That's a bit dire. I didn't say there was no such thing as a shared world, or that we can never decide how to talk about it meaningfully. I just meant that, taken out of any context, the term "the world" is going to refer to different things for different people. If you and I, or anyone else, want to introduce the term into a conversation, it would be a good idea to first agree on some rough reference. We could locate our usage on a map of well-known usages, such as physicalism, idealism, intersubjectivity, Platonism, et al.

I would say there's no wrong way to do this -- it's only a term -- we just need to stipulate how we'll use it. Then we can indeed talk about our shared world, and if it turns out that our way of using the term isn't as perspicuous as we wanted it to be, we can revise. — J

When someone says that "world" is going to mean different things for different people then you're saying that all qualifiers for "world" are up for debate, including "shared". You could be a solipsist for all I know.

Terms are not really the issue. It is what we are referring to with those words that is the issue. We might use different terms to refer to the same thing, or maybe the boundaries of our terms might overlap in some way. So what if I were to define the world as everything that was, is and will be?

I'm not sure if this line of questioning is going to be useful. Suffice to say, I am a monist and a determinist, so am going to view the world as seamless where there are no "physical" boundaries with the mental. Causes and reasons are the same thing from different views. One monist might say everything is physical. Another might say that everything is mental, or ideas. I like to try to merge the best of the two together and say that everything is information. The world consists of deterministic causal relations - information.

OK, so if we were going to continue conversing, I'd have a pretty good idea what you meant by "world," and could phrase my own thoughts accordingly.

You could be a solipsist for all I know. — Harry Hindu

Or a Communist! :wink:

I think the point is that we'd have to talk about it, and find out whether our ideas of a "shared world" are congruent. It's not so much a debate that's needed, about whose construal is better -- that might come later. We can't debate if we don't first figure out what we're talking about. And it's been my observation that very ordinary terms like "shared" become complex when we enter the Philosophy Room, hence requiring discussion.

I am pretty sure I had almost this same conversation re reasons versus causes with ↪J, using the stop sign example. Maybe it was a stop light :rofl: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great minds think alike :cool:

I would just suggest that a difficulty here is that "causes" is often used very narrowly, as always referring to a linear temporal sequence (either as extrinsic ordering, or a sort of intrinsic computation-like process), but also very broadly as encompassing the former, but also all "reasons." Or, causes might also be used narrowly in a counterfactual sense. "Reasons" often tend to include a notion of final and formal causality that is excluded from more narrow formulations of "cause." — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends on how we want to look at causes. Causes are an interaction of two or more things (like a broken tree limb and a window, or like a stop sign, a car and a driver) to create a new set of circumstances - an effect (the broken window, or stopping at a stop sign). Physicists often describe it as a transfer of energy. We should also consider that every effect is also a cause of subsequent effects, and that our current goal is what makes us focus on specific parts of the ongoing causal chain of events - that the boundaries between a cause and its effects are arbitrarily dependent upon the current goal in the mind.

You can raise your hand, or I can do it for you. Both of our wills are the causes of your hand being raised. You might resist me in which case it would be both a battle of wills and of strength, but our comparative strengths only come into play if our wills are still battling - I intend on raising your arm, while you intend on resisting. How can a will cause anything? If a will can be a cause why can't a reason?

So, it's tricky. Lift is a "cause of flight," but you won't find the "principle of lift" as an observable particular in any instance of flight. Likewise, moral principles are causes of people's actions, but you won't find them wandering about the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure if I'd agree that lift is a cause of flight. It seems to me to be part of what flight is. If you are flying you have lift. A cause would be what preceded the act of flying, just as what preceded the act of stopping at a stop sign. The cause of flight is the interaction of wings and air before one declares flight has been achieved. At what point in the process of running, flapping ones wings and jumping in the air does one achieve the effect of flight? It seems to me that lift is something you have already achieved to say that you are flying - not something that preceded the act of flying.

Just because we don't see moral principles "wandering about the world" (and I assume you mean wandering around independently of minds) does not mean that moral principles do not exist in the world.
They do - as mental constructs, or reasons, for determining one's actions. Morals exist only as characteristics of minds, just as ripeness only exists as a characteristic of of fruit. We don't see ripeness wandering about the world either. If that were the case the world would be a fruit, or the world a mind in the case of morals. They are properties of specific things in the world, like minds and fruit, not properties of the world itself.

Understandably, if there is no choice or decision -- if one adopts a hardcore physicalism or determinism -- then the distinction rather collapses. — J

Not necessarily. I am a determinist and a free-will Libertarian. How do I reconcile the two? I see freedom as having access to as much information as possible. By having access to as much information as possible, you are able to make more informed decisions. By having access to more information, you might choose differently, or you at least have the power to choose differently than you would have if you didn't have the information.

Many people make this assertion that determinism implies that you have the feeling of being forced into something you didn't want to. I say that determinism implies that you have a feeling of naturally choosing what decision is best. Your decisions and actions would feel natural, not forced, if determinism is the case. You always make the best decision with the information you have at that moment. It is only your fear of the consequences that you cannot foresee that make it feel forced. Thinking that you should have chosen differently only comes after the consequences have been realized (after you have more information).

I'm not sure if I'd agree that lift is a cause of flight.

Fair enough, I'd agree in a sense. A principle is something that unifies a diverse number of causes. It is what makes many instances of lift, natural selection, etc. the "same" whilst obviously being different in each instance, thus allowing for "the many" to be known through a unifying "one" (e.g. entomologists can know insects well, even though there are 60 million individual insects for each human, and one never closely observes even a tiny fraction of these).

The particulars need not have absolute priority though (either epistemically or ontologically). For instance, the difficulty in saying that "infection" is never the cause of infectious disease, but only individual interactions between viruses/bacteria and cells, is that this itself can be further broken down. We could also have the demand that virus/cell interaction is always really caused by molecular interactions. This is the drive towards reductionism/smallism. Yet it has to make certain assumptions, for instance, that wholes are always nothing more than the sum of their parts, else the continued decomposition ceases to be warranted. And, while smallism is not prima facie anymore reasonable than "bigism" from an ontological point of view, it is also unwarranted from an epistemic point of view, given that even the basics of molecular structure cannot be reduced to physics.

I'll thow out here the difference between linear (temporal) causal series, which are accidental, and hierarchical causal series. The first is the classic example of one domino knocking over another, or a ball breaking a window. The second is the example of a book resting on a table, or a chandelier hanging from a ceiling. For the book to be on the table, the table had to be there. This has to be true at every moment or interval; there is a vertical—as opposed to horizontal—element to efficient causation.

Likewise, the chandelier hangs due to its linkage with the ceiling at each moment. Neither the ceiling nor the table are dependent upon the book or chandelier sitting/hanging on them, but there is dependence (priority) in the other direction. So even efficient causes have these different elements of priority and posteriority that help our analysis. The plane is generating lift at each interval, unless it is stalling (this is a larger principle of fluid dynamics). And at each interval it has to be the case that fluid dynamics is such that lift works in this way (formal causality). Or, for another example, we could consider human decisionmaking. Man being man (a particular whole) is always prior to man making a decision as man, and this is a sort of vertical priority that affects both efficient and formal causes.

Not necessarily. I am a determinist and a free-will Libertarian. How do I reconcile the two? I see freedom as having access to as much information as possible. By having access to as much information as possible, you are able to make more informed decisions. By having access to more information, you might choose differently, or you at least have the power to choose differently than you would have if you didn't have the information.

Many people make this assertion that determinism implies that you have the feeling of being forced into something you didn't want to. I say that determinism implies that you have a feeling of naturally choosing what decision is best. Your decisions and actions would feel natural, not forced, if determinism is the case. You always make the best decision with the information you have at that moment. It is only your fear of the consequences that you cannot foresee that make it feel forced. Thinking that you should have chosen differently only comes after the consequences have been realized (after you have more information).

Why would this not be comptiablism?

Anyhow, you highlight a very important element that is missing from many considerations of freedom, both the idea that ignorance is a limit on freedom, and the idea that freedom involves understanding why one acts. I tend to want to frame liberty in terms of (relative) self-determination and self-governance (as opposed to being undetermined).

I'll thow out here the difference between linear (temporal) causal series, which are accidental, and hierarchical causal series. The first is the classic example of one domino knocking over another, or a ball breaking a window. The second is the example of a book resting on a table, or a chandelier hanging from a ceiling. For the book to be on the table, the table had to be there. This has to be true at every moment or interval; there is a vertical—as opposed to horizontal—element to efficient causation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not just a table, but a person that put the book on the table. A cause is not necessarily just two interacting things, it could be a multitude of things interacting. Can you explain how the book came to be on the table by just explaining the table? Can you explain how a murder occurred if you only explain the interaction between a victim and the weapon? How would you know if the person was murdered or committed suicide?

Likewise, the chandelier hangs due to its linkage with the ceiling at each moment. Neither the ceiling nor the table are dependent upon the book or chandelier sitting/hanging on them, but there is dependence (priority) in the other direction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It also hangs due to gravity. If there was no gravity the chandelier would float and not hang. I think the issue here is you're simply leaving out ALL the necessary causes that preceded an effect (like our observation).

Why would this not be comptiablism — Count Timothy von Icarus

It may, but I'm not concerned with labels - only what makes sense which might not always fit neatly in one philosophical "framework" that we've given a name as many philosophical frameworks have holes in them that an opposing view might fill but has holes itself.

I tend to want to frame liberty in terms of (relative) self-determination and self-governance (as opposed to being undetermined) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which you can only have by having access to information.

It also hangs due to gravity

Exactly. Gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism, etc. must be what they are at every moment.

If there was no gravity the chandelier would float and not hang. I think the issue here is you're simply leaving out ALL the necessary causes that preceded an effect (like our observation).

Right, the examples are just there to show the difference between the linear (horizontal) series and hierarchical (vertical series), and the difference between metaphysical and temporal priority/posteriority, not to claim the dominoes falling have "one cause."

Which you can only have by having access to information.

Exactly, although this is necessary but not always sufficient. One tendency I've noticed in modern philosophical anthropology is that it tends to play down the possibility of "weakness of will." The idea being that is science could only "tell us what to do clearly," our issues would be solved (e.g., Sam Harris, Stephen Pinker, Francis Fukuyama, etc.). I think this stems from the liberal presumption that, barring major dysfunction or misfortune, all people achieve a similar baseline level of freedom and self-determination by age 18 simply through natural maturation, which is quite different from Epictetus' claim that most masters are in fact slaves to their passions and appetites.

Right, the examples are just there to show the difference between the linear (horizontal) series and hierarchical (vertical series), and the difference between metaphysical and temporal priority/posteriority, not to claim the dominoes falling have "one cause." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm trying to understand your notion of hierarchical (vertical series). I only see causation as temporal. Upper vs lower levels of reality do not play a causal role on each other. They are simply different views of the same thing - in that the different levels are a projection, not how the world really is. The world is seamless and it is our goals that break up reality into regional spaces (views). It's not that the top has influence on the bottom. It is that the bottom and the top are merely different views of the same thing (zoomed in vs zoomed out).

Anyway, I'll go on: my point – maybe not quite the OP's – is not that "logic is inherent in existence" but, parsimoniously, that logic is existence (i.e. 'universes' themselves are logico-computable processes ...) about / from which we (can) derive abbreviated syntaxes & formulae ... — 180 Proof

Consider this empirical support for transitive inference by nonhuman animals:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635708000818]



@tom111 @Banno @Wayfarer @T Clark @kindred

Consider this empirical support for transitive inference by nonhuman animals: — 180 Proof

As long as there are minds to do logic then logic can be said to exist. Doing logic then seems to be a property of minds.

Without minds planets would still revolve around the sun in a logical ways held in place by laws of physics. The planet itself does not compute paths or such things, its obeying laws which it cannot know exist.

It’s only in minds that these laws can be inferred and deduced.

Doing logic then seems to be a property of minds. — kindred

And minds are governed – constrained – by laws of nature so that, in actuality, logic is also "a property of" nature. Nonhuman animals do not 'invent' transitive inferencing: they embody it (since their "minds" are embodied) in nature.

Laws of nature are logical, there’s no denying that. So to say that logic is embedded in nature is a totally valid. Perhaps it’s not necessary to separate the two.

All things however, embody the laws of nature, living or non-living yet logic as an activity only came to be when minds developed in the world.

So you’re right logic is a property of the laws of nature but in answer to the OP of where it came from it’s not so much where (nature) but when (evolution).

I take it that here "experience" means "our experience." So the Earth becomes what it is because we experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I found your ideas interesting, loaded with questions. Here: Someone like Rorty would say a discussion like this is just bad metaphysics, and thereby creates its own issues removed from what the world "gives". I don't agree with Rorty on many things, but here he is right. "Prior" refers to some substratum of the "world" without the perceptual act's contribution. But such a term is borrowed from familiar contexts only and to bring it into a conversation necessarily brings ordinary delimitations to bear upon it, and this finitizes what stands outside finitude, meaning this: appearances cannot be treated as derivative or contingent on what what cannot be identified at all. Why is the sky blue? is a question that belongs to science, and philosophy, I argue, has nothing to say about this. But to bring the principle of sufficient cause, looking for a "cause" on the "outside" side of experience that makes experience what it is, carries the assumption that talk of causes belongs to metaphysical relations, and the question follows on the heels of this: What metaphysics are you talking about if this is supposed to be about what is "outside" of experience? Stepping beyond experience....does this make sense?

Not to say something like experience is a radical delimitation of all meaningful propositions, for the point here is not to defend any delimitations at all. The world remains the world, and what is discovered in this world is open. I am arguing that a lot of philosophy deals with invented issues. But then, if you want responsible metaphysics, there really is such a thing in the world, and it is in clear sight, if neglected and "forgotten" sight, and it is all too forthcoming.

There seems to me to be a crucial difference between acknowledging that the experience of finite creatures is always filtered through their cognitive apparatus and denying the actuality of being as such prior to creatures' finite conscious awareness of it. The latter move puts potency prior to act if the idea is that the two (finite mind and world ) are the result of self-generation, with nothing outside this process. The world becomes the result of a self-moving process which, having nothing prior to it, is random. That is, sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself" into determinant actuality ex nihilo (or eternally I suppose, but the eternal framing doesn't make the question of quiddity, why being is one way and not another, any less acute). It's the same sort of issue you get with the physicalist claim that being and quiddity are "brute facts." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Filtered? Well, what is being filtered?

What is arbitrary, really, is the failure to acknowledge the world as it "is" as a stand alone givenness. To understand what this is requires first to be alert to its presence and no more, and there is nothing arbitrary about this, nothing needed to stabilize its presence, for such a need is, again, lifted from a totality finite possibilities, then needlessly thrust into a meta-explanation about what is NOT existence. We cannot have a discussion like this that makes apriori demands about requirements "behind" the solid presence of things, for there is no "behind" to conceive. A bit like talking about two continental plates colliding, erupting into mountains and volcanic activity, etc., and then asking about the nature of the collision apart from erupting into mountains and vocanic activity. But the collision IS the eruption, the seismic movements, the friction and its heat, and so on. The essence of the cup on the table is discovered in the revealed features of the cup on the table, and nothing more. Its being there is exhausted by the evidential ground of its being there.

You wrote, "sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself, yet in order for something to co-constitute itself, there must be two of something in the constitution, and this is not the case. One can go two ways in discussing ontology: One is Heidegger's, and this would be to talk about equiprimordiality at the basic level, which just means when analysis turns to issues of ontology, one is faced with the structure of experience (dasein) which is complex. The other is where my thoughts lie: There really IS a foundational primordiality to existence (and I do not divide "my existence" from "existence"; they are one. A very difficult point to understand, for generally, one is analytically bound to divisive categorical thinking, and this pins thought), and this lies in its transcendental phenomenality, transcendental because it is stand alone, or, standing as its own presupposition (what you call co-constitution). There is no interposing intentionality that undoes the absolute immanence. Michel Henry takes the structure of existence, our existence, which is the only, well, "place" you will find existence (and this by no means at all closes analytical possiblities), and pursues Husserl's Cartesian reduction beyond Husserl, and exposes a radical disclosure at the heart of being-in-the-world. Pure phenomenality cannot be gainsaid, and this most emphatically is about the affective or meta ethical/meta aesthetic dimension of our existence. This is, notwithstanding Heidegger, one "true" (truth as alethea) reality (presumptuous as it sounds).

Another difficulty is that if things' actuality is not prior to their being known, then it's hard to see how they could have any essence. All predication would be accidental (or essential, the difference is collapsed) and so there would be no pre se predication. Rather, things change what they essentially are when known differently. You get all the issues of Heraclitus, without the Logos as an ad hoc backstop. Presumably, there might be ways to iron this out, but it comes to mind. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But for this you would have make a move to actuality that has never been, nor can be witnessed. A fiction. But to be aligned with what is given in the world, a thing's actuality IS its being known. It has to be overcome that things have some secret identity, perhaps like Kantian noumena, that simply must be there. In fact, your claim that "all predication would be accidental is a LOT like Kant's attempt to explain the need to postulate noumena. You can see how uncomfortable Kant is having to talk like this, given the way he annihilates metaphysics: noumena is "just a concept" that has no meaning at all, a place holder for an undesirable absence, because...there must be "something"! Fo course, he gives no gravity to, or not nearly enough, there more basic insight that 'something' is a concept, and belongs to finitude's phenomena.


Of course, there are things here and there and over there, next to the mountain, and so on, but these are declared to be what they are in OUR existence, and not only the Kantian synthetic structures of pure logic, but moods, attitudes, memories, anticipation, contextuality, and so on (as well as the "uncanniness" of Being). The "over thereness" of that train depot simply cannot be conceived "outside" of its "hereness". The trouble that it can is the residuum of naturalism that intrudes into philosophy, which is understandable given how pervasive it is in general affairs and education; but naturalism falls away when basic questions are raised almost instantly.


Essence, what something IS. Of course, language is inherently contingent (accidental, if you like) in that concepts are part of a totality that gives contexts for meanings to arise, and essences are conceived, historical, part of a cultural evolvement. In philosophy, essences deal with basic ideas, like what it is for something to be/have an essence, and if I understand you, essences require consistency, repeatable results, if you will: what IS nitroglycerin? Part of its essence lies in the fact that if hurled, of a certain quantity and velocity, against a hard surface, it will explode, and consistently repeatably explode in rigorous testing. Of course, there is nothing apriori about this essence, and logic would not bat an eye if tomorrow it stopped doing this. Anyway, this is how objects can come by their essences. We create essences, also. What IS Toyota, the car maker? This essence was made.

So what does it mean to require the world itself, where essences' possibilities are grounded (due to consistencies like nitro's), to have an essence? Prior to talk about some abiding metaphysical essence, what makes the world as such "consistent," we have to look at what is IN the basic analysis, and this is Time, the apriori structure of existence. It is not that there is nothing outside of time. But that to think about it itself is a temporal act. Heraclitus? Time is Heraclitus' river. The point of this is that the substratum you support has a more basic analysis, and this lies with Time as a foundational feature of existence. Time is ontically (to borrow Heidegger's term referring to, well, normal affairs of thinking and naming) linear, sequential, but analysis shows it is here we find the true ground for metaphysics, evidenced in the ecstatic nature of Time's structure. Long discussion on this.

Now, the idea that there is only flux prior to our "constructions" mentioned earlier strikes me as different. Here, flux is prior. But this still seems to me to be heading towards the idea of man as the source of the world, if not in the role of God, then at least a demiurge. Are the principles of things contained in the flux (say, virtually), or is the flux a sort of prime matter on which man imposes form and makes everything what it is? And if the latter, from whence this form? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Phenomenological analysis takes the issue to its core. This form stands as its own presupposition.
If it is entirely laid aside that objects, the world, is given to the "openness" of our existence, then analysis has strayed from it content, due to the residuum of naturalistic thinking, the kind of thinking that looks at an object and considers it apart from the perceptual act that produces it. This is disingenuous on the part of many philosophers who got tired of Kant and idealism. Naturalists and scientific metaphysicians know that the epistemic/ontological problems they generate cannot be dealt with on their terms.

I think you’ve captured well the phenomenological move, common to writers as varied as Henry, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida, abandoning the need for an adequation between how things are perceived and the way things ‘really, really are’. The fecundity of time consciousness reveals the way things ‘really, really are’.

I can only approach understanding this philosophy, never be as solid as you. I am convinced that Henry is close to, well, heh, heh, the one true view.