I think the point is that when it comes to the question " what is the feeling-like-something ontologically speaking" that the sign relation is where it "bottoms out". What more could we hope to say without positing some additional mental substance; which would be to return to substance dualism? — Janus

You got it.

It is just the same as the equivalent cosmological question of "why anything?" or "what is being?". We can only answer any such question semiotically - via a modelling relation. And modelling in turn relies on measurable counterfactuals. A theory has to impose a falsifiable claim on the reality. And once we get down to asking "why experience?" or "why existence?", what can count for the kind of counterfactuals that would truly make sense of some proper theory?

So I accept a limit to rational explanation in terms of the measurement of counterfactuals. If the question is why is green so greenish, we have pretty much run out of road as we can't even think what other possible alternative could be the case. The question ultimately becomes a hollow one because the modelling relation itself has no counterfactuals it can get a purchase on.

But despite that kind of ultimate barrier, we can then model the world pretty effectively. Neuroscience can give us answers on how experience is constructed as an umwelt to a degree of detail that is well past most people's actual level of interest.

I've been through all this with Schop a number of times, but still there is this plantiff bleat - solve the Hard Problem to my satisfaction. I believe in this stuff called mind. Explain how it gets there - in a world that I also believe is just a bunch of stuff called matter.

He won't be walked back an inch from his Cartesian dualism. He just stands there with his nose pressed against a brick wall complaining.

So stepping back from the business of theorising about both the human mind and the origin of existence itself, we can all marvel that there is anything there to be discussed at all. But then we ought to get back to theory-building if we are actually engaged with these things in a metaphysically interesting way.

Mechanical response is conceived as being exhaustively causally determined. In an interpretative response there must be some agential freedom; you could respond in any of some variety of ways.

No, it just doesn't make sense how behavior can have an internalness. Calling it "interpretive" is suspiciously pulling a pan-experiential move, as I told @Janus.

Mechanical response is conceived as being exhaustively causally determined. In an interpretative response there must be some agential freedom; you could respond in any of some variety of ways. — Janus

So we have degrees of freedom. Can you provide an example and then connect this with internalness?

No, it just doesn't make sense how behavior can have an internalness. — schopenhauer1

Aren't you going to even make a single solitary attempt to justify your position against the claims of modelling?

Why wouldn't an umwelt-style modelling of the world feel like something?

The point of this exercise is to show yourself that you can't in fact come up with convincing reasons why all that activity wouldn't be "experiential" in a basic "animal experience of the world" way. You having nothing concrete to support the prejudices you are expressing.

It is not the behaviour that has "internalness" here. It is the modelling. So again, stop deflecting and focus on the question as it was asked of you. Discover for yourself that you really don't have any concrete reason to deny an "internalness" to a modelling relation between the brain and the world. You might in fact realise that the semiotic story is all about the organismic construction of an "internal and meaningful point-of-view".

So stop treating my position as merely good old materialism.

Semiotics is a metaphysics designed to get beyond both materialism and mentalism - the standard issue Cartesian substance duality. Start respecting that by answering the question it poses for you - why wouldn't modelling a world feel like modelling a world?

How could an entity without some minimal subjective experience ("internalness") have any degrees of freedom? If an entity could respond in different ways to the same stimulus, what other than some self-regulative "internalness" could give rise to that possibility?

If an entity could respond in different ways to the same stimulus, what other than some self-regulative "internalness" could give rise to that possibility? — Janus

I don't know but, that is definitely a sort of panpsychism that @apokrisis would deny. I think I've seen that posited by some philosophers though.

It is not the behaviour that has "internalness" here. It is the modelling. So again, stop deflecting and focus on the question as it was asked of you. Discover for yourself that you really don't have any concrete reason to deny an "internalness" to a modelling relation between the brain and the world. You might in fact realise that the semiotic story is all about the organismic construction of an "internal and meaningful point-of-view". — apokrisis

I mean come on.. Internalness of modelling of the brain and the world? There are so many steps there.. Yeah lets start with sight. Light hits the eye, all this happens right: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-science-of-vision-how-do-our-eyes-see-10513902.html
(abbreviated version obviously)...

You can call this process combined with more strictly neural processes (stuff like this: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~rswenson/NeuroSci/chapter_11.html#chapter_11_visual)

And we can add more very specific articles, textbooks, and the like..

Okay, that is the substrate. Where does this modelling "take place"? What is the "space" that this modelling is happening? Where does interpretive space happen? We can't assume what is being inquired about... We know there is internalness, but it is not obvious from the substrates themselves.. and modelling is a process.. but where is this process space occurring? It is all physical stuff happening at this point.. All material. Unless you make underhanded Cartesian theater claims.. I don't see your way out of the bind.

I don't know but, that is definitely a sort of panpsychism that apokrisis would deny. I think I've seen that posited by some philosophers though. — schopenhauer1

I don't think apokrisis would deny what I said, but he might deny the interpretation of "self-regulative internalness" as 'psyche', though, because this conception bears a notion of mind-as-substantive as opposed to mind-as-process. This is why Whitehead's philosophy is spoken of as a 'pan-experientialism', rather than as a 'pan-psychism'. Experience can be understood as en embodied physical process if you don't have an eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of the physical, thus obviating the need to posit a separate mental substance.

We know there is internalness, but it is not obvious from the substrates themselves.. and modelling is a process.. — schopenhauer1

So stop going on and on about material substrates. Start talking about the process ... of modelling ...

but where is this process space occurring? — schopenhauer1

What has physical space got to do with it? The model is about an organism in a world. So it is an abstraction as far as that physical space is concerned.

Then I should hardly need to point out that your talk about "physical space" is itself a modelling interpretation. So you are simply doubling down on the epistemological missteps.

I don't see your way out of the bind. — schopenhauer1

I don't see you doing anything but ducking the question you were asked. Your problem is that you are happy with the bind you are in. You think being stuck in an irresolvable paradox is some kind of good thing. You just keep on shaking that dualism in my face while you avoid answering why modelling wouldn't feel like something, when we both know that the brain actually models and that it indeed does feel like something when it does that.

Experience can be understood as en embodied physical process if you don't have an eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of the physical, thus obviating the need to posit a separate mental substance. — Janus

I guess I just don't understand this embodied physical process as much. I wouldn't mind if you told me more what that really means as opposed to eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of physical. There's just a lot of word salad thrown around at this point.. Not that it's necessarily wrong.. I just feel we need our definitions defined first and we can see if we even agree.

What has physical space got to do with it? The model is about an organism in a world. So it is an abstraction as far as that physical space is concerned.

Then I should hardly need to point out that your talk about "physical space" is itself a modelling interpretation. So you are simply doubling down on the epistemological missteps. — apokrisis

No, I don't mean "physical space" in this case. What I meant is more abstract.. If all this physical stuff is happening.. "where" is this modelling happening?

This is why Whitehead's philosophy is spoken of as a 'pan-experientialism', rather than as a 'pan-psychism'. Experience can be understood as en embodied physical process if you don't have an eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of the physical, thus obviating the need to posit a separate mental substance. — Janus

This is fine but my reason for preferring Peirce is because he starts with some actual bit of mechanism or structural relation that we can all understand - language and the way it mediates as a system of sign to result in a "reasonable" experiencing of reality.

And from there, we can see that neurology and biology generally have the same central structuring relation. Beyond that, pan-semiosis can track that "experiential relation" all the way down to the quantum level.

So the Peircean approach makes a concrete proposal that starts in an uncontroversial way with how language and logic work to structure human awareness of reality. And then that can take us down all the way to where quantum physics is again throwing up the same essential question about how physical reality itself could have intelligible form. That's quite an achievement.

Whitehead moved on from the failed project of logical atomism to create some pretty incomprehensible melange of pan-psychism, quantum physics and theism. Yes, he said the right kind of holistic stuff about a process approach to metaphysics. But that is nothing new in itself. And then his actual claims about quantum scale physical action just don't bear serious scrutiny. The "experience" of electrons or photons becomes a hollow term which explains nothing and instead diverts attention from the actual holism and contextuality which is the metaphysical issue for fundamental physics.

No, I don't mean "physical space" in this case. What I meant is more abstract.. If all this physical stuff is happening.. "where" is this modelling happening? — schopenhauer1

Why do you think "where" is a meaningful question if we are no longer talking about a materialist notion of space or time?

As I've already said, the embodied or enactive view of neurocognition is the one that tries so hard to get away from notions like "consciousness happens in the brain as the result of neuron firings".

It is the holism of the modelling relation - an organism in interaction with a world - that is the place where all this mindfulness action is occuring.

You have words but not really explanations. Modeling relations, interactions, organism..none of it makes sense unless there is already a first person point of view in the equation. Yes the “space” does matter. Unless there is some already-there interpreter (first person point of view) this concrescence of behavior has to cohere and “do” its internal thing. I’m waiting to see your explanation of that.

The "experience" of electrons or photons becomes a hollow term which explains nothing and instead diverts attention from the actual holism and contextuality which is the metaphysical issue for fundamental physics. — apokrisis

I think you are too dismissive of Whitehead and mischaracterize him as a 'panpsychist' as I've already explained. Also his "theism' is not really theism in any familiar theological sense. I'd need to study Peirce some more before I can judge whether his philosophy is substantially different, (apart from the obvious emphasis on the sign relation and interpretance). Whitehead is beginning (and Peirce also) to be taken much more seriously by philosophers. Have you read Stengers Thinking with Whitehead or Shaviro's Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics or any of Brian Massumi';s work? Here's a quote from the Wiki entry on Massumi:

Massumi situates his work in the tradition of process philosophy, which he defines broadly to encompass a range of thinkers whose work privileges concepts of event and emergence. For Massumi, this includes not only Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher most closely identified with the term, but also Charles Sanders Peirce, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Simondon, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari.[7], on all of whose work he draws extensively. He articulates process philosophy with William James's radical empiricism, which asserts the primacy of relation. This is the doctrine that relations are real, are directly experienced, and create their own terms.[

I think there are many interesting pathways and crossovers in what might generally be called "process philosophy". Peirce may well be the main, or at least most original and comprehensive, precursor, but I think all the philosophers mentioned in the 'Massumi' excerpt, and many other semiotics thinkers, Hoffmeyer, Salthe, Pattee (and BTW, have you read Wendy Wheeler's Expecting the Earth?) have their own takes and interesting perspectives on this rich area of thought.

Anyway I do have a question relating to your response I quoted above: would you say that interpretance is operating at the quantum scale? If you would say that then would there not also be in your own terms an 'internalness", which could be characterized as a kind of proto-experience compared with our idea of human experience, just as the interpretance would be classed as a proto-interpretance compared to our notions of human interpretance?

Unless there is some already-there interpreter (first person point of view) this concrescence of behavior has to cohere and “do” its internal thing. — schopenhauer1

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme? Give us a useful definition that excludes interpretance as something models do. Let's see you shake that dualism one more time, tell us how the mind is some kind of unphysical thing rather than some kind of natural process.

But despite that kind of ultimate barrier, we can then model the world pretty effectively. — apokrisis

'Modelling the world' is your main concern, is it not? Your 'meta-philosophical project'?

And then that can take us down all the way to where quantum physics is again throwing up the same essential question about how physical reality itself could have intelligible form. — apokrisis

But does quantum physics have an intelligible form? It makes accurate predictions, and enables fantastic technology, but what it means is a matter of intense controversy. I mean, at this time, it can't really be claimed that the standard model of particle physics, or the state of modern cosmology, presents an intelligible picture. It might be many things, but 'intelligible' isn't one of them.

So the Peircean approach makes a concrete proposal that starts in an uncontroversial way with how language and logic work to structure human awareness of reality. — apokrisis

But what about when there's no humans? How to get from where humans are interpreting signs, to everything being signs? How can there be 'representation' without 'interpretation'?

When Peirce says 'matter is effete mind' - what does he mean by 'mind'? I think he got that from Emerson and/or the other idealists. And what they seem to have gotten it from is 'nous' on the one hand, or even Vedanta, in the case of Emerson. But remove that - and what is doing the interpreting?

I think you are too dismissive of Whitehead and mischaracterize him as a 'panpsychist' as I've already explained. — Janus

I don't see how he gets beyond being a panpsychist. If experiencing is a process, then what is its structure exactly? Where is the precise theoretical description of that? If you understand Whitehead, help by explaining how it works in some causal sense.

...would you say that interpretance is operating at the quantum scale? If you would say that then would there not also be in your own terms an 'internalness", which could be characterized as a kind of proto-experience compared with our idea of human experience, just as the interpretance would be classed as a proto-interpretance compared to our notions of human interpretance? — Janus

Quantum scale interpretance would have all that interpreting happening externally. Or better yet, contextually.

Organisms are defined by having internal models of their worlds. That is why they need some kind of coding mechanism - an informational way to construct material constraints. Genes, neurons, words, numbers - a way to remember the forms of order that will perpetuate the organism's own existence.

But the physical world is clearly not organismic in that sense. The Universe has no internal model of its world. Why would it need such an umwelt of sign? It already is the world.

However - contra the usual mechanical view of material nature - there is something pretty semiotic going on in terms of how physical contexts shape up local fluctuations or excitations. So the Universe can be considered as a kind of running model of the sorts of local events that ought to take place. The Universe represents a memory of its own development in the structure of habit or natural law it imposes on all material possibilities. It says there can electron like particles as local degrees of freedom because a history of development - a generalised cooling and expanding - has now crisply backed that possibility in.

So quantum scale events become the kinds of thing that are likely to happen because the world has accumulated some generally constraining history. And electron is not a little roaming jot of experience making simple choices. It is a constraint of energetic possibilities to the point we are left with a localised excitation with very little distinctive character.

It is an electron identical to all other electrons and must follow the same dynamical laws. It might be different in terms of its speed or location, but those are not exactly a matter of experience-based choice or any kind of individuated point of view on the electron's part.

So in an organism, interpretance is an internalised model of the world - the informational ability to construct states of material constraint.

But in physics, intepretance just is a material state of constraint. And to model that interpretance then demands an informational brand of physics as the materiality is now that which emerges from constraints. Materiality becomes an output rather than an input from the pan-semiotic or infodynamic point of view.

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme? Give us a useful definition that excludes interpretance as something models do. Let's see you shake that dualism one more time, tell us how the mind is some kind of unphysical thing rather than some kind of natural process. — apokrisis

Again this use of interpretance- what do you mean by this? What, metaphysically is going on when you say this? "Where" is this happening? From a first person perspective of the parts involved? Use the example of sight if you want. How does this not avoid the Cartesian Theater? Instead of panpsychism experience, we have interpretance? Sounds fishy.. sleight of hand. Same concept, different name and a lot of protest.

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme?

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme? — apokrisis

I don't know. I don't have a metaphysical scheme that fully answers this question. The best I can think of is that all natural processes have a point of view that goes all the way down. This eliminates the need for an abstracted "space" where process concresces into something (the hidden Cartesian Theater). I can't think of a way out of the bind. This doesn't mean this point of view is right, it is just one way out of it.

You mention interprative aspect of process.. to me that sounds like a point of view of the process- the same thing.. You say it isn't.. That's fine, but the Cartesian Theater of there being a "somewhere" this coheres into a first person experience then becomes an issue again.

I don't see how he gets beyond being a panpsychist. If experiencing is a process, then what is its structure exactly? Where is the precise theoretical description of that? If you understand Whitehead, help by explaining how it works in some causal sense. — apokrisis

You might be disappointed if you expect a "precise theoretical description" from Whitehead. For Whitehead what is most fundamental is feeling, the vague sense of our sheer bodily existence which cannot be precisely articulated.

Here is a passage from Adventures of Ideas which gives some account of his understanding of experience; what he calls 'prehension':

§2. Structure of Experience. — No topic has suffered more from this tendency of philosophers than their account of the object-subject structure of experience. In the first place, this structure has been identified with the bare relation of knower to known. The subject is the knower; the object is the known. Thus, with this interpretation, the object-subject relation is the known-knower relation. It then follows that the more clearly any instance of this relation stands out for discrimination, the more safely we can utilize it for the interpretation of the status of experience in the universe of things. Hence Descartes’ appeal to clarity and distinctness.

This deduction presupposes that the subject-object relation is the fundamental structural pattern of experience [a.k.a. the “object-to-subject structure of experience” or the “vector-structure of nature” (189; p. 11 here)]. I agree with this presupposition, but not in the sense in which subject-object is identified with knower-known. [] I contend that the notion of mere knowledge is a high abstraction, and that conscious discrimination itself is [177]
a variable factor only present in the more elaborate examples of occasions of experience. The basis of experience is emotional. Stated more generally, the basic fact is the rise of an affective tone originating from things whose relevance is given.

§3. Phraseology. — Thus the Quaker word “concern,” divested of any suggestion of knowledge, is more fitted to express this fundamental structure. [I.e.] The occasion1 as subject has a “concern” for the object. And the “concern” at once places the object as a component in the experience of the subject, with an affective tone drawn from this object and directed towards it. With this interpretation, the subject-object relation is the fundamental structure of experience.

Quaker usages of language are not widely spread. Also, each phraseology leads to a crop of misunderstandings. The subject-object relation can be conceived as Recipient and Provoker, where the fact provoked is an affective tone about the status of the provoker in the provoked experience. Also, the total provoked occasion is a totality involving many such examples of provocation. Again this phraseology is unfortunate; for the word “recipient” suggests a passivity which is erroneous.

§4. Prehensions. — A more formal explanation is as follows. An occasion of experience is an activity, analysable into modes of functioning which jointly constitute its process of becoming. Each mode is analysable into the total experience as active subject, and into the thing or object with which the special activity is concerned. This thing is a datum, that is to say, is describable without reference to its entertainment in that occasion. An object is anything performing this function of a datum provoking some special activity of the occasion in question. Thus subject and object are relative terms. An occasion is a subject in respect to its special activity concerning an object; and anything is an object in respect to its provocation of some special activity within a subject. Such a mode of activity is termed a “prehension.” Thus a prehension involves three factors. There is [1. the “subject,” a.k.a. “individual,” “atom,” “monad”] the occasion of experience within which the prehension is a detail of activity; [2. the “object,” a.k.a. “data”] there is the datum whose relevance provokes the origination of this prehension; this datum is the prehended object; [3. the “affective tone,” a.k.a. “subjective form”] there is the subjective form, which is the affective tone determining the effectiveness of that prehension in that occasion of experience. [178] How the experience constitutes itself depends on its complex of subjective forms.
.

It might be interesting to compare and contrast his three factors of prehension with Peirce's three elements of semiosis.

As to his panspychism; I guess it depends on how you define it. This essay might be of some use:
http://scholarworks.csun.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.2/3304/McHenryLeemon199501.pdf;sequence=1

Have fun.

You might be disappointed if you expect a "precise theoretical description" from Whitehead. — Janus

That is why I don’t take him seriously. A theory of anything must have crisp counterfactual structure. It must impose a measurable definiteness on the world. So a theory that claims to cash itself out in anything vague, like undefined feeling, lacks explanatory force. The PNC fails to apply to the predictions it makes.

What kind of theory is it that says x is always there, just sometimes it is really definite and obvious, at other times it is so faint and vague that it becomes undifferentiated and unmeasurable. The theory just can’t be found wrong as it doesn’t in fact pose a counterfactual account of the world.

Just because a theory puts itself beyond been proved wrong does not mean it is then true. It means it is not even actually a theory. It is a claim that is not even wrong - the most damning of possibilities.

The basis of experience is emotional. Stated more generally, the basic fact is the rise of an affective tone originating from things whose relevance is given. — Whitehead

So the Peircean pansemiotic story would be about the claim that the Cosmos has a universal logical structure - the sign relation. It is a basically cognitive story. Reality exists because a counterfactual structure could be imposed on material vagueness or indeterminism.

Thus the highest form of mind - the rational scientist - is expressing the very thing of a world-making causal relation. We form our rational umwelts. The Cosmos likewise is forming itself into concrete being by imposing a counterfactual definiteness on its general being.

This pansemiotic metaphysics has turned out to be correct. Quantum mechanics shows that. The most recent turn in quantum interpretations supports the idea that wavefunction collapse represents the imposition of a counterfactual structure on material possibility. The world asks yes/no questions of itself. If an event happens, history gets made and that now constrains the future.

So the thing to note is that pansemiosis is all about rational cognitive structure. It is where the evolution of the human mind has ended up. And it is all about the logical exactness of counterfactual structure imposed on material indeterminacy.

But Whitehead is taking some ill defined notion of conscious experience as his starting point. And then he is treating cognition as an imposed logical structure that can be thrown off to leave some barer affective potential. Feeling is treated as a concrete materiality. A subjective substance. And right there we have the misstep.

We have a located stuff that is inside some thing. But then that claim lacks counterfactuality as the experience of an electron is something that makes no measurable difference to its behaviour. At least we can credit organisms with a mind as they do act with counterfactual autonomy. We can see they make purposeful choices in terms of their behaviour. As Peirce would say, organisms always have reasons because they have a personal point of view. But electrons give us no reason to think they have experience.

So stick to logic and cognition. To claim that reality is founded on feeling or affect is always going to be Cartesian substance thinking. It is treating experience as a material potential stripped of its logical structure.

But even human affect is completely rational in its structure. Neuroscience tells us that. The whole structure of emotional response is the same old story of a semiotic imposition of dichotomies on an umwelt. Things are either good or bad, arousing or boring, attractive or repulsive, etc, etc.

Feelings aren’t actually vague at all. Our brains are set up to feel either the one thing, or its logical opposite, so that we have a clear counterfactual direction to guide all our reactions. The panpsychic move Whitehead is trying to make - strip away cognition to leave something more fundamentally simple - falls at the first hurdle. Feeling is just as cognitively organised as thinking in the neuroscientific view.

Of course feelings can be vague. But that just means there are times when we are uncertain. A counterfactual response to the world has not yet clicked into place.

To treat the uncertain as the primal sort of works. But it takes the Peircean semiotic story to actually make it work. Mindfulness is all about resolving uncertainty by managing to impose a counterfactual umwelt on it. Cognition makes things definite. So cognition is also primal in complementary fashion. And that is why the Peircean story is properly structuralist. It is irreducibly hierarchical or triadic.

Whitehead want some kind of reductionist monism - pan experience. All is the vagueness of a feeling. But that is closet dualism. It is substance thinking.

Peirce gets it right by refusing to try to reduce from dualism to monism. He steps up to the larger metaphysical model which understands being in terms of a three part sign relation.

That is why I don’t take him seriously. A theory of anything must have crisp counterfactual structure. It must impose a measurable definiteness on the world. — apokrisis

While I agree that this must be true of empirical theories; I don't think it is necessarily true of metaphysical theories. That would be like saying that poetry must have a crisp counterfactual structure. I get it that you are not interested in vague metaphysical systems; I on the other hand say there can be great poetic virtue in vagueness. It's really nothing more than a matter of taste, or lack of it.

Anyway I see no point in trying to defend Whitehead to you; your scientistic bent has already disqualified him from possessing any interest to you from the get-go. You and I are obviously interested in very different things; and there's nothing wrong with that; I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm not at all sure that I agree with your interpretation of Peirce, though, but I would have to investigate that much further, before I would presume to offer an actual opinion on it.

Just because a theory puts itself beyond been proved wrong does not mean it is then true. It means it is not even actually a theory. It is a claim that is not even wrong - the most damning of possibilities. — apokrisis

Here is the very nub of our disagreement laid out beautifully. You presume that metaphysical theories must be like scientific theories. I prefer to think of metaphysical speculations not as theories at all, but as invitations to look at things in new and different ways. I get it that you have no interest in that, because it makes metaphysics more like an art than a science. As I think I already said earlier in this thread I don't think the pursuit of metaphysics is a search for truth at all. It can't be since the truth of metaphysical "theories" is undecidable. Instead the pursuit of metaphysics is a search for beauty through different ways of understanding things. Once you see this, you don't need to worry about truth at all, since it is reduced to a chimera in the metaphysical domain..

While I agree that this must be true of empirical theories; I don't think it is necessarily true of metaphysical theories. That would be like saying that poetry must have a crisp counterfactual structure — Janus

And that is my claim. The definition of a theory is that it is empirical in some meaningful fashion.

Theories are generalisations capable of having particular consequences. So they have to be “good” in two complementary senses. They need internal rational coherence (to be generalisations). And they need to relate to whatever they are a model of via the particularity of their consequence. So they need to correspond to thing in question via a clear counterfactual act of measurement.

Poetry doesn’t need a crisp counterfactual structure because it is not attempting to be a theory of metaphysical reality.

It is not rationality being aimed at the world in an attempt to make sense of it. It is instead - at best - an attempt to socially construct a culturally structured self. Art sketches out the kind of world, the kind of umwelt, that we are then meant to “find ourselves in”. It we learn to see the meaning in the cultural artefact, then that is teaching us to be the kind of self who sees that kind of world.

So poetry is semiotic. It is about modelling a “world”. But while metaphysics was about the attempt to model the real world, reality as it actually is, poetry is about the invention of socially useful worlds. So one form of semiosis targets the metaphysically objective, the other targets the socially subjective. It is a mistake to conflate the two as you hope to do.

I am new to the forum so excuse my nativity on the broader topic of philosophy, so take my post as merely a random commentary from a random researcher.

--

When we ask, did the universe come from nothing?, I have to wonder if we aren't confusing words. Precisely, nothing cannot be positively defined, for otherwise it would be something. The "nothing" is the primal Being, the darkness surrounding the light. — darthbarracuda

I must agree that nothing is not a good word to capture the general idea of the before, but I also perhaps think that it can be interpret in a different measure to make sense within the context of 'nothing lacking nothing,' and "nothing not having something'.

In a sense, the fundamental foundations of our been is by the measurable accounts and progress of the parameters of the Universe in which we live in; those being time, and the dimensions in which we visualize and think inside of. The nothingness that we have the intuition for is a measurable (or in better words, a lack of measure) that we interpret due to the fact we are founded in the after (in something).

In other words, while it might make intuitive sense to our person that something must have followed something, that is only due to mere fact we are in something, and thus think restrictively in something. To put it in a different manner, logically assuming math is a fundamental parameter of the after, then the existence of nothing can be interpret in the existence of something; in the function x + 2 = 3, the lack of existence of the solution -5 implies that there is a nothing to something, but that nothing also implies that there was something so it could be nothing. So in a sense, the implication of something and nothing is a loop in the fundamental logic used in the after. Thus, I believe, this logical loop cannot be assertively answered in the after.

What we can do, however, is interpret things with a different postulation. The function of f(x) = 0 is, in essence, the existence of purely nothing -- without implication of something. That is, this nothing does not imply a something, and of course the lack of something (nothing) cannot imply the nothing (nothing lacks nothing, and nothing not having something). Our range of interpretation in the after, however, stops here -- and I believe, this is what the word 'nothing' implies in the context of the before, not in the context of the paragraph above, as there having something in the nothing.

Now of course this leads down to the question of how absolute zero, nothing, can become something... and that you have millions of creative solutions to the problem. My point is that something cannot prove the existence of something coming from nothing. Whatever is and happened in the before is naturally out of our intuitive ability to understand.

I prefer to think of metaphysical speculations not as theories at all, but as invitations to look at things in new and different ways. — Janus

Yeah,I already covered the fact that metaphysical theories are not strictly theories at all, except you conveniently ignored what I have reproduced above.

So, you would need to show that the truth of metaphysical so-called theories is actually decidable in "some meaningful empirical fashion"; good luck with that.

Also I totally disagree with you about characterizing poetry as "socially useful". You would need to show in just what ways it is useful, and that that usefulness is its prime characteristic. The writing and reading of poetry is very often, arguably most often, a solitary activity.

Stick to the subject - Whitehead. I gave you a specific argument why I say it is the wrong sort of metaphysics. The clinching evidence is that feelings are cognitive. Their organisation is dichotomous and hence counterfactually structured.

So rather than going on about the solitary splendours of poetry, just tell me how Whitehead counts as a proper metaphysical theory.

You don’t want to say Whitehead is just poetry do you? Or if you do, then I’d probably agree that that is all that it is. We need never mention him again when talking about actual metaphysical theories which make observable claims about the structures to expect when investigating reality.

The clinching evidence is that feelings are cognitive. Their organisation is dichotomous and hence counterfactually structured. — apokrisis

LOL, I haven't strayed from my take on what constitutes "the argument", if my take is different to yours, then so be it; perhaps we will find no common ground. Would that be so surprising? I don't buy into the rightness of your overarching demand that everything about the human, or even nature, for that matter, must be "measurable" to be of any intellectual value. As I keep pointing out to you the arts are not measurable, and they are of the greatest intellectual value to human life in my view.

Do you have an argument that demonstrates unequivocally that feeling, as opposed to "feelings", which have obviously already been identified and conceptualized and could hence be counted as "cognitive') is cognitive? I have already said I think it is reasonable to think of experience or feeling as interpretative "all the way down"; but "cognitive" in my view, is a step too far.

I would have thought you would count primal pre-conceptual feeling as 'firstness'. I'm looking for a knock-down argument that any unbiased thinking person must accept, and not simply the usual repetition of your understanding of semiotic emergence, symmetry-breaking, triadic sign relation and so on. You should appreciate that without a background and presuppositions equivalent to yours these are ideas which are anything but self-evidently true to others.

So rather than going on about the solitary splendours of poetry, just tell me how Whitehead counts as a proper metaphysical theory. — apokrisis

I already said I don't think any metaphysical speculation is a "proper theory", and explained why I think that. You haven't addressed that statement and argument at all, so I don't know what you are after here. Do you have an argument to support your belief that metaphysical conjectures should be classed as (in the same sense?) theories or hypotheses along with empirical conjectures?

You don’t want to say Whitehead is just poetry do you? — apokrisis

I don't want to say that Whitehead is "just poetry" or that metaphysics is exactly equivalent to poetry. It's not black and white like that. Metaphysics is strictly a logical discipline, it must be internally logically consistent and coherent; in other words it must be a valid form of argumentation. But this is a purely formal requirement that is not a strict requirement of poetry. Poetry is not usually logical argumentation at all. Do you see the difference?

Whitehead's system is internally consistent and coherent; you just don't like it because it rests on premises you don't agree with. I don't expect you to make the effort to study Whitehead in order to really understand him; why would you make such a considerable effort if you don't accept his starting premises? On the other hand, there's no point simply dismissing something you don't really understand, because of your basic lack of affinity with it. All metaphysical systems rest on premises which cannot be demonstrated within the system, in fact cannot be demonstrated at all, because all unimpeachable demonstration is strictly deductive, and all deductions rest on premises....

As I said before metaphysical systems are just invitations to look at the world in creative speculative ways; you shouldn't expect them all to be to your taste, just as you would expect all of literature, music or the visual arts to be to your taste.

Anyway carry on, but I'm done with this pointless dick-measuring.