It" either reads the signs, or creates them (thinking of the creative power of Hoffman's conscious agents); a conscious agent, or agents, which transcend(s) substantial existence. From a psychological standpoint, that makes sense because that's what human beings do: create things (albeit, in a temporal manner). — Galuchat

In apokrisis' ontology, the "it" which reads signs or creates them, bringing substance into existence, is a feature of the vague infinite potential of matter, as substantial existence emerges from the infinite apeiron. But this infinite apeiron, or prime matter, as Aristotle demonstrated, is an unintelligible principle.

In relation to substantial existence then, we can follow the principles of Aristotle's cosmological argument, and apprehend the necessity of assigning to this "it" (which reads signs), substantial existence, creating an ontology of substance dualism, or we can adhere to the physicalist's assertions that prime matter is something real, thus leaving the "it" which reads signs as unintelligible within the infinite apeiron of prime matter.

Whereas, ascribing semiotic attributes to anything other than a psychophysical organism is a category error. — Galuchat

Aside from what you say, that this is mistaken attribution, the point I'm trying to make to apokrisis is that this false attribution gets us no further in terms of ontological principles. All one does with this type of approach is push back the sign reading capacity from the conscious mind, to DNA and other micro elements within the living body, and finally to the inanimate and the basic foundation of substantial existence. At this point we are faced with apokrisis' conclusion that semiotic principles are responsible for bringing into being substantial existence. Therefore we are forced to assume something outside of substantial existence, which reads the signs in the first place, causing the coming into being of substantial existence. Whatever it is which reads the signs in the first place, it cannot have substantial existence.

So all that this approach does, is push the question of what is it within the human mind which gives us the capacity to read signs, back to, and prior to, the beginning of substantial existence. Now by the principles of this approach, we are forced with the conclusion that whatever it is which gives us the capacity to read signs, it is necessarily something which transcends substantial existence.

This is an unreasonable approach because it renders the capacity for reading signs as something unintelligible. Instead of the dualist approach which allows that this capacity has real substantial existence, and therefore it has intelligible existence, it designates the existence of the capacity for sign reading as unsubstantiated and therefore unintelligible.

I remember trying to explain to my psychologist that choice was an illusion when I was ~15 years old. I didn't know of the term "mechanism" then, but it was blatantly obvious to me that there was actually no such thing as free will. The problem is, I also remember not doing a damn thing with my life then,

...

. I notice that I tend to procrastinate allot anytime I think about mechanism, regardless of my efforts not to. — XanderTheGrey

See how these two go together, believing that choice is an illusion, and not doing a damn thing? If you're waiting for the universe to make you do something, you might wait a long time.

I said they were external, not internal. That would be the difference. The water of the river knows which way to go because a channel carved over time points the way downhill. — apokrisis

So this is the semiotics of dissipative structures? The water sees the channel as a symbol, and interprets the meaning of this sign as "go this way". By what method does the water interpret the meaning of the sign? By what force does the water empower itself to go where it wants (where the sign tells it to go). Do you think that the water has the capacity to decide not to follow that sign? What if the water saw conflicting signs, how would it decide which one to follow?

There are no hidden mysteries here. — apokrisis

Is that a joke? It looks like pure mysticism to me. You're just saying that inanimate things have a mind by which they interpret signs, and decide to do what the sign tells them to do.

The conception of life at stake in each seem entirely unrelated to each other. — StreetlightX

Don't you see this as a big problem though? If you and I are referring to completely different things when we use the word "life", then how can we have any understanding of each other? We could each cling to our own meanings, and diverge further and further apart in our respective misunderstandings, or we could sit down and try to determine the correct conception. Platonic dialectics.

Even though, yeah, I get it, you have a kind of visceral reaction to the idea of anything to do with 'naturalism'. But it is warranted here, conceptually? And if so, why? — StreetlightX

If Wayfarer apprehends the naturalistic approach as incorrect, then the argumentation is warranted. Two people can be different, and we can respect each others differences, but in relation to conceptualization, differences become inconsistencies which produces incoherency. So if we do not take the time to determine the correct and the incorrect in conceptualization, we remain divided in misunderstanding, and "the concept" is incoherent. The cost of respecting each other's differences, in relation to concepts, is incoherency.

Pan-semiosis is then a further speculative metaphysical project where dissipative structure is also understood as a generalised sign relation. It connects to the mainstream of current physics now that it has turned productively from talking about reality in terms of particles to bits of information. — apokrisis

Perhaps you could explain this, because it appears to be the missing link which serves as the foundation of your metaphysics. How are sign relations inherent within a dissipative structure? I can understand how dissipative structures are interpreted and understood by observers through the means of sign relations, but how would sign relations be inherent within the dissipative structure itself?

By the same token, mind enters the picture right from the start. As soon as there is the vaguest speck of semiotic mechanism in play. — apokrisis

OK, so this is the issue I have. How do you interpret a common inanimate dissipative structure as having a semiotic mechanism at play?

I only have the advantage that my paradigm is thoroughly supported by scientific investigation. — apokrisis

So, point to this scientific investigation which provides evidence that a common inanimate dissipative structure has semiotics at play.

Yes, the striking thing that comes through from Hoffman is that the basis of life is way more mechanical than we knew. It is all a bunch of little switches and rotors and pumps and chains and conveyor belts. So out of utter instability, a little bit of genetic information can conjure a fantastic apparatus. We used to think metabolism was a chemical soup. The cell was a bag of reactants. Now we can see it is a factory with structure.

So the explanation of life back a decade or two was focused on genetic information and metabolic reactions. At school, we all had to learn a bunch of chemical equations like the Krebs cycle. Now there is this third intervening level of mechanical organisation.

That is a huge realisation in terms of the metaphysics of life. No one was predicting that ATP production would actually involve a proper little rotating spindle device. That is just so outlandish. — apokrisis

What this really indicates is that life is much more complicated than earlier imagined, not the opposite.

Hoffman's book also makes it clear how just the tiniest, simplest scrap of mechanical structure can have outsized impact at the nanoscale. And that is key to the abiogenesis issue. It is much less of a step from nonliving to living than we imagined. — apokrisis

Au contraire. This indicates that the step from non-living to living is much bigger than previously imagined. The levels of animated mechanization go far deeper then previously imagined, and as we delve deeper and deeper, that mechanization is seen to diverge further and further from the inanimate (unmechanized) at the same level.. People used to think that the mechanics and biogenesis of mitochondria was fascinating, but now these are seen as just the tip of the iceberg.

Nick Lane's book then comes from the other side and talks about how - with alkaline sea vents - the nonliving world closes the gap to make it a much tinier leap than we ever previously imagined. In terms of a chemical soup (with no biological machinery), there can be a dissipative energetic process in full swing. — apokrisis

I think that what you are saying is that since there is a vast realm of unknown, at the micro level with respect to the inanimate, and a vast realm of unknown at the micro level with respect to the animate, we can class these two together, and say that they are similar, each unknown. But this is not a real similarity, it is just an unknown within our minds.

Now we can see that if the nonliving metabolic cycle already exists, all the first life had to do was take away the possibility of that metabolic cycle collapsing. — apokrisis

What name would you assign to that thing which would take away that possibility, "soul"?

We know substance dualism can't work in any sensible causal fashion. — apokrisis

Oh we know this eh? We know it because our prejudice tells us that dualism ought to be avoided. Therefore we ought to conflate formal cause and final cause, as you do, because to properly distinguish between these two and produce a real causal understanding of reality would undermine this prejudice.

The reason why Peircean semiotics impresses me as the most developed model of systems causality is because it turns things around.
...

This is the pansemiotic hypothesis that Peirce dubbed objective idealism. — apokrisis

I've repeatedly told you that your position is backwards. You seem to recognize that now, with this statement. Why attempt to maintain a backward metaphysics? And why would you think that a metaphysics which "turns things around" from accepted metaphysical principles is the most developed? All this really does is compromise strong, consistent metaphysical principles in order to make them consistent with mistaken theories.

Google 'pansemiosis bootstrapping' and see what comes up ;-) — Wayfarer

Hmm, seems like nothing, how telling. Why did apokrisis call this the "the mainstream information theoretic view" then?

I don't see how "bootstrapping" is an appropriate term here. To assume bootstrapping is to take a physicalist premise and begin with this prejudice. What is necessary first, is to demonstrate that this is actually a case of bootstrapping.

There is a huge gap between a Prigogine dissipative structure, and a semiotic system. So much so, that these two are fundamentally different, because the capacity to understand and use symbols which is essential to semiotics is missing from dissipative structures. The proposition that a semiotic system bootstraps itself into existence from a dissipative structure, could be ridiculed if it was proposed as a scientific principle.

No. It arises from constraints on a vague material potential (that thus become the concrete degrees of freedom of the system because there are those limits that produce some distinct variety of substantial being). — apokrisis

OK, so I understand that you assume two distinct types of constraints, the constraints which act on material potential causing substantial being, and semiotic constraints which act on substantial being. This is what you just told me:

The semiotic information acts causally as the constraints on substantial being. In Hylomorphic terms, it represents the top-down formal and final causes. — apokrisis

Can we deconstruct the conflation of "formal and final causes" here to assign "formal" to one of these types of constraints, and "final" to the other? Would you agree with me, that the constraints which act on the vague material potential, which account for substantial existence in the first place, are formal causes, and the constraints of semiotics, since living beings act with purpose, are final causes?

So in terms of the four causes, it is formal/final cause constraining vague potential to produce definite material/efficient causes. The causal loop is then closed as these material/efficient causes must be of the right character to re-construct and perpetuate the global state of constraint. — apokrisis

Yes, "causal loop" is an appropriate expression because you have just described a vicious circle. First, you said that "constraints on vague material potential" become (or I would say "cause") substantial being. But then you say that this constraining produces "definite" material causes. So we need to sort this out. If material cause refers to vague potential, we cannot reintroduce "definite" material cause, because "definite" implies formal. So either material cause is vague and indefinite, or it is definite, but if the essence of material cause is to be vague and indefinite, as I understand "material cause" then to say that it becomes definite is to say that it becomes not itself.

Can I assume, according to my distinction between formal and final cause, made above, that formal cause, acting on material potential produces further formal causes, which act on material potential to produce further formal causes, and that this activity is what we commonly call a causal chain of efficient causation? Now, the concern of the op is, how does final cause, or semiotic constraints enter into this process?

Apokrisis is providing the pivot we need to understand the transition from non-life to life. Semiotics allows us to jump track from chemistry to biology by considering function over form. — MikeL

This is what I am trying to understand, how does semiotics provide this pivotal point? To me, it appears like nothing other than the assumption of God, or as the atheists would say, magic. We had non-semiotic activity occurring billions of years ago, prior to the arrival of life on earth, then magically semiotics (and life) occurred. If we assume that semiotic activity occurred prior to life on earth, and is responsible for the original shaping of material potential into substantial existence, then this is no other than assuming God as creator of substantial existence.

Let me see if I've got this straight then.

The semiotic information acts causally as the constraints on substantial being. In Hylomorphic terms, it represents the top-down formal and final causes. — apokrisis

If I understand correctly, substantial being exists only as the result of constraints. So semiotic information must be prior to substantial being, as the cause of it, or else you are assuming some constraints which are prior to semiotic constraints, which are responsible for substantial being which is prior to semiotic constraints. I assume the latter is your position, because you asked me about matter coming into existence from energy. I take it that this matter constitutes substantial being which is prior to semiotic constraints.

Then the physical degrees of freedom are the bottom-up material and efficient causes.

Substantial being emerges as the third thing of their interaction. As hylomorphism argued long ago. — apokrisis

Wait a minute, now I'm confused. Substantial being emerges from the interaction between material and efficient causation. Isn't substantial being necessary for, and therefore prior to both of these? There cannot be matter without substantial being, nor can there be efficient causation without substantial being. So unless you've figured out a way to reverse these brute facts, I think you should reconsider what your saying. In the case of material cause, how do you propose that there is matter which does not have substantial existence? In the case of efficient causation, what could possibly be the cause, or the effect, if there is no substantial existence?

So while I appreciate your attempt at parody, it failed by not understanding what it hoped to mock. — apokrisis

I'm not attempting to mock, or parody, I am only pointing out to you how you have your ontological priorities reversed. You ought to take a good look at what is being pointed out to you by myself as well as others, and address the problems which are extremely evident in your metaphysics. Whether it is your approach, or you are just copying from "the mainstream information theoretic view" is irrelevant. These problems render the approach completely untenable without substantial restructuring. You ought to be able to justify the principles which you espouse, and if not, you should recognize that this is a problem.

OK. How does energy come to rest to yield "solid matter"? What is your theory which isn't another "just so" story? — apokrisis

You have everything backward, as I've told you on numerous occasions. "Energy" according to it's conceptual structure is necessarily the property of something. It is commonly understood as a property of matter. You cannot abstract the property from the object which it is a property of, to give it independent existence without invoking some form of dualism.

You are claiming that energy is prior to matter, but this is just the nonsense of the idea that there could be an activity without something which is active. It is nonsense because "activity" is a concept which requires that there is something active, or else it's just an abstract concept, which has not been applied to describe anything active.. If your claim is that the concept of "activity", or "energy" is prior in existence to the thing (matter) which is active, then you need to support this idealism with some ontological principles. And this leads to dualism

You have two distinct forms of information in your description. You have information within the dissipative structures and you have information within the semiotics. There's a big gap between these two, because in "semiotics" information is a property of matter, and in your "dissipative structures" information is supposed to be prior to matter. Because your attempt is to conflate these two distinct conceptions of information, you have left yourself no idea of what "matter" even is. It's just some vague thing which emerges as "necessary", necessary to assume, in order to account for bodily existence. But it's not really necessary because it just emerges as random chance. And that's all nonsense, because as I say, you have it backwards.

I can't believe you guys take the passivity of matter so much for granted. . — apokrisis

So it's either take it for granted, or claim that it comes about by magic (take some dissipative structure and add some semiotics)? I choose neither of these.

Biology says the answer is just add semiotics to dissipative structure. — apokrisis

I read this as magic. Just stir in some semiotics, (the capacity to communicate), and bingo, you have a living being. Where would this semiotics come from?

You have a belief that it rained recently. This belief is supported by your perception that the ground is wet, along with a logical principle such as "if the ground is wet, then it has rained recently", or as you say, "rain makes the ground wet". It is the assumption of this logical principle which makes your perception of the ground being wet into evidence of "it rained recently".

The strength of the evidence depends on the strength of the logical principle. "Rain makes the ground wet" is rather weak because there are other things which could make the ground wet as well. So we'd have to resort to probabilities, or other evidence to make a conclusive decision. "If the ground is wet, then it has rained recently" is a much stronger principle, but it is not true, because there are other things which could make the ground wet. So strengthening the logical principle may create the appearance of strengthening the evidence, but if this renders the logical principle unsound, then the evidence may be completely dismissed.

Exactly, and Watts wants to claim that in the mystical union that the mystic achieves with God, he has such knowledge. That is how he justifies the attempt to use mystical religion to complete the understanding from God to the universe. — Agustino

Notice though, how you present the position in the op. You claim that Watts wants to talk about "how" God produces the universe. You do not ask "why" God produces the universe. Why refers to the end, and how refers to the means. Each of these has a tentative answer. Why is answered with "love", and how is answered with "matter", God created the universe by creating matter. The difficulties, which lead to mysticism, arise when we ask of either of these, what is love, or what is matter. So we have two, very distinct forms of mysticism, one focuses on the inner, immaterial feelings of love, and the other focuses on the physical existence of matter. Both of these need to be respected, and balanced, because to place too strong of an emphasis on one tends to cultivate disrespect for the other.

Now I don't think Watts' solution works. He removes the difference between creature and Creator and re-inserts it, through the back door as it were, when it comes to morality. — Agustino

I don't understand the need to remove the difference between creature and creator. Where does this desire come from. If God created matter, as well as us, and we follow and use matter, instead of creating it like God did, why should this be seen as a problem? I think that it is the attempt to remove the distinction between creature and creator, which produces the problem of accounting for the existence of evil. If there is no separation between the creature and God, then why does the creature commit evil?

From this perspective we are forced to consider matter as the only thing which separates God from creatures, the creatures have material bodies, God does not. Then matter becomes associated with evil, as the source of evil, because these are the two things which the creature has, and God does not, a material body, and the inclination to commit evil.

So instead of maintaining the separation between God and creature, and allowing that God created matter out of love, therefore matter is good, we are forced toward the idea that matter is the source of all evil because we see it as an unwarranted separation between God and creatures.

What is crucial is that for something to be 'evidence' it must be intimately correlated with the facts that it is evidence for. — Fafner

No, evidence is apprehended as being correlated with the belief which it is evidence for. So you have two things wrong here. First, the thing which the evidence is evidence of, is a belief it is not a fact. It cannot be called a fact, because the purpose of evidence is to convince someone of something which may or may not be true. Second, in order for it to be called evidence, it need not be intimately related to the belief, it needs only to be perceived as such. This is what makes it evidence of the thing, the fact that it is perceived as being related to the thing, whether or not it actually is, is irrelevant.

If your grounds for claiming that you know something don't justify you to say that you know, then I think it comes down to the same thing as saying that you don't have any good reasons at all to say that you know (and hence you ought not to have any confidence in your knowledge whatsoever). — Fafner

This doesn't make any sense to me. You seem to be using "justify" in a strange way. We often claim to know something when someone we trust has told us that. But this is not at all a form of justification. So we often claim to know something, and have a reason for making such a claim, yet that reason doesn't constitute justification.

The structure of the skeptical argument is such that all of your claims to knowledge are completely worthless unless you've ruled out all possibilities of error. — Fafner

I've already told you, as well as javra has told you, that this is a misrepresentation of skepticism. In my last post, I clearly pointed out, in your own argument, how what you say here is not true to your argument.

Obviously the skeptics' argument is based on the idea that you can't say that you know something unless you are not absolutely sure that you are not mistaken - and of course this is the assumption that I'm rejecting. — Fafner

The argument, as you presented it, is that if knowing something requires absolute certainty, then we do not know anything. It does not say that you cannot know anything unless you are absolutely certain.

I take everything personally. I am a person, that's reality, the way it is. If I were a rock, I wouldn't be able to take what you say at all.

Then Watts goes on to critique part of Aquinas in light of mystical religion. Watts begins by saying that Aquinas reasons perfectly from the universe to God, but cannot reason back from God to the universe. Namely, it is not shown how the First Cause produces the universe. — Agustino

The reason why one cannot reason back from God to the universe is that the creation of the universe by God is a freely willed act. The nature of the free will act is that there is no necessity between the willing agent, and the act itself, it is freely chosen, and this denies the possibility of necessity, which is required for such a logical process.

So for example, when we see evidence of a freely willed act, we will say that a human being carried out that act. The evidence indicates that the act was an intentional act, just like the evidence in the universe indicates that it was created as an intentional act. So we can reason from the evidence, to conclude the free willing agent. But once we conclude that the act was an intentional act, the only way to reason from the agent to the act, is to have intimate knowledge of the agent, and even from this all we can do is speculate as to the intention. That is because of the lack of necessity between the agent and the act, which is the nature of the free will act. When we see the evidence of an intentional human act we might even proceed to determine who carried out the act, but without the intimate knowledge of the person we will not know why the act was carried out, and reasoning is fruitless.

In the case of God, it is common to judge the magnitude of the act itself, and speculate about the reasons for the act from the magnitude of the act. Since God created everything, from nothing, and it was His intention to create, it is assumed that the act is the most pure act of giving, an act of love.

Well, no. We don't know that there is an immaterial aspect of life. You believe that but I don't. — T Clark

All this indicates is that I know something which you don't, so you're excluded from the "we" in my statement. Do you know about the existence of ideas and concepts, and how these things are immaterial objects? Suppose I describe to you a project which I will do tomorrow, a box I will make, out of wood. The idea of the box exists, as described, but the material box does not. Do you agree that the idea of the box, the immaterial form of the box, as the plan or blueprints, exists prior to the material box itself.

I do listen to you, I just don't agree with you. — T Clark

Actually, you seem to be having difficulty understanding, as is evidenced by the following:

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make - "non-living matter became animate" vs. "the coming into existence of living matter." — T Clark

Consider these two statements, and let me explain the difference between them.:
1) Non-living matter became animate.
2) The coming into existence of living matter.
The first implies that there is a change to something which has continuous existence, matter. Matter changes from being inanimate to being animate. The second does not necessarily imply such a continuity, it implies a beginning of something. The thing which comes into existence (begins), in the second, is living matter. In this second statement, the living matter may or may not have come from already existing matter. So when you choose statement #1, as your description of the event, you already exclude in a prejudiced way, the possibility that living matter came into existence from something other than pre-existing matter.

Why do you need to attribute negative motivation to my disagreement with you? — T Clark

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you, but you had disclosed your prejudice.

Sure, but we are talking about an historic event, a fact - the time the first non-living matter became animate. It happened sometime about 3.5 billion years ago. The matter changed in ways that were physical and chemical to become biological. Matter, energy, cells, organisms - these are material things I deal with everyday. Why do I need to consider non-material factors? I'm willing to if you give me a reason. — T Clark

Why do you describe this event as "non-living matter became animate"? Why would you not describe this in the way that biological science actually understands it, as the coming into existence of living matter? When you describe it in the appropriate way, then the question is where did living matter come from, not how did inanimate matter become living. And since we know that there is an immaterial aspect of life, which is exemplified by the creative faculty known as free will, it is very easy to answer the question. The living matter was created by the immaterial aspect of life.

But I don't think you'll listen to me. You cannot fathom the immaterial, so you'll keep asking the impossible question to answer, how matter changed from being inanimate to animate. It's impossible to answer because it didn't happen. So you won't ever ask the real question, the interesting question of how living things create matter, because you're afraid of the immaterial and will not face the reality of the immaterial. Do you know how plants create matter from energy in photosynthesis?

It depends on what one means here by "evidence". On my understanding, having evidence for p is being in a state of such kind that you cannot be in this very same state when p is false. — Fafner

That's a ridiculous definition of "evidence". Evidence supports a belief it does not render it impossible that the belief is false. That's why to convince someone of something it usually requires more than one piece of evidence. If evidence for a belief rendered the belief necessarily true, then all that would be required would be one piece of flimsy evidence and the belief would necessarily be true.

The skeptic says that our confidence in all of our claims to knowledge ought to be 0, since there are some crazy possibilities of error that we cannot rule out. But does it follow? I think not. — Fafner

I think you misunderstand skepticism. The skeptic doesn't claim that our confidence ought to be zero, the skeptic claims that the confidence cannot be one hundred percent. And, since we cannot have absolute, one hundred percent confidence in any claim of knowledge, all knowledge ought to be doubted.

Now, suppose that you form a belief that there's a tree in front of you on the basis of your experience. Is your belief entirely without grounds as the skeptic claims? — Fafner

Again, I think you misrepresent skepticism. The skeptic does not think that the belief is entirely without grounds, the skeptic thinks that the grounds for the belief ought to be examined. The skeptic doubts the belief on the assumption that the grounds for the belief may not be sound. So if I have been known to call trees shrubs before, or if I've called shrubs trees before, the skeptic wants to know this before assuming that my claim of a tree in front of me is a true claim.

I don't think so, because the experience that you are having does rule out objectively, some possibilities of error - e.g., that you are looking at a traffic light or a painting of a tree etc.- since it is impossible for a person with a normal eyesight and proper lighting conditions to take a painting or a traffic light for a real tree. — Fafner

But very often people mistake shrubs for trees, and trees for shrubs. It is a common mistake. A small tree might be mistook for a shrub, and a shrub might be mistook for a small tree. How do you rule out this possibility for error unless you know that the person is adept in this type of judgement?

So in pother words, what I'm trying to argue is that we have good grounds to trust our judgments (and take them to be knowledge) even in the face of their fallibility, since it is simply not the case that they are completely groundless. Why should we assess our judgments relative to the imaginary stories that the skeptic tells us? If we just stop being obsessive about absolute certainty, and adopt some more modest standards for knowledge claims (which is not the same as not having standards at all), then there will remain no longer any good reason to worry about what the skeptic is saying, and thus no reason to not to be confident in most of our claims to know. — Fafner

Skepticism is not a claim that knowledge is "completely groundless". It is the claim that the grounds are just as likely to be mistaken as anything else is. If the grounds for our judgements may be mistaken, then we ought assess these grounds, and judge them as well. This requires assessing and judging the grounds for those grounds, and on and on, until all the grounds have been assessed and judged. It is a matter of not taking anything for granted. If you take it for granted, that what you see is a tree, simply because you've been calling it a tree all your life, the day might come when someone explains to you that it's really a shrub. Then you might realize that you never really knew what it means to be a tree, when you just took it for granted that you did.

What would be the point in lowering the standards for knowledge? You seem to think that this would get rid of the skeptic, but actually the reverse is true. If the standards are lowered, we can say P is knowledge when we have a lower degree of certainty of P. This means more cases of what is called knowledge turning out to be false, giving us more reason to be skeptical of anything which is called knowledge.

See the conclusion of the skeptical argument in my first post. — Fafner

The argument concludes "no p can be known". It defines "know" as ruling out the possibility of error, in premise 1. The argument says nothing about degrees of confidence in one's belief. The skeptic doesn't say, as you claim, that we can have zero confidence, the skeptic says that if "knowing" requires ruling out the possibility of error, as per premise 1, then we cannot know anything. This does not say that we cannot have any confidence in our beliefs. It says something about the nature of "knowing".

I meant to exclude such cases, of course there are many ceteris paribus conditions that we must take into account. I meant that when you perceive a tree (you are not dreaming, your eyesight is normal etc.) then your perceptual state is correlated with the fact that there's a tree in front of you, and this is an objective matter. This is what should be properly regarded as your evidence. — Fafner

My point, is that the evidence, your perception of a tree, never provides the basis for a conclusion which beyond the possibility of doubt. If you exclude all the cases in which you were wrong, i.e. it turned out to be a shrub or something like that and not a tree, to support your claim that the judgement is beyond doubt, then you are being unrealistic.

No, it doesn't refer to my judgment. You know that p, if you judge that p on a basis of evidence which entails that p (and p is true). Such judgments are fallible as you say, but it doesn't show that they are not knowledge when they do succeeded. — Fafner

So you acknowledge that such judgements are fallible. If you make such a judgement then, one which you acknowledge as fallible, how would you know whether the judgement is mistaken or not. Since you cannot know such a thing, because all you have to go on is your judgement, and such judgements are fallible, then you cannot exclude doubt. Since "knowledge" as you use it refers to a successful judgement, and you have no way of knowing whether your judgement is successful or not, because you acknowledge that your judgement is fallible, then you have no way of knowing whether your judgements are knowledge or not. Therefore you should doubt all your knowledge.

In the first case you are basing your belief on a capacity that within certain parameters (that is, in the right sort of environment) is an extremely reliable tree-detector (meaning it can detect real trees as opposed to fake trees, but not real trees as opposed to extremely vivid hallucinations). — Fafner

Why would you class all human beings together as "extremely reliable tree-detector"? What if all my life I've been calling shrubs by the name "tree"? Would you say that I'm an extremely reliable tree detector? How would you differentiate a shrub from a tree in an extremely reliable way?

How do you know it's not? — T Clark

Did you click the link and read the article?

not — Wayfarer

The simplicity of a lipid.

Why complicate a simple understanding with unnecessary decoration? — T Clark

This argument goes two ways. It is impossible to have a simple understanding when the thing to be understood is complex. The "simple understanding" is necessarily a misunderstanding when the thing is complex.

You didn't answer my question. Are you denying that life is a physical, chemical, and biological process? — T Clark

Have you never considered the non-physical, immaterial aspect of life, all those things in your mind which are immaterial?

I didn't actually deny what you said that I denied (that knowing p means ruling out p's falsehood) - and I agree with you on this. I only disputed the claim that knowing must also entail being able to detect (from the subjects point of view) all cases of p's falsehood, and I think this is something else. — Fafner

I assume you mean all possible instances of p's falsehood. Without detecting, and negating all possibility of p's falsehood, you retain the possibility that p is false. So you seem to be saying that you allow for the undetected possibility that p is false, when you know that p.

What must rule out the possibility of falsehood is your objective evidence. So for example, if you are in a waking state perceiving a tree in full daylight, you cannot possibly be in this very same state and still be wrong about the tree. — Fafner

I don't see how you can make this conclusion. A person in a waking state may have poor eyes, poor judgement, or be hallucinating when thinking that they are in a state of perceiving a tree. You seem to be neglecting the fact that evidence must be judged. The person must judge the perceptual evidence, as well as the meaning of the statement "that is a tree", in order to know that that is a tree. Human judgements can be mistaken. Therefore the person can be wrong.

So my point is this - when you know that p, then your evidence must objectively entail the truth of p - — Fafner

So here you use "objectively entail" to refer to the judgement which must be made. How do you ensure that the human judgement is not mistaken?

Again, you are just assuming here that knowing that p requires the ability to detect every conceivable possibility of p being false, while I saying that such an assumption is unwarranted. Again, there's no much that I can add to what I already said on this point. — Fafner

How can you claim that knowing that p consists of anything other than excluding the possibility that p is false? If you can know that p, without excluding the possibility that p is false, then what does "knowing that" amount to?

I'm not really familiar with client centred therapy at all. I don't read much psychology. But the honesty which I am referring to is honesty on the part of the client. This I think would be the top priority, and honesty on the part of the therapist would be for the purpose of inspiring honesty in the client. So for example, in your mother/child analogy, honesty by the mother would be for the purpose of culturing honesty in the child. But I don't think we can say carte blanche, that honesty is always the best policy for the therapist. Sometimes the mother sees reason to be dishonest. Bear in mind that I define dishonesty as being secretive in any way. We often act dishonestly when it's for the good of the other. And when the situation is complex, the individual with a higher degree of intelligence concerning the issue will not always be honest with the other. For example, we have to trick the cat to get it into a cage in order to take it to the vet for its own good. When the individual is not capable of understanding the situation it is pointless to try to explain, so it is necessary to be dishonest. Perhaps this occurs sometimes in the medical field.

The deeper question though is the one you alluded to when you said "I don't really know what it is", in reference to honesty. If the intent of the therapist, in being congruent, is to inspire honesty in the client, then we should have some idea of what honesty is. What are you looking for from the client? And as I tried to explain, there are two somewhat contradictory interpretations. One can be true to oneself, which means acting according to one's own inner feelings, or one can be true what one thinks is expected of oneself, by others. The former implies that the person, while being true to oneself, would be selfish, and might be dishonest to others, while the latter allows for self-deception. Which type of honesty do you think that the therapist wants to inspire in the client?

ONE THING IS CERTAIN - If life stopped evolving it would perish: It must mutate lest the crest it is on sink into the abyss. Is this Creative Evolution? — MikeL

I don't think that this is true, and that's why I reject "survival" as central to evolution. I think that simple single-celled organisms could continue to exist indefinitely, survive, without evolving. But life is doing more than just surviving hereon earth, it is thriving, and so we must look beyond simple survival to see the purpose behind evolution. Life is not here to survive. If it were, it would have evolved into a very simple organism which could very strongly withstand the pressures of time, it would not have evolved into complex, sophisticated, and extremely delicate organisms, if it only wanted to survive..

No, I think you've missed the trick there Metaphysician. If we extrapolate the inteference from the paper, there are not billions and billions of different lifeforms on earth, there is only one organism covering the adaptive landscape like a mat. It slides through the valleys and around the edges all at once. And when it goes into the valley it is wiped out and when it goes around the valley it survives. — MikeL

Well, I see billions and billions of different living beings, and I don't see this "one organism", I think it's an unsubstantiated assumption. If I thought that this assumption answered my questions, I might make it. However, it doesn't answer the questions. How does this "one organism" foresee the other side of the valley, to inspire attempting to go around or through the valley to get there?

I can imagine the inspiration as perhaps coming from inside the individual living beings, but I cannot imagine it existing in this "one organism" because I can't see what type of existence it has. So assuming one organism appears to be a step in the wrong direction.

The philosophical danger lies in the denial of novelty: the genotype network must not be thought of in terms of a set of pre-existing possibilities that is here and there instantiated depending on environmental contingencies (Bergson's critique of possibility, if you're familiar with it, would be applicable).

...Paths that were once available now become closed off: phylogeny now becomes path-dependant, closing off certain evolutionary possibilities.

However because the landscape is multidimensional, paths closed off by speciation in one dimension may open up paths along other dimensions. What is at stake here is the creation of new possibilities. In other words, the adaptive landscape is not just a series of possibilities but a series of changing possibilities, which are themselves dependent upon the actual paths of speciation. — StreetlightX

Something isn't quite right here, and I detect a degree of inconsistency. The process is described as "closing off", or limiting possibilities, yet the claim is that what is occurring "is the creation of new possibilities". So unless we assume two distinct types of possibility, one which is being limited, and the other which is being created, it appears to be contradictory to say that closing off possibilities is really creating possibilities.

Can possibilities really be created? If it's a real possibility mustn't it have been there all the time? For instance, if I create for myself, the possibility of having a bath, by filling the tub, wasn't that possibility of me having a bath already there prior to me filling the tub? How could one actually create a possibility? Wouldn't it be more consistent to speak of creating actualities, by closing of certain possibilities?

The issue would then be the question of how do existing actualities affect future possibilities. The actuality of the assumed "being" has closed off certain possibilities, but in doing this it has somehow enhanced others. In other words, it has directed itself away from certain possibilities, and toward others, and this is manifested in the actual forms of the individual beings.

It appears like there would be a reason why the "being" would proceed in certain directions rather than others, and I do not think this reason is to found in it being shaped by the environment, for the sake of survival. "Survival" is a bland thing, it means simply to subsist, and as we see in the example of human beings, we want a lot more than to simply subsist. So the closing off of certain possibilities to create new actualities, cannot be directed by survival, because it's very clear from the case of human beings that we know we will die, therefore not survive, yet we directed our energy toward producing a certain type, or style of life, in our short time here.

The fact of non-survival is already taken for granted by the individual living being, and this is evidenced by reproduction. So what the individual is trying to do by closing off possibilities and creating particular actualities, is to either create a style of life for itself, or for its offspring. In human beings we might see the principal intent as creating as creating a certain lifestyle for oneself, the good life, or what Aristotle called happiness, but we have to still respect the existence of the intent to create a certain lifestyle for one's offspring. Which is really more fundamental?

If we are to assume what MikeL called "one organism", this anticipatory factor has to be accounted for. What I am talking about is the anticipation of the existence of the offspring. In order for the individual being to have inherent within itself, the inclination toward creating a lifestyle for its offspring, it must be already anticipating the existence of offspring. And perhaps this anticipation could validate the assumption of "one organism".

It's what the word means in the context of the survival of the fittest though. — BlueBanana

Well that's the point, it's a misleading use of the word. We commonly think that "survive" means to stay alive. But in "survival of the fittest" it means something different, it refers to successful procreation. So the discontinuity of life, the fact that there is a separation between parent and offspring, is glossed over, and hidden by that misleading use of "survival".

A teaser, from the above article, on how to skip the valley (add dimensions!): — StreetlightX

How creative. But how does the being know to proceed through the other dimension? Does it somehow anticipate or foresee getting to the other side, and create a passage through the other dimension, in that direction? I think we can exclude complete randomness, and we can exclude survival, as the means. So what is left, how is the passage through the other dimension found?

Well, insofar as the phrase "survival of the fittest" has any use, it's just this: you don't get to reproduce if you don't survive. — Srap Tasmaner

We all die. No one survives, that's the point. Some breed some don't. Or are you defining survival as successful reproduction? Having children is not my idea of surviving. I think it's called procreating.

But in all these cases, my own feeling is that honesty/dishonesty is not even applicable. Cats, stick insects, the schoolboys, my mother, seem to be 'doing what come naturally'; there is deception perhaps, but no intention to deceive. — unenlightened

Maybe this is why deception is easier to identify than honesty, because acting deceptively is often what comes naturally. It is a selfish behaviour which we might be naturally inclined toward. But if honesty is what is conducive to inter-subjectivity, then inter-subjectivity might not really be natural, it might be created artificially. If so, then it is something which could only come into existence through intentional effort.

Where I find a more agonising grey area, is the notion of self-deception. I can wonder, for example if McDoodle's father might have been deceiving himself that he was 'doing the right thing' and 'helping his son to grow up' and so on, when in fact he was recoiling from the expression by his son of his own feelings of hurt. — unenlightened

Such a self-deception would be one step beyond the intentional act of honesty. If one convinces oneself that X is correct, when it is not, this is self deception. So when the intent is to act honestly in the inter-subjective environment, but the individual is mistaken, then we have this odd sort of self-deceptive situation. The person is not acting deceptively in the natural selfish way, but is trying to act in an honest (inter-subjective) way, without knowing the proper etiquette. The result is this odd form of deception. It is self-deception because one freely chooses to act this way, believing it is the socially acceptable way.

What I think is important here is that inter-subjectivity, which is derived from honesty, must be learned, it does not come naturally. So it will always involve a certain amount of suppressing one's own natural feelings. Mcdoodle's father was suppressing his own natural feelings of sympathy (being natural feelings, they are different from the artificialness of inter-subjectivity), in order to say what he thought was the proper thing to say in the situation (honest inter-subjectivity), but he may have been mistaken in that decision. Notice the different levels. We must always suppress our natural tendencies in order to choose what is right, because the natural tendency may at any time be wrong. But sometimes the natural tendency might already be what is right. So if in the conscious decision making, we are inclined to believe that the natural tendency is always wrong, this would sometimes mislead us into making the wrong choice. Therefore we must respect at least three levels, the natural tendency, the chosen action, and the action which is correct in the inter-subjective environment.

Anyway, honesty - vitally important but I don't really know what it is. Perhaps we have to say that it is your best effort to respond fully in the moment, in the condition that you're in, as far as you know. And then your second-guesses afterwards are perhaps self insights, or perhaps deceptive self-flagellation, and it will take your best third guess to decide which. — unenlightened

I agree it is very difficult to say what honesty is, and that was the point in my first post. If staying true to one's natural tendencies was honesty, then quite often acting deceptively would be honesty. So we normally define honesty in relation to how others would want us to act. Honesty is defined by the inter-subjective realm, such that we must make an effort to suppress some natural tendencies in order to be honest. Then what does it mean to be honest in therapy? Should we follow the inter-subjective definition which requires that we suppress some natural feelings, or ought we allow natural feelings to flow freely in therapy? Each would be a somewhat opposing sense of "honesty".

That's easy for you to say, "mind persists and is continuous", but I cannot say that I have the same mind as you, nor is my mind the same as my mother's or father's or brothers' or sisters'. So I really cannot agree with you.

What I was hoping to illustrate with my anecdote was that intersubjective communication is - in the beginning at least - nonverbal. And I wanted to ask you because you asked,Where does honesty lie in this approach? — Metaphysician Undercover, whether the notion of honesty could apply to my mother's nonverbal communication, and if so, whether it was honest or dishonest? — unenlightened

I think there are too many subtleties and unknown factors to judge the honesty of your mother in that particular situation. As I said, I think that even to hold a secret is most likely to be dishonest. So if she thought that your days of being a baby were through, it would be dishonest for her to hide this from you, and her actions were an honest expression. But we cannot even say that keeping a secret is always being dishonest, because sometimes the situation in which the secret needs to be disclosed does not ever arise. When this is the case, then how can keeping a secret be dishonesty? If the secret is irrelevant to everyone else then there cannot be dishonesty. But if the situation does arise, and the person does not disclose the secret, there is dishonesty. Sometimes, I find that in my shyness I do not say what I should say. Later, I may feel discomfort, a sort of guilt, for not saying what I should have said when the time was right. So I can only interpret this feeling of guilt as being derived from a type of dishonesty which I see in myself.

I believe honesty and deception go far deeper than verbal communication. You can sometimes witness dogs being dishonest with each other, and these actions are probably pervasive in the animal kingdom, perhaps in the actions of hiding food from each other. Dishonesty, I believe, is easier to identify than honesty because it mostly involves hiding something from others. When the hidden thing is disclosed the dishonesty is exposed, and the evidence is often conclusive. But where is the evidence of honesty? How can we know that the other person is not hiding something, when the hider may be just very good at it?

There is a fundamental difference between survival and creativity with respect to temporal continuity. "Survival" implies a thing, an organism or being, which continues to exist through time. "Creativity" implies a beginning of something new, with the new thing created existing through time. So "creativity" recognizes a discontinuity between the old and the new, a separation between what is created, and the thing which did the creating, while "survival" does not allow for such a separation because continuity is essential to survival.

This is what I see as the principal deficiency in describing evolution in terms of survival. There is no being, or thing which survives, they all die. There is no survival. Evolutionary theory attempts to get around this problem by assuming the real existence of an abstract thing, a variety, or species, which survives. But there is really no such thing which survives. Therefore the concept of "creativity" better handles this problem of temporal continuity. It allows death to the old and birth to the new, through the mentioned separation and discontinuity, without clinging to the illusion or false hope of survival.

Part of the dialogical approach is that ideas rarely happen in an 'inner world' but rather in the inter-world. — mcdoodle

I don't think that this is correct to say that ideas rarely happen in the inner-world. We spend some time talking and we spend some time thinking, but for many of us, we're not doing too much thinking when we're talking. We're all different with respect to our thinking habits, and some are constantly thinking over problems, working out one's own plan, and saying very little. This is the inner-world. There are people, whom for one reason or another, have difficulty in the inter-world, they become shy and retracted, spending much time in the inner-world. It would not be fair to classify these people as mentally ill, just because they produce a vast imaginary world for themselves, some may turn out to be geniuses.

I need to read some more, so this is a directed random fragment of fragments. Let me just remark that there seems to be a foundational, unreflective immediacy of intersubjectivity that is prior to language that can be exemplified by mother and child relations that are non-verbal in the first instance. And this bodily immediacy persists in dialogue generally as 'body language', and is only eliminated as a major factor in virtual worlds such as this. — unenlightened

I like mcdoodle's terms of "inner" and "inter". We could oppose inner-subjectivity with inter-subjectivity, and see how these two are really entwined, and that the way we each approach them varies immensely from person to person. Suppose my mother was spending too much time talking to my older siblings, and I disdained this, feeling a lack of attention. I could shy away from this inter-subjective world, realizing that I could hide things from the others within my inner-subjective world. Knowing things which others do not, holding secrets, gives one a certain position of power. Being younger than the others, I'd enjoy this taste of power. For those who have come to love and cultivate this power, the unity of "one-mindedness" has a completely different role. The appearance of one-mindedness coming from these people is an illusion, created with the motive of deception. Look, we think alike, you can trust me on this (but I'll screw you when the time is right).

Holding secrets from one another is a form of dishonesty. We all do it, some more so then others. After all, there is no moral code which dictates that we must tell each other everything. Some talk more than others, but if it's just blab the talkers could be holding more secrets than the non-talkers.

My traumatic initiation into the solitary cerebral self. — unenlightened

We do not know exactly what drives a young child away from the inter-subjective toward the inner-subjective, the reasons for this I think can be infinite. The fact is that it does happen to us all, to an extend, some more than others. I do not think that we can say whether it is something good or bad, moderation is the goal I suppose. But like many aspects of our personalities, we can develop the same trait in a good way or a bad way. I think Plato said something about this, a person's potential can go either way, toward bad or good. An individual's perspective toward the inter-subjective and the inner-subjective, is developed at a very young age, as you say. When we grow through childhood and adolescence, we must learn to cope with what is already there. The coping determines the good, the bad, and the ugly.

You do realise that this is one of those 'first principles' which have to be seen, and cannot be deduced, right? If someone lacks the noetic insight into their own desire, then they cannot be 'reasoned to' it. It's disagreement over basic premises. Both Plato and Aristotle struggled with this problem of how to arrive at correct/true first premises. — Agustino

I believe that all premises must be reasoned, most come from inductive reason. If a "first principle" is not reasoned, then it is most likely random and unreasonable.

The more interesting thing to look at, is why does one end up believing such a true falsehood? — Agustino

You mean how does someone believe a contradiction? That's what "true falsehood" is, contradiction, and the other description you provided involved contradictory premises. It's actually quite common for people to believe contradictory things. When we just accept the words without properly understanding what the words mean, we can have that problem. In other words, when we simply believe what has been said, without taken the time to properly understand it, we can believe contradiction.

do tend to see desire as something produced in us - or aroused in us - by the object desired. But this is to give power at a distance as it were to the object desired. It is to accept some sort of teleology, where the object desired can orient my being towards it. Not many people today would be willing to accept that. — Agustino

The "object" desired is always a state of being within the person who desires, so there is no such thing as the power of an external object causing the desire. The perceived external object is just a means to the end, the end being the true object. That's why there is most often many different external objects which will satisfy the same desire, but we focus our desire on an object which appears to be convenient due to habit, proximity or whatever.

Here you illustrate that you're using a different conception of desire. — Agustino

Yes, that's quite correct because the one you've provided is false. We should dismiss yours and examine mine to see if perhaps it is right. If not, we should continue to seek a better one.

The inner void is constitutive of desire - it is desire. Desire just is the inner void trying to affirm itself - make itself actual - and failing to do so. Desire in this conception is not conceived with reference to any external or internal OBJECT. Rather it is conceived only with reference to itself. That is why, according to Spinoza for example, or Nietzsche, will-to-power or the conatus is the essence of man. This vain striving to no end - striving for its own sake. — Agustino

Well sure, to conceive of desire in this way, as if it were a thing in itself, simply "desire", without recognizing the fact that desire always involves something which desires, as well as the desire for something, and does not ever exist as a thing in itself, then you might conclude that it is a vain striving to no end. But that 'is only because you've made a false representation of desire, by separating it from the thing desired, when in reality desire does not exist without a thing desired. So of course it's going to end up looking like a vain striving to no end, because it has been separated from its end in this description. But that's a false description

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Indeed, the journey of the subject is fueled by this inner void that compels the subject to bring itself into being as it were. To make itself real. To transform itself - the void - into something substantial. Desire is pointed inward - desire itself is circular. Pure non-being becomes the active force. The end of desire or the will isn't the object anymore - but rather desire itself - its own self-affirmation. Obtaining the object desired is not the essential aspect anymore - rather it is the affirmation of the desire itself - which is exactly why desire is always frustrated in obtaining its object because self-affirmation knows no end. — Agustino

There appears to be something incorrect in this description. If there is an inner void, then it is impossible that desire is pointed inward, because there is nothing there to be desired. Desire is always point toward what is desired. So you have put together two opposing, or contradictory premises, to create a desire which is circular.

Either the subject has an inner void and desire is necessarily directed outward from this void, perhaps in an attempt to fill the void, or, if desire is directed inward then there must be a perceived object there which is desired. We could say that one or the other is an illusion, either that the void is an illusion, or that the inner thing desired is an illusion, but we cannot suppose the reality of both. Therefore you cannot propose such a circular desire without involving contradiction in your proposition. So your conclusion of frustration and "no end", is just a product of contradictory premises.

The relation of parent to infant necessarily begins as a person-object relation, in which the parent is the author and authority, and the infant is a dependent object. The task is to conjure from this relation a new relation between individuals, by invoking the interiority of the infant, just as God created man in His own image. — unenlightened

Fee fie fo fum
I smeel the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive or be he dead
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

The rejection of the parent as authority is a necessary part of the process of individualisation, just as the Fall is a necessary part of the creation of humanity. — unenlightened

See, the stories that the parents tell are intended to make the child reject the parent as the authority. But that's how authority generally works, no one wants to take that responsibility, so it's passed off, and someone else is the author of that.