That’s true, although it’s worth noting that Aristotle’s unmoved mover does not function as a source of the world’s intelligibility. As νοήσεως νόησις, it thinks only itself, and does not impose form or order on the cosmos. For Aristotle, the intelligibility of nature is intrinsic to substances themselves rather than conferred by a divine intellect contemplating or structuring the world. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm not so sure about this. While God is not seen as an efficient cause of entities, it is seen as their final cause, IIRC. Given this, I'm not sure how you can safely say that their intelligibility isn't rooted in the Unmoved Mover according to him.

Regardless for that, however, I agree with you that intelligibility alone certainly doesn't 'prove' the existence of God.

Well, my first reaction is to examine the question to work out what will count as an answer. — Ludwig V

Yes, I agree.

A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic. — Ludwig V

In other words, the intelligibility of the world to you is a 'given' that isn't explainable in terms of something more fundamental. Am I misunderstanding you?

Fair enough. — Ludwig V

Ok.

I'm not so sure about this. While God is not seen as an efficient cause of entities, it is seen as their final cause, IIRC. Given this, I'm not sure how you can safely say that their intelligibility isn't rooted in the Unmoved Mover according to him. — boundless

That’s a fair point — you’re right that, for Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover functions as a final cause of cosmic motion, even though it is not an efficient cause. I don’t mean to deny that.

My claim is narrower: even granting divine final causality, Aristotle does not treat the Unmoved Mover as the source of the intelligible form of natural substances. Final causality explains why motion is directed toward an end; form explains what a thing is, and it is form that grounds intelligibility. On Aristotle’s own terms, those forms are intrinsic to substances rather than conferred by divine cognition.

So while Aristotle certainly affirms a divine intellect, the intelligibility of nature, as he understands it, does not consist in being thought by God, but in being formally structured in its own right. And on that much, I think we agree that intelligibility alone doesn’t prove the existence of God.

Agreed!

I’m not saying that anyone should believe it, or that I believe it. But that we should at least acknowledge that it was believed by all the adherents of these religions movements and is depicted en masse in their iconography and teachings. And was accepted as true by the whole population prior to the Cartesian divide. — Punshhh

I don't think this assessment is accurate if the Ancient Greeks philosophers are taken into account.

All I’m saying is that if we are going to consider transcendence, we have to somehow translate what is revealed to people during revelation into something amenable to philosophical discourse. That there is no other way. It is rather like Kant’s neumenon. Philosophy accepts the neumenon into discursive discourse, why not transcendence? It’s rather like a positive form of neumenon. — Punshhh

Perhaps, but 'revelation' is a loaded term―I prefer 'altered states' or 'non-ordinary states'. Kant's noumenon is specifically defined as that of which no experience at all is possible. The question about revelation is as to whether what is revealed is the same as what is articulated. The question is whether adequate discursive articulation is possible. I tend to think not. In fact I think the same about ordinary states―they are made to seem ordinary by the assumption that our talk in terms of identities adequately characterizes them, captures their nature.

For Husserl and the other thinkers I mentioned there are no thing-in-themselves. Not just because humans or animals must be present for them to be perceived, but because a world seen in itself, apart from humans or animals, is a temporal flux of qualitative change with respect to itself. — Joshs

I agree―we identify things as determinate things, as being this or that. On the other hand I think there is structure in the temporal flux or field of differential intensities that is the determinator, that enables the reliable appearance of a shared world for both humans and animals. If not all would be anarchic chaos, and no discourse at all possible.

Spinoza, yes. Hegel and Whitehead, no. For the latter two the idea of mathematical truths that are utterly independent of history, world, relation, or realization is not just false, it is philosophically incoherent. — Joshs

I'm not going to argue about Hegel, as he is complicated and variously interpreted, including as having links with the Hermetic Tradition, but I think you need to look closer at Whitehead. In his ontology there are actual occasions, more or less evanescent events that make up the spatiotemporal flux that constitutes reality, and there are eternal objects―atemporal potentials that are "ingressed" (a Whiteheadian term that Levin has adopted) in the actual occasions. Basically the actualization of eternal potentials. Mathematical objects, or better, patterns, and forms, including ontic forms.

Whitehead stands Plato on his head as Marx did with Hegel―or perhaps better, stood Plato on his feet (as Marx said he did with Hegel), in that he denied that actual reality is the dim, imperfect copy of eternal forms, but their actualization, without which they would be effectively nothing at all. The eternal objects together constitute the totality of possibility, which is of course, numerically speaking, far greater than actuality, but greater only in that sense.

In other words, the intelligibility of the world to you is a 'given' that isn't explainable in terms of something more fundamental. Am I misunderstanding you? — boundless

I don't find a clear meaning in the question whether the world is intelligible or not. I was trying to extract some sense from it, by paying attention to cases, rather than large generalities.

I was saying, perhaps not very clearly,
1. that in some cases, what we call disorder is disorder in a collection of objects (or processes) that we can recognize. So it is disorder among elements, but identifying the elements is a level of order. Here, the world is both ordered and disordered. It's a question of levels.
2. so in radical disorder (as in "the world is unintelligible") we could not even identify distinct objects or processes. What, then, would it mean, to say that such a world existed - not that it could be said, because we couldn't exist in it.
3. Sometimes, order in the world is something we recognize, and sometimes it is something we impost, in the sense that we choose which of many possible orderings we wish to pay attention to. In the latter case, it is a moot point whether one says that we recognize the order or impose it.

It seems to me that "The world is unintelligible" and "The world is intelligible" are a false dilemma. But even to consider it allows that it is possible that the world is intelligible, and even that possibility may be sufficient to say that the world is intelligible. I would rather say that the possibility is a methodological assumption which is indefeasible, because if our existing ways of understanding the world fail us, we can construct new ones. So there will never be compelling evidence that we must give up on that assumption.

The straightest answer I can give is that the world is partly intelligible and partly not. But even where we do not understand some part of the world, we wring from it such understanding as we can.

Does that help?

I don't think this assessment is accurate if the Ancient Greeks philosophers are taken into account.

Yes, there would have been a few deeper thinkers who had thought about this, but the world they were living in was steeped in the belief, to such an extent that it was as accepted as real as water and air.*

Perhaps, but 'revelation' is a loaded term―I prefer 'altered states' or 'non-ordinary states'. Kant's noumenon is specifically defined as that of which no experience at all is possible

Yes, altered states could suffice, but it leaves out the important thing about revelation. That the person is contacted by a being, who is in a transcendent relationship to himself. This requires something called hosting, in which the person is temporarily transfigured, or “sees through” the eyes of the transcendent being. Is taken up into heaven, so to speak and witnesses heaven. That when the person comes back down to earth, what they witnessed is no longer explainable, or conceivable, but is couched in a conceptual language of this world and their terrestrial conditioning. Hence allegory, now if that person discusses their experience with someone else who has witnessed similar, they are holding a discursive conversation about a transcendent state.

By comparison, and I’m not drawing a direct comparison, only hinting at a possible parallel. In the human body were we to assume a transcendent relationship between the person and the individual cells in his body, a hosted cell might be a receptor cell in the eye, or a memory cell in the brain of the person. Such that an individual cell in his body bares witness to the transcended state of being a person. Of course that cell would not “comprehend” what it witnessed, but the image perceived by the person, has possibly passed through that cell, so in an esoteric sense, the cell did witness something the person saw.

The question is whether adequate discursive articulation is possible.

Two people who have experienced revelation can hold a discursive discussion about it.

Regarding the neumenon, I still see a parallel, it’s true that we may never experience the neumenon, or have an understanding of it. But we are composed of it, hosted by it, so in a sense we have access to it. But we are totally blind of that access.

In fact I think the same about ordinary states―they are made to seem ordinary by the assumption that our talk in terms of identities adequately characterizes them, captures their nature.

I agree entirely, which may be a doorway through which it can be discussed.

*I could go on at length about how a culture, particularly a historic culture, where everyone believes something without question. Is very different to what we experience in our disparate culture. Magic does happen, religious narratives do come to life. I witnessed such myself in India.

Does that help? — Ludwig V

I'm not sure. Intelligibility of an entity merely means that, in principle, the entity has some kind of structure that can be known by an intellect. So even claiming that an entity has a structure implies saying that it is intelligible IMO (not necessarily by you or me but in principle).

It seems to me that you aren't denying that the world independent from us has a structure. To me this means that you're saying that it is intelligible. However, this intelligibility might be a 'given' that isn't necessarily 'due to' something more fundamental. I would say that it is 'due to' something more fundamental but intelligibility alone doesn't force that conclusion.