He had an astonishing mind.

I *think* It’s recounted in the opening pages of The Fatal Impact by Alan Moorehead.

Outstanding critique. Well-thought, and asks pertinent questions, not all of which have answers. — Mww

Thanks Mww. It's difficult to do. It's easy to take what another says and disagree with it because it's somehow counterintuitive, so it doesn't make sense. But it's actually quite difficult to take apart what another has said and determine the reasons why it doesn't make sense. So on this forum, we tend to do the easy thing, and just disagree with each other and never make any progress in finding out why. Anyway, I'll answer your question, but sometimes its even more difficult to take apart one's own intuitions, then to take apart the statements of others.

.what happens in the very first instance of a perception or an idea in a particular human cognitive system? By first instance I mean the very first observation of something in Nature, or the very first flash of a possibility a priori? The implicit ramification being of course, there is no experience on which to draw, therefore there is nothing in memory, re: consciousness, therefore the representation by already present conceptions is quite impossible. — Mww

That the conception is prior to the sense perception is what validates the idea of "a priori". What is implied is that there is some sort of conception which is prior to sense perception. You could look back at an individual person's first sense perception, or the first human being's first sense perception, or even the first sense perception of a living being, and ask the same question, how is it possible that there is a conception prior to sense perception. But even if we look only at the physical aspects of sensation, I think we would find that not only is a sense organ required for sensation, but also some sort of brain.

Notice the way that conceptualization works, consisting of universals, categories, etc.. So it is not necessary that there is a conceptual representation of each thing, prior to it being perceived by sensation, it is only necessary that there is a sort of conceptual structure of universals, which gives the mind the capacity to categorize the information received from the particular. Therefore I wouldn't say that perceiving a particular is an instance of conceiving the particular (that would be contradictory), it's more like an instance of categorizing the particular according to an already held conceptual structure..

The point being that on the other side, the sense side, the image which we are able to get. via the sense, is limited by the capacity of the mind to support the sense. But we tend to think that the senses are giving us a direct representation of the thing sensed, when in realty what the senses give us is greatly restricted by what the mind has the capacity to apprehend.

This is why the Aristotelian description was that the mind abstracts the form of the thing, through the means of the senses. It is the mind which is creating the form or image, through the means of sensing. But we commonly attribute the production of the image or form, to the sense. This is because of the pervasiveness of the physicalist mind-set, in our current society. This mind-set apprehends a chain of causation from the thing itself. The thing causes an effect in the sense, which causes an effect in the mind. From the dualist perspective, the mind creates, using information received by the senses. So what is produced as "a sensation" is restricted by the capacity which the mind has to create. Therefore it is possible that the senses received a whole lot more information than what we receive as a sense image, but if it doesn't fit into the mind's capacity to represent it, it doesn't get represented within the representation which the mind creates.

Fair, but doesn’t answer the question.

The categorization of the particular according to an already held conceptual structure, isn’t the same as conceptualizing the particular sensation. So that structure isn’t how conceptualization works, but is merely the necessary criteria by which it is possible.

I would say the limitations on sensibility are physiological, and not the mind’s inherent capacity to apprehend that which is presented to it. This relates directly to the question above, insofar as there doesn’t seem to be a limit on our conceptualizing practices. The most rampant, uncontrolled faculty in human cognition, is imagination, after all, right? In fact, it is the case understanding does synthesize conceptual representations into the objects of sense that do not belong to it, re: optical illusion.

There may indeed be more information in sensation than is transferred to the mind, but such information would be irrelevant to the process of determining what an object is, insofar as understanding uses only whatever information is given to it, as phenomenon.

This is why the Aristotelian description was that the mind abstracts the form of the thing, through the means of the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Abstracts….from what? The thing itself? This presupposes the form is already contained in the sensation, and that the senses have some sort of self-contained deductive power. I usually resort to the ol’ tickle on the back of your neck scenario to refute such description. A tickle is a sensation, and if the form of the thing which causes the tickle is abstracted from it, it would seem we would know immediately what causes the tickle. But we do not. In fact, it is the case we sometimes sense a tickle not caused by any object at all.

There is a form belonging to any sensed object which becomes known as a certain thing, but it is not abstracted through sense, but resides a priori in the mind. This also relates to the question as to what do you do in the case of first instances.

Again….lots of what you say I agree with, but I can’t see an answer to the original question in it.

The categorization of the particular according to an already held conceptual structure, isn’t the same as conceptualizing the particular sensation. — Mww

A quick reply in response to reading the first couple lines. The particular is never conceptualized. That is why there is a distinction between the thing itself (the particular) complete with accidents in Aristotelian terminology, and the phenomenal appearance, concept, as consisting only of what is apprehended as essential. So "a sensation" is not a particular. Wittgenstein visited this is the so-called private language argument, in the question as to how one could determine a reoccurrence of a sensation, at a later time, as "the same" sensation.

Abstracts….from what? The thing itself? This presupposes the form is already contained in the sensation, and that the senses have some sort of self-contained deductive power. I usually resort to the ol’ tickle on the back of your neck scenario to refute such description. A tickle is a sensation, and if the form of the thing which causes the tickle is abstracted from it, it would seem we would know immediately what causes the tickle. But we do not. In fact, it is the case we sometimes sense a tickle not caused by any object at all. — Mww

The mind would abstract from the information received through sensation. Remember, I am portraying the senses as tools of the mind in its creations. You might call the senses information collecting tools. The information is received as formal, but it consists of forms created by something other than the mind which receives it, so the meaning inherent within must be interpreted, like interpreting someone else's language. And the mind receiving creates its own meaning according to what it knows in its interpretation. That there is independent meaning, and Forms, not created by human beings or other known life forms results in the need for something like God.

So the act of abstraction which occurs in the feeling of a sensation as per you example of a tickle, is an act of creation within the receiving mind. The mind classifies the information received, according to conceptions which it already has, and creates what appears to you as a conception of that particular instance. But it is really just a particular instance of categorization, whereby the essentials are determined and a representation of a particular is produced. The conception, or categorization appears to be a true conception or abstraction from the particular, because of the vast multitude of possibilities which the mind allows for, but it isn't really a conception of a particular. That is evident from Wittgenstein's example of the chair. When you come into the room and see a chair, where there was a similar chair yesterday, you tend to think it is the same chair. However, someone could have switched chairs overnight. Therefore we can conclude that the abstraction is not really of the particular, but of some sort of universal, and we designate "the same particular" based on some sort of ideas of similarity, or continuity of temporal existence. We cannot properly conceive a particular.

There is a form belonging to any sensed object which becomes known as a certain thing, but it is not abstracted through sense, but resides a priori in the mind. This also relates to the question as to what do you do in the case of first instances.

Again….lots of what you say I agree with, but I can’t see an answer to the original question in it. — Mww

This where I think you have it backward. The form of the sensed object inheres within the thing itself, as indicated by Aristotle's law of identity. What is a priori in the mind is some structure of universals by which the mind categorizes incoming information. So the form of the thing which the mind knows is fundamentally different from the form which inheres within the thing itself, as a representation produced from placing the information within the conceptual structure. The mind knows what it apprehends of the particular as the essentials of the thing, while the thing itself consists of accidentals. So even the appearance of the thing to the mind, the sense image which the mind works with, has been created in this way, as essentials rather than accidentals.

There is no problem with "first instances" so long as we maintain the reality of the a priori which exists prior to the first instance, and makes the first instance possible. As you can see though, the first instance would be extremely vague, and not what we would call a good representation of the particular at all, because the receiving mind would not have built up a good catalogue of information (memory), and so would not produce a good representation. However, the question remains now, as to how good the representation produced by human perception really is. Science tells us that the world is actually quite different from the sense representation that we get of it, with things like atoms interacting to make molecules, etc.. So we may not have really progressed very far from the first instances of sense appearances.

Does this answer the original question, or does it remain?

The particular is never conceptualized. — Metaphysician Undercover

No? Then what is? And what of the notion that all thoughts are singular and succession, which implies any thought is itself a particular instance of it? All conceptions are thought, so…..

The same sensation is not the consideration. Obviously, time conditions all of them, in that sensation now is not the sensation before or later. It is still logical that a sensation now is of the same thing as the sensation is of that thing at a later time. The mind doesn’t worry about the relative time of the thing itself, only the time at which we are affected by it.

Ehhhhh….Wittgenstein. I don’t care what he says. The bee sting I experienced last year is for all intents and purposes precisely the same experience I will have next time. How else to know it as caused by a bee?
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You might call the senses information collecting tools. — Metaphysician Undercover

You might, I would not. I would limit the senses to information transferring devices, the information already residing in the things perceived. There isn’t any information collected per se, it is, rather, merely that which the mind employs as the instantiation of its methods.

Compromise: if we say my transferring is your collecting, I might still be inclined to grant intuition is the collecting tool, in that the matter of an object from which sensation proper arises, is represented as an empirical intuition. Dunno if that works for you.
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The information is received as formal, but it consists of forms created by something other than the mind which receives it, so the meaning inherent within must be interpreted — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, so what something other than the mind creates forms? And if the information contains inherent meaning within it, what does understanding do? How is this not precisely the materialist doctrine writ large?
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And the mind receiving creates its own meaning according to what it knows in its interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, the mind abstracts meaning inherent within forms received as information, according to what it knows. But once again….what if the mind doesn’t know? Why would the mind create its own meaning, if there is already meaning inherent in the forms? Although, I’m beginning to see where your notion that judgement being the source of error, as I hold it to be, is not the case. I’m not sure it is legitimate to permit the mind to misinterpret, that is, mistake the meaning inherent in forms with the meaning it creates for itself.
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So the act of abstraction which occurs in the feeling of a sensation as per you example of a tickle, is an act of creation within the receiving mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok. In Plato, this is “knowledge that” there is something affecting the sensory apparatus. But it is not “knowledge of” the particular object. As such, it is merely one of a general class of possibilities. The mind knows immediately what some causes of the sensation is not, but not yet as to what it is.

The mind classifies the information received, according to conceptions which it already has, and creates what appears to you as a conception of that particular instance. — Metaphysician Undercover

This works for objects received more than once. In other words, objects known to the mind as experience, re: according to conceptions which it already has. Once more, the question remains as to conceptions the mind does not have, in which case it would seem the mind couldn’t create a conception of that particular instance. Consider the alternative, wherein the mind classifies in accordance with conceptions it already has…..how is it determinable that none of them represent the forms inherent in the information it received? I don’t think ol’ Mother would imbue the human intellect with so inefficient a methodology, which requires it so eliminate all that doesn’t apply, only to find out nothing it already has, does.

But it is really just a particular instance of categorization, whereby the essentials are determined and a representation of a particular is produced. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. This is better, in that conceptualization is really categorization, in which the essentials are determined. Now, the mind can certainly interpret the information contained in forms in accordance with categories it already has, and the categories are themselves conceptions, but of a very specific gender and origin. But no particular instance of an object of sense is ever to be conceptualized from a mere category. Th essentials determined by categorization, are necessary conditions for the possibility of knowing what an object may be in general, not properties for determining what it is in particular.

When you come into the room and see a chair, where there was a similar chair yesterday, you tend to think it is the same chair. — Metaphysician Undercover

Long before Wittgenstein, critical metaphysics established that tendency is unwarranted. Conventionally, perhaps, through lackadaisical thinking endorsed by herd mentality. Simply put, it’s just easier to say it’s the same chair because it’s too complicated to explain why it might not be, or indeed, isn’t.
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The form of the sensed object inheres within the thing itself — Metaphysician Undercover

The primary, and probably irreconcilable, difference in our respective theories. The form resides in the mind. Sensation contributes nothing but the physical matter of the object affecting the senses.

What is a priori in the mind is some structure of universals by which the mind categorizes incoming information. — Metaphysician Undercover

YEA!!! Agreement!! Categorizes. What do you think this means? What is happening when categorizing occurs?

So the form of the thing which the mind knows is fundamentally different from the form which inheres within the thing itself, as a representation produced from placing the information within the conceptual structure. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. The thing the mind knows as representation of sensation, is phenomenon, which is the matter of the object, arranged according to the form provided by the mind a priori, kinda like placing information within a conceptual structure.

There is no problem with "first instances" so long as we maintain the reality of the a priori which exists prior to the first instance, and makes the first instance possible. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is certainly still a problem, in that the a priori which exists prior to the first instance, the categorizing conceptual structure, and any instance at all, doesn’t have anything to do with the determination of what that thing is, only that knowing what it is, is possible from them.

No? Then what is? And what of the notion that all thoughts are singular and succession, which implies any thought is itself a particular instance of it? All conceptions are thought, so….. — Mww

I think I explained this. I guess not satisfactorily. Let me try again, in a different way. What is conceptualized is a bunch of relations between concepts, as you described earlier. "The particular" is something posited as having a relation to these conceptions. The particular does not enter into the conceptualization though, so we cannot properly say that it is conceptualized.

This is the point with truth and falsity being a judgement which is outside the validity of the logic. Logic here represents the conceptualization. The relation between the logic and the particular is that judgement of truth, which cannot be said to be part of the conception. That's the point with Wittgenstein's chair example. The person sees the chair one day, and sees it the next day looking exactly the same, and in the same place, yet the person cannot say whether it is the same particular (it may have been switched overnight). This indicates the what we call "the particular" does not enter into the conception of the chair. The person has all this knowledge about "the chair" in that place, but cannot accurately judge whether it is the same particular which is there now as was before. This is a statement of how we understand "the particular", as an object with temporal extension.

It's actually a very difficult ontological principle to grasp, which is tied up in Aristotle's law of identity. The law of identity is set up to support the very intuitive notion that there are real objects in the world, particulars, which exist with temporal extension, despite undergoing minor changes as time passes. Change is incompatible with our conceptualizations of an object, yet it very much appears (is very intuitive) that an object maintains its identity as the same object despite changing. Logically, if a thing requires two different descriptions, at two different times, then it is two different things. So Aristotle posited a principle of continuity, matter, which links the object at one moment, to the changed object at the next moment. This accounts for the reality of "the particular", as a thing having temporal extension.

The problem is that matter is described as potential, in order to account for the reality of change, and potential as what may or may not be, escapes intelligibility by defying the law of excluded middle. The other way of portraying the unintelligibility of matter, is that it defies the law of non-contradiction, as both is and is not. This is the position of dialectical materialism, which comes from Hegel's dialectics of being.

I hope that will help to explain this idea, that the particular does not enter into the conceptualization. There is something about the particular, that it changes (its properties change) while remaining the same (it maintains its identity as the same thing), which makes it fundamentally unacceptable to conceptualization. So logic simply leaves the particular out, and works with the properties. "Socrates is a man", for example, indicates a particular with that name "Socrates". But the proposition replaces the particular with a name, "Socrates", and the name, as the subject receives predications. If we say that the name, which enters into the conceptualization as the subject, is the particular, then we deny the grounds for truth, because it is what we say about it. So truth in the sense of correspondence requires that the name must represent the particular, rather than be the particular.

As for the issue of thoughts being singular, and in succession, as particulars, I don't think this is an accurate representation of thoughts. Thoughts are very much overlapped, in their comings and goings, and this is why they are best described as relations and associations.

It is still logical that a sensation now is of the same thing as the sensation is of that thing at a later time. — Mww

This is the key point. If the supposed "thing" requires a different description at a different time, it is not logical to say that the two are the same thing. A different description indicates a different thing. And when we learn that a thing undergoes minor changes at each moment of passing time, logic dictates that it cannot be the same thing unless we establish something which relates them like temporal continuity. This is what the thing is at one moment, and this is what it is at another moment, the two are not the same, therefore the two are different things. So we simply assume a temporal continuity between the two, and this allows us to say that they really are the same thing.

So, we allow a separation between the thing (particular) and its description (its conceptualization). This allows that the same thing can have certain predications at one time and contradicting predications at another time. The predications are applied to the subject, and the subject is a stand in for the thing, the particular, as a representation of it. We cannot allow that the subject is the thing, or particular, or we lose the grounds for truth (as correspondence).

Compromise: if we say my transferring is your collecting, I might still be inclined to grant intuition is the collecting tool, in that the matter of an object from which sensation proper arises, is represented as an empirical intuition. Dunno if that works for you. — Mww

It doesn't really work for me. The point is to make a complete separation between your mind and my mind, as each is being confined within distinct particulars (different bodies). The ideas produced in my mind are created by my mind, and the ideas produced in your mind are created by your mind. Similarities are the result of past occurrences, genetics, and conformity in teaching practises, etc..

So there is nothing which is really being transferred when you and I communicate. You write something (create something) according to the way your mind works, and I interpret it ( a creation of my mind) according to the way my mind works.

You might, I would not. I would limit the senses to information transferring devices, the information already residing in the things perceived. There isn’t any information collected per se, it is, rather, merely that which the mind employs as the instantiation of its methods. — Mww

This is the difference in our understanding of causation, which has pervaded this discussion. I place the cause of perceptions and ideas as within the person. You place the cause as external to the person. So where I say the person uses the senses as tools, in the mind's creation of ideas, you say that the external thing enters into the mind through the senses, and causes the existence of what the mind perceives.

Of course this is where some compromise could be afforded. I think we would both agree to some of each, as a combination. The question though is to priority, which is the principal form of causation in perceptions and ideas. And this is where determinist/choice becomes relevant. From my perspective, the chain of causation, which we commonly represent as necessary, is broken, so your representation cannot hold. Causation from the internal side is final cause, and there is no necessity in how external things are represented within the mind, so the chain of efficient cause from the external is broken.

Ok, so what something other than the mind creates forms? And if the information contains inherent meaning within it, what does understanding do? How is this not precisely the materialist doctrine writ large? — Mww

The common solution here is "God", simply because we really do not know where the order which appears to inhere within the universe comes from.

Ok, the mind abstracts meaning inherent within forms received as information, according to what it knows. But once again….what if the mind doesn’t know? Why would the mind create its own meaning, if there is already meaning inherent in the forms? Although, I’m beginning to see where your notion that judgement being the source of error, as I hold it to be, is not the case. I’m not sure it is legitimate to permit the mind to misinterpret, that is, mistake the meaning inherent in forms with the meaning it creates for itself. — Mww

Again, I will insist on a complete separation. The way that the independent Forms (the forms which particulars are supposed to have) affect us, is the way of efficient cause. The way that the perceiving mind creates its forms in conception, is the way of final cause. The two are incompatible, because "efficient cause" is a representation of how material bodies affect each other, and "final cause" is a representation of how the immaterial affects the material. In our commonly accepted understanding of efficient causation, those employed in science, there is no room for the immaterial to affect the material.

The only reasonable explanation for why the mind must create its own meaning (through final causation) rather than simply receiving meaning from the existing independent Forms (forms of the particulars), through efficient causation, is that there is a separation between the two. The separation is what we know as "matter", and this is the barrier of unintelligibility.

There is a temporal principle here. The immaterial soul has a causal impact on matter, final cause. But the mind understands causation within material things (particulars) as efficient cause, without the influence of final cause. So until the mind understands causation within the world of material things (particulars) as including an immaterial cause, final cause, there will always be a separation in our understanding of how things affect us, and the way that we affect things. The gap may be closable, but not under our current understanding (misunderstanding).

This works for objects received more than once. In other words, objects known to the mind as experience, re: according to conceptions which it already has. — Mww

You don't seem to be getting the point. This is the way of first time perception, because each instance of perception is a first time, as unique and distinct from every other instance. We class by similarity, not by being the same. There is no need for the same object to have already been sensed, only similarity in prior sensations. You don't seem to be grasping this fundamental point. Your bee sting this year is not "the same" as your bee sting last year, it is only similar. So it is not at all a case of receiving the same object twice, it is a case of similarity. No two distinct experiences are "the same". We class them as the same, but this just means of the same type. And when you come to understand that all such judgements are judgements of type rather than a judgement of the same particular, you'll see that the particular never enters into the conception. "The same" as in the same particular is some sort of ideal intuition, which we cannot grasp in conception because it is contrary to logic.

Consider the alternative, wherein the mind classifies in accordance with conceptions it already has…..how is it determinable that none of them represent the forms inherent in the information it received? — Mww

We can determine this in the way described above, from the known fact that the independent Forms (the forms inherent within particular material things) are constantly changing. In the mind's system of classification each change means that the thing has become a different thing. But this is counterintuitive to our idea that a minute change ought not constitute a different thing, so we posit a temporal continuity of existence whereby the thing would undergo minute changes and maintain its status as the same thing. However, this implies that the form of the particular, the independent Form is constantly changing, and this is fundamentally different from our conception of the form of a thing, which is a static description. Therefore we have a determination of the difference. A form inside a person's mind is a static description, the independent Form is a continuous change. In the mind, the form consists of properties which are attributable at a moment in time. At a different moment the form would consist of different properties. This implies that something happens between those two moments, and this "something" is fundamentally unintelligible to this way of conceptualizing. The independent Form, the form inherent within the material thing, is constantly changing. So there is no static thing with X properties at time 1 and Y properties at time 2, in the independent Form of the material thing which exists as continuous change.

OK. This is better, in that conceptualization is really categorization, in which the essentials are determined. Now, the mind can certainly interpret the information contained in forms in accordance with categories it already has, and the categories are themselves conceptions, but of a very specific gender and origin. But no particular instance of an object of sense is ever to be conceptualized from a mere category. Th essentials determined by categorization, are necessary conditions for the possibility of knowing what an object may be in general, not properties for determining what it is in particular. — Mww

This is exactly the point. Because of this, what you say "no particular instance of an object of sense is ever to be conceptualized from a mere category", we never actually get a conception of the particular. It's a sort of illusion, we tell ourselves that we've conceptualized the particular, but really, that there is a particular is just a stipulation which we make to account for our inability to properly conceptualize the way things really are. Aristotle stipulated a particular, with the law of identity, and the particular is necessarily distinct from the conceptualization, and this accounts for the failings of conceptualization.

There is certainly still a problem, in that the a priori which exists prior to the first instance, the categorizing conceptual structure, and any instance at all, doesn’t have anything to do with the determination of what that thing is, only that knowing what it is, is possible from them. — Mww

This is exactly why the symbol may be completely arbitrary and have no similarity to the thing represented, and why we must hand priority to final cause with its inherent choice. In one dialogue, I can't remember which one, Plato went through a whole lot of different words, trying to determine the origin of each, and how it somehow is similar to the thing represented. Some are easy, but in the end there is no need for the symbol to be similar, that's just a sort of memory aid for understanding meaning. So the principal determination, we give the thing a name, need not have any thing to do with what the thing is, no value in the sense of similarity. The problem which arises though, is that we find out later that calling two instances of appearance by the same name doesn't necessitate that it truly is the same thing (W's chair), which we've assigned the name to. Now we demand real principles of similarity to ensure that what is called the same thing really is the same thing. And then we get lost because we see that a thing is constantly changing, and it isn't by similarity that we make such a judgement of "the same particular" but by an assumption of temporal continuity. And we cannot understand temporal continuity.

I didn’t forget or ignore; just couldn’t come up with anything more to say.

Been real, all the same.

‘Til next time…..