I tender Plotinus' objections to the Gnostics as evidence for this view. The conflict between views of a natural good and a flawed creation concern the expectations of the future, for all who live. — Paine

This is a very interesting comment. I've recently been reading Cormac McCarthy's works and a book, A Bloody and Barbarous God the Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy by Petra Mundik, which aligns McCarthy's philosophy with the Gnostics, with the idea that this world was created by a flawed deity. It does seem that the natural human demand for Justice and search for the Good cannot be realized, or at least not comprehensively, on a societal scale.

Although this inability to realize the Good seems apparent I'm reluctant to admit it, because it seems defeatist, and I think this might be what you allude to when you say

concern the expectations of the future, for all who live. — Paine

Do you have a ready reference for Plotinus' objection to the Gnostic vision? If so, I would be interested to look at it.

I will provide tomorrow. I approach the end of today's period of being fully conscious.

The observations about McCarthy does address what I am thinking about. I will sit with them for a while.

Cheers, whenever you find both the time and inclination...

If you google Plotinus on the Gnostics there’s a ton of material out there. As I understand it, the basic drift is that he wouldn’t countenance their claim that matter was evil. (The top hit is from a Wiki article which seems quite comprehensive and as always has links for further reading.)

As I understand it, the basic drift is that he wouldn’t countenance their claim that matter was evil. — Wayfarer

But that is what Plotinus said:

We conclude that Matter's participation in Idea is not by way of modification within itself: the process is very different; it is a bare seeming. Perhaps we have here the solution of the difficulty as to how Matter, essentially evil, can be reaching towards The Good: there would be no such participation as would destroy its essential nature. Given this mode of pseudo-participation- in which Matter would, as we say, retain its nature, unchanged, always being what it has essentially been- there is no longer any reason to wonder as to how while essentially evil, it yet participates in Idea: for, by this mode, it does not abandon its own character: participation is the law, but it participates only just so far as its essence allows. Under a mode of participation which allows it to remain on its own footing, its essential nature stands none the less, whatsoever the Idea, within that limit, may communicate to it: it is by no means the less evil for remaining immutably in its own order. If it had authentic participation in The Good and were veritably changed, it would not be essentially evil. — ibid. III. 6. 11

Thanks, I'll have a look. I hadn't thought of the Gnostics considering matter as such to be evil, but rather the forms it takes and their activities in this world.

From the Wiki article:

Plotinus, at least in his texts against the Gnostics, portrayed God as a separate entity that human souls needed to go towards, whereas Gnostics believed that in every human soul there was a divine spark of God already. However, Gnostics did not disagree with the neoplatonist notion of getting closer to the source.

This it seems. if true, would place the Gnostics closer to Plato than Plotinus would be. As far as I understand the Gnostics did not believe that God is the source of this world, and nor, on the other hand, did they believe that the Demiurge was the source of matter, but was rather a "craftsmen god" (as Plato's Timaeus tells it) who shaped the world out of pre-existent chaotic matter. The difference being that the Gnostics did not think the Demiurge, or the resultant world, is in accordance with the Good, as Plato apparently did.

An arcane argument. The SEP entry on Plotinus, by Gerson, has it as follows:

With regard to Plotinus’ contemporaries, he was sufficiently exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate treatise, II 9 (‘Against the Gnostics’) attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians…were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus’ view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism, according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is ‘fallen’ and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret elect, alone destined for salvation – which was what the Gnostics declared themselves to be – was deeply at odds with Plotinus’ rational universalism.

I stand corrected.

This website has all of the Six Enneads translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page. The translation is a little clunky at times, but it beats typing out the passages.

The text concerning the Gnostics comprises all of the Second Ennead, Ninth Tractate.

The title given there speaks to your comments about McCarthy:

AGAINST THOSE THAT AFFIRM THE CREATOR OF THE KOSMOS AND THE KOSMOS ITSELF TO BE EVIL:
[GENERALLY QUOTED AS "AGAINST THE GNOSTICS"].

Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object.
— Aquinas Online, Cognition in General

This theme of 'union' in some ways echoes the idea of union in many different schools of the perennial philosophy. This is what is lost in the transition to modernity, particularly with the advent of Cartesian dualism and the separateness of mind and matter. — Wayfarer

I think Modernity began a deconstruction of the idea of unity determined as identity, but it didn’t take this deconstruction far enough. Only when identity is understood as a derived modification of difference can the concept of union free itself from Platonic dogmatism and metaphysical presuppsitons.

Gerson's account is a fair description.

I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties. Many of Plotinus' objections could apply equally well to a certain 'Saul of Tarsus', who called for the end of tis kosmos.

Augustine placed Plotinus above Plato in The City of God. But I don't recall any reference to this part of the oeuvre.

Although this inability to realize the Good seems apparent, I'm reluctant to admit it, because it seems defeatist, and I think this might be what you allude to when you say: "concern the expectations of the future, for all who live. — Janus

I think Kafka gave this some thought. In his Reflections, [a collection of aphorisms]. this one is an affirmation through negation of a sort:

There are questions which we could never get over if we were not delivered from them by the operation of nature. — Kafka, Reflections, 54

But perhaps the true antipode to the gnostics is Walt Whitman:

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands.
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or
next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they
are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the
water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 17

Only when identity is understood as a derived modification of difference can the concept of union free itself from Platonic dogmatism and metaphysical presuppsitons. — Joshs

Where does that critique come from? What's the theory behind it?

I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties — Paine

I'm wary of trying to delve into the minutiae of doctrinal distinctions between Christians, neoplatonists and gnostics, although I'm sure there are many to be made. I'm attempting to stick to the broad contours of the issue. But for what it's worth, some of the entries I perused yesterday said that Plotinus had specific gnostic sects in mind and that while 'Plotinus raises objections to several core tenets of Gnosticism, although some of them might have come from misunderstandings' (Wiki entry on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism.) An interpretation of neoplatonism is central to Vervaeke's project, so far as this project is concerned, I'm being guided by that.

Thanks.

I think Kafka gave this some thought. In his Reflections, [a collection of aphorisms]. this one is an affirmation through negation of a sort:

There are questions which we could never get over if we were not delivered from them by the operation of nature.
— Kafka, Reflections, 54 — Paine

Right, it is not productive, healthy or even tenable to focus too exclusively on the obvious plethora of evils that seem to be an integral (or dis-integral) part of human life.

But perhaps the true antipode to the gnostics is Walt Whitman:

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands.
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or
next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they
are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the
water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 17 — Paine

Nice! Whitman is one of my favorite poets and is also a fitting "antipode" to postmodern relativism. Some see modernism as the elimination of all but subjective values and postmodernism as the radical relativization of all value.

Perhaps I should not have made my remark. I did not mean to hold Gerson to account as a matter of the 'minutiae' of citing specific schools of thought. Plotinus leaves the burden upon the one who would disagree with his argument. It is brilliant in that regard.

Only when identity is understood as a derived modification of difference can the concept of union free itself from Platonic dogmatism and metaphysical presuppsitons.
— Joshs

Where does that critique come from? What's the theory behind it? — Wayfarer

I dont know, but it’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Just kidding. Actually, that’s a kind of thinking common to Foucault, Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. They all trace it back to Nietzsche’s Eternal Return. They read it as eternal return of the always different. Deleuze wrote

In accordance with Heidegger's ontological intuition, difference must be articulation and connection in itself; it must relate different to different without any mediation whatsoever by the identical, the similar, the analogous or the opposed. There must be a differenciation of difference, an in-itself which is like a differenciator, by virtue of which the different is gathered all at once rather than represented on condition of a prior resemblance, identity, analogy or opposition.

On Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, Deleuze says:

When the identity of things dissolves, being be­gins to revolve around the different. That which is or returns has no prior constituted identity: things are reduced to the difference which fragments them, and to all the differences which are implicated in it and through which they pass.

The analogy that comes to mind is Buddhism's apoha logic: 'Apoha theory was proposed to provide an explanation for how, in the absence of objectively existent universals, we are able to form concepts and effectively use them to communicate and achieve practical ends. Dignāga defined apoha as a theory of classification based on exclusion. He said that a category such as 'cow' is arrived at not by the inclusion of all objects we would, based on some criteria, identify as cows, but by the exclusion of all objects we would identify as 'non-cows.' Concepts thus involve a double negation - the category of 'cow' is, in fact, the category of all 'not non-cows.' Since a negation or an absence cannot, according to the Buddhists, be objectively real (since absences are not caused and have no causal efficacy), this shows that concepts, though referring to a class of particulars, have no basis in reality.'

But then, this is the aspect of Buddhist philosophy that I have trouble accepting. There's a well-known analogy in the early Buddhist texts, the analogy of the chariot. It comprises a dialogue between one Ven Nagasena, a monk, and King Milinda (who has subsequently been identified as Meander, an actual Greco-Bactrian king). In short, Nagasena 'deconstructs' the chariot, showing it cannot be found in its various parts - the axle is not the chariot, the wheels, etc. Likewise, says Nagasena, I am nothing more than an aggregation of parts, if these parts are dispersed, then I would be no more (ref).

What this doesn't come to terms with, in my view, is the idea of the chariot. In that historical epoch, the possession of chariots was a major factor in military conquest. Empires rose and fell on the basis of such technologies. So while it's true to say that this or that particular chariot is nothing more than an assemblage of parts, it is also the instantiation of an idea, which is real over and above any particular. There are those who possess the idea, and those who don't.

In fact what I think undermines Buddhist nominalism (although this is a digression) is that the Buddha himself is a universal kind. That is why Buddhism uniquely believes that Buddhas are a class of being, even if at the same time each one is a particular individual. (I've tried that out on Buddhist forums and it didn't go down well.)

In fact what I think undermines Buddhist nominalism (although this is a digression) is that the Buddha himself is a universal kind. That is why Buddhism uniquely believes that Buddhas are a class of being, even if at the same time each one is a particular individual. (I've tried that out on Buddhist forums and it didn't go down well.) — Wayfarer

That is very interesting.

It was a major factor in making me realise my own Platonist (i.e. western) heritage.

In exploring John Vervaeke's conception of 'extended naturalism,' I am developing a theory that aligns with Platonism, proposing that what Platonism describes as universals are, in fact, universal cognitive structures. However, it is crucial to clarify that these universals are not merely constructs of the mind. Instead, they are the inevitable parameters of conscious experience and knowledge.

To avoid falling into the trap of conceptualism, which posits that universals exist only within the mind as concepts, I propose that universals such as the principles of logic and natural numbers have an ontological status that transcends individual cognitive processes. They are not mind-dependent in the sense that they do not rely on being conceived by any particular mind to exist. Instead, these universals are fundamental aspects of the fabric of reality that reason can discern and understand. As Bertrand Russell put it, 'universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.'

This perspective suggests that universals have a kind of reality that is both independent of individual human minds and intimately connected to the rational structure of the universe. The principles of logic and natural numbers, for example, are not contingent upon human thought but are discoverable through the exercise of reason. In this way, they serve as the bedrock of our capacity for knowledge and conscious experience, guiding and constraining our understanding of the world.

In summary, by situating universals as universal cognitive structures that are inherent to the rational structure of reality, we can maintain a stance that acknowledges their actuality while recognizing that they can only be grasped through the exercise of reason. And I think that's consistent with where Vervaeke is going in this course I'm listening to.

Thanks. Jungian archetypes would seem to belong to these universal cognitive structures too.

I propose that universals such as the principles of logic and natural numbers have an ontological status that transcends individual cognitive processes. They are not mind-dependent in the sense that they do not rely on being conceived by any particular mind to exist. Instead, these universals are fundamental aspects of the fabric of reality that reason can discern and understand. — Wayfarer

But how can number and logic be aspects of the fabric of reality when what we think of today as number and logic were invented bit by bit over the course of cultural history? I will go so far as to predict that at some point in the future we will replace numeric calculation and propositional logic with alternative technological languages.

But how can number and logic be aspects of the fabric of reality when what we think of today as number and logic were invented bit by bit over the course of cultural history? — Joshs

I guess that debate would focus on whether number and logic were invented or 'discovered'.

But how can number and logic be aspects of the fabric of reality when what we think of today as number and logic were invented bit by bit over the course of cultural history? — Joshs

‘God created the integers’ ~ some philosopher.

It is sometimes said that the natural numbers are objectively real, but I don’t agree. I think they’re ‘transjectively’ real - the same for all who can count, but only perceptible to one capable of counting.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/transjective

I haven’t heard of this author, but there has been a Platonist element circulating contemporary philosophical writings for some time, even as far back as the pre-Brexit, pre-Trump era. It may have helped to cultivate ideas amongst the masses which led to those circumstances. Maybe Trump tapped into the collective conscious when those raiders stormed the capital building!

I guess that debate would focus on whether number and logic were invented or 'discovered'. — Tom Storm

Like other empirical knowledge, we invent these schemes and then discover their usefulness in our dealings with the world. The fact that we find them useful does not make them part of the fabric of reality, any more than our other invented technologies are a part of the fabric of reality.

It is sometimes said that the natural numbers are objectively real, but I don’t agree. I think they’re ‘transjectively’ real - the same for all who can count, but only perceptible to one capable of counting. — Wayfarer

They are the same for all who can count because that is the meaning of numeric unit, ‘same thing different time’. There is no experience in nature that conforms to ‘same thing different time’. In order to understand the empty, generic concept of ‘same thing different time’, one must start by noticing multiplicities, and then separating out particulars within such multiplicities. There is no concept of number yet to be found at this point in the process of going from multiplicity to the deliberate noticing and separating out of particulars. In order to arrive at the concept of the number unit, one must turn away from the meaningful world of continually changing senses by inventing a new notion, that of the empty, context and content-free particularity, a particularity which can be returned to again and again as ‘same thing different time’ because it has no content, stands for nothing other than a placemark. It is not just that the apples we count are never identical to each other in their attributes, but that the very meaning of the category of ‘apple’ changes as we move from one ‘apple’ to the next in our enumeration. In order to count, we mist ignore this slippage of sense, not only of attributes of the particulars , but of the meaning of the category as a persisting identity. Nothing about the world we perceive gives us the notion of identity of content, which is why we can only count by ignoring the actual
content.

Whatever we look at in the world, or imagine in our minds, changes in such a way that every difference in degree is simultaneously a difference in kind. It is necessary for the invention of the concept of enumeration that we ignore this about actual experience. Such a strange notion of ignoring and flattening the real world had to be invented, and invented in order to accomplish specific purposes. To say that numbers are the same for all who can count is merely to say that all who can count have already invented the concept of identical sameness, since counting depends on that concept. We have become so accustomed to the idea that the notion of repeated identicality is built into the universe that we forget how peculiar an invention it was, the imposition of a subjective idealization onto our experience ofnthe world that precisely ignores , prescinds from , the fabric of reality in order to create the illusion of pure difference in degree that is not at the same time a difference in kind.

…without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the wholly invented world of the unconditioned and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world through numbers, people could not live.” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)

In order to arrive at the concept of the number unit, one must turn away from the meaningful world of continually changing senses by inventing a new notion, that of the empty, context and content-free particularity, a particularity which can be returned to again and again as ‘same thing different time’ because it has no content, stands for nothing other than a placemark. — Joshs

I wonder if there is a confusion here between counting and conceptualising counting. In many cultures counting begins with the human body, and the names for certain numbers correspond to different parts of the body - hence, digits. Some of the names for numbers have magical or (un)lucky qualities, or associations with non-numbers.

Then it would be in algebra, the generalisation of counting, that one arrives at 'same thing different time'. But perhaps this is what you meant.

I wonder if there is a confusion here between counting and conceptualising counting. In many cultures counting begins with the human body, and the names for certain numbers correspond to different parts of the body - hence, digits. Some of the names for numbers have magical or (un)lucky qualities, or associations with non-numbers.

Then it would be in algebra, the generalisation of counting, that one arrives at 'same thing different time'. But perhaps this is what you meant. — mcdoodle

I was doing a rather static analysis of a contemporary thinking of number, but a historical account would support my argument that them concept of number is invented, and thus there were many concepts of number that appeared over the past centuries. As I said in an earlier post , the modern notion was invented in bits and pieces over time , in different ways in different cultures.

Like other empirical knowledge, we invent these schemes and then discover their usefulness in our dealings with the world. The fact that we find them useful does not make them part of the fabric of reality, any more than our other invented technologies are a part of the fabric of reality. — Joshs

This has always been my assumption - but not being a philosopher, I assumed it was common sense - that most dubious of systems.

To say that numbers are the same for all who can count is merely to say that all who can count have already invented the concept of identical sameness, since counting depends on that concept. We have become so accustomed to the idea that the notion of repeated identicality is built into the universe that we forget how peculiar an invention it was, the imposition of a subjective idealization onto our experience ofnthe world that precisely ignores , prescinds from , the fabric of reality in order to create the illusion of pure difference in degree that is not at the same time a difference in kind. — Joshs

Nice. Thanks.

They are the same for all who can count because that is the meaning of numeric unit, ‘same thing different time’. There is no experience in nature that conforms to ‘same thing different time’. In order to understand the empty, generic concept of ‘same thing different time’, one must start by noticing multiplicities, and then separating out particulars within such multiplicities. — Joshs

Which is a human ability, and one that is basic to the exercise of reason. As for being ‘no experience in nature that conforms to “the same thing at a different time”, surely these are occurring every instant. Breathing, tides, days - many basic constituents of existence happen in patterns which can be counted and measured. Humans have been counting seasons and moon-phases since the Stone Age. As soon as humans began to produce and gather then the requirement becomes imperative - no coincidence that the advent of writing, counting and calculation was mainly concerned with tallying harvests.

As for ‘ignoring and flattening the real world’ I interpret it differently. With the advent of science there is a tendency to believe that only what can be measured is real, as measurement is fundamental to science. That tendency indeed ignores and flattens the reality of lived experience. That lives on in the absurd arguments about 'qualia', a jargon term that designates 'qualities of experience', which are ignored under quantitative sciences. But there’s nothing inherent to mathematics that entails this. //It's the mistake of believing that only what can be quantified is real. It perhaps grew out of the Pythagorean-Platonic foundations of Western science, but it also depended on many other social and historical factors.//

As regards the contention that number is invented, this doesn’t account for the consilience between mathematics and nature, the subject of Eugene Wigner’s well-known essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. By abstracting from the observable and measurable properties of objects and their relations, many things have been discovered that would be otherwise unknowable. Wigner can't explain it, but he also doesn't attempt to explain it away.

"Subjective idealisation" is the wrong term, that's why I referred to the newly-coined 'transjective', meaning 'transcending the distinction between subjective and objective, or referring to a property not of the subject or the environment but a relatedness co-created between them.'

Given that mathematical ability exists, then all kinds of imaginary systems can be invented. But the core elements are discovered not invented. This is what has impressed me about mathematical Platonism.

As regards the contention that number is invented, this doesn’t account for the consilience between mathematics and nature, the subject of Eugene Wigner’s well-known essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. By abstracting from the observable and measurable properties of objects and their relations, many things have been discovered that would be otherwise unknowable. Wigner can't explain it, but he also doesn't attempt to explain it away. — Wayfarer

Mathematics only seems unreasonably effective because we don’t notice the sleight of hand we perform by forcing aspects of the world into idealized objects that persist identically and then apply mathematical calculations to these constructed idealities. Our invented axioms don’t represent a world, any more than our scientific theories represent a world. They enact a world by our inhabiting it , moving within it in a particular way, like an animal constructs a niche. We don’t say that the spider’s web or the bird’s nest is an unreasonably accurate representation of their world. We say that it produces a lived world unique to the animal , that it navigates in a specific normative way. Mathematics, science and technology are how we navigate our constructed world in ways that express how we build that world . We create these patterns of interaction in a back and forth with the environment within our bubble, and then exclaim in wonder how unreasonably precise the response of our niche is to the very patterns that constrain it to respond in that way.

Von Uexkill illustrated how creatures like us build a ‘bubble’ around us that we consider world. In the following, he takes us on a

stroll into unfamiliar worlds; worlds strange to us but known to other creatures, manifold and varied as the animals them­selves. The best time to set out on such an adventure is on a sunny day. The place, a flower-strewn meadow, humming with insects, fluttering with but­terflies. Here we may glimpse the worlds of the lowly dwellers of the meadow. To do so, we must first blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each
creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows. When we ourselves then step into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed. Many of its colourful features disappear,
others no longer belong together but appear in new relationships. A new world comes into being. Through the bubble we see the world of the bur­rowing worm, of the butterfly, or of the field mouse: the world as it appears
to the animals themselves, not as it appears to us. This we may call the phe­nomenal world or the self-world of the animal.

The only difference between us and other animals is that we continually produce new bubbles , new niches, via new technologies. It’s not a question of the human subject positing a world as an epistemological knowing, but the active engagement of the human organism with its surrounding according to stable patterns of interaction which define the person as a living system and at the same time define its world. To be alive means to produce a normative pattern which maintains its dynamic stability in changing conditions. Our sciences enact ,through the feed forward and feedback reciprocity between our actions on and response from the world , a way of navigating through it in a consistently anticipatory manner.

A scientific, mathematical or technological niche( paradigm) have a certain contingent stability, what Kuhn called normal science. During this period of stability we can predict the response of the world to our observations of it in precisely logical ways through our mathematical schemes. But when we replace one niche, paradigm, worldview for another, the old logical relations either become irrelevant or we change the sense of the concepts they refer to (Newtonian vs Relativistic).