Upon further reading I think he may be using Zeus as a symbol for daylight, the other thing he commonly stands for.

And daylight seems to refer to being awake or aware, being perceptive to the intelligble patterns of nature.

In other passage he contrast the waking with those that are asleep.

The waking have one world. in common, whereas each sleeper turns away to a private world of his own. — Heraclitus

The waking have one world because they are attuned to the intelligibility of the one thing that is, i.e. becoming.

Upon further reading I think he may be using Zeus as a symbol for daylight, the other thing he commonly stands for. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't see how it could be physical daylight since this is of itself an aspect of logos/fire, of the universe in total - with night/darkness as its dyadic opposite. I instead interpret his references to light (and dryness) to be metaphors for wisdom ... which is in keeping with a) traditional western metaphors of light being wisdom and b) with the fragments I've previously referenced. Again:

(65) The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus. R. P. 40. — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_32

(19) Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things. R. P. 40. — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_41

It then seems plausible enough to infer from his total known fragments that for Heraclitus becoming has at its ultimate end this addressed "wisdom" which is "one only" and can go by the name of "Zeus" (although imperfectly). — javra

This sole nondualistic one - addressed at different times as Zeus/God/wisdom/light - then being the source of (what I so far find to be) a plausible priority monism, thereby being that "one only" from which the universe in oppositional total as fire/logos takes its form and attributes and which, as wisdom which is one, "knows the thought/logos by which all things are steered through all things" (with knowledge here, to my mind, clearly not being declarative knowledge - which requires changes via argumentation/justification, to not mention declaration - but more in keeping with notions of a complete understanding).

....Some philosophers don’t see this, but that’s because they haven’t done their philosophizing in an orderly way, and haven’t carefully enough distinguished the mind from the body ~Descartes. — Mww

Which has a clear precedent in The Phaedo in the passages about the separation of soul from body.

I like Joe Sach's translation of the category of substance as "thinghoood," although this is perhaps confusing if one thinks of it in terms of the "particles" that were the self-subsistent, fundamental things of 19th century metaphysics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was going to quote a passage by Sachs in the OP, but it made it too long. But I'll include it here, as it is relevant to the translation of 'ousia' (from the IEP entry on Aristotle's Metaphysics):

My guess is, as universals became "names" some way to tie properties back to things had to be developed. The "names" come from us, but they have to have some cause in things, else we have no knowledge of them. No notion of participation or inherence could be called upon, so substrate has to expand beyond being mere potential (which would explain why substance and matter collapse towards meaning the same thing, when before they are almost opposites, a substance being what a thing is and matter its potential to be something else). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Spot on. I think you’ve identified something essential in showing how, once the participatory/inherence framework is lost (or becomes untenable), the explanatory burden shifts to "substance" in a different way. It has to account not only for what a thing is, but also why our concepts seem to refer to it at all.

That might explain why the substrate notion of substance—something like an inert bearer of properties—rises to prominence, while the richer Aristotelian idea of ousia as actualized form (not just potential matter) gets flattened out. The result is a metaphysical picture that looks more like proto-empiricism than classical realism (and indeed is the precursor to modern empiricism.)

And that also folds into the point about modern "thing ontology"—where what a thing is becomes identified with what it is made of, rather than what it does or means within a larger context.

My own longstanding view is that much of this equivocation around "substance" arises from the loss of a hierarchical ontology—the kind that underpinned the classical and medieval idea of the great chain of being. In that schema, being was analogical and graduated; different levels of being were possible and meaningful (as beautifully articulated by Eriugena). But with Scotus' doctrine of the univocity of being—the idea that "being " means the same whether said of God or a rock—this hierarchical distinction collapses. What results is a metaphysical "flattening," in which all beings are treated as ontologically equal (even if causally or epistemically different), and substance is increasingly thought of as inert substratum rather than act or form. It is precisely the loss of the vertical dimension, the axis of quality.

This contributes directly to the modern drift toward mechanistic and materialist metaphysics, where the rich account of form, finality, and analogy is replaced by homogenous "stuff" under mathematical laws.

Just checked. Couldn't find any fragments to the effect of light equating to the "only one" - wanted to say my bad for this - but there are fragments and interpretations such as this:

(74-76) The dry soul is the wisest and best.[31] R. P. 42. — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_118

with the following footnote:

31. This fragment is interesting because of the antiquity of the corruptions it has suffered. According to Stephanus, who is followed by Bywater, we should read: Αὔη ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη, ξηρή being a mere gloss upon αὔη. When once ξηρή got into the text; αὔη became αὐγή, and we get the sentence, "the dry light is the wisest soul," whence the siccum lumen of Bacon. Now this reading is as old as Plutarch, who, in his Life of Romulus (c. 28), takes αὐγή to mean lightning, as it sometimes does, and supposes the idea to be that the wise soul bursts through the prison of the body like dry lightning (whatever that may be) through a cloud. (It should be added that Diels now holds that a αὐγή ξηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ αρίστη is the genuine reading.) Lastly, though Plutarch must have written αὐγή, the MSS. vary between αὕτη and αὐτή (cf. De def. or. 432 f. αὕτη γὰρ ξηρὰ ψυχὴ in the MSS.). The next stage is the corruption of the αὐγή into οὗ γῆ. This yields the sentiment that "where the earth is dry, the soul is wisest," and is as old as Philo (see Bywater's notes).

Which may or may not speak to the same thing? Don't know.

I don't see how it could be physical daylight since this is of itself an aspect of logos/fire, of the universe in total - with night/darkness as its dyadic opposite. I instead interpret his references to light/daylight to be metaphors for wisdom ... which is in keeping with a) traditional western metaphors and b) with the fragments I've previously referenced — javra

Yes I also saw it as a metaphor for wisdom and for those that are awake... as opposed to night, asleep, dream.

This sole nondualistic one - addressed at different times as Zeus/God/wisdom/light - then being the source of (what I so far find to be) a plausible priority monism, thereby being that "one only" from which the universe in oppositional total as fire/logos takes its form and attributes and which, as wisdom which is one, "knows the thought/logos by which all things are steered through all things" (which knowledge here, to my mind, clearly not being declarative knowledge - which requires changes via argumentation/justification, to not mention declaration - but more in keeping with notions of a complete understanding). — javra

I wouldn't rule it out, but intuitively it seems like monism or dualism isn't even the right way to talk about it, because substances are an afterthought of being, and there is only becoming. It more like some kind of energy/force process 'monism'. The thing that gives form and the thing that gives substance are one and the same.

I wouldn't rule it out, but intuitively it seems like monism or dualism isn't even the right way to talk about it, because substances are an afterthought of being, — ChatteringMonkey

I think this gets back to the OP. In the case of priority monism - such as can be found in "the One" of Neoplatonism - there is no substance involved in the definition of the monism addressed. Rather it is being itself - as being beyond both existence and nonexistence. The Ancient Greek "ousia". Which both "substance" and "essence" are Latin translations of, but with only the latter nowadays yet holding some clear semblance to what the Ancient Greek "ousia" most typically signified in philosophical discourse.

All this to say that in priority monism, the monism addressed does not specify any type of substance whatsoever but, instead, essence itself: the One in Neoplatonism being quite literally quintessential - the ultimate essence of all that is. If Heraclitus had in mind a priority monism prior to there being words for the concept, the only substance he would have specified would have been the logos/fire - this being "stuff" - but by "Zeus / wisdom which is one" he would have intended and done his best to express in this own time "a nondualistic being/ousia - such as the Neoplatonic "the One" - upon which all existence and hence substance is dependent". Or at least something to the like. Hence making sense of fragments such as this (as previously addressed):

(110) And it is law, too, to obey the counsel of one. R. P. 49 a. — Heraclitus

What I’m proposing is that reasons operate as causes, not by exerting force, but by shaping intentionality within a context of meaning. This kind of causation isn’t mechanical but rational: it explains action by appeal to what makes sense to an agent, not what impinges on a body. — Wayfarer

Well put. I prefer keeping a boundary between reasons and causes, but I know what you mean. It's just a question of how far we're willing to stretch "cause" to cover what reasons do. Actually, using "cause" language in talking about rationality has at least one advantage, namely that you don't have to coin some new verb to describe how reasons affect intentionality. The downside, for me, is that we also want to preserve the Kantian notion of rationality as freedom, and here "cause" starts to get in the way. (Kant would say that causality only can apply in the "heteronomous" world, not the autonomous world of human action.). But this is all terminological -- I definitely concur with the need to stop trying to get mental and physical items to cause each other, under any description.

Ok that makes sense yes. Thank you for the feedback.

Glad to know. Thanks.

But this is all terminological -- I definitely concur with the need to stop trying to get mental and physical items to cause each other, under any description. — J

Spinoza already sorted this out—by understanding the physical and the mental as the same thing under different descriptions.

I've always been a fan of Locke's discussion on substance, it's phenomenal:

"So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what SUPPORT of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was—a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied—SOMETHING, HE KNEW NOT WHAT. "

But to be clear, Locke did believe in substances, but he just says he doesn't know what they are. They are obscure to our understanding.

And as for the Ghost in the Machine, your right, that's the popularization. But I think careful consideration of the phenomena involved should lead us to conclude, that it's ghosts all the way down. Consciousness is surely more "ghostly" than "mechanical".

And if our best current physics is not "ghostly" ("spooky" as Einstein protested), then I don't know what is.

But to be clear, Locke did believe in substances, but he just says he doesn't know what they are. They are obscure to our understanding. — Manuel

Thanks, interesting. Here you can see pre-figured Berkeley's rejection of 'material substance' altogether, can't you? Which I believe we discussed recently on my thread on that.

I think by the time Locke was writing, 'substance' has already been reconceptualised in material terms. The previously-mentioned IEP entry on Aristotle's Metaphysics says of the philosophical substantia that 'Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an I-don’t-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor.' But this is because, according to the article, the original translation as 'substantia' was in many respects a mistranslation. The author (Joe Sachs) remarks 'It is no wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its friends'.

And if our best current physics is not "ghostly" ("spooky" as Einstein protested), then I don't know what is. — Manuel

You might enjoy my recent essay on spooky action.

The world as experienced by humans is obviously "half human" — Janus

I don't think it's obvious to many, most, people that this is true. As I understand it, the implication would be there is no objective reality, only a mixture of our internal and external worlds. I endorse this view as a metaphysical position, a perspective.

I don't think it's obvious to many, most, people that this is true. As I understand it, the implication would be there is no objective reality, only a mixture of our internal and external worlds. I endorse this view as a metaphysical position, a perspective. — T Clark

What I meant is that the world, as experienced, is a cooperative reality involving the organism and the environment. I understand this world as experienced to be as objective as the world considered as it is absent any experience of it.

'Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an I-don’t-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor.' But this is because, according to the article, the original translation as 'substantia' was in many respects a mistranslation. The author (Joe Sachs) remarks 'It is no wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its friends'. — Wayfarer

Probably. I think after Hume, substance became very problematic, Hume of course denied we had a concept of substance. Interesting arguments for sure, but, not persuasive.

Then we get Kant saying that substance is a category of the understanding and deflates the impact of the term a bit. In fact I don't see a massive difference between Locke and Kant in terms of Locke treating substance as kind of "things in themselves", whereas Kant does not. But I think, technicalities aside, it's a very similar idea, dressed differently.

You might enjoy my recent essay on spooky action. — Wayfarer

Thanks. Will take a look!

I don't think the idea of substance is that difficult—it is simply what is fundamental, what everything is composed of-—the basic nature of things.

What like atoms? Or something along those lines? If so, that's a bit different from substance as Locke (and others) talks about it.

I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does.

It might be agreeable to translate "res cogitans" as "understanding"instead of using the term, "substance" however qualified, since they are identical in literal meaning but vastly differ in their associations.

:up:

I think this is a good way to look at even the "substance" heavy high scholastic metaphysics of St. Thomas (and certainly of the more obviously "Neo-Platonic" Augustinianism of St. Bonaventure. Finite essence is a constraint in being, the being of things a particular constrained act of being. Fr. Norris Clarke refers to the "limiting essences" of things. God meanwhile, is not a thing, but being itself, and God alone is subsistent being (ipsum esse subsitens).

Spinoza already sorted this out—by understanding the physical and the mental as the same thing under different descriptions.

The difficulty is that the physical is contained within the mental, and only known or even conceivable within the mental. For "being" to mean anything at all (to have any content) if must be that which is given to thought. Hence, the Parmenidean adage "the same is for thinking as for being."

The difficulty I have with dual aspect theories (and not particularly Spinoza, who I am less familiar with) is twofold:

A. As Plotinus says, being and being known are two sides of the same coin. They do not seem like they can be totally distinct "aspects" but rather are conceptually interdependent and interpenetrating. Rather than maybe a more strict division of "something seen from two different aspects" a "unity conceivable in two modes."

B. More importantly, since A is just verbage, dual aspect theories need to explain why "the physical" is experienced by beings, by people, dogs, dolphins, etc., but presumably not by rocks, thunderstorms, or random ensembles that include half of a human brain, half of a dog brain, and the intervening space (or non-continuous ensembles for that matter).

If everything has a dual aspect, it seems that something like panpsychism should hold. Yet this doesn't seem to explain why our experiences have a particular loci in our body, why we experience our own, private experiences, and why rooms full of people and animals shouldn't be their own, higher level minds (i.e. "group mind" theories). We cannot appeal to "complexity" alone, because a room with five people in it is more complex and involves more information processing than a room with one person, and yet we seem to have powerful reasons to think the room with five people has five minds in it, not one. Yet if everything has a mental and physical aspect, then complex systems involving many beings seem like they should be in possession of a mental aspect, a mind, as well.

Psychophysical harmony is another issue. Evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and the study of our sense organs seems to do a good job explaining why we experience the world we do and why we shouldn't expect rocks or cars to possess minds or have a mental aspect to their being (except inasmuch as they are known). Yet under panpsychism, everything has an experiential element, so we have to explain why certain combinations of physical things bring forth different experiences, and also how they seem to produce unified minds (of course the "emergence of consciousness" is a similar problem, it's just that I don't think panpsychism actually solves the problem it is called in to solve).

I think this is what is getting at. We would like a description of why consciousness is like it is, and this would include the apparent non-conciousness of some things, as well as how and why minds are discrete.

Whereas, to return all the way to point A, this would nonetheless be an explanation given within consciousness, which can never go beyond the intellect into some realm or aspect that is actually free from the "mental." The reason we even posit a "physical" outside the "mental" is that not everything seems like it should participate in the "mental" as an experiencer or knower, only as a known(granted, the distinction is largely modern).

And that also folds into the point about modern "thing ontology"—where what a thing is becomes identified with what it is made of, rather than what it does or means within a larger context.

Indeed, or to its opposite, the rise of process metaphysics and the total denial of thinghoood. The idea that the universe is properly just one thing, a mathematical object, is not uncommon today. This is Parmenides, absolute unity. Or it is one ever-changing process, Heraclitus and the slide into the Many. The via media between the One and the Many has largely been lost, as well as an understanding of how there can be a Many unified in a One such that it is both One and Many.

But I think the rejection of thinghood is every bit as pernicious as the reduction of all things to a multiplicity of "building blocks." Both have serious epistemic and metaphysical problems. They lean too far into unity of multiplicity respectively. The most obvious (I would even say ostentatious) example of discrete thinghood comes from the privacy of our own minds, which is also tied to a particular body, and it seems a good metaphysics must explain this unity (and also that a good metaphysics will require nouns, not just verbs). Aristotle's insight that physics, a "philosophy of nature(s)," must deal with a cosmos of things that are nonetheless always changing (and thus processes), and interacting (and thus not wholly discrete), seems to get lost.

BTW, I get what Sachs is saying here, but I think it might be a bit misleading. Everything I know about St. Augustine suggests that we really don't have much of an idea of which "Platonists" he read, or if he was largely just taught their doctrines from notes. Yet as far as I know he almost certainly didn't read Aristotle directly, although he also definitely inherits some key ideas from him (in part because the Neoplatonists use him a lot, particularly Plotinus who did read Aristotle, and other Christians used him as well). As far as I know, the Peripatetics were already in decline by St. Augustine's day, at least in the West, and Aristotle was largely received as a Neoplatonist going forward.

It's worth recalling that even out East where people had Aristotle's texts, they genuinely confused the Book of Causes and the Theology of Aristotle (paraphrases of Plotinus and Proclus) with Aristotle's own work, which just shows how easy it is to interpret Aristotle in a Neo-Platonic lens (and indeed, that people reading him in their native tongue readily saw this connection makes me a bit skeptical of modern takes that try to advocate for "the real Aristotle, Aristotle the materialist empiricist," who doesn't seem to emerge until the 1800s).

I think this is what ↪J is getting at. We would like a description of why consciousness is like it is, and this would include the apparent non-conciousness of some things, as well as how and why minds are discrete. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that's the idea. With my usual caveats about how little we really know about consciousness as a biological phenomenon, I think some kind of dual-aspect/supervenience theory will carry the day. But to do so, it has to dissolve these apparent antinomies between what is physical and what is mental, and explain the enormous variation in how these aspects manifest in the world. We grope for terms like "materialism" or "panpsychism" but it's unclear -- to me at least -- whether these are even good words for the dual aspects.

Are you familiar with the work of Jaegwon Kim? He is largely seen as offering a "knock down" argument of emergence vis-a-vis consciousness, given the assumption of a substance/supervenience ontology. I'd tend to agree that this is convincing, given the assumptions (which are common). This led Kim eventually towards a sort of property dualism and epiphenomenalism.

Yet, as process philosophers are happy to point out (and as Kim admits), his findings wouldn't hold for a process metaphysics. Personally, I take this to be a great blow against supervenience and "building block" or "things are what they are made of" ontologies. Because, even if we pivot to epiphenomenalism, this still seems to require strong emergence. It's still the case that first-person subjective experience has to emerge as something new from what lacks it. Seemingly, the only way around this (while keeping to the supervenience framing) is panpsychism, which has all the problems noted above, and which also seems implausible. Yet it's a problem dire enough that people have been willing to bite the bullet on it. I would just as well drop the presumptions of supervenience/substance ontology instead.

For one, while quantum phenomena do not truck with preconceptions about "strong emergence," they also do not seem to agree with the presuppositions of reductionism either. This just suggests to me that the supervenience paradigm is somehow fatally flawed (as the need for "strong emergence" only shows up in the context of this paradigm in the first place).

As to epiphenomenalism, i.e., the idea that our volitions and “how experience feels/is for us,” plays no explanatory role in determining our behavior, it has major difficulties. If epiphenomenalism is true, then it follows that our sense of certainty, our logical intuitions, how we phenomenologically experience different things, etc. can never be selected for by natural selection. This follows because these things are said to never play an explanatory role in behavior, in which case they also can never affect survival and reproduction. Yet, if our logical intuitions, sense of certainty, etc. can thus drift arbitrarily far away from reality (because they are irrelevant to natural selection), then we have absolutely no grounds for trusting them! Thus, epiphenomenalism is self-undermining unless it can craft a “just so” story that explains why the contents of consciousness and our logical intuitions just so happen to “line up with the world” despite not determining behavior. They must "come along for the ride."

However, it seems to me that we have many good reasons to think that “how the world appears to us” does affect behavior. Donald Hoffman's idea of consciousness being shaped much like a "user-interface," while based on bad metaphysical assumptions, nonetheless seems to get something right. This would explain why high calorie foods are so attractive, why they taste good, why sex is pleasurable, why damage to the body is unpleasant, etc. These are a means of motivating us to survive and reproduce. But eating could just as well be torturous if the "mental aspect" of our being was irrelevant to behavior.

It's also worth noting that, to work at all, the social sciences need to presuppose that people’s thinking and experiences do affect behavior. Likewise, it would be impossible to do things like correlate different feelings with brain states if we didn’t think that the way people feel determines the way they choose to talk about their internal states. Hence, much of the evidence that is used to theorize about reductionist explanations of the brains ends up being based on the implicit assumption that behavioral outputs relate to private internal sensations.

Plus, the track record for reductionism is quite poor (what's the example outside of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics?) Even the basics of molecular structure cannot be reduced, and chemistry is not an immature field. The major paradigm shift in the sciences in the last century has been the chaos/information/complexity studies revolution and these all rely on unifications (explanations of disparate phenomena through more general principles), not reductions.

Are you familiar with the work of Jaegwon Kim? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely. I'd urge anyone interested in supervenience and/or a reasonable version of physicalism to start with Kim.

Do you know Galen Strawson's work in this area? He put out a book called Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? that is quite brilliant. It includes dialogues with other philosophers, as Strawson defends his very unusual version of panpsychism.

It's still the case that first-person subjective experience has to emerge as something new from what lacks it. Seemingly, the only way around this (while keeping to the supervenience framing) is panpsychism, which has all the problems noted above, and which also seems implausible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair, but check out Strawson. He makes it plausible, at least to me.

Finite essence is a constraint in being, the being of things a particular constrained act of being. Fr. Norris Clarke refers to the "limiting essences" of things. God meanwhile, is not a thing, but being itself, and God alone is subsistent being (ipsum esse subsitens). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for this. I greatly like the terminology of "limiting essences" or else "finite essence" - this in contrast to what would then be pure ousia as "limitless, boundless, else infinite essence". Although I personally don't univocally associate the latter - this tmk being the quintessence of priority monism - to "God" for various reasons: one of these being that God is often construed to be a deity which, as a psyche, would itself then necessarily be in dualistic standing to all other occurring psyches (and hence not be limitless, etc.). But, yes, it's fully contingent on how the term "God" gets to be understood. To each their own. :smile:

I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does. — J

Would an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does not simply be another subjective description?

The difficulty is that the physical is contained within the mental, and only known or even conceivable within the mental. For "being" to mean anything at all (to have any content) if must be that which is given to thought. Hence, the Parmenidean adage "the same is for thinking as for being." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The idea of the physical is contained within the mental, but it seems obvious that what the idea of the physical is the idea of is not contained within the mental.

Mental" can be understood to be just a word (and a misleading one at that) for a concept that signals that we cannot understand how experience, judgement abstraction and conceptualization, although always of physical things, are themselves physical processes. The only alternative is dualism, or the idea of a mental realm or substance which does not depend on the physical or idealism, which renders the physical as a mere idea.

What like atoms? Or something along those lines? If so, that's a bit different from substance as Locke (and others) talks about it. — Manuel

It might be atoms, or quantum fields, or something more fundamental. I was not suggesting we know what substance is, but that the idea of substance is not hard to understand.

I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does.
— J

Would an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does not simply be another subjective description? — Janus

A huge question, but it boils down to whether there's anything at all that can properly be called "objective." In the conversation about mental/physical, supervenience, the nature of consciousness, etc., I think it's generally assumed that an objective account of all this is possible. If it isn't, then a great deal else that we consider objective knowledge would also have to be given up. This might be the case, to be sure, but to consider it would immediately open a different conversation. For myself, I do think we can talk about subjectivity from a subjective point of view, and still discover truths about it that are general and open to reasonable investigation -- which is all the objectivity we're likely to get.

A huge question, but it boils down to whether there's anything at all that can properly be called "objective." In the conversation about mental/physical, supervenience, the nature of consciousness, etc., I think it's generally assumed that an objective account of all this is possible. If it isn't, then a great deal else that we consider objective knowledge would also have to be given up. This might be the case, to be sure, but to consider it would immediately open a different conversation. For myself, I do think we can talk about subjectivity from a subjective point of view, and still discover truths about it that are general and open to reasonable investigation -- which is all the objectivity we're likely to get. — J

I count as objective that which is actually encountered or experienced. Say I feel sadness, then I would count the sadness as an objective fact or an objective feeling. You say it is generally assumed that an objective account of say the nature of consciousness is possible. I'd say that all accounts are objective in the sense that they are actual accounts, but it would seem that in the sense you probably mean an objective account of consciousness would be possible only insofar as it is encounterable as an object. Are so-called "quales" able to be encountered, experienced, or are they after the fact ideas of the subjective qualities of what we experience?

Some people say things like 'consciousness cannot be an object, it is like the eye that sees, nut cannot in the act of seeing see itself'. Of course, the cheeky response to that is 'go look in a mirror'. What parts of objective knowledge do you think would have to be given up if it were decided that an objective account of consciousness is impossible?

The difficulty is that the physical is contained within the mental, and only known or even conceivable within the mental. For "being" to mean anything at all (to have any content) if must be that which is given to thought. Hence, the Parmenidean adage "the same is for thinking as for being." — Count Timothy von Icarus

My thoughts also, as explained in the mind-created world.

I get what Sachs is saying here, but I think it might be a bit misleading — Count Timothy von Icarus

But he’s talking specifically about the translation of ouisia, and how the meaning of that seminal term - “being” - was lost in translation, starting from ancient philosophy. I’m not a Heidegger reader, but it’s a matter of general knowledge that the ‘forgetting of being’ was his central concern.

I'd urge anyone interested in supervenience and/or a reasonable version of physicalism to start with Kim. — J

‘Supervenience’ is, according to SEP, a philosophical term of art. It is deployed as defense against many criticisms of physicalism, as its meaning is vague enough to cover almost any eventuality. “Supervenience” has often functioned in philosophy of mind as a kind of magic word that promises metaphysical rigour but without any really explaining anything. Anyway let’s not get into supervenience in a thread on substance (but it is a kind of trigger word for yours truly.)

it is a kind of trigger word for yours truly — Wayfarer

:gasp:

Yeah, I see that! I think we need supervenience in our lexicon, but as you say, that's another thread.

“Supervenience” has often functioned in philosophy of mind as a kind of magic word that promises metaphysical rigour but without any really explaining anything. — Wayfarer

Yes, and this was borne out in threads such as, "Philosophical jargon: Supervenience."