Why would we need to be agnostic when intentionality is something neurocognition studies? We have reason to make a definite distinction between brains and universes, purposes and laws. — apokrisis

Three points.
1. I'm anything but agnostic on the existence of God. I am a theist.
2. The points I've discussed in this thread are an insufficient to decide the existence of God. I have not discussed the origin of the laws or what their existence betokens. Even if we say that intentionality betokens an intending mind, that does not tell us that mind is God. So the agnosticism is wrt respect to what has been established, not with respect to the existence of God in general. Elsewhere i have used the continuing operation of the laws to argue the existence of God.
3. The existence of God is a contentious issue that could easily sidetrack the conversation I want to have.

Given that it is probability states that evolve deterministically, then I would say that makes it literally part of the equation. — apokrisis

What evolves deterministically is a wave that can be used to calculate a probability. That does not imply that the wave itself is probabilistic. Observations always involve an interaction between a relatively isolated quantum system and detectors made of bulk matter. We have no way of knowing the detailed initial state of the detectors, and calculating their interaction with a quantum system is beyond our mathematical wherewithal. This twofold ignorance is a sufficient reason to see the relative unpredictability of measurements as epistic rather than ontic.

And classical determinism is an emergent feature of reality at best. — apokrisis

I'm unsure why you think classical determinism is "emergent." "Emergent" means that a feature is logically irreducible to some prior knowledge base. Given that our knowledge of reality is a posteriori, I see no reason to see determinism as "emergent" with respect to some set of prior features. It is just another contingent fact. What am I missing?

Let me say in anticipation, so we aren't talking at cross purposes, that I do not think that human agency is predetermined. The determinism I'm discussing is my best understanding of what physics tells us -- based on years of advanced study and decades of reflection.

So you are taking an approach to the laws of nature that seems really dated. — apokrisis

I am not concerned with whether my views are dated or avant garde. I only want sound analysis consistent with the known facts.

The idea that transcendent laws could some how reach down, God-like, to regulate the motions of particles was always pretty hokey. An immanent view of nature's laws is going to be more useful if we want to make sense of what is really going on. — apokrisis

My view combines Newton's insight that the laws we learn on earth apply to the whole universe (and so are transcendent) with the fact that the laws are inseparable from the matter they act to control (and so immanent).

Sounds good. But I'm not getting much sense of how you mean to proceed from here. — apokrisis

One step is to discard the ill-defined modern concept of "substance" and return to Aristotle's view that ostensible unities are fundamental our understanding of the world. So, we are not a material "substance" interacting with a mental "substance," but single beings who can act physically and intentionally -- which lead us to examine how our intentional acts relate to our physical acts.

Part of the answer rests on the fact that the laws of nature and our committed intentions act in the same theater of operations.

Talk of "laws" is definitely nonsense if we are to understand that as meaning anything like the kind of law-bound behaviour of reasoning social creatures like us. — apokrisis

Clearly, "laws" has different meanings in the natural order and the social order. Still, the meanings are not equivocal, but analogous. They are both sources of order, but the order is effected in different ways. Also, historically, when the notion of fixed laws of nature first appears in Western thought (in Jeremiah), it is taken for granted that they are the acts of a lawgiver.

But the irony, as I say, is that our human concept of law is all about reification. We create these abstract constructs like truth, justice and good, then try to live by them. A lot of hot air is spent on debating their "reality". — apokrisis

While I certainly agree that our abstractions are not "things," we shouldn't assume that they're mere constructs. Abstractions arise from the mind fixing on some notes of intelligibility in reality to the exclusion of others -- so they have an objective basis. Constructs, on the other hand, are invented to fill gaps in our knowledge and have an inadequate basis in reality.

The problem is that they don't work very well - at least to explain "everything". — apokrisis

Exactly.

So first up, science just is modelling and hence abstractions are how it goes about its business. That won't change — apokrisis

I don't expect it to. The Fundamental Abstraction is a useful methodological move. It whittles the complexity of reality down to a scale more proportioned to our limited mental capabilities. The problem is forgetting that it is an abstraction -- committing Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness -- and thinking that physicality exhausts reality (as physicalists do) or, as you suggest, reifying the abstraction into a res extensa (as Cartesian dualists do).

Second, physicalism can now be better understood in terms of information and entropy rather than mind and matter. — apokrisis

I would be happy to see how you develop this line of thought. I am not one, however, to abandon one conceptual space in favor of another. Each gives us a different projection of reality. So employing several can only enrich our understanding.

And that semiotic view even explains why science - as an informational process - should be a business of abstractions ... so as to be able to regulate the world insofar as it is a concrete and entropic realm of being. — apokrisis

The idea that the sciences are defined by their various degrees of abstraction is well developed in Aquinas Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. Applying the language of information theory to this insight is a recent development.

I am not sure how you see abstractions as "able to regulate the world."

I think it may have started with Galileo — Janus

I would be happy to learn of its roots in Galileo, if any.

I would be happy to comment. I follow Aquinas on a number of issues, but depart from him on a few points where he has a Neoplatonic, rather an an Aristotelian, position. Specifically, I reject (1) his notion of prima materia (prime matter) as a completely unintelligible passive potency and (2) his claim that we can have no intellectual knowledge of particulars. This are related positions and it is hard to reject (1) without rejecting (2).

I have published my reasons for rejecting (1) -- "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," Modern Schoolman 68 (3):225-244 (1991) (https://philpapers.org/rec/POLANR)

My main reason for rejecting (2) is that It makes the application of universal knowledge to particulars impossible. To apply any science to reality we need a judgement of the form "This particular is an A" (where A is a universal). On Aquinas's theory this judgement can't be formed by the intellect (which doesn't know any particular), nor can it be formed at the sensory level (because A is a universal).

Now to your text. Brennan gives an accurate and competent presentation of Aquinas's theory. So, let me say where I think it breaks down.

This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

First, this seems to reify the form. Objects are intelligible - they have various aspects the intellect can grasp (notes of intelligibility). A subset of these notes corresponds to each concept the object can evoke in us. One subset evokes the concept <human>, another the concept <tall>, etc. These notes of intelligibility are not separated in the object, which is an ostensible unity (a "substance" = ousia).

Second, while different material objects have different matter (different atoms), we understand that an object is this particular by grasping, intellectually, is place in the world -- its relation to other objects. This individualizing relations are just as intelligible as the notes that define the kind of object we are dealing with. So, yes, the matter of an object does not enter us in cognition, but information that allows us to judge an objects particularity does.

Third, abstraction is not a mystical process that removes the "form" from individuating data. It is simply us attending to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. So, when he says "To understand is to free form completely from matter," that is simply wrong. (a) An object's matter never enters our senses -- its action does. (b) If it were true, we could never understand anything other than forms (the intelligibility required to evoke species concepts such as <human>). We could not know when and where we were born, how tall we are, or whether we are driving on the right or left side of the road.

Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized.

This is simply a dogmatic claim -- and one contradicted by experience. We have universal concepts not only of substantial forms (e.g. humans, cats and planets), but also of accidents (e.g. height, hair color and age).

But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

If you read Aristotle's De Anima you will see that concepts arise when the agent intellect actualizes notes of intelligibility latent in the phantasm (bound sensory representation). If we actualize the notes common to a species, we form the concept of a species form, but we can just as well actualize the notes of intelligibility informing us of an object's particular and individualizing traits (its "accidents").

Since the notion of "agent intellect" is very abstract, it is good to ask how this concept relates to experience. What mental act makes neurally encoded information actually known? Clearly, we come to know when we become aware of them. So, the agent intellect is simply our awareness -- and abstraction is focusing our attention, our awareness, on some aspects of experience to the exclusion of others.

Note that the word nous, which Aristotle uses for intellect, is a cognate of noos (vision).

the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and indentifies it as a particular something.

I would say that we are in the realm of intellect when ever we are aware. Sensory processing absent awareness is just what Freud called the unconscious mind.

Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable.

As you can see, this is not my understanding, nor, I think, that of Aristotle.

Broadly I take a view on causality that is Aristotelian and Peircean. — apokrisis

I know Aristotle's views quite well. While I respect Peirce, I don't know as much about him as a should. What should I know of his view of causality?

Which then cashes out in the kind of current physicalism which sees information and entropy as bridging the old mind-matter divide. — apokrisis

It seems to me that the "divide" is between subjectivity considered in isolation and objectivity considered in isolation. If so, the divide can be bridged by considering them holistically. The concepts of subjectivity and objectivity certainly relate to information, but I don't see what role entropy, as a measure of disorder, has to play.

Talk of an "informational realm" is pretty general. — apokrisis

I am not talking about an information realm, but about physical and intentional theaters of operation and their relation.

You can inquire about the location of an event, or the momentum of an event, but not get a complete answer on both in just a single act of measurement. — apokrisis

While this problem is based in reality, it is due to a misconceptualization of reality not to any ontic inconsistency. As Aristotle points out in Metaphysics Delta, real quantities are not actual numbers but specific forms of intelligibility: either countability (for discrete quantity) or measurability (for continuous quantity). Thus, quantum states do not have actual numerical positions or numerical momenta -- rather they are susceptible to location measurements and momentum measurements.

There is no a priori reason to think that different measurement operations will be interference free. The Principle of Quantum Indeterminacy simply tells us that this logical possibility is real. We cannot simultaneously measure canonically conjugate variables (such as position and momentum, time and energy) with arbitrary accuracy. This may be a surprise, but it has no profound metaphysical implications.

your proposal strikes me as having a particular problem. It seems to have to presume a classical Newtonian backdrop notion of time - a spatialised dimension. And modern physics would be working towards an emergent and thermal notion of time as a better model. So any logical propagator would have to unfold in that kind of time, not a Newtonian one. — apokrisis

First, my concept of time is Aristotelian, not Newtonian. "Time is the measure of change according to before and after." I see no conflict between it and any recent development in physics.

Physics does point to a regime, the big bang "before" Planck time, when our <time> concept breaks down -- because the required measurements are impossible in principle. The canonical (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian) formulations of the laws of physics also break down, along with General Relativity and quantum field theory. I have no special insight into how to formulate physics in this regime.

So, I'm quite happy to concede that there are regimes in which our concepts break down. I don't think that'is an argument against them in regimes where they do apply.

But the bare physical world - the world that does not have this kind of anticipatory intentional modelling of its tomorrow - has only its tendencies, not its plans. So it is "intentional" in an importantly different way. — apokrisis

I would agree: Mary has an explicit representation of the "final" state she intends. Nature does not. Still nature has an implicit representation. Except for personal agency, the present state of the universe and the laws of nature fully specify (and therefore represent) the "final" state. Still, the only difference is that one representation (nature's) is merely intelligible, while the other (Mary's) is both intelligible and actually known.

All this is a great advance on the old notion of transcendent laws floating somewhere above everything they regulate in some kind of eternal and perfect fashion. — apokrisis

I do not see that one projection excludes the other. From the initial appearance of laws of nature in Jeremiah until very recently, the laws were seen as both fixed and providential. As James Hannam points out in The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, without this combined perspective we would not have the scientific revolution as we know it.

Yes, the full physical description needs to recognise final and formal cause. — apokrisis

I would say a full philosophical description. Mathematical physics seems to be getting along nicely without these concepts.

So everything can be brought back to the notion of constraints. — apokrisis

I agree that is one conceptual space into which we can project our experience. It has a related set of supporting concepts that can give rise to novel insights. Still, the concept of constraints is not in any way "unique." Constraints restrict possibilities, but information is defined to be the reduction of possibility. So, we can move our representation from the conceptual space of constraints to that of information -- activating a host of new associations and insights. Again, information reflects the Greco-Scholastic concept of <form> with its network of elaborations.

So, I don't see the benefit of prizing one conceptual space above another.


Stepping back, I am reminded of the Scholastic axiom: "whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the recipient." So, I do not expect that your reception of my ideas will mirror my views. Hopefully you will make fruitful new connections.

As I see it, knowing and willing are objective relations; their intentional objects are not subjective, but objective (and shared, public). — gurugeorge

There is no knowing without a subject knowing, no willing without a subject willing. So, our experiences as subjects are essential data in understanding the reality of knowing and willing.

I'm not denying that there are objective acts we call "knowing" and "willing." Nor am i denying the intersubjective availability of many of their objects. Still, these acts are asymmetrically relational and so cannot be fully understood without examining both terms of the relation.

So the laws cause matter to behave the way that it does, by informing it? I assume that they exist as information then. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, not as abstract information, but as an intelligible aspect of reality.

How could matter interpret the information which the laws provide, in order to act according to the laws, if it is not aware of that information — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say it interpreted the laws. It simply acts in a uniform, orderly fashion and that uniform mode of action is the foundation in reality for our concept <laws of nature>.

Don't you think that information is useless without something to interpret it? Do you know of any cases where information does anything without something interpreting it? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said above, we are not dealing with actual information, but with intelligibility. When we become aware of the intelligible order in nature, we form the concept <laws of nature>, which can enter into judgements about reality -- informing us. Until we have a true judgement, there is no reduction of what is logically possible, and so no information.

Well that' a really bad analogy then. — Metaphysician Undercover

All analogies fall short. That's what makes them analogies instead of veridical descriptions.

Why would you even think that matter exhibiting orderly dynamics is a case of matter obeying laws, when this has nothing in common with what we know as "obeying laws"? — Metaphysician Undercover

If there were no note of commonality, there would not be an analogy. The common note is that, both are a source of order in their respective spheres.

"Given Hume’s critique of causality, our grasp of time-sequenced causality is not adequately based on observing physical events. However, it is warranted by our experience of willing. Being aware of our own committed intentionality and its subse­quent incar­nation, we expect analogues in nature. Contrary to de­terminists who give time-sequenced causality prior­ity over voli­tion, will is the prime analogue and causality deriva­­tive. Associ­ation plays a role, but, as Hume noted, asso­cia­­tion does not warrant necessity. The idea of causal con­nec­tion over time derives from our experience as agents."

Hume's view of causality is nominalist. Consider reading Armstrong's "What is a Law Of Nature." Armstrong (a physicalist and realist regarding universals) postulates that laws are relations between universals. For example, electron is a universal: it is a type of object with a -1 electric charge as a constituent property. Electrons and protons have as a relation between them: attraction. This attraction-relation is a relation between those two universals (electron, proton), and is therefore a "law." The law exists in its instantiations: each actual pair pf electrons have this relation. Armstrong's postulate is supported by the success of science (whereas Hume's constant conjunction makes the success of science surprising), and I suggest should be more compelling at least for realists. However, it doesn't appear to be consistent with your thesis of intentionality, and that seems a flaw for your position.

As I said, I can't remember where I encountered that item of information, but a google search yielded this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction

In that article the following is quoted from Galileo:

"I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we locate them are concerned, and that they reside in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated"
—Galileo Galilei, The Assayer (published 1623).

And this from Descartes, who also preceded Locke:

"t must certainly be concluded regarding those things which, in external objects, we call by the names of light, color, odor, taste, sound, heat, cold, and of other tactile qualities, [...]; that we are not aware of their being anything other than various arrangements of the size, figure, and motions of the parts of these objects which make it possible for our nerves to move in various ways, and to excite in our soul all the various feelings which they produce there."

—René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (published 1644/1647).

I am not talking about an information realm, but about physical and intentional theaters of operation and their relation. — Dfpolis

And so the crucial question becomes how do you measure intentionality in your scheme?

Information and entropy complement each other nicely as measurements in the two theatres of operation as physics and biology are coming to understand them. If you have some personal idea here, then you will need to say something about what would count as a measurement of your explanatory construct.

Matter is completely conceptual, it is the concept which human beings have developed to account for the temporal continuity of existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confused. The point I was pushing was how physics is no longer based on that kind of material atomism. It agrees that it is form that gives persistent shape or individuation to raw potential.

So substantial being is again understood in hylomorphic terms. Of course, this ain’t much trumpeted. But it looks undeniable.

In modern physics the concept of matter has been replaced by the concept of energy as the means of accounting for temporal continuity. — Metaphysician Undercover

And energy in turn has become entropy and even information. There is a trajectory here. Persistent being is now dominantly described in terms of form or ontic structure.

And to complement that, we need an equally updated notion of the material potential that is getting shaped into something. That is where Aristotle is not much help. But Anaximander’s Apeiron or Peirce’s logic of vagueness is.

I follow Aquinas on a number of issues, but depart from him on a few points where he has a Neoplatonic, rather an an Aristotelian, position — Dfpolis

It seems to me, then, that you’re actually rejecting Aquinas’ hylomorphic dualism. And as I commented before, I don’t think your analysis can account for ‘the unreasonable efficacy [or predictive power] of mathematics’.

I see the metaphysics of it like this: that the types or forms of things correspond to their original ‘ideas’ in the divine intellect. The rational soul [unlike the sensory faculties] is able to grasp those forms or ideas by identifying their kind, type, etc; this is the role of the ‘active intellect’. Actually, yesterday I read the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on intellect, which comments [among other things] on the fact that Aristotle’s comments on the ‘nous poetikos’ are regarded as controversial, difficult and obscure and have generated centuries of analysis. But the key point to me [as a neophyte neoplatonist] is that ‘The active intellect "illuminates" the object of sense, rendering it intelligible somewhat as light renders colours visible. It is pure energy without any potentiality, and its activity is continuous. It is separate, immortal, and eternal.’ It corresponds with a passage in Augustine on ‘intelligible objects’ that has always been a source of interest to me.

In any case, thank you once again for your clear exposition, as always - it is an honourable thing to have a clear disagreement with someone as learned as yourself. :grin:

The distinction of primary and secondary qualities seems to start with Locke -- long after Descartes..
— Dfpolis

I think it may have started with Galileo, but I can't remember where I encountered that information, so I may be incorrect. — Janus

I wrote the following yesterday before you added the above quotations, but I think they still hold good

The distinction between primary and secondary did indeed become articulated by John Locke, who is one of the founders of modern empiricism, and whose political and philosophical writing was hugely influential in the formation of modern liberalism.

I don't think that Galileo himself explicitly referred to 'primary and secondary qualities' but in effect, what has happened since the 'scientific revolution', is that the ‘primary qualities’ of objects have been generally identified with those characteristics and attributes which can be depicted in quantitative terms. [Hence ‘the reign of quantity’ to adopt the title of Rene Guenon’s polemical anti-modernist tract; and the general stance that only what can be measured ought to be considered real.]

So - I am drawn to a form of dualism, but emphatically not the Cartesian form.

So - I am drawn to a form of dualism, but emphatically not the Cartesian form. — Wayfarer

So you are against substance dualism? Do you favour some kind of 'dual aspect' theory or something else? Is it something you can articulate?

I’ve been trying to articulate it since Day One - but from my perspective, it is always misunderstood. It has to do precisely with the reality of incorporeal objects. All those passages and quotations that I pull from my dog-eared crib-sheets - from Lloyd Garson, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, Frege and the rest. Numbers, logical laws, fundamental conceptions - these are real but immaterial. They’re not ‘the product of the material brain’ but can only be grasped by the rational intellect, which by seeing them, is attaining an insight into the real nature of things, which is not described by physics, as physics relies on these very insights.

Bear in mind, in a post above, DFpolis actually mentions that ‘substance’ in the philosophical lexicon, is the translation of the Greek ‘ouisia’. And that word is nearer in meaning to ‘being’. I think there is an ineluctable tendency to reify substance, which Descartes’ dualism always falls victim to. I have mentioned previousy that in Husserl’s critique of Descartes in Crisis of European Sciences, Husserl says this notion of ‘thinking substance’ has had disastrous consequences ever since, and that it was not properly thought through or articulated by Descartes, even though it represented a genuine insight. But if you translated res cogitans and extensa as ‘thinking being and extended substance’, it would be less misleading. And then, my point about ‘being’ is that it is never ‘an object of cognition’, as we’re never outside of or apart from it. [That is an insight from the Upanisads at the basis of nondualism which is sorely lacking in Western philosophy.]

So if you combine the ‘insight from non-dualism’ with ‘the reality of intelligible objects’, you come to an understanding that the physical domain is subsidiary to or derivative from the ‘realm of form’ [which is the exact inverse of modern materialism]. The rational intellect is what grasps, sees or understands that ‘domain of form’ [which enables humans, for example, to ‘see’ into the domain of possibility and create novel inventions among other things]. But that understanding of the ontological distinction between intellect and senses is precisely what has been lost due to the cultural impact of empiricism which [among other things] depicts mathematics in terms of adaptive necessity and humans as a kind of simian [which is the contention of the radical anti-modernism of many of the “traditionalist” thinkers such as Rene Guenon and Julius Evola.]

There is no knowing without a subject knowing, no willing without a subject willing. So, our experiences as subjects are essential data in understanding the reality of knowing and willing. — Dfpolis

Sure there's no knowing without a subject knowing - but this doesn't mean that:-

[subjective experiences] are tokens of types of experiences such as knowing and willing. — Dfpolis

Subjective experiences are "tokens of types of experiences such as knowing and willing" only in the case of knowing and willing about one's subjective experiences. (I had a dream, wish I didn't feel anxious, etc.)

But as I said, nobody (well, nobody except psychologists and your therapist :) ) are interested in that type of knowing and willing, most of us are interested in the type of knowledge that crosses the abyss between man and man, that is objective and shareable, common.

Your dream as such has no effect on me, but your knowledge of some hidden trail can be part of my world as well as yours (which is a poetic but potentially misleading way of putting it; actually it's part of the one, shared, objective world).

DFpolis actually mentions that ‘substance’ in the philosophical lexicon, is the translation of the Greek ‘ouisia’. And that word is nearer in meaning to ‘being’. I think there is an ineluctable tendency to reify substance, which Descartes’ dualism always falls victim to....
... if you translated res cogitans and extensa as ‘thinking being and extended substance’, it would be less misleading. And then, my point about ‘being’ is that it is never ‘an object of cognition’, as we’re never outside of or apart from it. — Wayfarer

These issues I have been touching on recently as you can see in these exchanges with Dfpolis:

... I was simply pointing out that it is logically consistent to think of being as substance, in which case a monist would be one who thinks there is only one kind of being (although there are obviously many kinds of beings). Heidegger speaks to this need to distinguish between being and beings with his ontological distinction (although it is not clear that he thought that being is univocal as, for example, Deleuze avowedly did).

--Janus

My question with regard to Descartes was based on taking res (thing) as possibly convertible with "being" with "thinking" and extended" as modifiers. Personally, I don't see being as a prior substrate that can be modified. — Dfpolis


OK, so you don't see 'being' as a suitable synonym for 'substance'. I don't either unless being is thought of as synonymous with becoming or process. So I agree that being is not a "prior substrate" and would say that the very notion of a prior substrate, or passive substance, is really incoherent.

-- Janus

I think being can be understood both as a noun and a verb, as a state and an activity. We never perceive being as such, that is an abstraction, but we do perceive being as beings, and in fact it is from such encounters that the notion of 'being as such' is abstracted. So, I do think that 'substance' should be thought as coterminous with 'being': and that being is in its different modes both an activity and an abstraction. Thus res cogitans could be thought as thinking being and res extensa could be thought as extended being without conceptual inconsistencies or confusions arising, but the fact of their being two ways of understanding being does not justify thinking there are two radically different kinds of being, because to think this just is to fall into substance dualism of the Cartesian kind. Also, being as an activity is synonymous with becoming, and it is only as an abstraction that it appears to be static as opposed to processual.

So if you combine the ‘insight from non-dualism’ with ‘the reality of intelligible objects’, you come to an understanding that the physical domain is subsidiary to or derivative from the ‘realm of form’ [which is the exact inverse of modern materialism].

I think the view that the physical domain is separate from the "realm of form" is incoherent; and thus that the idea that one is "subsidiary to or derivative from" the other is completely wrongheaded. It seems to me that you are reacting to a version of "modern materialism" that you say stipulates that matter is prior to form, by jumping to the other pole, and thus making the same kind of mistake inversely.

You asked me whether I favour a form of dualism, and in response to that, you say:

I think the view that the physical domain is separate from the "realm of form" is incoherent — Janus

The basis of the argument is that:

The rational intellect is what grasps, sees or understands that ‘domain of form’ — Wayfarer

This is also noted in the entry I noted from the Catholic encyclopedia:

Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by, or intrinsically dependent on, a bodily organ, as sensation is. This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these activities involve elements essentially different from sensuous consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas. These are different in kind from sensations and sensuous images. These latter are concrete and individual, truly representative of only one object, whilst the universal idea will apply with equal truth to any object of the class. The universal idea possesses a fixity and invariableness of nature, whilst the sensuous image changes from moment to moment. Thus the concept or universal idea of "gold", or "triangle", will with equal justice stand for any specimen, but the image represents truly only one individual.

The sense in which the domain of ideas is 'separate', is what is at issue. But it is the ability of the rational intellect to grasp such ideas, which differentiates the human intellect. The fact that in day to day life, these are not separate or separable doesn't invalidate the notion of their being separate domains or 'magisteria'. So - where is the incoherence here?

I did not say it interpreted the laws. It simply acts in a uniform, orderly fashion and that uniform mode of action is the foundation in reality for our concept <laws of nature>. — Dfpolis

Actually there isn't really any foundation in reality for your concept of "laws of nature". We have descriptive "laws" such as the laws of physics which are really just inductive conclusions. Some people have decided that these inductive conclusions which we call "laws" must have corresponding "laws", in nature, which are acting on matter to make it behave in the consistent way which allows us to make the inductive conclusions which we call "laws". But just because the inductive conclusions are called "laws" it doesn't really follow that whatever it is in nature that is causing matter to act in consistent ways,.is anything like a "law", it's more like a cause. Wouldn't you agree? Whatever it is which acts on matter, causing it to behave in the way that it does, can't really be anything like any laws that we know of.

You did say that what you called "laws", is operative, it's acting in a causal way. So when we see matter acting in a way which can be described by laws, what you are really saying is that the actions of the matter are just the effects of these "laws". The laws being the cause, are what is really acting, and what appears to us and our senses, as natural phenomena, the motions of matter is just a reflection of the real activity, which is the "laws' in action. Would you agree with me that the matter in motion is just a reflection of the real activity which is the laws in action?

Consider Plato's cave allegory. The cave people see reflections, shadows, or images of the real activities. They don't see the real activities, only the philosopher sees through these reflections to the real activities behind them. Carry this over to your discussion of laws. As cave dwellers, we see matter moving around. But this is only a shadow, or reflection, of the real activity which is what you call the "laws" acting to move the matter around. You, being the philosopher see through this to the real activity which is the "laws" in action, causing the appearance of moving matter.

You are confused. The point I was pushing was how physics is no longer based on that kind of material atomism. It agrees that it is form that gives persistent shape or individuation to raw potential. — apokrisis

I think that you are not quite grasping the concept of "matter". It was introduced by Aristotle as a means to account for temporal continuity. When change occurs, there is always an underlying substratum which remains the same, and this is called matter. This allows us to say that a changing object maintains its identity as the same object despite undergoing change. It is essential to the concept of "change". Without this concept, change becomes unintelligible because at each moment of change there is something new. This is not "change", but a ceasing to be of the old, and a coming to be of the new. Without "matter", which is the thing which stays the same from one moment to the next, we'd have to say that the old universe ceases to be, and is replaced by a new universe at each moment of change. Instead of ceasing to be, and becoming anew, at each moment, we allow that there is temporal continuity, the matter stays the same from one moment to the next, so it is the same universe from one moment to the next, but forms change.

And energy in turn has become entropy and even information. — apokrisis

What I was saying is that the concept most often used today, to account for temporal continuity, is energy rather than matter. This is expressed as the law of conservation of energy. So from one moment to the next despite changing its form (information), the quantity of energy remains the same, and this quantity of energy is how temporal continuity is represented. The law of conservation of mass is more representative of the concept of temporal continuity of "matter", but mass and energy are convertible.

I think that you are not quite grasping the concept of "matter". — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm simply not agreeing to your half-baked thoughts on the issue.

When change occurs, there is always an underlying substratum which remains the same, and this is called matter. This allows us to say that a changing object maintains its identity as the same object despite undergoing change. It is essential to the concept of "change". — Metaphysician Undercover

Your view is familiar. Along with its defects.

Without this concept, change becomes unintelligible because at each moment of change there is something new. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'll repeat. A constraints-based view of substance says limits on instability create stability. So in every moment, something could accidentally change. And very often in life, things do. But to the degree there is a global order or law in place, such accidental changes are suitably restricted. Things can't change enough to matter.

This is a perfectly intelligible ontology. Tell me one thing wrong with it. And it fits the facts as science knows them. Unlike your story.

What I was saying is that the concept most often used today, to account for temporal continuity, is energy rather than matter. This is expressed as the law of conservation of energy. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are still a century out of date. Energy is now countable as quantum information. Degrees of freedom are the conserved quantity. Cosmology measures the entropy of event horizons. Things have moved on.

I'll repeat. A constraints-based view of substance says limits on instability create stability. So in every moment, something could accidentally change. And very often in life, things do. But to the degree there is a global order or law in place, such accidental changes are suitably restricted. Things can't change enough to matter. — apokrisis

My point was that this is completely different from dfpolis' position that laws are inherent within matter, so no such "accidental change" is possible. Yet both of you claim to have a metaphysics which represents modern physics. Is modern physics that confused that it supports contradictory metaphysics?

This is a perfectly intelligible ontology. Tell me one thing wrong with it. And it fits the facts as science knows them. Unlike your story. — apokrisis

Right, and df's ontology, which is contradictory to yours, fits the facts as modern science knows them also. Unlike my story which avoids those contradictory facts of modern science altogether. So-called "facts" which support contradiction are best left where they lie.

You are still a century out of date. Energy is now countable as quantum information. Degrees of freedom are the conserved quantity. Cosmology measures the entropy of event horizons. Things have moved on. — apokrisis

And you think that is a step in the right direction, dissolving temporal continuity into degrees of freedom? How would you quantify one degree of freedom, to ensure that it is maintained, in continuity from one moment to the next?

My point was that this is completely different from dfpolis' position that laws are inherent within matter, so no such "accidental change" is possible. Yet both of you claim to have a metaphysics which represents modern physics. Is modern physics that confused that it supports contradictory metaphysics? — Metaphysician Undercover

Dfpolis was taking a position on Hyle. I disagreed with that, making the argument that he was treating the material principle as already having formal organisation in having an inherent and active intentionality. So in terms of "prime matter", his starting point had already crossed the line and ceased to be prime.

However, that is also a reasonable view if we are talking about the actual world where it is only in our conceptions that we are wanting to insist on some absolutely dualistic separation. So it is also the case that any notion of prime matter is simply a state of being that is the least tellic, the least organised, the least shaped and directed.

And as we have discussed multiple times, I would then go beyond that qualification to say that both matter and form would have to co-arise from something even more extreme - a state of "actual" vagueness. It is at this point any conversation we have completely breaks down. You were already lost at step one - the idea that prime matter reduces to a notion of undirected flux, making matter already an active thing, just a chaotically unformed kind of active thing.

So I am quite sympathetic to Dfpolis on the characterisation of Hyle as already intentional and active - given my qualification that that is then the least intentional form of activity we could possibly imagine. It would be simply a blind and formless striving to be.

And I am completely opposed to your characterisation of prime matter as some kind of passive substratrum that awaits a shaping intentional hand to magic it into a world of objects. This is just the materialism of atomism. And Aristotle was a good deal beyond that.

Unlike my story which avoids those contradictory facts of modern science altogether. — Metaphysician Undercover

Talk about wishful thinking.

How would you quantify one degree of freedom, to ensure that it is maintained, in continuity from one moment to the next? — Metaphysician Undercover

Physics does that by counting the microstates of a bounded system. So what is conserved is all the possible configurations of some collection of parts. A block of spacetime can contain some maximum number of different arrangements.

So that is how the model achieves conservation. And now the ontology works the other way round. It is the closure by being bounded - constrained - that underwrites the energy conservation. In general relativity, for example, energy is no longer conserved as a necessity. This is because the spatiotemporal boundaries are no longer globally fixed. They have a plastic geometry.

So energy conservation becomes an output of the model. The modelled world starts open. You add constraints to close it in suitable fashion. It is no longer a universal fact to be taken for granted - even if our actual Universe does look pretty closed in terms of its energy content.

And remember I asked you a direct question:

A constraints-based view of substance says limits on instability create stability. So in every moment, something could accidentally change. And very often in life, things do. But to the degree there is a global order or law in place, such accidental changes are suitably restricted. Things can't change enough to matter.

This is a perfectly intelligible ontology. Tell me one thing wrong with it.

...I'm sure you were just about to give an answer.

Dfpolis was taking a position on Hyle. I disagreed with that, making the argument that he was treating the material principle as already having formal organisation in having an inherent and active intentionality. So in terms of "prime matter", his starting point had already crossed the line and ceased to be prime. — apokrisis

That's not surprising. As I've told you already, it is strictly implied within the concept of matter, that prime matter is impossible in reality. It may be a useful concept, but to imagine that it ever had, or will have any real existence is not only fictional, but an impossible fiction dictated by the concept itself.

However, that is also a reasonable view if we are talking about the actual world where it is only in our conceptions that we are wanting to insist on some absolutely dualistic separation. So it is also the case that any notion of prime matter is simply a state of being that is the least tellic, the least organised, the least shaped and directed. — apokrisis

If you are talking about a state of reality which is the most lacking in form possible (highest degree of privation), then this is not prime matter. So why talk as if it is?

And as we have discussed multiple times, I would then go beyond that qualification to say that both matter and form would have to co-arise from something even more extreme - a state of "actual" vagueness. — apokrisis

OK, so you have here a state where the form is so highly deficient that it is unintelligible to you, so you call this a state of "actual" vagueness.

You were already lost at step one - the idea that prime matter reduces to a notion of undirected flux, making matter already an active thing, just a chaotically unformed kind of active thing. — apokrisis

This though, your "step one", is an unwarranted assumption, or unjustified conclusion, and this is where you go in a contradictory direction to dfpolis. You have no principle whereby you can say that matter is an active thing. Dfpolis assumes that there are "laws" acting causally within matter, and this is what allows it to be active. "Prime matter" according to the concept of it, is pure potential, and cannot be itself active, yet you claim it "reduces to a notion of undirected flux". This is false.

It appears like you have assigned a highly deficient form to this matter, a form which is unintelligible to you, which you call "actual vagueness", and then you want to say that this form of matter is real prime matter. But prime matter, according to the concept cannot have any form, and that's why it's impossible in reality.

And I am completely opposed to your characterisation of prime matter as some kind of passive substratrum that awaits a shaping intentional hand to magic it into a world of objects. This is just the materialism of atomism. And Aristotle was a good deal beyond that. — apokrisis

As I told you in my last post, I do not say that there is a prime matter which awaits shaping by a hand. Matter is conceptual only, there is no such thing as prime matter, nor is there such a thing as the "in-forming of matter". This is an absurd mischaracterization of my position it is purely ad hominem.

Your argumentative procedure appears to consist of two aspects, asserting over and over again your beliefs, and instead of understanding and addressing the stated beliefs of others you attack them with ad hominem.

Physics does that by counting the microstates of a bounded system. So what is conserved is all the possible configurations of some collection of parts. A block of spacetime can contain some maximum number of different arrangements. — apokrisis

That's pure fiction. "Possible configurations" is constrained by the physicist's capacity to determine these possibilities. Quantum physics demonstrates quite clearly that the physicist has not the capacity to determine the possible configurations. Where is the particle? The physicist can consider that it is possibly anywhere, and everywhere, but the physicist cannot consider as a real possibility that it is nowhere. Since your "maximum number of different arrangements" will not even allow the possibility that the parts are nowhere, your "degrees of freedom" is simple fiction.

Your constraint is your refusal to recognize that matter is purely conceptual, in the mind only. You want it to be an active thing within the reality which you model, when in reality it is just a symbol in the model. And you seem to have no idea of what it represents in the reality which you are modelling. Therefore, you assume that it represents "vagueness", the unintelligible.

So that is how the model achieves conservation. And now the ontology works the other way round. It is the closure by being bounded - constrained - that underwrites the energy conservation. In general relativity, for example, energy is no longer conserved as a necessity. This is because the spatiotemporal boundaries are no longer globally fixed. They have a plastic geometry. — apokrisis

Right, instead of considering "nowhere" as a possibility, you are forced to relinquish accepted spatiotemporal boundaries such that your possibilities are no longer globally fixed, and are now literally "anywhere". Say good bye to any "degrees" of freedom.

And remember I asked you a direct question:



A constraints-based view of substance says limits on instability create stability. So in every moment, something could accidentally change. And very often in life, things do. But to the degree there is a global order or law in place, such accidental changes are suitably restricted. Things can't change enough to matter.

This is a perfectly intelligible ontology. Tell me one thing wrong with it.

...I'm sure you were just about to give an answer. — apokrisis

I already answered that question. It is completely contradictory to dfpolis' position in which laws are inherent within matter. And, both of you claim to represent the principles of modern physics. So, modern physics allows both, that "something could accidentally change", and that accidental change is impossible because the laws of nature are inherent within matter. That's what's wrong with it, it is a representation of deep inconsistencies within the discipline of physics.

Of course I didn't mention the blatantly obvious thing wrong with it, but since you asked again, that statement is contradictory itself, and we've been through this before. If something can change so much so that it is identified as a change, then we cannot say that this change does not matter. The fact that it has been identified as a change indicates that it matters. This is just another representation of your nonsensical, and contradictory notion that there is a difference which doesn't make a difference. The fact that it has been identified as a difference indicates that it has made a difference. That there is a difference which is not a difference is blatant contradiction. That you can identify a change as a change, and claim that it doesn't matter, after it clearly has mattered to you, because you have proceeded to identified it as a change, is simple dishonesty, lying.

As I said, I can't remember where I encountered that item of information, but a google search yielded this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction — Janus

Thank you for the reference. I think the proper formulation is to say that secondary qualities depend on the relation of particular sensory modalities to physical conditions, while primary qualities are independent of particular sensory modalities.

I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names

With respect to Galileo, they are more than bare "names." They are modes of sensory interaction.

that we are not aware of their being anything other than various arrangements of the size, figure, and motions of the parts of these objects — Janus

I think Descartes has it wrong as well. We are not aware of the "various arrangements of the size, figure, and motions," any more then we are aware of our brain states when we know the contents they encode. What we are aware of is the action of various kinds of physical states interacting with our senses. These are presented as qualia.

Subjective experiences are "tokens of types of experiences such as knowing and willing" only in the case of knowing and willing about one's subjective experiences. (I had a dream, wish I didn't feel anxious, etc.) — gurugeorge

I think we are misunderstanding each other. By "subjective experiences" I don't mean experiences, such as dreams, devoid of objective content. I mean experiences informing us about our self as a subject in a subject-object relation.

I pointed out earlier that even our most objective experiences inform us not only about a physical object (the objective object, e.g. what we're looking at), but also about ourselves as experiencing the physical object (the subjective object, e.g. ourselves as able to see, know, direct our attention, etc.).

The Fundamental Abstraction of natural science, then, focuses on the objective object (the thing seen and known) to the exclusion of the subjective object (us seeing and knowing).

Armstrong (a physicalist and realist regarding universals) — Relativist

These seem like incompatible positions. Physics has nothing to say about the logical order and universals belong to the logical order.

I see no reason to think that universals exist independently of the minds thinking them. They have a foundation in reality, in the potential of each instance to evoke the same concept, i.e in the intelligibility of their instances. But, being potential is not being actual.

As universals have no actual existence outside of the mind, they can have no actual relations outside of the mind.

Hume's constant conjunction makes the success of science surprising — Relativist

If that is all you are thinking about, it certainly does. Hume was not addressing the ground of necessity in nature, but the ground of our idea of necessity. So, we need to look beyond Hume's epistemological analysis to a more ontological one.

it doesn't appear to be consistent with your thesis of intentionality, and that seems a flaw for your position. — Relativist

I am not sure what flaw you are thinking of. So, just explain how the concurrent ("essential") causality of the laws of nature can give rise to Humean-Kantian or "accidental" causality (time sequence by rule). If the laws remain the same at each instant of time, integrating their operation over time gives us laws with a determinate connection between successive events. So constant intentionality explains the success of physics. (As anticipated by Jememiah.)

I think we are misunderstanding each other. — Dfpolis

No, although of course I may be mistaken, I do think I understand your position. I've read Hegel, etc., too. I'm just disagreeing with it and trying to "cut it down to size" (so to speak) :)

The only "subjective object" around is the person knowing, willing, etc., but that is just the objective human animal accessible to all, and its qualities can be understood scientifically (e.g. its/our means of knowing, its/our capacity for knowledge, etc.

On the other hand, if you mean something like "the knowing subject caught in the act of present knowing," then that's a misunderstanding of what knowledge is. It's actually not a momentary subjective relation in that sense (the momentary, present relation between a notional abstract subject and the abstracted contents of that subject's knowing).

Knowing is a whole bunch of things with family resemblances: various forms of tacit knowing and know-how (including things practiced and now unconscious, like driving), knowledge by acquaintance (which is closest to the momentary, present sense of "knowing" - one might call it "gnostic" knowing), knowledge by description, Platonic recollection (probably closest to the kind of tacit expectations about environment investigated by evolutionary psychology). There's nothing in common between them except the abstraction of knowing as a generalized relation between subject and object, but there's nothing to investigate, nothing to be discovered about that abstraction, it's just an abstraction lumping all the disparate cases together.

That whole line of thought from Descartes, via the rationalists/empiricists, through to Hegel, Fichte, etc., around this (most succinctly expressed by Schopenhauer with his "no subject without object, and vice-versa"), and as toyed with by the Postmodernists, is I think grossly mistaken.

The fact that in day to day life, these are not separate or separable doesn't invalidate the notion of their being separate domains or 'magisteria'. So - where is the incoherence here? — Wayfarer

What could those "separate domains or magisteria" be beyond being conceptual distinctions, abstractions? The other alternative is that they are, substantively speaking, different kinds or orders of being; in other words different substances. So again, this is either substance dualism or aspect dualism. You seem to want to contend that you hold to some 'third position', but I can't see that there is any coherent third position to occupy unless it be either idealism or materialism simpliciter; both of which seem to be inadequate to explain human experience.

But prime matter, according to the concept cannot have any form, and that's why it's impossible in reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Matter and form are just the useful conceptions that divide reality for us. Being is a whole. So we are speaking of taking a dialectical opposition to its limits so as to have a causal tale that makes a generalised sense. It sustains a mode of metaphysical analysis that works better than any other general scheme.

So you are confused to say the fundamental source of materiality would somehow exist by itself in concrete fashion - even as the hypothesis here. That is not hylomorphism. And that is why I in turn invoke the further foundational concept of the vague and the crisp to allow for conception of the development of the dialectically divided themselves. You can start with a hylomorphic state of matter~form without either of these aspects of causality being clearly in effect.

It all makes logical sense. If there is a beginning in a symmetry, then a symmetry breaking can follow. A lack of distinction is the perfect ground for the birth of distinction.

Your constraint is your refusal to recognize that matter is purely conceptual, in the mind only. You want it to be an active thing within the reality which you model, when in reality it is just a symbol in the model. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course it is conceptual. Metaphysics is about developing the most useful constructs for making sense of existence. It is all modelling.

But also, some modelling actually works. The hylomorphic division into material and formal cause works. As does the attempt to understand reality as being divided with degrees of sharpness into the dichotomy of stasis vs flux. Or chance vs necessity. Or atom vs void. Or now, information vs entropy.

For me, matter and form both have to be active in the sense that both have to themselves develop. And both have to be causes - a reason for concrete change. Yet still, those other contrasts, like active vs passive, will start to apply somewhere along the line. We wouldn’t hold on to these other dichotomies of existence if they didn’t have strong explanatory value.

But a characterisation like active vs passive doesn’t seem to make much sense until reality has developed enough to become crisply divided against itself in this categorical fashion. Everything is relative. And so action can only be treated as something general and actualised once hylomorphic being is developed enough for action to be measured against some kind of countering passivity in its world. To be a thing, somewhere, it also has to not be a thing elsewhere.

So you are wrong to say all this metaphysical talk is purely conceptual. It is an attempt to dissect reality in terms of its actual logical oppositions. But also, it is definitely an exercise in modeling. So it is conceptual. But what seems missing in your replies is an understanding that what is central to the conception is the dialectical logic - the logic of symmetry breaking - that is at the heart of a hylomorphic analysis of nature.

You keep thinking vagueness should be a thing in my arguments, then getting angry because monistic existence of that kind is impossible. Vagueness could only ever be relative to crispness, you say.

And I agree. That is the very point I make. Metaphysics only makes sense once all the conceiving is understood in terms of how the logic of symmetry breaking or dichotomisation would work. It is the mechanism by which primal divisions arise that is the key take home here. Categories are limits - the complementary limits of some deeper process of dichotomisation.

I already answered that question. It is completely contradictory to dfpolis' position in which laws are inherent within matter. And, both of you claim to represent the principles of modern physics. So, modern physics allows both, that "something could accidentally change", and that accidental change is impossible because the laws of nature are inherent within matter. That's what's wrong with it, it is a representation of deep inconsistencies within the discipline of physics. — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s a really weird mash up, not an answer. It is just you lumping everyone else into a general category of those who seem to be in disagreement with MU. You right, thus everyone else is definitionally wrong. :razz:

The fact that it has been identified as a difference indicates that it has made a difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It says the criteria has been changed. A different point of view has been adopted.

My approach starts by granting the reality of finality in nature. And goals are constraints. Once a purpose has been adequately served, anything more doesn’t make an intelligible difference.

So I simply apply that commonsense view of finality or intentionality to nature as a general principle.

Every river is different. But not in a way that makes a difference to nature, in terms of its general purpose of maximising entropy.

So regardless of what you say, this way of conceiving of existence is already basic to the metaphysics of science. It just makes obvious sense.

That's fine, but I was merely pointing out that I remembered coming across the information that the idea of distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities, however that distinction might be explained, did not have its origin with Locke.

Having said that, I follow Whitehead and other process thinkers in believing there to be no substantive difference between primary and secondary qualities, no "bifurcation of nature" to quote Whitehead, so I don't hold with the notion of there being substantive qualia at all.

(the objective object, e.g. what we're looking at), but also about ourselves as experiencing the physical object (the subjective object, e.g. ourselves as able to see, know, direct our attention, etc.).

The Fundamental Abstraction of natural science, then, focuses on the objective object (the thing seen and known) to the exclusion of the subjective object (us seeing and knowing). — Dfpolis

Right - hence the discussion about the characteristic of typically modern thought which is that the real attributes of anything are what are able to be measured or expressed mathematically. Other, qualitative aspects of cognition are then relegated to the subjective [and implicitly secondary] domain. That is the main characteristic of scientific naturalism, is it not? That what is real is measurable?

Hence the conundrum posed by the ‘observer problem’ in quantum physics. In fact, it is this very problem which shows some fundamental issue with the whole project of modern [as distinct from post-QM] science - that is, science as it was conceived from the time of Newton until the time of Einstein. That was when ‘modernism’ began to unravel - which it definitively has, hence the chaos and anarchy of post-modernism.

What could those "separate domains or magisteria" be beyond being conceptual distinctions, abstractions? — Janus

Here's an example:

Physics has nothing to say about the logical order and universals belong to the logical order. — Dfpolis

Here's another:

The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. — Howard Pattee

Those are conceptual distinctions, so I don't think you have answered the question at all. Of course physics does not deal with semantics; who in their right mind would want to claim that it does?

Do you want to say the logical order and the physical order are two substantively, as opposed to merely conceptually, different orders of being? If you want to say that, then I would say you are a dualist in the Cartesian sense.

I'm pretty certain you can't answer this question without 'incriminating' yourself, so I don't really expect a straight answer from you. :wink: