert K.C. Forman. The crux of their disagreement lies in the interpretive framework used to understand mystical experiences, particularly regarding the extent to which these experiences are shaped by cultural, religious, and linguistic contexts.

Steven T. Katz argues for a constructivist approach, suggesting that mystical experiences are heavily influenced by the individual's cultural, linguistic, and religious background. According to Katz, the interpretive frameworks and conceptual categories that a person has internalized from their culture shape the nature of their mystical experiences. This view implies that there is no "pure" mystical experience independent of the conceptual apparatus brought by the mystic to the experience.

On the other hand, Robert K.C. Forman advocates for the perennialist approach, positing that there are core realisations that are universal and not entirely shaped by cultural or linguistic conventions. Forman argues that some aspects of mystical experiences transcend cultural and religious boundaries, suggesting the existence of a common realisation that can be accessed by individuals independently of their specific religious or cultural backgrounds.

I see @Count Timothy von Icarus as favouring the Forman approach and @Joshs as advocating the latter. I favour the former approach, in that I believe that at least some elements of what is being described as mystical experience (granting that it is rather a problematic description) are as universal as the experience of breathing or having sex. Religions and philosophies vary culturally, but hearts and lungs are the same everywhere.

But it's futile to really try and isolate or identify what that common core or 'mystical experience' is, because insofar as anything whatever is said about it will be expressed in language and its related metaphorical and cognitive structures. I believe that the 'philosophers of the absolute', of whom I suppose that Hegel is arguably one, would be aware of that, but I wouldn't look for agreement in the milieu that Joshs typically appeals to.

I think the key term is 'the unconditioned', and accordingly did a search on 'the unconditioned in philosophy'. I found one article called The Unconditioned in Philosophy of Religion - read it a couple of times and didn't get much from it, but at least it frames the debate the right way. A better one was The Unconditioned Soul by Stephen Priest, a book excerpt. But I know the objection will often be that all consideration of a putative 'unconditioned' is characterised by post-modernists as religious dogma, which counts against it.

speculative branch of sociology... — Manuel

It's more a speculative biological theory applied here to sociology in this particular case. The point being that morphic fields, and morphic resonance, provide a medium for what is perceived by us as ghosts. I will add that the existence of morphic resonance is on the whole rejected by most scientists, despite Sheldrake's claims to have found evidence for it, so I'm not saying you should believe it. Only that they at least provide a paradigm.

One of the 'six realms' into which humans may be reborn in Buddhist cultures is the realm of the hungry ghosts - these are the spirits of people who in life were greedy, envious, jealous or selfish. The hungry ghost's existence is characterised by inextinguishable craving which can never be satisfied, so they are depicted with large bellies and thin necks, forever searching for a sustenance they can never obtain.

Is it just that we experience things to some extent due to cultural circumstances? — Manuel

Consider this essay. Morphic fields, and morphic resonance, even though generally (and angrily) rejected by mainstream science, at least provide a potential medium for the transmission of what is perceived as ghosts.