Indeed, that was precisely my point. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, and I think part of my point is that this kind of thing is already inside the kind of perspectivr related to word-use. So invoking forms doesn't add anything.

"none of us actually know how or why we personally are able to perceive and point out 'roundness' in the world," is simply not one many people — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I think my claim is not quite what you had in mind. What I was thinking of is more along the lines of how someone performs a skill but the performance is automatic. People very skilled at playing the piano and sight-reading can just play the notes straight off the sheet music of a very complicated song. They will then memorize thr song as second nature and br able to play it almost without thought. I don't think anyone in these moments has conscious understanding or insight into what they are actually doing. They have just learned to do it and do so automatically. Do you think Novak Djokovic actually knoes why he was such a good tennis player? Do you thi k these tennis players actually have a strong understanding of why they were just able to beat all the other kids growing up? Not long ago I saw a video of Magnus Carlson beat someone at chess while blindfolded; do you think he really knows how he is able to do this? I think we can say similar for all skills - reading, facial recognition, any kind of knowledge. Sometimes I recall facts or events in memory and I don't even know how I learned them. They just come.

I think you know about as much about why you can perceive roundness as how much an agnosiac with brain damage would know about why they couldn't perceive or distinguish certain shapes. Sure, a scientist can explain to an agnosiac some information about brains, cognition, the psychology of perception. But at some point, from your first person perspective it boils down to just - you can do some stuff, you can't do some other stuff; you aren't exactly sure why in terms of your own personal insight.

What I am saying here is not a scientific claim about facts related to the brain or cognition. Its a claim about people's personal insight into their own behavior and cognition, which I think most people don't even realize much of the time.

There is no skepticism about science here, just that we cannot realistically get a precise explanation of how these things work without presuming our own use of words. For instance, how a neuroscientist or psychologist cannot study how people see color without relying on people's self-report about color. If you aren't building these things from the ground up, you are to some extent relying on how scientific, empirical facts and models are related to your use of words or perceptual abilities that you may not quite understand. So my point is that if I invoke "forms", I am just re-asserting that fact that I can see stuff without actually explaining what that means. So to me, that's not really interesting, and I know what is happening when my brain perceives stuff is probably a bit more interesting and informative.

These theories might be misguided, but they are not reducible to "word use." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think they are when you view word-use as not in a vacuum. We use words in response to things that are happening in the world, coming from what we see and hear, including from inanimate objects and other people that shape eachother's use of words.

One might indeed criticize a metaphysics of form in any number of ways, but to say that such a broad and well-developed area of philosophy is contentless would seem to simply demonstrate a total lack of familiarity with it ... ... There can be no "neuroscience" if there is nothing determinant that can be said about brains. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This whole section was informative, which just leads me to re-assert the next quote you take from my original post:

Is there actually much difference between my 'structure' and your 'forms' (in the most generic sense of structure)? Maybe I just prefer the former word without the connotations of the latter... other similar words might be 'patterns', 'regularities', etc, etc.

So I guess my conclusion is that appealing to forms and word-use is not meaningfully different. They are only different when trying to inflate stuff unnecessarily — Apustimelogist

Interesting that you mention strange loops. You've read Hofstadter, I presume? — Banno

I actually haven't! I just like the phrase in order to describe the inability to get out of a perspectival context - this constant tension between trying to give descriptions of what is the case and the fact that this can effectively be deflated in terms of word-use and enactive cognition, which itself is a description of what is the case, which brings us back to the beginning (in the sense that describing or giving a story about what is the case regarding how cognition works is itself word-use and enactive cognition).

if we want to explain the actual reasons why we use the word 'round', you have to talk about an immensely complicated brain and how it interacts with the rest of a very complicated world in an intractable manner - from the perspective of our own intelligibility - to infer something about how it represents or embodies structure out in the world. — Apustimelogist

But we're not required to know that. It's not necessary to know anything of the complexities of neuroscience to understand the principle of intelligibility. Here, you're simply projecting the inherent limitations of materialist philosophy of mind onto the whole issue.

But anyone using the word 'round' is using it because they are engaging with the world around them and they see 'round' things. — Apustimelogist

That's the empiricist argument in a nutshell. The problem is, many animals other than h.sapiens see round things, but they never form a concept of 'round'. LIkewise with my quoted example of 'equals'. 'Equals' is obviously fundamental to rational argument, symbollically denoting 'the same as'. But how is equality discerned? When we say that two objects are of equal weight or length, we must already possess the concept 'equals' to make that judgement. And no amount of sensory experience will convey that to a subject incapable of grasping the concept. Hence the argument that 'equals' (and other universals') are discerned by reason and cannot be derived from experience alone (a point which Kant elaborated at tiresome length in his master work.)

It's worth repeating the quote from Eric Perl again:

Forms...are radically distinct, and in that sense ‘apart,’ in that they are not themselves sensible things. With our eyes we can see large things, but not largeness itself; healthy things, but not health itself. The latter, in each case, is an idea, an intelligible content, something to be apprehended by thought rather than sense, a ‘look’ not for the eyes but for the mind. This is precisely the point Plato is making when he characterizes forms as the reality of all things. “Have you ever seen any of these with your eyes?—In no way … Or by any other sense, through the body, have you grasped them? I am speaking about all things such as largeness, health, strength, and, in one word, the reality [οὐσίας, ouisia] of all other things, what each thing is” (Phd. 65d4–e1). Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by reason. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p28

This applies to 'roundness' as much as any other universal. (Eric Perl's book, Thinking Being, is a well-regarded current textbook on classical metaphysics, unfortunately out-of-print, although I've managed to acquire a .pdf copy.)

Other than that, I quite agree with @Count Timothy von Icarus's post above, especially this:

Eleonore Stump notes that ‘what Aquinas refers to as the spiritual reception of an immaterial form . . . is what we are more likely to call encoded information’, as when a street map represents a city or DNA represents a protein.

It's not too far of a stretch to see how this suggests biosemiosis (signs and sign relations) as fundamental to cognition (and indeed to organic processes generally.) So here we're encountering the metaphysics of meaning, to which Platonic and Aristotelian principles still have considerable relevance.

Seeing is a power of humans, one every sighted person is innately familiar with. I don't think a reductionist account is the only true account of sight, nor necessarily the best. Perhaps more importantly, I don't think one must "know everything in order to know anything." The continued existence of some mystery vis-á-vis a phenomenon does not preclude us having any knowledge about it.

But why appeal to the complexity of the brain in particular? Sight also involves light, and the light wave/photon have more than enough mystery to make the same sort of argument. This is the problem with "neuroscience as first philosophy." It's an even worse candidate than epistemology because it is itself reliant on the principles of other sciences (e.g. physics).

Anyhow, this still seems to be misunderstanding the concept of form. The form is, in part, the actuality in things that is responsible for their appearance. Being is prior to interaction. Something needs to first exist in order interact so as to appear a certain way. Appearance—perception—is also prior to the development of language. Form is not primarily about explaining language, although it might do that to. It's about what must lie prior to language and perception (else our determinant perceptions would be caused by "nothing in particular," in which case they essentially wouldn't have causes at all). The form of things isn't just their appearances though (which you seem to be suggesting), nor what is said of them, but rather is upstream of each of those, because being (existing) is a prerequisite for interaction and being known.

In the broadest sense, a thing's form is what makes anything any thing at all, it's particular actuality or "act of existence" by which it is some thing and not "nothing in particular." If form were instead, as you seem to suggest, merely "what brains perceive and talk about," then "brains" themselves would have no true existence as anything distinct, and so would have no determinant powers, ruling out the very possibility of a "science of brains." Brains themselves would be merely "something brains perceive and talk about." This appears to me to be a rather vicious circle.

Besides this, as points out, form doesn't just explain perception, but the ability to reason about things and to attain intellectual knowledge (as opposed to sense knowledge). Things are not just perceivable, they are also intelligible. Form is what is communicated to the intellect such that things are known as more than mere collocations of sensation.

But, perhaps more to the point, even if one rejects any notion of form, it still wouldn't be the case that form is just about what is perceived and spoken of. Metaphysicians might be wrong, but they would be wrong about form as a basic metaphysical principle, not as a property of perception.

But we're not required to know that — Wayfarer

Yes, my point is just that if we don't know that then we are just re-asserting the way we use words in response to what we see without any deeper explanation. If that's all you're saying, fine. My point was more aimed at kinds of inflations of concepts to platonic realms.

Here, you're simply projecting the inherent limitations of materialist philosophy of mind onto the whole issue — Wayfarer

Not at all, and whatever limits there may be here are not transcended by any other purported view.

That's the empiricist argument in a nutshell. The problem is, many animals other than h.sapiens see round things, but they never form a concept of 'round'. LIkewise with my quoted example of 'equals'. 'Equals' is obviously fundamental to rational argument, symbollically denoting 'the same as'. But how is equality discerned? When we say that two objects are of equal weight or length, we must already possess the concept 'equals' to make that judgement. And no amount of sensory experience will convey that to a subject incapable of grasping the concept. Hence the argument that 'equals' (and other universals') are discerned by reason and cannot be derived from experience alone (a point which Kant elaborated at tiresome length in his master work.) — Wayfarer

Well, seeing 'round' things and inferring things about them is mediated by your brain. All concepts are to some extent abstract. A 'stone' or a 'particle' is an abstract concept as much as 'money' or 'health', all inferred through how the brain interacts with the world, but at the very core and central place that makes this universe of stuff tick is physical concepts.

It's not too far of a stretch to see how this suggests biosemiosis (signs and sign relations) as fundamental to cognition (and indeed to organic processes generally.) So here we're encountering the metaphysics of meaning, to which Platonic and Aristotelian principles still have considerable relevance.

There is a historical relation too in that biosemiotics and the invocation of semiotics in physics almost always involves the tripartite semiotics received through Charles Sanders Peirce. But Peirce was himself a lifelong student of the Scholastics, and received his semiotics through them. His model, although it has some very important new developments, still looks just like Saint Augustine's semiotic triad in De Dialectica in its main structure and elements.

John Deely's "Four Ages of Understanding" traces this history. It's an interesting work, although it is pretty deficient as a history of philosophy outside of tracing the history of semiotics. He writes off Neoplatonism entirely despite it's huge influence on the reception of Aristotle he is speaking to, which I found sort of odd.

A 'stone' or a 'particle' is an abstract concept as much as 'money' or 'health', all inferred through how the brain interacts with the world, but at the very core and central place that makes this universe of stuff tick is physical concepts. — Apustimelogist

But I say that concepts are not physical - they're the relations of ideas. And the idea that concepts or rational inference can be understood as physical is the central myth of philosophical materialism, which by tying rational concepts to 'brain function' seeks to give them a physical grounding. But that is neural reductionism:

Neural reductionism asserts that psychological phenomena (like perception, cognition, and consciousness) can be explained in terms of the workings of the nervous system, particularly at the neural level. In essence, it argues that understanding the brain and its neural processes is sufficient to explain mental states and behaviors.

Proponents include Australian philosopher D M Armstrong, and also the recently deceased Daniel Dennett.

But I say that there is a vicious circularity in the reductionist view, because in order to interpret neural data, or to say how, or whether, 'the brain' is the source of reason (as distinct from an interpreter of it), we must rely on concepts. Not just the advanced concepts required to understand neurobiology (which is an astoundingly complex science), but those very basic conceptual structures such as 'same as', 'different to' and so on. You won't see anything in the kinds of data that can be observed through fMRI and so on, unless you're a highly trained specialist deeply versed in neuroscience. On which basis, you will then say 'well, this scan shows activity in this area of the brain, which means that....' So again, you're relying on the very faculty of rational inference (if: then) to establish the claim which you're wishing to demonstrate. And it's not something you can see 'from the outside'.

Perhaps more importantly, I don't think one must "know everything in order to know anything." The continued existence of some mystery vis-á-vis a phenomenon does not preclude us having any knowledge about it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but if you can't articulate what you mean, then you are just effectively circularly re-asserting how you use words and behaving in response to something you can't elaborate on.

I don't know what you mean by reductionist account or what the alternative is.

But why appeal to the complexity of the brain in particular? Sight also involves light, and the light wave/photon have more than enough mystery to make the same sort of argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Its all included.

Anyhow, this still seems to be misunderstanding the concept of form. The form is, in part, the actuality in things that is responsible for their appearance. Being is prior to interaction. Something needs to first exist in order interact so as to appear a certain way. Appearance—perception—is also prior to the development of language. Form is not primarily about explaining language, although it might do that to. It's about what must lie prior to language and perception (else our determinant perceptions would be caused by "nothing in particular," in which case they essentially wouldn't have causes at all). The form of things isn't just their appearances though (which you seem to be suggesting), nor what is said of them, but rather is upstream of each of those, because being (existing) is a prerequisite for interaction and being known. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I think what I am mainly resisting is the notion of inflating this stuff beyond me saying something like "I see stuff"or "I see a 'round' thing".

In the broadest sense, a thing's form is what makes anything any thing at all, it's particular actuality or "act of existence" by which it is some thing and not "nothing in particular." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mean, why do I have to unnecessarily flower up the fact that I can see 'round' things like this? I don't even really understand ehat this sentencr is saying.

"what brains perceive and talk about," then "brains" themselves would have no true existence as anything distinct, and so would have no determinant powers, ruling out the very possibility of a "science of brains." Brains themselves would be merely "something brains perceive and talk about." This appears to me to be a rather vicious circle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I think there is always going to be a circularity of some sort imo, like my own quote here:

I actually haven't! I just like the phrase in order to describe the inability to get out of a perspectival context - this constant tension between trying to give descriptions of what is the case and the fact that this can effectively be deflated in terms of word-use and enactive cognition, which itself is a description of what is the case, which brings us back to the beginning (in the sense that describing or giving a story about what is the case regarding how cognition works is itself word-use and enactive cognition).

And our conceptual networks all run i to places wherr we can't articulate things so well. There are always limits to what we can explain or describe. The biggest tension is that stuff exists in the world clearly independently of us, yet we can only engage with stuff from within a perspective through what a brain does in terms of predictions, word-use, etc. And its the same for the study of our own brains.

But I say that concepts are not physical - they're the relations of ideas. — Wayfarer

You could say that but then again, many of our concepts are about physical things, many of our abstract concepts are about things that "supervene" on physical stuff, and concepts themselves can be explained in terms of what we do or think which can be explained in terms of a physical brain. The entire universe and everything in it is a physical system.

we must rely on concepts — Wayfarer

But again, concepts can be explained in terms of brains. Now, just because I think the universe is just a physical system doesn't mean I need to explain everything going on all the time in terms of particles or physical stuff. I can still talk about art, literature, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology without mentioning physics or chemistry.

Perhaps Davidson's Nice derangement of epitaphs goes here. Linguistic competence, and hence our explanations of how things are, cannot rely on fixed conventions or shared meanings, but depend on radical interpretation and charitable understanding in particular contexts.

And this in turn is a corollary of PI §201: '...there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it"
in actual cases.'

But again, concepts can be explained in terms of brains ....the entire universe and everything in it is a physical system. — Apustimelogist

Can they? Is it? Those are assumptions - the central assumptions of scientific materialism. And you don't present arguments for it: you present it as a foregone conclusion, something that is 'of course' the case. I don't think it has seriously occured to you that it can be questioned, how it can be questioned, and who questions it.

I can still talk about art, literature, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology without mentioning physics or chemistry. — Apustimelogist

But here we're discussing philosophy, Plato's forms, universals, and nature of mind.

There is a historical relation too in that biosemiotics and the invocation of semiotics in physics almost always involves the tripartite semiotics received through Charles Sanders Peirce. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have read that Peirce held to realism concerning universals. There's a tantalising fragment in a review of a book about Peirce and the 'threat of nominalism':

Peirce understood nominalism in the broad anti-realist sense usually attributed to William of Ockham, as the view that reality consists exclusively of concrete particulars and that universality and generality have to do only with names and their significations. This view relegates properties, abstract entities, kinds, relations, laws of nature, and so on, to a conceptual existence at most. Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence and that could admit general and abstract entities as reals without attributing to them direct (efficient) causal powers. — Peirce and the Thread of Nominalism (review)

That mention in passing of the distinction between reality and existence is one which I will guarantee you, nobody (or almost nobody) on this forum will recognise. (And I know this from long experience.)

This might be the key here. Those who "feel an need for Universal Concepts" will make an unjustified jump to them. It'll be a transcendental argument: things are thus-and-so; the only way they can be thus-and-so is if this Universal Concept is in play; therefore... — Banno

That sounds like a negative assessment of theoretical Philosophy compared to empirical Science. Scientists "justify" their work by getting observable physical results. But Philosophers by giving intellectual logical reasons. For example, Descartes' Mind/Body dualism, and cogito ergo sum have no material evidence, and ultimately only a transcendental argument : God. Yet, if the philosopher gives valid reasons for his postulated Universal Concept (e.g. God ; Forms), then he feels justified for his if-then conclusion. Ooops, there's that non-factual "F" word again*1.

Einstein used logical mathematical arguments to deduce that gravity could bend the path of massless photons*2. And his seemingly illogical conclusion was later justified by astronomical evidence. Unfortunately, Philosophers have no recourse to such evidence. So their justification is in accepted beliefs. For example, Plato & Aristotle were successful in the sense that their Universal Concepts (e.g. four Causes) were accepted as logically useful notions for millennia after their publication.

Yet, Aristotle tried to have it both ways, by asserting that Transcendent universal properties were also Immanent, as instances in material Things : Immanent Realism. The latter can be "justified" scientifically, but the former (the Forms) can only be supported by their acceptance in the minds of other philosophers. Therefore, he implicitly accepted the Mind/Matter relationship that we still argue over 2500 years later. Today, some philosophers feel justified in using Universal arguments, but some don't. To each his own. :smile:

*1. To Feel vs to Know : both are mental impressions, but feeling is General while knowing is Particular.

*2. Einstein sometimes used the transcendental term "aether" within his general relativity theory, but he was referring to the mentally-inferred properties (qualia) of spacetime, not to the measurable stuff of a material medium.

The admonition is that in order to understand meaning, look to use. In order to understand what folk think, look to what they do. And here, include what they say as a part of what they do. — Banno

That's an objective practical (scientific ; material) way to look at it. But a subjective theoretical (philosophical ; mental) perspective might include personal experiences that are meaningful, even if not practical . So, the physical Utility of a thing is a different conceptual category from the Meaning of the thing, relative to the observer. Hence, we are back to the old Mind/Body duality. :wink:


PS___ The fact that Philosophy is based more on Feelings & Beliefs is why ancient Greeks developed the Skeptical method of judging proposed ideas about the Nature of Reality and of Knowledge. The average person in those days made no distinction between physical Science and metaphysical Religion. But our modern separation of empirical Science and theoretical Philosophy has drawn a hard line between the Material world of tangible stuff and the Mental world of intangible ideas. All too often, the successes of Doing have allowed haughty Cynicism to supplant modest Skepticism.

Skepticism involves questioning or doubting claims, especially without sufficient evidence, but it's open to being persuaded with evidence. Cynicism, on the other hand, is a pervasive distrust of others and their motives, often expecting the worst and viewing them as selfish or malicious, and it doesn't rely on evidence or rationality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=origin+of+skepticism

PPS___ I'm currently reading Thomas Mann's WWI philosophical novel The Magic Mountain. No magic in the story except one late scene involves a seance, where most of the attendees seem gullible, but the ignorant & modest young protagonist remains somewhat skeptical of the manifestations of a ghost. Modern skeptical magician Randi, would have exposed the medium's sleight-of-hand tricks, in part by noting not what she said, but what she did.
Note --- Gnomon may come across as a gullible believer in unreal ideality to you, but he has subscribed to SKEPTIC magazine and Skeptical Inquirer for over 5 decades.

That mention in passing of the distinction between reality and existence is one which I will guarantee you, nobody (or almost nobody) on this forum will recognise. (And I know this from long experience.) — Wayfarer

Nobody here. I feel you. My worldview evolved from tepid Spiritualism as a child, to agnostic Materialism as a young adult, to a variety of -isms as a mature philosophical seeker. Since my knowledge & understanding of the worldwide variety-of-views is minimal, I cannot be dogmatic about any of them.

Although I can't accept hard-line Materialistic beliefs about the physical substance of my concepts, I also can't imagine that Plato's Ideal realm is an actual place. Instead, it's an as-if metaphor (a name), not to be taken literally. So, earlier in this thread, I admitted to being a Nominalist regarding the reality of your experiences & concepts. My directly experienced shadow ideas are not out-there in the real world, where you can find them, but in-here where I can express them in metaphorical labels & common names, as short-cuts to help you re-experience my feeling.

My personal worldview is BothAnd. It accepts imaginary mental representations of external reality as categorically different in essence from material things out there. But both inside and outside are real to me. The supposed "distinction" is necessary only for Metaphysical Ontology, not for practical Science. :smile:

Well, philosophy tries to get at the underpinnings of empirical thoughts and thoughts in general. That makes it different to the empirical sciences, and also considerably more difficult. Unlike scientists, philosophers don't have the benefit of being able to look around to see if they are right.

Or perhaps they do. The language and logic uses in philosophy is there for all to see.

↪Gnomon
Well, philosophy tries to get at the underpinnings of empirical thoughts and thoughts in general. That makes it different to the empirical sciences, and also considerably more difficult. Unlike scientists, philosophers don't have the benefit of being able to look around to see if they are right. — Banno

Yes. Even the scientific "underpinnings" for some counterintuitive conclusions remain debatable, long after they are accepted as doctrine. For example, some of Einstein's worldview shattering "facts", although supported by mathematical & physical evidence, still must be somewhat taken on Faith, because for Reason it doesn't add-up. We may not understand how invisible intangible insubstantial causal Energy can transform, like alchemical magic, into passive massive Matter. But much of modern science is grounded in that equation. For doers, it works. But for thinkers, it's still only a theory. :wink:


While Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc² is widely recognized and used in physics, its derivation and interpretation have been subject to ongoing debate and criticism. Some critics argue that Einstein's original 1905 paper contained logical flaws, such as circular reasoning, and that alternative derivations based on momentum conservation are more accurate. Additionally, some argue that Einstein's "proofs" were limited to low-speed approximations and didn't adequately address general cases. Despite these criticisms, the equation itself remains a cornerstone of modern physics and is supported by extensive experimental evidence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=einstein+mass+energy+equation+controversial

Good recommendation. From the introduction:

A philosopher may wonder whether true statements are true because they faithfully represent the world as it is or merely because they cohere with a vast range of other accepted statements. Charles S. Peirce was the philosopher who realized that that dilemma was badly misconceived because it induces us to think that truth is either a relation between a statement and an independent, extra-mental fact or else a relation between a statement and other statements. The dilemma seduces us into thinking, on the epistemological plane, that truth is either a matter of evidence-transcendent facts about correspondence or else a matter of mere acceptability (or rational acceptability), and on the ontological plane, that reality is either absolutely independent of how we experience it and conceive of it or else is a mere construct of our experience and discourse.

Peirce thought that the dilemma is deceptive on both planes. He also thought that he knew a good way out of this dilemma and, generally, out of the grand controversy between realism and idealism. In fact, he attempted a breakout twice, and it was the second time, I believe, that he was quite successful.

Of course, the author strangely spends a lot of time arguing that Peirce is not a scholastic realist, even though he allows that this is how Peirce himself saw himself. I am not totally sure from the parts of the book I've read what he thought scholastic realism is, because he seems to be ascribing to it positions I've never seen in scholastic realists (who tend to be very positive on CSP). At any rate, he also spends a lot of time trying to prove that Peirce is not an idealist, but I think (and he does allow this at times) that it would be better to say that Peirce dissolves the idealist/materialist distinction (which makes sense since the distinction didn't exist in scholasticism itself).

This is precisely why Aristotle can be plausibly claimed as an "idealist" while he might also plausibly be claimed as the father of empiricism and "objective science." It's really both and neither because the distinction makes no sense for him. The world cannot be made of either physical or mental substance because for Aristotle substances are just things, unities.

BTW, I don't know if I would wholeheartedly endorse CSP. He is very concerned to make his thought consistent with science, which is indeed important, but 19th century science tended pretty hard towards reductionism and smallism, and sometimes his moves seem to be in line with this (perhaps because of the quite dominant idea that to be "scientific" is to be reductive. He has a reductive account of essence and substantial form, or of natural kinds, but I don't think one actually needs to be reductive here and loses much if one is. This perhaps has to do with his sources (mostly late-medievals) who had begun to badly misunderstand and then start excising the Neoplatonist elements in high-scholasticism, which are what allowed for a non-reductive account of the logoi of changing beings and their relation to Logos.

I don't know if I would wholeheartedly endorse CSP. He is very concerned to make his thought consistent with science, which is indeed important, but 19th century science tended pretty hard towards reductionism and smallism, and sometimes his moves seem to be in line with this (perhaps because of the quite dominant idea that to be "scientific" is to be reductive. He has a reductive account of essence and substantial form, or of natural kinds, but I don't think one actually needs to be reductive here and loses much if one is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know much about CSP, and his abstruse philosophy & vocabulary, but I am generally familiar with his most famous ideas*1. However, I get the impression that his general worldview is similar to my own pragmatic-theoretic BothAnd philosophy*2. It attempts to reconcile reductive realistic Science with holistic idealistic Philosophy, and sensory Materialism with experiential Idealism.

My wishy-washy understanding of Platonic Forms accepts both sensory senses and logical definitions*3. I don't know if there is an objective Ideal realm out-there, but subjective Ideas are certainly in-here. And how sensory Percepts transform into extra-sensory Concepts is a moot question. Also, viewed through my personal Frame of Reference, the world out-there does not measure up to my standard of perfection.

Hence, the abstract notion of a human-mind-independent-perfect-world is a useful aspiration that humans have taken for granted over millennia. For example, the Aboriginal DreamTime has provided a sacred context for imperfect reality over 50,000 years of cultural evolution. :smile:


*1. C.S. Peirce's philosophy involves both realistic and idealistic elements, particularly his concept of objective idealism. He believed in a real, mind-independent world, while also arguing that the ultimate nature of reality is experiential and mind-like. This view distinguishes him from both naive realism and panpsychism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=c.s.+pierce+realism+idealism

*2. Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system. . . . .
Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ─ what’s true for you ─ depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

*3. Forms :
Platonic Forms are Archetypes : the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies. Timeless metaphysical Forms are distinguished from temporal physical Things. These perfect models are like imaginary designs from which Things can be built.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

I don't know if I would wholeheartedly endorse (C S Peirce). He is very concerned to make his thought consistent with science, which is indeed important, but 19th century science tended pretty hard towards reductionism and smallism, and sometimes his moves seem to be in line with this perhaps because of the quite dominant idea that to be "scientific" is to be reductive. He has a reductive account of essence and substantial form, or of natural kinds, but I don't think one actually needs to be reductive here and loses much if one is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think that's correct. He's an exceedingly complex writer with a vast corpus of work which is still being sorted and edited. But he (along with his contemporaries or near-contemporaries William James, Joshia Royce, Bordern Parker Bowne, et al) were all idealist in some sense - this was before the great rejection of idealism by Moore and Russell. In their day, idealism was mainstream.

I haven't yet really grasped Peirce's ideas of firstness-secondness-thirdness, nor his tripartite relation of sign, signified etc - but I think it's fair to describe it as an attempt at a fully-fledged metaphysic and one which is not at all friendly to materialism in any way shape or form. But he also spent decades as a working scientist and surveyor and was scrupulously empirical in such matters. So I don't think it's all fair to describe Peirce as reductionist.

(In many discussiones with Apokrisis, where I really first encountered Peirce, I would emphasise his idealist side, while Apo would deprecate it as due it being a 'man of his times', and lacking our more-sophisticated grasp of systems science. I never quite bought that, as I think that Peirce was a thoroughgoing idealist in his philosophical views. To this day, if you google the term 'objective idealism' C S Peirce is one of the top names on the returned list - 'matter is effette mind'.)

This is precisely why Aristotle can be plausibly claimed as an "idealist" while he might also plausibly be claimed as the father of empiricism and "objective science." It's really both and neither because the distinction makes no sense for him. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've tried to make the point before, that for Aristotle, and also for the Scholastics, 'idealism' wasn't necessary, because they had a completely different orientation or way-of-being in the world. Theirs was a 'participatory ontology', exemplified in Aristotle's maxim 'the soul is in a way all things'. So our sense of separateness, and the idea of the universe as a vast impersonal aggregation of material objects, wasn't real for them. The world was an expression of a higher intelligence, with which the individual had an 'I-Thou' relationship (per Martin Buber) rather than the 'me-it' relationship that characterises modernity. When that started to be called into question, about the time of the Renaissance, was when idealism began to make its appearance, as a kind of corrective to the emerging modern materialism.

(That incidentally is what makes the 'analytical thomists' so interesting, in their attempts are reconciling or comparing Aquinas and Kant, although it's a pretty recondite subject.)

Interesting thoughts. I would say that Peirce is a significantly unique thinker, in that he defies a lot of the standard categories. He is certainly a mediator between contemporary philosophy and Aristotelian realism. I also tend to see him as transcending the idealism-materialism dichotomy, although here we run into the difficulty of slippery definitions, particularly with respect to idealism.

https://aeon.co/essays/charles-sanders-peirce-was-americas-greatest-thinker

this constant tension between trying to give descriptions of what is the case and the fact that this can effectively be deflated in terms of word-use and enactive cognition, which itself is a description of what is the case, which brings us back to the beginning (in the sense that describing or giving a story about what is the case regarding how cognition works is itself word-use and enactive cognition). — Apustimelogist

It’s a zen koan!

Interesting thoughts. I would say that Peirce is a significantly unique thinker, in that he defies a lot of the standard categories. He is certainly a mediator between contemporary philosophy and Aristotelian realism. I also tend to see him as transcending the idealism-materialism dichotomy, although here we run into the difficulty of slippery definitions, particularly with respect to idealism. — Leontiskos

Apparently CSP's philosophy divides the conceptual-symbolic world into three categories instead of the "standard" dualities. I haven't been able to overlay (without overlaps) his triads onto my simpler & more traditional Real vs Ideal classifications. For example : 1) Firstness = Potential, Possible, Ideal? ; Secondness = Causation, Actualization, Realization? ; Thirdness = Mind, Ideas, Concepts, Symbols, Patterns?

More to the point of this thread, where would Plato's ideal Forms fit into CSP's tri-partite categories? How about Aristotle's ten categories? :smile:


Aristotle's Theory of Categories classifies the ways in which we can speak about things into ten fundamental categories : substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and passion. These categories help to understand the different ways things can be predicated of a subject, providing a framework for logical analysis and understanding of the world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=categories+aristotle+dualities

Yes, I think for me this is the kind of view of language that should go there. Itsthe kind of view that speaks to my inclinations and provides important nuances that seem to often be missed by various other essentialists on the philosophy forum.

Cheers.

...other essentialists... — Apustimelogist

Is that "other" advised? As in, would you consider yourself an 'essentialist'? If so, may I ask what would that involve - that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression? Or that essence precedes existence?

Aha, no that was a mistaken phrase; I did not mean to imply essentialism for myself!

Cheers.

We have a plague of them at present. Glad to see some nuance.