I think it is just here where have nothing more than intuition to rely on. Anything we might believe regarding "prime matter, pure potential, unformed possibility, uninterpreted existence" will be the result of a groundless (in the empirical or logical sense) leap of faith. — John

Why can't we apply rational argument in the way that I have done to arrive at some image of the unsayable and unthinkable?

I agree following that path is what is difficult - the most extreme abstraction. But also its seems obvious that intuition doesn't even make a start because whoever has spontaneously intuited the notion of vagueness in your experience?

When talking about things, like the creation of existence or prime matter, normal folk only apply "intuitions" like something can't come from nothing, everything has a reason, causes precede effects, etc.

In other words, normal folk are only going to continue to think about foundational issues using the same mechanistic habits of logic that have been drummed into them by Western enlightenment culture - a culture evolved to build machines. Or else they are going to default to the antithesis to that - Romanticism and its idealist causality, a world moved by ghostly spirits.

Why can't we apply rational argument in the way that I have done to arrive at some image of the unsayable and unthinkable? — apokrisis

I think that is just what people have been doing for centuries; I'm just not convinced that subsequent scientific advances bestow any improved ability to do it, in fact they may well get in the way. Probably meditations and 'altered states' of various kinds offers the best inroad. If we, and all of nature, are manifestations of the unthinkable, if that is the essence of our beings and being itself, then it would seem that to look within, free of all prejudice and discursive 'noise', might provide the best possibility of envisioning the unthinkable.

I am not sure how it occurred but there was a negation of that formlessness and regardless of what may have caused it (if that is the right word), that process occurred in time, which suggests a duality, t1 & t2
a dialectic.

I think that is just what people have been doing for centuries; I'm just not convinced that subsequent scientific advances bestow any improved ability to do it, in fact they may well get in the way. — John

We weren't exactly expecting quantum indeterminism, but science found that. Just like science found Newtonian determinism and Boylean atoms 500 years ago and metaphysics spent a very long time being shook up by what that seemed to imply for everything.

Is there any fundamental conceptual advance that science hasn't delivered - even if it is in the guise of an antithetical reaction provoked by that very conceptual advance?

Yes, but all those advances are in regard to the world we experience and precisely how it is thinkable. They really say nothing about the unthinkable; which is as would be expected since nothing definitive can be said about it. But via meditation the ineffable may be experienced; and what can be spoken about is not the ineffable itself, but only the way in which it is experienced, and only using a language and metaphors borrowed from the sayable. I understand that this may not satisfy you, because if you have not personally experienced such things that is to be expected.

We only know being when it is formed into some thing. And thus the notion of unformed being becomes deeply "other". — apokrisis

Not for me. I've never had a particularly clear sense of identity. Being somewhat amorphous is my homebase.

The OP came from a passage in a book: Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolph Steiner. He was saying that without adding ideas to sensation, all we would have is something like raw sense data... noise... and nothing to react to one way or another.

From there, I pondered if that doesn't mean that it's really ideas we react to... not sounds or sights... if that makes any sense.

I've written a lot of radio plays. You write the 'Sound Effects'. Even a mysterious noise has a way of being described, being describable. Or does it? I tried similes, being poetic, describing the action to imply the noise. Sometimes all you can do is present a recording: 'This is the noise I mean.' Sometimes there is only the experience of the noise. Electronic analysis wouldn't clarify it. But it must mean something to the author mustn't it? It may only mean artistically that that sound belongs there, at that place in a sequence.

Thanks for that, mcdoodle. Author is a god's-eye-view.... or is it?

You're saying the objective picture can be populated with noise. The author does that. But if there's no idea attached to it, it involves a dance between subjective and objective? Is that what you mean?

Re Steiner and what I have been saying about modes of effort to penetrate and think the unthinkable: I think Steiner would agree that there is no "raw sense data", no unthinkable, except for thought. The unthinkable is a kind of retrospective formation; something we cannot help imagining must be there as the prior 'condition' for any experience and thought.

So, as you say, I think it is thoughts that we respond to...and sounds and sights...but only insofar as sounds and sights are permeated through and through by thought.

Why can't we apply rational argument in the way that I have done to arrive at some image of the unsayable and unthinkable? — apokrisis

It's hard to see how you're not talking about a conceptualization of that which, by definition, cannot be conceived. (Sensation, redness for instance, "overflows" the conceptual grasp we have on it, but we need the concept in order to speak of its "overflow.")

When talking about things, like the creation of existence or prime matter, normal folk only apply "intuitions" like something can't come from nothing, everything has a reason, causes precede effects, etc. — apokrisis

I do think it's great to question the PSR and cause and effect. Taking these for granted imposes tunnel vision.

In other words, normal folk are only going to continue to think about foundational issues using the same mechanistic habits of logic that have been drummed into them by Western enlightenment culture - a culture evolved to build machines. Or else they are going to default to the antithesis to that - Romanticism and its idealist causality, a world moved by ghostly spirits. — apokrisis

I'd stress feeling and imagination when it comes to Romanticism.

What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. — Keats

Also sensation.

My senses discovered the infinite in everything. — Blake

Then there's irony and pluralism. Hegel griped about "The Irony" in his day, presumably in the name of the rigor of the concept.

“Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty,” Schlegel writes in Lyceumfragment 42: “for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.” The task of a literary work with respect to irony is, while presenting an inherently limited perspective, nonetheless to open up the possibility of the infinity of other perspectives: “Irony is, as it were, the demonstration [epideixis] of infinity, of universality, of the feeling for the universe” (KA 18.128); irony is the “clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos.” (Ideas 69). — SEP

The "world moved by ghostly spirits" doesn't fit with my image of Romanticism. I'm not an expert, but I sure did love those Romantic poets (and there theories of poetry) back in the day.

I'd stress feeling and imagination when it comes to Romanticism. — Hoo

Yep. Ghostly spirits. The essences that Newtonian mechanicalism so clearly leaves out.

Now of course Romanticism was also a retreat into vagueness about what exactly it might mean in this regard.

Theology had a perfectly substantial notion of souls and Gods. The Enlightenment undermined that concreteness in radical fashion. And so Romanticism was the retreat to talk about the ineffable, the sublime, the aesthetic, the personal, the existential, the ideal.

It all became fuzzy in a way that made it un-attackable by the reductionists. There was no longer any definite thesis to come under examination. A firm position on the realm of spirit was turned into a metaphysical waffle that evaded its pursuers.

Then there's irony and pluralism. Hegel griped about "The Irony" in his day, presumably in the name of the rigor of the concept. — Hoo

I think that is different - and more like Peirce's abduction. We can indeed retreat into vaguer states of conception with the self-conscious purpose of then making some new creative jump that might land in a better place.

So Romanticism I see as a refuge - a cloak of obscurity, an asking just to be left alone with a "mystery" that is more fun, more real, more whatever it takes to get serious questioning off its back.

But scientific reasoners use vagueness as a productive tool. An ironic stance to your own professed beliefs is a pre-condition for being able to start all over again in another direction. You have to be able to step back from your own current certainty to make another leap towards possibly more convincing certainty.

You can't be right unless you are prepared to be wrong. So the question for Romanticism is in what sense is it putting itself in a position that it could be shown wrong? In claiming the transcendent authenticity of personal feelings and imaginings, it just puts itself in a place where that becomes a social impossibility.

Although I'm not completely unromantic. As John argues, one can learn this social practice called meditation and find what that feels like. One can go to art galleries or watch the sun set. Culturally and psychologically, there is stuff that is important which is very human and a long distance from any cosmological-level discussion. So Romanticism as a movement makes great cultural experience. It speaks to that part of our lives.

But does it make great philosophy? I say no. It just isn't designed for that task. Although of course being a professional mystifyer in the form of a Continental academic is probably a quite gratifying kind of career if one is not really serious about cosmological issues. :)

Yep. Ghostly spirits. The essences that Newtonian mechanicalism so clearly leaves out.

Now of course Romanticism was also a retreat into vagueness about what exactly it might mean in this regard. — apokrisis

Oh, well those can indeed be called ghosts and spirits. But perhaps you'll grant that numbers are also figments of the imagination. So science is just a ghost or system of ghosts that gets things done.

How is the retreat into vagueness avoidable as we move away from numbers? Metaphors seem to me like a cutting edge of the creative imagination, and they are basically abuses or mutations of the language that sometimes succeed and become literalized (the exception becomes a rule if not the rule.) When someone asks us what we mean by our words, we can only offer more words. So "meaning" is a slippery ghost. On the other hand, an airplane or a stick of TNT speaks to the ancient, sensual animal. When I see a building from the sidewalk, I have no genuine doubt that others see this building. But as language becomes more complex and abstract, I very much lose this sense of "seeing the same building." I like pragmatism for trying to glue abstract statements to results in the concrete, manifest world. Instead of proving metaphysical "theorems" in a sort of "word math," we take them "modulo practice" and look at the result. (This isn't perfect or simply, but it's a promising path.)

So Romanticism I see as a refuge - a cloak of obscurity, an asking just to be left alone with a "mystery" that is more fun, more real, more whatever it takes to get serious questioning off its back. — apokrisis

Or one could define serious questioning as the questioning that one cannot get off one's back. This is inquiry powered by genuine doubt, cognitive dissonance, a fork in the road that matters. No doubt, poetry isn't science. But only a few of us are paid to do science, just as only a few of us are paid to be poets. Placing poetry and science and all the rest in the hierarchy is one of those issues that is under-determined (for individuals) by constraints on practice. Should the insurance salesman learn quantum physics or French? For the most part, it only matters to him.

You can't be right unless you are prepared to be wrong. So the question for Romanticism is in what sense is it putting itself in a position that it could be shown wrong? In claiming the transcendent authenticity of personal feelings and imaginings, it just puts itself in a place where that becomes a social impossibility. — apokrisis

Poets might be seen as (among other things) inventors of personalities. They give us new images/conceptions of what we might want to become. They are the "unacknowledged legislators" of the world to the degree that they impose the values that shape the social and physical world. Perhaps you'll agree that we don't as thinkers merely construct and evaluate propositions. We invent new conceptions and therefore "disclose" things that thereby become visible. For instance, philosophy seems largely dominated by the image of a sort of armchair scientists. He's like a scientist in his intentions, but he can work like a mathematician with just a pencil and paper. If we shift to the engineer metaphor, however, we are going to look for results instead or at the "math." If we dwell on the philosopher as poet, we concentrate on how the world looks through the lens of a new personality. In fact, we probably operate on all of these levels simultaneously. But, consciously, the scientist metaphor seems to dominate.

But does it make great philosophy? I say no. It just isn't designed for that task. Although of course being a professional mystifyer in the form of a Continental academic is probably a quite gratifying kind of career if one is not really serious about cosmological issues. — apokrisis

I'm not crazy about mystification either. But "seriousness about cosmological issues" seems optional. For the consumer, a "black box prediction machine" and a "physical reality manipulation machine" are going to be enough. That's always going to convince more than "word math," no matter how respectable the reasoning. If this "word math" allows for better machines, it will be embraced for its indirect contribution. Some of us will give a damn about the details, but that seems like an esthetic choice. Why not pure math or King Lear or just Arrested Development? If someone feels especially talented at metaphysics, there's an extra motivation: honor, maybe even $. If the stuff leads to new machines, there will surely be $. But without the machines, how is it so different from Romanticism?

Although I'm not completely unromantic. As John argues, one can learn this social practice called meditation and find what that feels like. One can go to art galleries or watch the sun set. Culturally and psychologically, there is stuff that is important which is very human and a long distance from any cosmological-level discussion. So Romanticism as a movement makes great cultural experience. It speaks to that part of our lives.

But does it make great philosophy? I say no. It just isn't designed for that task. Although of course being a professional mystifyer in the form of a Continental academic is probably a quite gratifying kind of career if one is not really serious about cosmological issues. — apokrisis

I don't think it is quite right to say that meditation is a social practice. It can be done in the company of others but I think the presence of others is irrelevant to the practice itself. Meditation is a culturally enshrined practice, no doubt, in the sense that many of the various methods that people have discovered, are described in texts, and taught to novices, and so on.

So, I would agree with you that contemplative meditation, viewing artworks, communing with nature, and so on are "a long way from cosmological-level discussion" if by that you mean that they do not (obviously) constitute doing cosmology and/or don't have any direct bearing on how we might think the physical universe has evolved.

But why is it only so-called 'outer' observations, which may be collectively observed and confirmed, that are taken into account when it comes to inter-subjectively motivated, conducted and judged discussions about the nature of things, and not the 'inner' observations of meditators, or the intuitions of imagination? I think the answer is obvious; because the latter are not subject to easy corroboration, or even any of the kind of more or less universal corroboration, which is possible and demanded when it comes to empirical observations.

So, those kinds of aesthetic or contemplative practices are not going to yield any testable theory about the origin of the cosmos, for sure. But the very fact that we can have those kinds of experiences (and who that has not enjoyed many, and/ or temporally sustained, such experiences can know just how comprehensive and utterly convincing they may be?) might lead some to believe that, since they are not satisfactorily explainable in physicalistic causal terms, they 'come from somewhere else'.

I don't mean by this that these kinds of experiences might come from some 'hidden' outer realm, but that they come from an inner dimension which is not accessible to the rational intellect, and that the rational intellect may only emptily speculate as to an 'explanation' for that inner dimension, and is quite impotent to give an adequate description of it, unless it maintains a position of faith in relation to the intuitions that seem to be quite natural to humans. Any such description and/or explanation will only be thought to be adequate in virtue of thinking that intuition may, if coupled with the right kind of skeptical attitude, offer a good guide in non-empirical matters. But it must also be acknowledged that such descriptions and explanations are couched in metaphor and cannot be understood to be of the kind of propositional hypotheses that empirical science works with.

But why is it only so-called 'outer' observations, which may be collectively observed and confirmed, that are taken into account when it comes to inter-subjectively motivated, conducted and judged discussions about the nature of things, and not the 'inner' observations of meditators, or the intuitions of imagination? I think the answer is obvious; because the latter are not subject to easy corroboration, or even any of the kind of more or less universal corroboration, which is possible and demanded when it comes to empirical observations. — John

It is one thing to get involved in a social practice in a way that produces an experiential state of social value. It is another to then analyse that as phenomenology. At that point you must be able to justify a further epistemic method of inquiry. It is no longer good enough to "just experience it" because that experiencing itself involves the conceptualistion which is the social practice's culturally constructed frame.

Naked phenomenology is a pipe dream. Introspective states come already culturally legitimated. People think all kinds of wrong things about the way that they dream because that is the way they are told dreams are in stories about dreams, or movie recreations of dream states. You have to strip away such expectations and - scaffolded by other theories now - see those phenomenal states "for real" ... as much as they will ever be seen so nakedly.

But the very fact that we can have those kinds of experiences (and who that has not enjoyed many, and/ or temporally sustained, such experiences can know just how comprehensive and utterly convincing they may be?) might lead some to believe that, since they are not satisfactorily explainable in physicalistic causal terms, they 'come from somewhere else'. — John

People think they know the deep secrets of the universe when they are on drugs, in church, psychotic, crackpot, drunk in the gutter. Indeed, the psychotic and the crackpot are the most strongly convinced.

So you are being very defensive about meditation. But I'm not attacking it as something that is not good to do - anymore than I would say art has no value in life. And it is plainly better than drugs or psychosis as an altered state - for reasons that I would give based on a neuropsychological justification.

And you would probably too? Just as you would point to the pragmatic utility of LSD as a creative aid if push came to shove in a social setting - where the meaning of such trips is having to be culturally framed.

Now OK. You might in fact say that meditation connects you transcendentally with a spiritual plane beyond our material one. And now we are off the charts when it comes to empirically defensible mechanism.

Yet still, I would be left with the neuropsychological story about why meditation feels like it does and might do you good. And you would be left unable to demonstrate that it was in fact anything more.

It is like psi. If it exists, then produce it in the lab. Otherwise we can put coincidence down to coincidence. And you can continue to lose money at the casino while listening to your dreams or using your lucky numbers.

People think they know the deep secrets of the universe when they are on drugs, in church, psychotic, crackpot, drunk in the gutter. Indeed, the psychotic and the crackpot are the most strongly convinced. — apokrisis

I don't have time to respond more comprehensively right now, but I will just say this: it is precisely (some) people on drugs, in church, crackpots, drunks in the gutter that make positivistic, purportedly empirical, claims about what they have experienced.

Sensible psychonauts, mystics, religious thinkers, and perhaps even sensible crackpots (although "sensible crackpots" sounds a bit odd) and sensible drunks in the gutter (are there any such?), don't make such kinds of claims; and that is precisely the point I have been trying to make.

The theoretic dimension of philosophy is one side, for sure; and I don't want to diminish its importance in any way, but I say there is another to philosophy which is captured by the etymology. And I believe that it makes perfect sense that some kinds (at least) of mystical experience may, and do, have great bearing on questions of how to live, that is on the love and pursuit of wisdom. It is on those grounds and not on the basis of the purported irrelevance of mystical or aesthetic experience to theoretic philosophy that I disagree with your position.

Sensible psychonauts, mystics, religious thinkers, and perhaps even sensible crackpots (although "sensible crackpots" sounds a bit odd) and sensible drunks in the gutter (are there any such?), don't make such kinds of claims; and that is precisely the point I have been trying to make. — John

I know what you mean. But the rub is in how you now define "sensible" in a fashion that is not how I'm defining it.

If there is no empirical way of telling the difference between the sensible mystics and the cranky mystics - as in listening to the way they talk as an example of "sensible" - then it becomes a distinction that makes no difference.

I used to spend a lot of time with psi researchers - because of the way the field is a living example of the edges of the scientific method. And really, in a formal setting with even its written accord between believers and sceptics, everyone could talk the sensible talk ... for a while. But eventually you learnt by their behaviour who was more honestly sensible, who was secretly still thinking like a crank.

And the sceptics could be the secret cranks at times too.

People think they know the deep secrets of the universe when they are on drugs, in church, psychotic, crackpot, drunk in the gutter. Indeed, the psychotic and the crackpot are the most strongly convinced. — apokrisis

In a sense maybe some of them do know a temporary secret about the universe in such moments. From over here, it looks as if you're thinking about the universe in terms of the "scientific image (Sellars)." But this largely mathematical "image" is embedded in a far richer totality, including of course the "manifest image." Spiritual practices, drugs, music, fasting, etc., are usually aimed at value insights.
If you, for instance, are locked into an identification with scientificity or investment in objectivity as the measure of a man, then, sure, this won't have much appeal. But this investment is optional. Imagine Beethoven at his piano. Was that objectivity? But would we want him doing something else? There's something in Dead Poet's Society (yes, let's go pop culture for a moment) about science being about how we live and poetry being about why we live. This silly statement has a grain of truth. What gives the facts weight in the first place if not values? And whence the value in objectivity that doesn't cash out in utility? It's there. There's certainly a love of truth and objectivity for its own sake or at least the idea of that love as a mark of virtue. Some of the stuff above may help us (though obviously may harm us in the same way) by adjusting our values and therefore our trajectory and the gap between what we want and what we have.

If you, for instance, are locked into an identification with scientificity or investment in objectivity as the measure of a man, then, sure, this won't have much appeal. But this investment is optional. Imagine Beethoven at his piano. Was that objectivity? — Hoo

I get the need to caricature me as the dry-as-dust reductionist scientist to legitimate the otherness that would be your heroic and liberated, yet still dreadfully suffering, poet of nature. It is the quickest way for you to win the argument here. But it doesn't accord with the facts of how I live and think.

If I were to offer you a theory of the measure of a man, it would be all about a balanced life - so a fruitful mix of science and poetry, the objective and the subjective, if those are indeed the dichotomy to be balanced here.

Spiritual practices, drugs, music, fasting, etc., are usually aimed at value insights. — Hoo

Well I think those things might be fun but also bogus when it comes to insight about values.

If you want real insight like that, go help out at a homeless shelter or do some eco-system restoration. Seriously. Actually being involved with the world is the way to discover its values. The other stuff you mention is largely self-indulgence.

I get the need to caricature me as the dry-as-dust reductionist scientist to legitimate the otherness that would be your heroic and liberated, yet still dreadfully suffering, poet of nature. It is the quickest way for you to win the argument here. But it doesn't accord with the facts of how I live and think. — apokrisis

I wasn't trying to offend you, just to be clear. I don't even identity with Romanticism. I don't care much for nature and I don't find suffering impressive or poetic. But yes liberty is part of my notion of the heroic. Anyway, I just thought you weren't painting a picture of Romanticism that squared with my fairly intense reading in the tradition almost 20 years ago now. I mentioned Beethoven under the assumption you enjoyed him, so I wasn't trying to paint you as a soulless person. You do dwell on philosophy of science or philosophy as science, but so what? Also, on some gut-level there's urge to "win" interactions, but isn't that in all of us? And, yeah, my position is easy to argue, since it's slippery and non-committal. But that's one of its features. Much of life is the clash of personalities, which I particularly contemplate. Still, I don't mean to be rude, just in case that's not clear.

Well I think those things might be fun but also bogus when it comes to insight about values.
If you want real insight like that, go help out at homeless shelter or do some eco-system restoration. Seriously. Actually being involved with the world is the way to discover its values. The other stuff you mention is largely self-indulgence. — apokrisis

Just for background and clarification, the best experiences I've had with drugs also involved great friendships. So there was a living community in place, and the drugs and music (listened to and created) just pushed feeling to heights that are otherwise hard to access. From this place of high feeling, certain metaphors and images in art and religion make sense in a new way. It's all "just" feelings, but the feelings are such that you don't give a damn about making objective claims. Everyone there already knows. The music becomes "obviously" something made in the same "spirit." Words seem like poor things. They are cups too small for the bliss.
But these days or rather these years (speaking of involvement in the world) I'm a PhD student in math. My worst vice now is probably typing foolosophy on this forum when I could be wrestling with ordinals and cardinals (or is it the nicotine gum?) As to the other stuff, I won't pretend to care much or pose as an altruist.

Still, I don't mean to be rude, just in case that's not clear. — Hoo

No worries on that score. I didn't take it that way because you are a very positive guy. Also, rudeness is part of the fun. It's all a game in the end. With ideas the winner hopefully.

If there is no empirical way of telling the difference between the sensible mystics and the cranky mystics - as in listening to the way they talk as an example of "sensible" - then it becomes a distinction that makes no difference. — apokrisis

You have to rely on your intuition just as you do when you tell the difference between honest and dishonest people that you have just met. There are no guarantees of being right, of course; but that's just the nature of life in general.

But eventually you learnt by their behaviour who was more honestly sensible, who was secretly still thinking like a crank. — apokrisis

But "thinking like a crank" is just a subjective characterization. What does thinking like a crank consist in when it comes to psi researchers? You're not saying that thinking like a crank here means being open to the idea that psi might be a genuine phenomenon are you?

But "thinking like a crank" is just a subjective characterization. What does thinking like a crank consist in when it comes to psi researchers? You're not saying that thinking like a crank here means being open to the idea that psi might be a genuine phenomenon are you? — John

No. That's why I said sceptics could also be insincere about their apparent objectivity. So what I am talking about is the difficult thing of what it would mean to be open-minded yet common-sensical.

It is like Bayesian reasoning (or it is Bayesian reasoning). Given the laboratory results (or the general lack of them), how do you then quantify your state of belief. Can you live as though it is 99.9% unlikely there is such a thing as psi, yet not then jump to 100% certainty in your heart, if the literature supports a psi effect of 0.1%?

A sensible person is always seeking falsification of his strong beliefs in some sense. A crank does everything to avoid a confrontation with falsification.

There are other standard good habits of thought like Occam's razor - valuing the theories with the fewest moving parts. Not data-mining for significant results. And so on.

It is not that hard to say something objective about the difference in mental habits of cranks and sensible investigators as it turns out. Philosophy of science is rather focused on the issue.

And as I say, that is why I found parapsychology a good living example of rational inquiry in practice. It both showed what scientific rigour looks like (psi research being far tighter in its protocols than practically anything else - like for instance, pharmaceutical research) and also the social limits of that rigour (how far can you go in supporting a hypothesis that a positive result is the product of experimental fraud?).

So, as you say, I think it is thoughts that we respond to...and sounds and sights...but only insofar as sounds and sights are permeated through and through by thought. — John

Well what's your ontological view then? Are you an idealist?

Candle melts into a puddle. The wax in the candle is now in the puddle. — Mongrel

Here's one thing I wrote in the earlier post that you didn't seem to read or understand. You're at least not targetedly addressing anything from that post:

"One thing we might be referring to is paraffin, and specifically, a particular molecular composition re hydrocarbons. If that's what we're referring to, and we imagine it can remain identical through time, then indeed it is the same wax as a candle and as the melted puddle, and it hasn't changed form, because the form we're referring to is that molecular composition of hydrocarbons. "

We only know being when it is formed into some thing. — apokrisis

And for good reason. The idea of being without form is incoherent.

it hasn't changed form, because the form we're referring to is that molecular composition of hydrocarbons. — Terrapin Station

The forms I referred to were candles and puddles. But if you like molecules better.. the hydrocarbons can take the form of a number of molecules.

And..... it's turtles all the way down. You're fun to pick on Terrapin. No harm intended.

“for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.” The task of a literary work with respect to irony is, while presenting an inherently limited perspective, nonetheless to open up the possibility of the infinity of other perspectives: “Irony is, as it were, the demonstration [epideixis] of infinity, of universality, of the feeling for the universe” (KA 18.128); irony is the “clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos.” (Ideas 69). — SEP by way of Hoo

Holy Guacamole!

I don't think I am. It's a slippery designation. I don't think material things are 'made of thought' whatever that might mean, they are by definition materially constituted. There is no-thing there, though, that is not in conceptual form; but that does not mean there is nothing, or even that there is a 'great unrepresented' there. Certainly I am not a materialist. Maybe a neutral monist? I wonder, do I have to be any kind of 'ist', though?

Holy Guacamole! — Mongrel

Yeah, Schlegel!
8-)

What is your interpretation of a representative theory of mind?