1. We expect our government to make decisions based on our moral values — Paulm12

I would question that. I think the expectation is that government acts within the bounds defined by law and political custom. The problem with moral values is that there is no objective way to define them. I don't mean that there is no real basis for them, but that the basis for them is not within the limits of objective determination. Quite why that is, is a very deep problem, but suffice to say that the grounding of morality in (for example) Judaism, Christianity, and the Indic religions is held to be the subject of revealed religion, where what has been revealed is precisely an order within which moral claims are ultimately meaningful. This is because they all, in some way or another, depict human life within the larger context of a cosmic drama as distinct from the supposedly quotidian story of fortuitous origins and random development that is typical of the secular 'creation myth'.

For the religious individual, it is different because morality is derived from a divine principle that is believed to be the law of god. For such an individual, morality is substantially extant and he is held accountable for his conduct whether or not it is seen by others — Merkwurdichliebe

Quite, although 'substantially extant' is a rather awkward way of describing it. Do you mean for them it is 'real, in spite of what anyone says about it'?

Wasn't the whole idea of having secularism (and the separation of church and state) directly from religious values and religious persecution? — Paulm12

If you mean, wasn't the idea of the secular state originally intended to provide freedom of religion, then, yes, that is true. However, since the advent of the Enlightenment, there's a strain of ideology which aggressively seeks freedom from religion, depicting all religion as superstitious, backwards, and anti-scientific, personified by the evangalising atheism of for example Richard Dawkins, whose goal is the absolute destruction of religion in all its forms.

Here's a very good (although quite difficult) essay, called Terror in the God-Shaped Hole, by contemporary Buddhist scholar, David Loy. It was published as an analysis of the Islamic terrorism that motivated the 9/11 attacks, and so is rather a heavy-hitting piece of analysis, but he has some very perceptive things to say about the underlying motivation and consequences of 'secularism' as an outlook on life, including secularism as having produced an 'identity crisis'. And it does that, precisely because it has rejected the sense of identity and belonging that animated religious culture in the first place, replacing it with a never-ending procession of artificial goods and products which can never fill the sense of 'lack' that drives it. It's rather too long and complex an argument to try and summarize, but the section in particular under the heading of 'The Spirituality of Secularity' is particularly acute, in my opinion.

String theory vs angels on the head of a pin. What a waste of the digital resources. :roll: — jgill

There's a resemblance, you know. The medieval debate was whether two immaterial intellects could occupy the same space. Nowadays the debate is about the meaning of super-position and how the same particle can be in two places at once. It ain't that remote. In future there will probably be scathing references to string theory as an example of the degenerate nature of 21st c physics. But, you are right, this thread is indeed a waste of electrons, over and out.

Leaving aside the inane suggestion regarding extraterrestrials, there is an interesting point about Anselm's ontological argument that I feel is often not noticed or made explicit.

Note the first article given in the SEP entry on the ontological argument:

God is a being which has every perfection. (This is true as a matter of definition.) Existence is a perfection. Hence God exists.

So, the question is, what could 'existence is a perfection mean'? Especially consider the manifestly imperfect nature of existence as we know it.

This refers back to the sense in which 'being' (or existence) is contrasted with absence or lack in ancient philosophy. I think that it depends on the intuition that being is an overall good (notwithstanding the problem of suffering); that it is better to be, than not to be. This is also linked to the intuition behind the 'pleroma', meaning 'the divine abundance', referring to the ever-fruitful nature of Creation which bears forth all nature's abundance (something more fully elaborated in gnostic mythology). In pagan iconography, this is depicted as the Goddess Fortuna bearing the 'horn of plenty' or Cornucopia signifying abundance or fertility.

That is the context in which 'being' is depicted as a good or a virtue, so that the absence of being or non-being constitutes a lack or deficiency.

I think it's important to call that out so as to make sense of the basic idea behind ontological arguments, although they don't make a lot of sense from a contemporary viewpoint.

Keep looking for that Boltzmann brain, Smith. It'll really help. :love:

I've been dining on some faux meat products from the supermarket - a mince product which made an acceptable spaghetti bolognaise for dinner last night, and just now Impossible Meat burgers for lunch. Yum! :nerd:

In that case, you are correct. But the point of my thesis is that Information is general & universal, hence a philosophical concept, similar to Plato's "Form". — Gnomon

Valiant attempt, but I don't think it fits. To be sure, the nature of the Forms or Ideas in Plato is a very difficult subject, but suffice to say that Platonism generally and the "neoplatonism" which developed from it, was closer to what we would understand as 'theism' albeit that the precise nature of the supposed 'first mover' or 'demiurge' was never clearly explained (or perhaps wasn't clearly understood). But the form or idea of something was as much its principle as its shape - for example, there is discussion of the form of health, or of largeness; what it is that makes a particular this kind. In Proclus and Plotinus, there is the idea that the idea resides or originates in the divine Intellect (something clearly later appropriated by Christian theology). But again, the relationship with information is tenuous, afraid to say.

//ps//actually it occurs to me that the role you're assigning to 'information' is analogous to that played by 'prime matter' in Aristotle (ref.)

I'm currently reading a book on Quantum Physics, Beyond Weird by Phillip Ball, — Gnomon

I’ve read some excerpts from that book, published as essays in various places. He’s scathing about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. As far as my limited understanding will allow, I feel that the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ - which is basically a compendium of Bohr-Heisenberg's musings on the meaning quantum physics - is philosophically sophisticated. As has been pointed out, those early figures in quantum mechanics were cultured individuals with a grounding in philosophy, which can't be said of many of the later generations. But I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation is a theory about the constituent elements of reality - in other words, it's not an ontological theory - so much as a reflection on the limitations of knowledge and of scientific method, generally.

You're placing a lot on the equivocation between the meaning of 'form' (morphe, which is part of the root of 'hylomorphism') and 'information' which has a separate etymology (see here.)

To re-iterate: Information has to specify or mean something. 'Generic' means, among other things, not having a specific definition. So if it means something, it can't be generic, and if it doesn't mean anything then it's not information. So I claim 'generic information' is a meaningless phrase.

we're trying to get a handle on information (new) with the aid of substance (old) — Agent Smith

You have to understand something in order to criticize it.

In a word, the rise of financialization is an index of capitalism in crisis. — Streetlight

Acute observation and an excellent analysis. I suppose trade what are called ‘financial derivatives’ exemplifies and underpins this kind of abstractification, if that’s a word.

well, the last paragraph in the post basically refers to philosophical theism, to which I'm positively disposed. Nothing to do with 'generic information', which I still say is an oxymoron. :grimace:

these same principles of thought are "natural or inherent impulses or behaviors" in us — javra

Instinct is too blunt an instrument to account for human capabilities.

I can meet you part-way at least.

Generic: characteristic of or relating to a class or group of things; not specific.
"chèvre is a generic term for all goat's milk cheese"

The reason information can't be generic, is because it has to specify something. It has to be about something, or (in the case of biological 'information') formative of something. It has to convey meaning in some sense. So it has to be specific, otherwise, it's not information. So the concept of 'generic information' is a non-starter.

Instincts being roughly interpreted as "basic principles already in the mind" not acquired via experience. — javra

But instinct is sharply differentiated from reason by most. Describing reason as an instinct was highly controversial in its day and it's hardly elaborated at all by Hume. Animals perform extraordinary feats by dint of instinct, so it is said, but that does not amount to reasoning.

In the Analytic of Concepts section of the Critique, Kant argues that in order to think about the input from sensibility, sensations must conform to the conceptual structure that the mind has available to it. By applying concepts, the understanding takes the particulars that are given in sensation and identifies what is common and general about them. A concept of “shelter” for instance, allows me to identify what is common in particular representations of a house, a tent, and a cave.

The empiricist might object at this point by insisting that such concepts do arise from experience, raising questions about Kant’s claim that the mind brings an a priori conceptual structure to the world. Indeed, concepts like “shelter” do arise partly from experience. But Kant raises a more fundamental issue. An empirical derivation is not sufficient to explain all of our concepts. As we have seen, Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our concepts of causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth. What Hume had failed to see, Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making judgments about objects, to which Hume would assent, presupposes the possession of these fundamental concepts. Hume had argued for a sort of associationism to explain how we arrive at causal beliefs. My idea of a moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the eight ball that is struck and falls into the pocket. Under the right circumstances, repeated impressions of the second following the first produces a belief in me that the first causes the second.

The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean association of ideas already presupposes that we can conceive of identical, persistent objects that have regular, predictable, causal behavior. And being able to conceive of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes several a priori contributions. I must be able to separate the objects from each other in my sensations, and from my sensations of myself. I must be able to attribute properties to the objects. I must be able to conceive of an external world with its own course of events that is separate from the stream of perceptions in my consciousness. — Kant's Metaphysics, IEP

I don't see how Hume can be defended against this critique. Hume is failing to account for the way that the understanding creates the entire framework within which his 'customs and impressions' are meaningful. And that framework is transcendental, that is, not given in experience, but necessary for experience.

find Hume saying, the principle of constant conjunction is epistemically, not ontically, given by our experience only in the same sense that the basic principles of thought are given to us by experience: we infer them based on what we epistemically realize ourselves able to do and incapable of doing — javra

But without those basic principles already in the mind, it would not be possible to make any inferences. They are what allow us to marshall and organise our thoughts with regard to experience.

Incidentally the section on synthetic a priori from the introduction:

We might, indeed at first suppose that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is a merely analytical proposition, following (according to the principle of contradiction) from the conception of a sum of seven and five. But if we regard it more narrowly, we find that our conception of the sum of seven and five contains nothing more than the uniting of both sums into one, whereby it cannot at all be cogitated what this single number is which embraces both. The conception of twelve is by no means obtained by merely cogitating the union of seven and five; and we may analyse our conception of such a possible sum as long as we will, still we shall never discover in it the notion of twelve. We must go beyond these conceptions, and have recourse to an intuition which corresponds to one of the two—our five fingers, for example, or like Segner in his Arithmetic five points, and so by degrees, add the units contained in the five given in the intuition, to the conception of seven. For I first take the number 7, and, for the conception of 5 calling in the aid of the fingers of my hand as objects of intuition, I add the units, which I before took together to make up the number 5, gradually now by means of the material image my hand, to the number 7, and by this process, I at length see the number 12 arise. That 7 should be added to 5, I have certainly cogitated in my conception of a sum = 7 + 5, but not that this sum was equal to 12. Arithmetical propositions are therefore always synthetical, of which we may become more clearly convinced by trying large numbers. For it will thus become quite evident that, turn and twist our conceptions as we may, it is impossible, without having recourse to intuition, to arrive at the sum total or product by means of the mere analysis of our conceptions. Just as little is any principle of pure geometry analytical. “A straight line between two points is the shortest,” is a synthetical proposition. For my conception of straight contains no notion of quantity, but is merely qualitative. The conception of the shortest is therefore fore wholly an addition, and by no analysis can it be extracted from our conception of a straight line. Intuition must therefore here lend its aid, by means of which, and thus only, our synthesis is possible. — Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, V

That logical relationship then pointed physicists to the conclusion that Energy & Matter are merely various forms of Generic Information — Gnomon

I’m disputing that the term ‘generic information’ means anything, or that it’s a substance, in the philosophical sense.

As I said bear in mind the origin of the term which is now translated as ‘substance’, namely, ‘ouisia’, which is nearer in meaning to ‘being’ than to ‘stuff’. So another translation of the term in the context of pantheist philosophy would be that the universe comprises, not a single subject, but a singular being, of whom all particulars are modes or expressions.

what is it that makes one collection of things inherently more or less chaotic than another collection of things? — Pantagruel

Yeah, what *is* the source of order in the universe? :chin:

That’s a valid caution, but in this context, the confusion between the philosophical and everyday meaning of the term ‘substance’ is significant. I’m saying that ‘information’ is being accorded a kind of fundamental ontological status, like ‘mind’ or ‘matter’ or ‘energy’ might have been, but that information is always derivative or dependent on definition, so that it’s not ‘fundamental’ in that philosophical sense. It’s being treated as a ‘fundamental substance’ but it’s very nature is conditional or dependent.

It’s also of note that the original word for ‘substance’ was ‘ouisia’ which is a form of the verb ‘to be’, and so carries a connotation which our word ‘substance’, meaning ‘a material with uniform properties’, does not. I’ve read that the Latin translators of Aristotle laboured long and hard over the translation of ‘ouisia’ before coming up with ‘substantia’, meaning ‘that which stands under’, which then morphed into ‘substance’ - but that word carries meanings vastly different to the original meaning of ‘ouisia’. This is actually a really critical distinction in reading philosophy in my opinion.

I’d be interested in @Galuchat’s opinion on this matter.

True, information isn't a substance like, for instance, clay or paper is. — Agent Smith

I said ‘in the philosophical sense’. Go and google ‘substance in philosophy’. Here’s the thing - substance in ordinary parlance means ‘material with uniform properties’ - which is what you’ve said. Substance in philosophy is a translation of Aristotle’s term ‘ousia’, which is actually nearer in meaning to ‘being’ or ‘subject’ than what we call ‘substance’. Examples of the traditional depiction of substance are ‘matter’, not in the sense of some particular kind of matter, but of matter as a kind of generalised abstraction, or ‘mind’, ditto (which are the two kinds of substance Descartes boiled everything down to). But it’s a diversion from this OP, other than to say that to take ‘information’ as a substance in that philosophical (as distinct from everyday usage) sense is, I think, a mistake.

(For a primer on classical philosophical theories of substance, try https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/#H1)

You and others who're of the same view are asking a deeper, metaphysical question: what is information...really? — Agent Smith

The answer to the question ‘what is information?’ Is another question: ‘what information are you referring to?’ It is not a substance - in the philosophical meaning of that term ‘the basic constituents of nature’, yet that is how it is being treated.

Stick around a while, it’ll become clear :-)

Well, my take is Shannon's mathematization would have to add precision to the definition (of information). Am I wrong? — Agent Smith

As is established, Shannon set out to solve a specific problem, namely, the transmission of information through electronic media, and everyone acknowledges that his work was fundamental to the success of information technology. No question. But to then claim that he has ‘defined information’ in any general sense, or that this has profound philosophical ramifications is what I’m questioning. It seems like hand-waving to me.

I got Paul Davies’ recent book on it, The Demon in the Machine. It’s a fascinating book and I’ve always liked that author. But it too contains a lot of breathless gesturing in the direction of ‘hey, this is something really PROFOUND’ in my opinion.

information, regardless of this particular qualification, is really NOISE. — Possibility

I’m sure that’s not right. I think - someone tell me if I’m wrong - that noise is one of the factors Shannon has to deal with in his attempt to define what amounts to successful transmission of information. Noise interferes with information transmission and if the information is totally degraded, then it just reverts to noise.

Information is first and foremost structured. A pile of rocks is just a pile of rocks, but the same pile laid out to spell ‘this is a pile of rocks’ in structured by the act of laying it out, and is no longer just a pile of rocks. It conveys information (and in this case, irony.)

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program has been capturing noise from interstellar space for decades, and so far all it has is noise. If if had captured any information whatever, anything that seemed to be a structured signal, then that would be enormous news. And it would be news BECAUSE it wasn’t just noise.

But it hasn’t happened.

Post-Shannon: Precise — Agent Smith

'Precise' could not possibly be a definition of 'information' in the general sense. Why? Because you can have very precise information, or very badly defined information. In both cases, it's still 'information'. So how could preciseness be a part of the definition?

As I said, information does not have a specific meaning, apart from the context in which the word is used, or a description of what information is being considered. Just as the OP said.

Norbert Wiener famously wrote that 'The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.' And I think that has been seized on; or rather, materialism has been forced to admit it. But that still doesn't mean that 'information' is a basic constituent of reality, in the way that atoms were supposed to have been, but that is how it seems to be treated.

I guess for a person everything around them is information; everything one can sense is providing us with information about our environment and informs that which attracts or repels us. — Tom Storm

Check this out.

This is from an important essay that I came across when it was first published (no longer online but a .pdf supplied for those interested.)

The basic drift of the analysis is the identification of William of Ockham as one who 'ushered into the world the first case of a new intellectual disease' (Gilson). It is not an easy read but then the territory that it is covering is large, and the consequences have been profound. It's an essay in the history of ideas.

The reason that it is relevant is that it identifies the loss of the idea of formal causation as the cause of the decline and finally the rejection of metaphysics from Western philosophy (the sub-title of the essay is Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West.) It is of course an ultra-traditionalist essay in many respects (which pains me as I have no wish to identify with conservatism of this kind). But I'm persuaded by the logic of the analysis. Note in particular the connection the author makes between final cause, causality, and reason, and his remark that the loss of the connection between these is reflected in the philosophy of David Hume. So I can't help but feel that the underlying issue, which is the decline and rejection of Platonist-Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, is still at the heart of the question in the OP.

Ockham did not do away with objective reality, but in doing away with one part of objective reality—forms—he did away with a fundamental principle of explanation for objective reality. In doing away with forms, Ockham did away with formal causality. Formal causality secures teleology—the ends or purposes of things follow from what they are and what is in accord with or capable of fulfilling their natures. In the natural world, this realist framework secures an intrinsic connection between efficient causes and their effects—an efficient cause produces its effects by communicating some formality: fire warms by informing objects with its heat.

Thanks to the nominalist rejection of forms, by the time of early modern philosophy the notion of formal causality had become the explicit butt of humanist jokes. In Moliere’s Invalid Imaginaire, for instance, a doctor is mocked for explaining that a drug causes sleep because it has a virtus dormativa, a sleep-causing power. What we have here, notably, is not an argument against the notion of formal causality, but a perspective which simply fails to appreciate the role that formal causality once served for those thinkers that took forms seriously. Forms had explanatory power in the older (i.e. scholastic) realist framework, not because general belief in that power was supposed to replace the empirical work of discovering and characterizing how they operated, but because confidence that there were such causal powers helped to account for the order of nature and the very possibility of successful scientific inquiry.

It is commonly said that modern science neglects formal causes but attends to efficient and material causes; but classically understood, efficient and material causes cannot function or even be conceived without formal causes, for it is form which informs matter, giving concrete objects their power to act on other objects. The loss of formal causality is thus in a sense the loss of efficient and material causality as well—an implication that is not quite fully realized until we see it brilliantly explored in the philosophy of David Hume.
....

Accordingly, Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional ( i.e. scholastic) realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble. In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. — Joshua Hochschild , What's Wrong with Ockham? Pp 10-11

What is information? It has no meaning if not in the context of a context from which a piece of information in transmitted and another, completely separate context, in which it is received. — Pantagruel

Agree. I don't think the word 'information' is meaningful unless it is specified - what information? By itself, the word is merely a placeholder. In other words, there really is no such thing as 'information' simpliciter.

Consider the definitions:

information
1. facts provided or learned about something or someone.
"a vital piece of information"
a charge lodged with a magistrates' court.
plural noun: informations
"the tenant may lay an information against his landlord"
2. what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.
"genetically transmitted information"
3. COMPUTING: data as processed, stored, or transmitted by a computer.
(in information theory) a mathematical quantity expressing the probability of occurrence of a particular sequence of symbols, impulses, etc., as against that of alternative sequences.

Note in each case, the context and usage is specified. It's not possible to define 'information' absent those additional qualification.

Claude Shannon labeled the basic element of computer data as "Information". — Gnomon

The point about Claude Shannon's theory was that it was intended to solve a specific engineering problem, namely, the transmission of information across electronic medium. As for the introduction of 'entropy':

In 1948, while working at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Claude Shannon set out to mathematically quantify the statistical nature of “lost information” in phone-line signals. To do this, Shannon developed the very general concept of information entropy, a fundamental cornerstone of information theory. Initially it seems that Shannon was not particularly aware of the close similarity between his new quantity and earlier work in thermodynamics. In 1949, however, when Shannon had been working on his equations for some time, he happened to visit the mathematician John von Neumann, who asked him how he was getting on with his theory of missing information. Shannon replied that the theory was in excellent shape, except that he needed a good name for “missing information”. “Why don’t you call it entropy”, von Neumann suggested. “In the first place, a mathematical development very much like yours already exists in Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics, and in the second place, no one understands entropy very well, so in any discussion you will be in a position of advantage.”

I do wonder if von Neumann said this last with a wink.

Reason is a tricky subject-people hundreds of years ago thought the sun revolved around the earth (makes sense-we seem to be stationary but the sun seems to move). This conclusion would be an application of reason from the premises. But now, we know this is not the case. — Paulm12

Something which Copernicus et al deduced from the application of reason to the evidence, to overturn the apparently-obvious conclusion that the Earth is stationary at the centre of the Universe.

Excellent. Glad to be converging to some extent.

might not this sharp demarcation be more properly stipulated to be that of a consciously held existential understanding (here to include issues of ethics, if not meta-ethics, and the like)? — javra

Sure. :100: But they're not strictly separate faculties, are they?

So, to my way of thinking there is no "intellect" (conceived as a kind of reified faculty) that grasps "universals" (as though they were some of disembodied entities) as it appears in the Scholastic conception. — Janus

Thanks. I'm reading some phenomenological texts right now, including Crisis of the European Sciences and Embodied Mind, both of which I've found as .pdfs.

But I still stand by the idea that 'nous' signifies a real faculty, the understanding and appreciation of which has been lost in the transition to modernity. C S Peirce also believed that:

Peirce understood nominalism in the broad anti-realist sense usually attributed to William of Ockham, as the view that reality consists exclusively of concrete particulars and that universality and generality have to do only with names and their significations. This view relegates properties, abstract entities, kinds, relations, laws of nature, and so on, to a conceptual existence at most. Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence....

I'm with him on that. It's the belief that universals are 'disembodied entities' which is one of the problems, when in fact they're the guiderails of reasoned cognition, they're structures within consciousness, if you like.

By my understanding, his remarks are only suggestive of scepticism that causal and logical necessity are objective properties of objects — sime

Quite. But that implies that we can ascertain what such properties are, independently of our imputation as to their nature. Interesting paper, though, I'm sure it will be right up @Banno's alley. I will try and find time to take it in.

But language is not just an adaption, like a tooth or a claw. If you think about what is required for language to really operate, then you get into the whole field of semiotics, linguistics, and theory of meaning.

There's one of Kelly Ross' essays pinned to my homepage, 'universals and the problem of meaning'. I'm not asking you to read it, but the point that Ross identifies is that universals are implicated in any cohesive theory of meaning (to know why, you would have to read it :-) ).

But my hunch is that 'universals' refers, at least in part, to 'the ability to grasp abstract likenesses'. This is intrinsic to our thinking - the mind does it without having to consciously reflect on it. The mind is constantly operating in terms of 'is' 'is not' 'is like' 'is not like', and so on, and beyond that, in terms of similarities, resemblances, and differences. And also in terms of concepts, which are the constituents of rational discourse. This is what Kant painstakingly uncovers in his 'Critiques'.

This is why language is not simply an adaption - or rather, that there is much more that has to be considered. The massive explosion of the hominid forebrain from 2.5 mya until h. sapiens around 100k years ago - that development is what it took for language to be possible. The massive h.sapien forebrain is like a 'meaning-detecting organ'. That is where we really grew apart from our simian forebears (something which I can't see as plausibly deniable, the anatomical changes alone in terms of child-bearing capacity and the upright gait and so on, are utterly profound.)

This ability to grasp abstractions is what I think Plato intuits with his 'theory of universals'. He sees that universals or forms or ideas are not real things, 'out there somewhere'. But at the same time, he realises that without the capacity to recognise them reason can't get a foothold, as they are like the organising principles of both thought and things. Of course, Plato was alive in the 4th c BC and his thought was often symbolic or allegorical, there is much that has obviously been discovered since. But I'm convinced his basic intuition was valid (and also one of the reasons why Western culture went on to develop science, although that's another story.)

So the million dollar question is, are universals real? And by that, we mean, do they exist? My response is, they are real, as the constituents of meaning and reason - but no, they don't exist. So they're real, but not existent. And that's why this is a metaphysical question. It differentiates what exists from what is real, and naturalism can't handle that.

Go back to the passage I quoted from Maritain and read it again. Here Maritain is making a crucial point about the nature of reason.

the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Ed Feser makes a similar point in a blog post, Think, McFly, Think:

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.)

So, what do Jacques Maritain and Edward Feser have in common? Why, they're both neo-thomists. So they both get the Aristotelian theory of universals, mediated through Aquinas. And I'm of the view that this remains a valid metaphysic (and that yes, that there is such a thing).

And thanks for reading. :up:

The invasion has, in effect, has destroyed 30 years of economic progress, eviscerated the tiny shoots of democratic freedom that Russia was beginning to enjoy, and now engineered the exact opposite outcome in foreign policy of what he hoped to achieve through his military escapade.

Actually, on further reflection, I think that the ability of animals to plan and act according to goal-directed purposes (something also central to the Steve Talbott article) supports the idea that reason, per se, is not solely confined to the conscious intellectual operations of h. sapiens, but rather is somehow latent or potentially existent throughout the organic world. But the 'something more' that h. sapiens has, is the ability to consciously recognise it.

“The world is my idea”, said Schopenhauer - "this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness."

Probably a good idea to exercise some intellectual modesty, and don't express ill-considered opinions about subjects you are not interested in. — Janus

I don't consider the point about whether animals are rational as relevant to the OP.

(I am listening to audio books about Franz de Waal and Jakob von Uexküll, which are very fascinating but not germane to the point I'm arguing, which I don't believe you have responded to.)

The article you link to addresses the teleology of individual life-forms – rather than that of any global telos. Other than that, interesting. — javra

All biological activity, even at the molecular level, can be characterized as purposive and goal-directed. As a cell grows and divides, it marshals its molecular and structural resources with a remarkably skillful “wisdom.” It also demonstrates a well-directed, “willful” persistence in adjusting to disturbances. Everything leads toward fulfillment of the organism’s evident “purposes.”

Teasing out the meaning of these scare quotes may be the most urgent task for biologists today. As the Chilean neuroscientist and philosopher of biology Francisco Varela wrote: “The answer to the question of what status teleology should have in biology decides about the character of our whole theory of animate nature.”

My own sense of the matter is that the question has yet to be fairly taken up within the core disciplines of biology. What appears certain is that as yet we have no secure answer to it.
Even more important is what seems least recognized: to the degree that we lack understanding of the organism’s purposive life we also lack a respectable foundation for evolutionary theory.

There are, in any case, two confusions to be avoided immediately. The first confusion is that the question about teleology in living organisms is often presented as a question about final causes, with conscious human planning as the model. One thinks of an external goal or end, which then must be aimed at. Avoiding any suggestion of such planning is considered urgent when we try to understand biological or organic, as opposed to psychological, activities.

The concern is justified. What may be overlooked, however, is that we can speak of end-directed activity without assuming an external goal to be planned for and aimed at. We can, that is, think of the organism as simply giving expression to the wholeness of its own nature, which comes to an ever fuller realization over the course of its life.

Even more important is what seems least recognized: to the degree that we lack understanding of the organism’s purposive life we also lack a respectable foundation for evolutionary theory.

There are, in any case, two confusions to be avoided immediately. The first confusion is that the question about teleology in living organisms is often presented as a question about final causes, with conscious human planning as the model. One thinks of an external goal or end, which then must be aimed at. Avoiding any suggestion of such planning is considered urgent when we try to understand biological or organic, as opposed to psychological, activities.

The concern is justified. What may be overlooked, however, is that we can speak of end-directed activity without assuming an external goal to be planned for and aimed at. We can, that is, think of the organism as simply giving expression to the wholeness of its own nature, which comes to an ever fuller realization over the course of its life.

The telos or end of teleological behavior, in other words, rather than being a goal “out there,” freely conceived by a reflective organism, may simply be the organism’s own completeness and wholeness — the fullness of its self-expression under all life conditions that present themselves....

The second source of confusion about teleology and inwardness lies in the failure to realize how weak and lamed our conscious human purposiveness and intelligence are in relation to biological activity. We struggle even to follow with our abstract understanding the unsurveyably complex goings-on in our own organs and cells, let alone to animate our material artifacts with the same sort of life. And when we achieve a pinnacle of effective self-expression as pianists or gymnasts, it is by grace of a body whose execution of our intentions is a mystery to our understanding.

We need to reject conscious human performance as a model for organic activity in general, not because it reads too much wisdom and effective striving into the organism, but rather because it reads far too little. — Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Purposes of Life

The bolded sentence about 'human intention as the model' is similar to what I argued above. In short, this essay pleads for a more holistic perspective on 'purpose'. (Actually, I remember the Whiteheadian process-philosopher Charles Birch's last book, called On Purpose, which expresses a very similar philosophy.)

I think Freddy was referring to 'Diogenes of Sinope.' — 180 Proof

Right - I think the OP mislead me, or rather I have confused the two 'Diogenes'. Although the image of 'wandering the streets with a lamp' associated with Diogenes, is very similar to Nietszche's 'parable'.

Also the lack of other animals' ability to speak is irrelevant, since we are discussing pre-linguistic reasoning capacities. — Janus

No, you're discussing that. They have some rudimentary capacity to reason, but I'm not particularly interested in it, and furthermore I think it is easily exagerrated.

I’m approaching the matter from the viewpoint that the universe - replete with its causal reasoning, i.e. logos - itself does not intend (intentions being something that individual minds/egos do), though the universe does hold global teloi as part of its logos, making it operate, in part, teleologically. — javra

:up:

Was Diogenes mad as well as wise? — Hillary

He was a wandering ascetic. They were a constant feature of ancient cultures, they still exist in India to this day. The early Buddhist scriptures refer to 'dog duty ascetics' who apparently used to dwell with packs of dogs. They're obviously on the fringes, 'liminal', in anthropological terminology - on the outside of culture and society. As such, they represent a connection with the 'primordial', the unconditioned, or Nature.

doesn't Nietszche makes an obvious reference to Diogenes in the Parable of the Madman? Actually a bit of digging reveals that 'Diogenes Laertiades’ was how Nietzsche signed himself in a letter to a friend in his late 20s: ‘son of Laertius’, or literally ‘sprung from Laertius’, i.e. from Diogenes Laertius, so it seems certain.

I can only conclude that you don't know much about animals and are stuck in human-centric thinking about them. — Janus

Have you ever looked into what happened when behavioural scientists tried to teach chimps - our nearest biological relative - to speak? Ever hear the sad story Nim Chimpsky?

My view is not human-centric, but based on a rational assessment of the nature of reason. Yours appears to be based on nothing more than sentiment.

I think your view is poverty-stricken and lacking in depth. — Janus

Your concern is touching, but I'm getting along ok.

Incidentally by way of footnote, a passage from the above review notes that:

Catholic theology affirms that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention.

However, I think it's possible to defend the ontological difference between humans and other species without appealing to divine intervention, by arguing that one of the capacities that h. sapiens developed was that of 'self-realisation' in the sense understood by the higher philosophical and spiritual traditions. This is the sense in which the human 'realises him/herself' as an embodiment of the same cosmic principle that animates all living beings (Tat Tvam Asi, 'that thou Art', one of the slogans of Advaita). Again as mentioned earlier in this thread, that idea is implicit in many traditional schools of philosophy such as Stoicism, Hermeticism, Advaita, and even Buddhism (where the 'true nature' or Buddha-nature is an allegorical depiction of the idea).

That doesn't directly contradict the Catholic principle, but it attributes it to something other than divine agency (thus, some would say, probably more of a threat to Catholicism than outright atheism! Hence the article on my profile page, The Neural Buddhists.)