This is very different from how Wallace understands Plato and Hegel, because there intelligibility always refers outside itself, ultimately to the Good/One/True Infinite/Absolute. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for these pressing questions, it's really making me think it through. I want to clarify: I’m not saying there is nothing at all prior to interpretation—certainly not “nothing” in a nihilistic sense. What I’m pointing to is something more like undifferentiated givenness—not sheer formless flux, but not determinately articulated being either. It’s not a thing or set of things waiting to be picked out, but a field of potential meaning that only becomes structured in relation to a subject (something like Peirce's 'firstness'). That's why I said 'neither existent nor non-existent', which is what I take the expression 'beyond being' to mean - beyond the flux of coming-to-be and passing away.

Which leads to the question of the sense in which the purported Good/One/True Infinite exists. Existence is precisely what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in relation to. To make of 'the One' something that exists is a hypostatisation (perhaps akin to Heidegger's critique of onto-theology).

I think, and you will know this subject better than I, that Eriugena's Periphysion articulates this far better than I could. From the SEP entry:

Eriugena proceeds to list “five ways of interpreting” the manner in which things may be said to be or not to be (I would prefer 'exist or not to exist'). According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be ('exist') , whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature” transcends our faculties are said not to be (i.e. 'exist'). According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be (i.e. exist). He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam).

Quite literally beyond existence, sheer out of this world. Not in the heavenly firmament above but beyond (or is it before?) any spatial or conceptual projection (see God does not Exist by Bishop(!) Pierre Whalon.) Whereas when you speak of the One as 'something that exists' prior to or outside any act of intellect, I think perhaps this is also an hypostatisation. You have something in mind when you say it, perhaps as a kind of placeholder.

As far as the forms are concerned - I don’t mean the Forms as existing objects pre-existing in metaphysical space. This touches on a deeper point I've been trying to work out—namely, the metaphysical necessity of forms. I agree with the concern that if cognition had no grounding at all—if it operated in a total void—it would be arbitrary, even solipsistic. But I don't think that's the case.

Universals—or forms—exist, or rather, are real, not as actual entities, but as structured possibilities. As Kelley Ross puts it, they "exist where possibilities exist," and we encounter them not only in the future, but also in what he calls the "imperfect aspect"—that is, in things that are still unfolding, in process, not yet completed. This is key: the world we engage with is not made of finished essences, but of meaningful potentials that become actualised or manifested through living beings.

So cognition isn’t either imposing form or simply making things up. It’s realising a potential that is already there in the world—not as a determinate object, but as an intelligible field of possibility. That, I think, is what makes form metaphysically necessary without requiring it to “exist” in the way physical objects do. It’s also why cognition can be both grounded and open-ended

The concluding point I'd llike to make is that all this really does have some bearing on 'where logic comes from' but I think I'll leave that open for now.

You're making an appeal to determinant causes prior to the first finite mind. If the two (experiencer and experienced) are rather wholly co-constituting, as a self-moving cause, this doesn't work. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hence that passage I quoted:

These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. — Schopenhauer, WWI

Even if this 'claim' is true – of course there's no evidence for it — 180 Proof

What, pray tell, would constitute evidence for this argument?

. Why do you persist on blaming physics for not doing something that physicists don't use it for? Re: materialism – You're (still) shadowboxing with a burning strawman — 180 Proof

Are you familiar with D M Armstrong? His book Materialist Philosophy of Mind presents the kind of philosophical materialism that I’m criticizing. And Relativist cites Armstrong as an exemplary philosopher. Armstrong was Head of Dept where I studied philosophy. So no straw man arguments here.

One of my reference works might be of interest to you in this regard Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. Thomas Nagel is an analytical philosopher who is also a critic of reductionism.

I’m with you. I meant that quotation from the Sutta as a support for what you were saying as I thought it very relevant. But then, the reason I brought in that academic paper on ‘the unconditioned’ was to try and build a bridge between that discourse and analytical philosophy.

The problem is that discourse about 'the unconditioned' is inextricably bound up with theology in Western culture. That is because so much of neo-platonism, which had a framework for that discourse, became absorbed into theology by the Greek-speaking theologians. As a consequence, in secular culture, there is a taboo against this framework of discourse, on the grounds of its association with religion. I think that is the dynamic behind a lot of this debate.

And that is literally true for some of us. — Fire Ologist

No doubt, but the point I was labouring, was the concept of 'the unconditioned' and its place in philosophical discourse.

No, but I said "determinant actuality prior to the senses." And this is a denial of that, right?…. Whereas , if the process isn't wholly self moving (i.e. randomly generating) then something is prior and determining the process, and so there is some "prior actuality." — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is something prior to or outside of any cognition of it, but it is not really ‘something’ until it is (re)cognised by a subject. (This is what I take the in-itself to mean - something is, but as it has no determinate form or features, then it can’t be understood as any kind of existent or ‘thing’).

In Charles Pinter’s terms, cognition lights upon the features and form of objects and synthesises them as gestalts, meaningful wholes, in accordance with the sensory and cognitive faculties that the subject has (and not only human subjects, he demonstrates a similar faculty in the fairy fly, an insect so small as to be imperceptible to the naked eye.)

So there is ‘prior’ but it has not been ‘actualised’. It is ‘actualised by cognition’, so to speak.

So the Earth becomes what it is because we experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The word ‘world’ is derived from the old Dutch ‘werold’ meaning ‘time of man’. It implies that man is already intrinsic to the nature of world.

Planet Earth has a different meaning, that is as an object of study for the earth sciences, etc. And one is perfectly free to pursue that avenue of understanding, nothing said here contradicts that.

What ‘the world’ means, however, is not exactly the same as planet Earth. 'The world' means 'the totality of existence including the subject:

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. — Erwin Schrodinger

As for why we perceive colours the same way, all of us belong to a common species, and also share a common language and culture. If we were a different species with a completely different cognitive system everything might appear completely differently to what it does to h.sapiens . The evolutionary pathway gave rise to h,sapiens, not centaurs, and as a species, we share a common world (to an extent).

I should add, the passages I referred to are part of the book I mentioned, The Blind Spot of Science, by Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser and Evan Thompson. The chapter those passages come from is on the topic of Consciousness, largely from Thompson’s perspective of phenomenology and embodied cognition. It introduces ‘the strange loop’ in the preceeding discussion, which is the sense in which our consciousness of the world provides the horizon of experience within which everything occurs, and yet we also know that the world which appears in experience, precedes any experience.

There is no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else. Everything we investigate, including consciousness and its relation to the brain, resides within the horizon of consciousness. — The Blind Spot

It is not practical to try and summarise all of the preceeding argument but there's a blog post which elaborates a similar point in Schopenhauer's words:

...the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being (due to its being Idea), however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.

Reading that against your quotations from Robert Wallace, I don't see any inherent conflict.

From the paper:

The ultimate source of our cognitive faculties is natural selection, and natural selection is interested (so to speak) only in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. A given belief, therefore, will have a certain causal role to play in the production of adaptive behavior; but whether it is true or false is irrelevant from this perspective. So the naturalist who accepts evolutionary theory has a defeater for the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable.

which is as I said.

Although I will add,. I'm not arguing in support of Plantinga's religious conclusions, only the more general point about the non-physical basis for rational inference.

Why are you so reluctant to state what you actually believe? — Relativist

I've spelled it out in depth and detail. To recap: physics is based on a useful abstraction, which has yielded enormous physical powers, but at the expense of excluding fundamental aspects of human existence.

Speaking of the determinate is where the speaking corresponds directly with the spoken about. It is also like the apriori, the axiom. Or for believers in myth, it is the truth, the absolute. The fixed. The permanent and unchanging. The eternal. The ground.

The indeterminate is the unknowable-in-itself. It’s psuedo-determinate when known as ‘nothing’ or the ‘vacuous’, but then, that may just be a language trick where we have ‘determined nothing’. It is unformed. It can’t exist and is all around us, and in us, allowing for mystical/mythical (maybe meaningless) statements like this one. — Fire Ologist

I feel I can mention a verse from the early Buddhist texts in this context. Partially because it is so succinct, and also because Buddhism, especially of the type represented in these (Pali) texts is resolutely non-theistic in its outlook, so this is not an attempt to smuggle God into the picture.

There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned. — Nibbāna Sutta

So this 'unborn, unmade, unfabricated' is a fortiori also 'the unconditioned'. And I think there's an abyss in the current philosophical lexicon, where something corresponding to 'the unconditioned' used to dwell. I think in the Western cultural context, this is associated with God, so post death-of-God, the unconditioned has been banished from respectable philosophical discourse, except by way of hints and aphorisms. Perhaps also it is subject to what Alan Watts decscribed as a taboo (in his last work The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who you Are.) There's a kind of gentleman's agreement as to what is considered a suitable topic for philosophical discourse, and of this, 'we must be silent' (or else :brow: )

I have found a relevant (and open access) academic paper on this topic -that is The unconditioned in philosophy of religion Steven Shakespeare,. where he argues that 'the unconditioned' badly needs to be rehabilitated and re-situated. I have still not fully assimilated this paper, but as he engages with and situates his discussion in relation to the broader analytical tradition, others might find it a useful resource.

Do you think that within the domain of possibility, there is a social reality such that P1 (possibility one) holds a conversation with P2 (possibility two)? — ucarr

I can't really make sense of that question. There are no discrete domains in that sense. The textbook example I referred to is the role of observation in quantum physics and the fact that the act of observation or registration precipitates a particular outcome from an indeterminate range of possibilities.

In a more general sense, we are able to consider possibilities and find ways to realise them - make them real, in other words.

You seem to acknowledge mind cannot be uncoupled from brain. — ucarr

And you seem always determined to argue that 'the physical is fundamental.' So far, I'm not persuaded, but then again I've never accepted physicalism as a philosophy.

The world Merleau-Ponty is talking about is the life-world, the world we’re able to perceive, investigate, and act in. The subject projects the world because it brings forth the world as a space of meaning and relevance. But the subject can project the world only because the subject inheres in a body already oriented to and engaged with a world that surpasses it. The bodily subject is not just in the world but also of the world. The bodily subject is a project of the world, a way the world locally self-organizes and self-individuates to constitute a living being.

You may want to say that the universe—the whole cosmos or all of nature—subsumes the life-world, so the strange loop pertains only to us and our life-world, not to us and the universe altogether. But quarantining the strange loop this way won’t work. It’s true that our life-world is a minuscule part of an immensely vaster cosmos. The cosmos contains our life-world. But it’s also true that the life-world contains the universe. What we mean is that the universe is always disclosed to us from within life

Excerpt from
The Blind Spot
Adam Frank;Marcelo Gleiser;Evan Thompson; Chapter 8: Consciousness.

Right, but if there is no logos, no determinant actuality prior to the senses or intellection, then why is experience and intellection one way and not any other? If the relationship between appearances and reality were arbitrary, then there is effectively only appearances (we have no grounds to posit reality, and it makes no difference to us). But if there is only appearances, appearances just are reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't say, nor imply, that there isn't a determinant, that there is no external world. The relationship between world and mind is not arbitrary. The term that I believe is common to both phenomenology and Buddhism is that the world is 'co-arising'. This tends to subvert the whole question of whether logic or order are 'in the mind' or 'in the world'. Answer is: neither, or both.

Merleau-Ponty ...writes in Phenomenology of Perception: “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism). Instead of these two extremes, Merleau-Ponty proposes that each one of the two terms, the conscious subject and the world, makes the other one what it is, and thus they inseparably form a larger whole. In philosophical terms, their relationship is dialectical. — The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson.

reason might be derived from experience through a particularly structured cognitive apparatus which has limitations. Isn’t that a point Kant makes? I’m no Kantian, but doesn’t Kant discuss transcendental illusions (systematic errors built into our reasoning) and emphasise that humans face clear limits in how reason can be used? — Tom Storm

You’re right to bring up Kant’s emphasis on the limits of reason—and his account of transcendental illusion is precisely where he acknowledges that reason has a built-in tendency to overreach. It poses questions—about God, freedom, the soul—that it can’t answer with the tools of empirical or discursive knowledge. But, as you say, these are not silly questions. They arise from the very structure of rationality itself.

Kant’s famous dictum is that "percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts are empty"—meaning that experience needs conceptual form, and concepts need experiential grounding. But what this leaves out—or perhaps leaves implicit—is whether there are other forms of knowing that don't fit neatly into that structure.

Some of Kant’s critics (like Hegel, Schleiermacher, and later thinkers like Maritain or even Vervaeke today) have argued that Kant’s model closes off the possibility of what you might call “higher insight” or participatory knowledge—knowledge that arises not from external observation or deduction, but from engagement, transformation, or direct acquaintance. (See this reference on John Vervaeke’s distinction between propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory knowing.)

So when Kant says that God is “beyond all possible experience,” that’s true within the bounds of his system. But that’s also the crux of the critique: what if those bounds are too narrow? What if there are legitimate forms of insight that don’t conform to his propositional model? Mystical traditions, contemplative practices, and certain strands of idealist or existentialist philosophy have all tried to develop alternatives to that constraint. Which is not to reject Kant but to broaden the context in which his questions are considered.

In that sense, the question isn’t just “what can we know?” but “what counts as knowing?” And that’s still very much a live question.

I wasn't trying show that evolution necessarily accounts for rationality, I was identifying the glaring flaw in Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). , — Relativist

What you identified as the 'fatal flaw' was this:

In order to survive, every organism needs a functionally accurate perception of its environment to successfully interact with it. Primitive rationality is exhibited when animals adapt there hunting behavior when necessary, doing things that work instead of those that don't. The evolution of abstract reasoning would have been an evolutionary dead end leading to extinction, if it worsened our ability to interact with the environment. — Relativist

My criticism of this is that it misconstrues the nature of reason in a typically reductionist way. It treats reason as on a par with adaptive behavior—the ability to respond flexibly to environmental cues. But as I pointed out, many organisms manage this just fine without any capacity for abstract reasoning. Cockroaches and crocodiles are paradigms of evolutionary success, they've survived for hundreds of milions of years, and yet we don’t credit them with logic, mathematics, or philosophical reflection.

What Plantinga argues is not that evolution couldn’t produce minds, but that if all mental life—including reason—is understood solely in terms of material and efficient causes, then we’ve undermined the very basis on which we make rational inferences. Logical relations are not physical events; they are intelligible structures, the relations between ideas. If belief is just the result of brain chemistry shaped by fitness, not by the ability to grasp truth, then the rational basis of naturalism loses its warrant. This is how physicalism is self-undermining (which is a consequence of having excluded the subject who brings reason to the picture, in the first place.)

This is what I see as an enormous problem in your position. It depends on uncritically accepting the existence of magic (or "something even greater") — Relativist

You realize this was a reference to reason? I'm saying that ability to reason resides in the capacity to see the relationships between ideas which is basic to language and rationality. And considering what h.sapiens has been able to achieve by virtue of reason and language - that is something that I am saying is even greater than magic.

And I will always reference what previous philosophers have said. This is a philosophy forum, and such citations are perfectly appropriate in the context.

The argument made by Nagel seems to treat reason as something almost magical, something that exists outside of nature and therefore can't be a product of the natural world and its processes — Tom Storm

I have previously started threads on this very topic. There's a constellation of arguments referred to as the argument from reason. There are several versions. One is associated with C S Lewis, elaborated by Victor Reppert. Another is Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. The passage from Nagel is from his essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion which we've discussed previously.

Very briefly, the argument from reason states that reason is the capacity to grasp ground and consequent relations - because of this, then that must be the case. The argument is that the nature of causation in this context is different from the material causation upon which naturalism is grounded.

So, yes, I think there's a good argument that reason is not a product of the kinds of naturalistic causation that science generally assumes. Indeed, Darwin himself hinted at perplexity over this fact, writing 'With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.' My view is that when h.sapiens gained the capacity to perceive causal relationships, which was bound up with the evolution of language, abstract thought, and the understanding of symbols, our intelligence realised horizons of being that were not perceptible to our simian forbears. It is only that capacity which can be properly said to perceive truly.

So - magical? Well, I think not, but something even greater in some respects. I think when the ancients discovered the power of reason they discovered an intoxicating power which we have since begun to take for granted. This is very much the topic of the excellent TPF essay Dante and the Deflation of Reason.

Isn't it the view of phenomenology that reasoning is grounded in the structures of experience, in how the world appears to us through perception, intention, and context? — Tom Storm

Phenomenology is not empiricism. While it begins with lived experience, it doesn’t reduce reason to perceptual inputs or behavioral adaptations. Especially in Husserl’s later work, phenomenology becomes explicitly transcendental, concerned with the a priori structures of subjectivity—those conditions that make intentionality, perception, and reasoning possible in the first place.

So yes, perception, intention, and context are crucial—but they don’t explain the faculty of reason. They are, rather, the field in which reason operates, and which reason must itself interrogate. What phenomenology uncovers is that reason is not merely derived from experience; it's already operative in how experience is constituted (which is what 'transcendental' meant for both Kant and Husserl.)

I thought it was your thesis that meaning can only exist if there is some form of guarantee for all meaning - a transcendent source. You often seem to maintain that there needs to be a higher-order purpose for any kind of purpose at all to be possible? — Tom Storm

I wouldn’t say meaning requires a “guarantee” in the strong sense—that seems too ambitious. But if reason genuinely grants insight into truths that hold necessarily, or in all possible worlds (as traditional logic and metaphysics have claimed), then that would seem to indicate a level of cognition that is categorically distinct from the reflexive or instrumental intelligence of non-rational animals (or technicians ;-) ).

Isn’t this precisely why the classical tradition held reason to be the distinguishing feature of human nature? Not because humans are “smarter” in an evolutionary sense, but because we’re capable of grasping truth as such, not just what works.

I realize this sounds unfashionable to modern ears—perhaps even reactionary. As John Vervaeke wryly observed, "what unites all of postmodernism is hatred of Plato.” But Plato’s point still stands: if we can know what is true, just, or good in itself, then our rational capacities open onto something more than contingent adaptation—they reveal a dimension of meaning that is not merely made, but discovered.

Could it be that humans are unrealistically impressed by reason, treating it as the highest or even only valid form of understanding? — Tom Storm

Far be it from a philosopher to defend the soveriegnty of reason :yikes:

Mostly agree. And remember how much of this is just political theatre. Trump made huge mileage out of the claim that undocumented immigrants are criminals and rapists - typical demagogue tactics. So now, making good on all that means casting the dragnet wide and getting the numbers up. Never mind that the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket - looks matter!

As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher. — Janus

I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions. Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?” — Daniel Dennett

In order to survive, every organism needs a functionally accurate perception of its environment to successfully interact with it. Primitive rationality is exhibited when animals adapt there hunting behavior when necessary, doing things that work instead of those that don't. The evolution of abstract reasoning would have been an evolutionary dead end leading to extinction, if it worsened our ability to interact with the environment. — Relativist

That criticism betrays a misunderstanding of the argument from reason. Obviously organisms must respond adaptively to their environment in order to survive. But that’s a long way from showing that evolution accounts for rationality of the kind required for abstract thought and language or theoretical science. Evolution selects for adaptive advantage, and plenty of species have been successfully adapted for millions of years without any ability to reason.

The behavior of crocodiles, cockroaches, and even mammals reflect functional intelligence—what works pragmatically—but that’s not the same as rational insight, which is the ability to perceive and evaluate logical relations among ideas.

More to the point, if we reduce reason to adaptive success—if it’s “just what works” in evolutionary terms—then we undermine the normative authority of reason itself. After all, reason doesn’t just describe what we do—it tells us what we ought to believe, based on validity, coherence, and evidence. But if reason is just a tool of survival, why trust it in matters beyond basic survival? Why trust it to tell us the truth about consciousness, the universe, or even evolution itself?

As far as ethics is concerned:

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense. — Richard Polt, Anything but Human

And as for reason:

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion

That is why the veracity of reason presupposes a deeper concordance between mind and world than can be understood solely in terms of adaptive fitness. Neo-darwinian biology is many things, but an epistemology, it ain't.

Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find? — Banno

Could it not be something we do in response to something we find? Counting is something we do, but the rules governing it are imposed on us by necessity.

Dividing the world into primary qualities (supposedly real) and secondary qualities (supposedly mere physic imaginative additions to reality) is the "artificial bifurcation of nature" a fundamental flaw in both scientific and philosophical thought. — prothero

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

Although there are those who take them deadly seriously.

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth. The only required feature is some amount of difference within reality. Again, even if minds do not exist, reality is still implicitly following the laws of logic through the fact that there are differentiated properties and things such as the gravitational force, electromagnetism, protons, higgs bosons, etc. — tom111

I would question the assumption in this passage. They are genuine distinctions as discerned through empirical inquiry, and they form the backbone of modern physics. But whether those distinctions entail that reality “follows the laws of logic” independently of any interpreting subject is far from settled.

As @Joshs quoted from Merleau-Ponty:

“...the identity of the thing with itself... is already a second interpretation of the experience... we arrive at the thing-object... only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores” (The Visible and the Invisible).

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

Because we are the phenomenon.
— Wayfarer
We are one phenomenon. — Relativist

The discussion is about the phenomenon of life, and about how physicalism omits some of its fundamental characteristics. Reductionism may be effective and useful in many scientific disciplines, but that doesn’t ameloriate its shortcomings when applied to philosophy. The ‘explanatory gap’ and the ‘problem of consciousness’ both refer to that shortcoming.

I believe materialism is justified on the basis that it provides the best explation for all the uncontroversial facts of the world. — Relativist

It is justifiable in respect of material phenomena over which science demonstrates considerable mastery. But this discussion has been what it leaves out - what happens when the methods of science are applied to questions of philosophy.

My question is: why assume an ontological basis for the epistemological paradigm? — Relativist

Because we are the phenomenon. We're not observing from a point outside life—we are living, embodied beings whose actions, thoughts, and values are suffused with purpose and normativity. That’s not just how we talk about life; it’s how we live it.

As already argued, physicalism arises from a methodological abstraction, intended for modeling inert matter (something it does very well!) It achieves explanatory power by systematically bracketing out qualities like meaning, value, and purpose. But this comes at a cost: these are not incidental features of life—they are constitutive of it. So when physicalism tries to "explain" life, it ends up trying to reconstruct the very things it had to exclude to get started. That’s the core of Jonas' argument: life and consciousness are not anomalies to be explained away—they’re clues to what physicalist ontology has left out.

How do you imbed this into an ontological theory of what actually exists? — Relativist

Start with the modest but radical move of taking the phenomena of life seriously, not as illusions or surface features, but as real indications of the nature of reality. The burden of proof doesn't rest solely with those who insist that life exhibits intrinsic purposiveness. The burden also falls on those who deny it—especially when their models can’t account for meaning, agency, or value except by explaining them away.

Should intelligibility be assumed? — Relativist

Science—and philosophy—both presuppose that the world is intelligible. Even raising the question of whether it should be assumes a rational order that allows the question to be posed in the first place. So rather than doubting intelligibility, the more pressing issue is: what kind of ontology can account for the fact that intelligibility is possible at all?

If physicalism treats intelligibility as an accidental byproduct of blind processes, then it risks undermining the rational basis of its own claims. This concern is related to what some have called the argument from reason (C.S. Lewis) or the evolutionary argument against naturalism (Alvin Plantinga): namely, that if our minds are solely the product of non-rational forces, we have little reason to trust their capacity for reason—including our belief in physicalism itself.

How do you account for it without a "God" (a being who acts with intent)? — Relativist

Understanding the nature of intent—or “God’s will,” if you like—is one of the most vexed questions in both theology and philosophy. Literalist religious frameworks often interpret history as a kind of script written in advance, culminating in divine intervention and final judgment. That’s not what I’m suggesting.

But it’s also not the only way to approach the idea of cosmic purpose or intelligence.

I lean toward what might be called a naturalistic philosophy of religion—if that isn’t too paradoxical. A good example is Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos (and Nagel, notably, doesn't write as a theist). He speculates that “each of our lives is a part of the cosmic process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming self-aware.” That’s not a doctrine, but a philosophical gesture toward an alternative vision—one in which mind and value are not intrusions into a meaningless cosmos, but intrinsic to its unfolding.

Yes, it’s vague when stated like that—but vagueness here may be appropriate considering the scale and subtlety of the question. What matters is that it opens a conceptual space between mechanistic materialism and supernatural intervention. It suggests that intentionality and consciousness may be expressions of something deeper in the fabric of reality, not inexplicable anomalies.

. Rather, you and Talbot seem to be arguing for using "teleology" as an epistemological paradigm for describing living things and their interactions. Sure, I see the utility for better understanding biological systems. But this wouldn't negate what I said, in terms of a metaphysical teleology. — Relativist

I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're right to say that there's a distinction between using teleology as an epistemological paradigm—i.e., as a way of understanding living systems—and asserting it as a metaphysical principle embedded in the structure of reality. But I think that very distinction deserves closer scrutiny.

The heart of the issue is this: Can we adequately account for living systems—and by extension, consciousness and agency—without appeal to any notion of purpose, directionality, or normativity? Or put differently: Is it plausible to treat teleological concepts as mere heuristics or metaphors, while denying their ontological basis?

When Talbott (and others like Thompson, Varela, Deacon, and Jonas) emphasize the meaningfulness, normativity, and goal-directedness inherent in organisms, they're not merely saying "this is a useful model." They're pointing out that organisms actually behave in ways that cannot be made intelligible in purely mechanistic terms. As soon as you describe a cell as regulating its internal state, or an animal as foraging, you're already invoking purpose-laden language—language that tracks something real in the nature of life.

So when you say my post didn't show your dichotomy to be false, I would say: the dichotomy between materialism and creationism is false precisely because there is a third option: namely, that telos is a real feature of life, but not in the anthropomorphic sense of an external designer with a blueprint. Instead, it emerges as a kind of immanent normativity—a principle of self-organization and purposiveness intrinsic to living systems themselves.

I've been reading Hans Jonas 'Phenomenology of Biology'. Jonas argues that life is the phenomenon that gives rise to value and meaning—not because it was pre-ordained by a deity, but because the very act of being alive entails a concern for continued existence, a directedness toward goals (however basic), and an interpretive relationship with the environment. That's not "epistemological teleology" in the narrow sense—it’s a recognition that teleological structures are built into the logic of life itself.

And once we admit that—even provisionally—then perhaps the modern exclusion of telos (and with it, qualities like value, intention, or meaning) from our ontology is not just a simplifying abstraction, but a serious (even catastrophic) omission.

And as Hans Jonas powerfully argues, since the ascent of mechanistic materialism, life and consciousness have become anomalies—features of reality that no longer fit within the explanatory framework that modern science inherited from Galileo and Newton. The success of mechanistic models in physics came at the cost of excluding precisely those qualities that constitute living, experiencing beings: purposiveness, value, and meaning. Materialism has to treat these as secondary effects or emergent illusions, but never as basic features of reality.

To return to your point: I agree that "intent" in the conscious human sense requires a subject capable of forming and acting on reasons. But perhaps that's an evolved expression of something more basic: the kind of intrinsic normativity that characterizes even the simplest organisms. That doesn’t entail an uncaused divine being—it entails rethinking what kind of ontology is required to make sense of life itself.

Trouble is of course that if something is beyond discursive thought then it cannot be said. We could not have an argument that reached such a conclusion. And indeed the ending of elenchus is often aporia - the method of dissection ends without resolution. — Banno

Aporia can be seen as precisely the points where dialectic ends and noetic insight is required. The fact that language and symbolic thought is inherently limited, is something that can and has been a subject of philosophical discourse. Wittgenstein’s aphorism at the end of the Tractatus ('that of which...') is often treated as a full stop — a way to shut down discussion of anything that can’t be stated in propositional terms (especially by you!) . But it can also be read as a threshold: an acknowledgment that there is something beyond what can be said — something that may be shown, enacted, or lived. Anyway, the idea that wisdom might transcend discursive articulation isn’t foreign to philosophy — it runs through Plato, Plotinus, and arguably into Wittgenstein himself. It’s also central to Eastern philosophy, where sometimes silence becomes the highest form of answer, akin to 'see for yourself!'

Mysticism is often a pejorative term, shorthand for vagueness or woolly-headedness. And, to be fair, it often is that. Theosophical Bookstore shelves are full of ‘mystical aphorisms,’ and it’s not hard to generate vague-sounding phrases that mimic profundity (we've had more than a few here, I remember 'Brother James'). But the actual mystics — whether Buddhist, Christian, or other — are people of of great discipline, clear insight, and spiritual rigor. What they describe is often not fuzzy at all, but the result of a highly refined insights. Easier to say than to enact.

There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject [of metaphysics]. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself...~ Plato, Seventh Letter — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting that the root of the word 'Upaniṣad' is 'sitting closely' - the relationship of chela to guru.

Philosophical type activity moves from naive common sense, to the analytic dissection Banno enjoys, to the metaphyisical more constructive type (building more things to be dissected), then to more mystical transcending type... — Fire Ologist

There's a stream that might be called 'analytical mysticism' in Catholic philosophy. At least, it has its mystical elements, from its inhereted neoplatonism and the presence of mystics in the Church (You've mentioned that you're Catholic). Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, William Desmond - all great philosophers in that tradition. There are many more.

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let's recall Lloyd Gerson's most recent book Platonism and Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy.

Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy.

Let's step back a bit. The question I was responding to was, 'is there good reason to believe teleology'? So to address that we need to clarify exactly what that means. (This could easily become a 5000 word essay, but I'll try to keep it brief as possible.)

The way I addressed the question of teleology was in the context of the emergence of the Galilean-Newtonian-Cartesian worldview (a.k.a. 'the scientific revolution'). It is here that the notion of telos or purpose was rejected in favour of mechanistic model, the understanding that the totality of the universe can be understood solely in terms of matter (since Einstein 'matter-energy') acting in accordance with natural laws over aeons of time. This is what gives rise to all phenomena, undirected by anything like a higher intelligence or divine intellect.

Background - teleology at the time of the scientific revolution had been intertwined with concepts from Aristotelian physics, such as 'natural place', and, in turn, with the Ptolmaic geocentric cosmology. This was superseded by Galileo and Newton's modern understanding of physics in terms of mass, velocity, intertia etc. So teleology was rejected, along with Aristotelian notions of final and formal causation (which also has major implications.) And that medieval conception of causation was bound up with the early modern conception of a 'divine architect' and 'ideas in the mind of God'.

Whereas, the way you phrase the question falls into what I see as a false dichotomy: either accepting the naturalist, mechanistic account or holding to a creationist or 'intelligent design' cosmology. This is precisely the predicament that the cultural dynamics of Western culture engineered for itself. (Karen Armstrong's 2009 book The Case for God lays this out very clearly.)

Whether we call this a "God", a trascendental oversoul, or anything else, it strikes me as a rather extreme assumption to think that such a being just happens to exist uncaused. By contrast, the gradual development of beings, somewhere in an old. vast universe, with the capacity for intentional behavior, but considerably more limited powers to act, seems considerably more plausible. — Relativist

I would suggest looking at telos differently, rather than in terms of a Grand Design presided over by a cosmic architect/engineer (which seems to me like God created in the image of man).

Recall that I said that physics begins with abstraction: this is the key point. Galileo's physics starts with the division of primary and secondary qualities, the primary qualities being those that can be both expressed and measured in mathematical terms, the fundamental ground of mathematical physics, which has grown so astoundingly since Galileo's day. How things appear to us, by contrast, is relegated to the 'secondary qualities' which are intrinsically subjective in nature. (Notice this is a re-statement of the ancient philosophical quandry of 'reality and appearance'.)

But what does that leave out? Already, intentionality and purpose have been excluded from the reckoning, as one of the grounding assumptions of the model. Physicalism' insists that in reality there are no purposes or intentionality - these are relegated to the personal or subjective domain. Whereas, in actuality, all of us, as human beings, and every single organism, are animated or driven by purposeful and intentional actions. The idea that the universe is 'devoid of meaning' is, therefore, a judgement: even the scientist studying the motions of planets has some aim in mind, if only just to understand. So this is the false dichotomy I'm refering to.

Consider the following, from philosopher of biology, Steve Talbott:

The physicist wants laws that are as universal as possible, true of all situations and therefore unable to tell us much about any particular situation — laws, in other words, that are true regardless of meaning and context. So far as a physical law is concerned, once we know it, every subsequent observation merely demonstrates something we already knew: the law will yet again be obeyed. This requires a severe abstraction from the presentational richness of the phenomenal world, which presents us at every moment with something new. Such abstraction shows up in the strong urge toward the mathematization of physical laws.

Nothing ever goes wrong with the physical laws that were operative in the system, but any given causal relation can always be sabotaged by a contextual change.

In biology a changing context does not interfere with some causal truth we are trying to see; contextual transformation is itself the truth we are after. Or, you could say: in the organism as a maker of meaning, interfering is the whole point! The ongoing construction and evolution of a context, with its continually modulated causal relationships, is what the biologist is trying to recognize and do justice to. Every creature lives by virtue of the dynamic, pattern-shifting play of a governing context, which extends into an open-ended environment. The organism gives expression, at every level of its being, to the unbounded because of reason, the tapestry of meaning... — Steve Talbott, What Do Organisms Mean?

So that is at least the direction in which an answer should be sought. Notice that it doesn't deny the efficacy of physical laws and physical causation, but recognises the inherent limitations of those principles when applied to a broader context, that being actual existence.

Yes, but then there isn’t some other substance which can receive potentiality. ‘Matter’ is not a substrate which receives form. The ‘material’ out of which something is created is the already existed stuff (objects) which can be made into a whole (by way of it receiving the form of the whole); so each object is both comprised of form and matter only insofar as its parts are the matter and its form is the actualizing principle of the structure that makes those parts its parts. There is no substrate of ‘matter’. — Bob Ross

The substrate is what is translated as 'prime matter'. In this, I will defer to the others here with greater knowledge of Aristotle, but based on encyclopedia entries: Aristotle's Prime Matter (prōtē hulē) is conceived as pure potentiality. Imagine the most basic "stuff" of the universe, utterly undifferentiated and without any inherent qualities, forms, or properties of its own. It's not actually anything specific, but has the potential to become anything (to 'take form', so to speak).

This idea of prime matter is crucial for Aristotle's explanation of change, especially what he called substantial change – when one thing completely transforms into another (like a plant decaying into earth). For change to occur, there must be something underlying that persists throughout the transformation. Prime matter serves as this ultimate, enduring substratum. Without it, Aristotle argued, things would have to come into being from absolute nothingness, which he rejected as impossible ('nothing comes from nothing').

But because prime matter possesses no form or qualities, it cannot be directly observed or even understood in isolation (like I said, 'not a thing'). It is only possible to encounter things that are already a combination of matter and form – actual objects with specific characteristics. Hence Prime Matter is often described by what it isn't, rather than what it is.

For Aristotle, prime matter was generally considered ungenerated and indestructible. It was an eternal principle underpinning all creation and destruction in the observable world.

Speculatively, there are parallels to this concept (if it is a concept) and the mysterious 'fields' of today's cosmological physics. Nowadays particles are said to be 'excitations of fields' rather than self-existent point-particles. It is at least analogically suggestive. (There are modern interpretations of hylomorphism in quantum physics but that would take us too far afield.)

The closest one can get to being consumed in doing philosophy, the way a master is consumed while practicing his trade, is the moment when philosophizing becomes mystical contemplation. Words and self-awareness dissipate at that point, so you are not really doing philosophy anymore, though you may be thinking about being, or self, or language qua language, or the thought of nothingness. — Fire Ologist

Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.

‘Thought’ is a deficient term, though, as it seems so quotidian; we all think incessantly, often to not much effect. I don’t know if there’s a proper English term for the kind of insight being referred to but it seems more a reference to a visionary insight, noesis, perhaps, or gnosis, or something of the kind.

And these may be ‘beyond discursive thought’ and so ‘philosophizing’ in the sense of verbal formulation. But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.)

In any case, Plotinus, the fountainhead of much of ancient philosophy, and even of much since, dwelt between those two worlds of mystical insight and philosophical exegesis. So too did many a classic philosopher. So the boundary is more a border, and a porous one at that.

If we are to focus on praxis, then what does the Grand Theory Of All provide? Why do we need an analysis of being in order to say that the flower is pretty? — Banno

I think a ‘grand theory of everything’ is a mischaracterization. It's insight into the nature of things. It may show itself in a gesture or an artwork.

And the guitarist practices outside of the performance. — Banno

Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria.

Might I suggest (pace Hadot) that in modern philosophy, the former is generally neglected.

(Incidentally, from what very little I know, Richard Bernstein was not one of those who neglected it.)

Supose that there is an actual good. Now supose that we are in a position to pass a judgement on some act - kicking a puppy or stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children or what ever - is that act Good? We look to the circumstances, to the consequences, to the intent of the participants. How would what we do in making that assessment differ, if there is no "actual good"?

Do we really need to understand the nature of being, to have the whole and complete truth before us, before we decide that the sunset is beautiful, or that kicking a pup is wrong, or that stealing to feed one's children is forgivable? — Banno

All the examples are artificial. It's like those endless discussions of the trolley problem. God knows what you would *actually* do in that circumstance. Useful for stimulating classroom discussion, but still artificial, because it's not a real trolley, and no actual lives are at stake.

Unlike our actual existence.

Even 'understanding the nature of being' sounds artificial, when expressed in such bald terms, but to see a real master at work, in whatever capacity or occupation they are engaged in, is to see what that understanding means.

I can't help but post this, the mods will probably remove it, but it's only 2:25 and there are actual philosophers (some since deceased) discussing this very point.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular
— Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see that this is so.
Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing? — Banno

I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. (So I’ll agree with the impulse while questioning the formulation.) I submit that there is an actual good — the good, in Platonist terms—and that being able to orient oneself toward it is essential to philosophy qua "love of wisdom." Naturally, there will be objections: “Who knows what that is?” or “How can there be such a thing in a pluralistic culture?”

But this doesn’t negate the point. Mary Midgley, whom you mention, was concerned to rescue morality from scientism and evolutionary reductionism. She writes about far more than just “philosophical plumbing.” In Evolution as Religion: Strange Hopes and Even Stranger Fears, she criticizes those who take evolutionary theory not just as biological explanation, but as a total account of human nature, ethics, and meaning—a trend she rightly sees as both philosophically naïve and culturally dangerous. Yet this reductionism, tacitly accepted, still underlies much philosophical discourse.

So what is the metaphysics of meaning? Of the good? Of what distinguishes the good from the merely useful? These are questions philosophy must engage with — indeed, they are what make philosophy more than intellectual hand-waving. And it must be holistic in some genuine sense.

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, pus and entrails. — Banno

The Pāli Buddhist texts acknowledge this very fact with clinical clarity:

In this body there are: head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, stomach contents, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin grease, saliva, mucus, joint fluid, and urine. — Majjhima Nikāya (MN 10) — Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta

Yet this frank realism does not cancel out the fact that Buddhism offers a transcendental philosophy—one that seeks liberation from precisely this embodied condition, not through denial, but through insight into its impermanence and lack of inherent selfhood.

Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body actually draws a comparison between the Holy Trinity and marriage and the procreative act for instance. When "everything is sacramental," romantic love must also reveal God. — Count Timothy von Icarus

However, I presume (not having read it) that he would maintain sanctions against pre- or extra-marital sex.

If one considers this from the perspective of a deflationary information theoretic process metaphysics, where all of the universe is a changing "code," it can be helpful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've had a long-running debate (sometimes very acrimonious) on the importance of maintaining the distinction between beings and things. I still believe that this is a basic ontological distinction, and precisely the distinction that materialism must erase.

But then matter is something — Bob Ross

Reword it like this: matter is some thing.

If it is 'a thing' then it has form. If it has no form, then it's not a thing.

I wouldn't attribute such an emphasis on "parts" to them. — Leontiskos

General question: I have the idea that Aristotle's biology is what we would call 'holistic'. He identifies that there is an animating principle which determines how all of the parts are organised for the benefit of the whole. Is that fair?

Animism' (ancestralism ... or daoism) seems the oldest, and really the only, "religion of the people" that's ever worked for any people. — 180 Proof

There’s shamanism, which is one of the very ancient roots of what was to become ‘religion’. So too yogic practices of mystical absorption. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of the ‘sramana’ movement in ancient India, which comprised heterodox (i.e. non-Vedic) ascetics who renounced society and lived in the forests (literally ‘forest-dwellers’.) And by what criterion would you judge that these had, or hadn’t, ‘worked’? All of the Indian religion, Vedic and other, were oriented around mokṣa, liberation from the eternal cycle of birth and death. If you don’t recognise that there is such a state, then of course the entire edifice will be, for you, a fiction, which seems to be how you regard it.

It’s instructive that biology, having rejected the Aristotelian idea of teleology, had to re-introduce telos, purpose, in a neologism, ‘teleonomy’, referring to the apparent purpose exhibited by organisms. That was because it was impossible to say much meaningful about biology without referring to purpose, as in a broad sense, intentionality animates organic life from the cellular level through every level above it. (Philosopher of biology Steve Talbott has a superb series of essays on this topic in The New Atlantis.)

The issue of purpose and intentionality, and it’s supposed absence from the world, is part and parcel of the scientific and Copernican revolution, grounded as it was in Galileo’s division of the mind and world into the two domains of primary measurable physical attributes, and secondary mental or qualitative attributes. This meant also the elimination of the relics of Aristotelian physics, with its ‘natural places’ and inherent tendencies, in favour of a world in which everything could be accounted for by material causation.

What is overlooked in all this, is the sense in which the Galilean-Newtonian view is a useful abstraction, within which life itself now appears as an anomaly, an oddity, something which has to be ‘explained’ in terms which have already intrinsically excluded it. That’s the plight of modern materialism in a nutshell.

I wonder how useful a ground of being is to us as a concept — Tom Storm

Reduced to the conceptual, it has very limited usefulness. The realisation of such a ‘ground’ is ecstatic, outside the conceptual or discursive intellect.

It's fake and manipulative, essentially regurgitating our style back to us to ingratiate itself and maximize engagement. — Baden

You’re correct, of course. A salutary admonition. I have noticed from time to time a dialog will appear ‘do you like this personality?’ All part of subscriber management.

They're still trying to politicize it regardless, check out the previous page. — Mr Bee

Remember what Michelle Obama said - ‘when they go low….’

I agree that Trump has been overall responsible for the atmosphere of threat and the promotion of violence.

A recent exchange:

Wayfarer: I quite like the philosophical theory called ’neutral monism’ but it’s such a jejune phrase. Reminds me of a middle-aged man in a grey overcoat with a bowler hat.


ChatGPT: That’s a perfect image—neutral monism does have a certain drab, bureaucratic air about it, doesn’t it? As if reality turned out to be a civil servant.

It’s unfortunate, really, because the underlying idea is far more radical than the name suggests: that the world is made of neither mind nor matter, but something more primordial—some third thing that becomes “mental” or “physical” depending on how it’s organized or related. In William James’s hands, it’s fluid and vivid; in Ernst Mach’s, almost visionary. But call it 'neutral monism', and it sounds like a colour swatch from a Soviet apartment block.

Still, there's something in its humility—especially compared to the grand metaphysical systems. It’s an attempt to avoid getting trapped by the old dualisms, without leaping straight into idealism or materialism. You might say it's metaphysical minimalism in a trench coat.

If it ever gets a rebrand, I hope it leans toward something more evocative—maybe primordial monism, or proto-experiential realism, or just eventualism, to pick up Whitehead’s scent. Anything but “neutral,” which always feels like it’s waiting for the train home.

"a colour swatch from a Soviet apartment block" :rofl:

There's also constructive criticism - those who are willing to have their ideas criticized so as to better understand both them and their critics, which I think is nearer the true spirit of philosophy.

Another Trump supporting lunatic out killing people. But I guess it was just another day of love. — Mikie

I wouldn’t politicise such a heinous act. Politicising it is the kind of thing MAGA would do, had the shoe been on the other foot.

DJT will be super annoyed tonight that the assassination and the Iran-Israel war will have stolen all the news minutes from his parade.