"Ducks lay eggs" is true if and only if ducks lay eggs. Some ducks do not. — creativesoul

Here again you just expose the limitations of a nominalist metaphysics. Predicate logic is optimised for reasoning about particulars. Universal predication becomes just an exercise in set theory - a nominalistic claim of congruence. So your weapon of choice simply lacks the firepower to make any impression here. It's a classic case of bringing a knife to a gunfight. ;)

If you check out his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle was trying to steer a middle course between Platonic realism and Atomistic nominalism. So his genus~species distinction is an attempt to understand the ontological issue in terms of hierarchies of constraint. A universal speaks to a disposition - a tendency, function or purpose. And thus is is not contradicted - in its generality - by exceptions ... so long as the exceptions are accidental and don't count as essential.

Universals can thus be seen as allied with the top-down constraining causality of telos and form. A generality, like a genus, is defined as some kind of telic intent. A way of being that is organised by a reason. Then a species is some particular form that expresses that intent. A species is a general desire made specific flesh.

So if we are going to say something truthful-feeling like "ducks lay eggs because birds lay eggs, and ducks are birds", then we would have to look towards the reason why birds would even lay eggs. Birds would be a genus - a real distinction in nature - because there was some essential natural purpose that "a bird" expresses. And then a duck would be a bird as a particular form that in turn expresses that purpose in terms of some more specific design.

Then "this duck right here" would be the individuated being which is the form of a duck made locally and materially definite - complete with all the accidents of matter which can be deemed not to matter as they don't really affect the globally real purpose.

So behind every individuated duck, we have a hierarchy of increasingly general, but absolutely real, constraints. And the constraints themselves have a directional organisation - one that points always from general telos towards specific form.

By definition, telos tolerates material exceptions of every possible kind - except any differences that would make a difference in terms of that purpose. So a constraints-based view of "universal predication" says not only that what is not prevented, could be the case. It says if an exception could happen, it must happen. Exceptions are a prediction, given that the very idea of the essential is dichotomous to that of the accidental. You couldn't have the one in any definite sense without having also its "other".

So your attempts to keep forcing regular nominalistic logic onto a discussion of the problems of nominalism is quite amusing. Your dogmatism is a symptom of the intellectual disease in question.

Why can't it be answered? I've been amazed instead how close we are getting to a fairly complete answer.

Why something and not nothing is of course a dead-end causal inquiry. But why something and not everything starts to become an answerable one. We have a ton of science that now speaks to that.

An octopus is now an alien and they probably can start predicting who will win the world cup. — TimeLine

I'm confused as the OP did not mention panspermia let along tardigrades and octopuses.

If that is your specific concern here - you haven't mentioned a specific criticism of the OP - then that should have been stated in your expression of moderatorly discomfort. You could have just called Wayfarer out for doing his usual thing of introducing panspermia into the conversation at every opportunity and, more especially, asked him to source his comments about tardigrades and octopuses (but only if you wanted to encourage him to derail the OP - a reason I passed over it in silence).

Panspermia research does offer the evidence of extremophiles like tardigrades. But talk about octopuses being alien is - as far as I can see - just a meme. Wayfarer might be able to show to the contrary that it is part of panspermia as a serious hypothesis. So if you were really looking to draw some line, tardigrades would be some kind of accepted science, octopus become the lunatic fringe.

So you are attempting to justify drawing a boundary line in terms of hyperbole - "An octopus is now an alien and they probably can start predicting who will win the world cup." But hyperbole is a rhetorical device and not a suitable method for the drawing of fine distinctions. If you defend your position, as you have, with hyperbolic statements, then that is a bigger failure in critical thinking than the one you meant to criticise.

I do respectfully agree and reiterate that I will certainly be cautious before ever making a decision otherwise, but my intention really was to understand whether this subject could indeed be considered Philosophy of Science and not about moderating risks and what not. — TimeLine

Cool. But again the OP seems utterly unproblematic in that light. It sets out a chain of reasoning in full. It asks a question that is worth answering - on moral grounds, if we are going to cart our bugs to Mars, if nothing else.

It contained a "scientific error" at the last step, in my opinion. The OP assumed that our immune system has to be evolved to recognise invasive biological threats. But we now know our immune system instead can learn because it generates a variety of antibodies on a "just in case" basis. It doesn't know what might be coming down the pipe, so it produces a range of receptors and uses these to discover what might be "alien" in terms of what it knows to be not "the usual biology out which 'I' am constructed".

So, my point is, even if we found an Earth like world - with similar gravity, atmospheric composition etc - this similarly is only superficial - and its biosphere - especially life at the microbial level - would make moving and colonising this planet impossible - unless we develop immunity to its biosphere as we have done here on Earth. — JohnLocke

So - given the OP's constraints around this other planet having a very Earth-like chemistry in other respects - it is reasonably unlikely that alien life would escape detection by our immune system, especially if the life was biologically similar enough to be infective. And even just being an unrecognised organic chemistry would be enough to set off an allergic reaction.

But because our immune system learns, then it is possible we could adjust in months rather than millions of years.

Thus the OP asks a completely reasonable question - one that is speculative and yet also one we can start to make more precise sense of; break it down into more specific questions to be answered.

Wayfarer of course went off at a tangent. The idea that octopuses could be aliens in our midst is a risible hypothesis with little to no scientific motivation.

If Wayfarer thinks something he read somewhere does provide proper motivation, he can cite the source. He would need to present a similar careful chain of reasoning that leads towards some central well-focused question - a question that would have maximum impact on the holding of the theory outlined.

And then even a risible hypothesis is meat for philosophy of science. Learning how to deal with crackpot suggestions is central to learning critical thinking. Bad ideas teaches how good science should work.

If PF has a serious function, it should be not to close down uncomfortable discussions but instead to expose what faulty thinking looks like.

I have actually been to a lecture by Davis, by the way, and I find his ideas on evolution and cancer research to be really compelling. His suggestions about tracing this works similarly to his ideas of Mars, of going back to a time when it may have been habitable and how this could indeed initiate the biosignatures now on Earth. — TimeLine

Davies is one of my favourite scientists. He is more prepared than most to speculate wildly because that speculation could bring great rewards.

And unlike Crick, his speculation is careful. It always has a good metaphysical grounding.

It is also not without controversy. — TimeLine

How could any new and good idea be anything else than controversial? I don't get why you seem to think that a lack of controversy is a plus. If you aren't challenging accepted paradigms, then what is the point?

The trick is to be able to tell the difference between well-motivated challenges and charlatanism. But if you aren't living on the edge of controversy, you just ain't living.

Perhaps the prime moderating rule here should be "this isn't sufficiently controversial". :)

The question of “why anything?” seems deeper.

It is not mainstream science. — TimeLine

You appear to be confusing mainstream research with mainstream belief. If you check, you will find there are journals of astrobiology and centres of astrobiology these days.

A good example of credible research is https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0403049.pdf

Now cynics like me would also be quick to point out the self-interest NASA has in generating public hype about the value of a manned Mars mission. Why wouldn’t it seed curiosity by supporting panspermia research?

However as a general issue of policing debates here, this site ought to be enforcing standards of critical thinking, not trying to enforce some mainstream belief system. It is how folk handle what seem to be extraordinary claims that matters. And going and checking the facts - is panspermia a mainstream research topic? - would be an example of critical thinking in action.

From the fact that I deliberately posted a sceptical response you ought to be able to deduce where my own sympathies lie.

But it remains the case that science treats it as a possibility even if an unlikely one. That seemed to be what you were asking for opinions on.

I’m not convinced for a minute, so kindly don’t address me as if I am saying it is something you ought to feel convinced about.

But it is published theory. Experiments have been done. The issue you raised was whether it is sufficiently within the purview of the scientific method. Clearly it bleeding well is. End of.

Oh that. Yes, it seems crackpot. But Francis Crick for one published an argument for directed panspermia - deliberate seeding by aliens - in the 1970s. Scientific experiments have been done - https://www.space.com/22875-alien-life-claim-space-microbes.html

So it is certainly within the bounds of science. It is not regarded as impossible or uninvestigatable.

So if there is a point where reality comes to an end, you want to say that it doesn’t in fact come to an end there? The end ain’t real?

Sounds legit.

Pfft. T Clark is right. SETI is accepted science. There is a ton of constraints based papers seeking to sharpen an understanding of the probabilities. A question about the risks to aliens landing here is the mirror of the one any space expedition to Mars would have to answer. You will have to be more specific to show how the discussion might be unscientific, let alone unphilosophical.

Exactly. Nothing is more minimal than zero. So zero is the asymptotic limit on somethingness.

The logic of dichotomies is apophatic. We are talking about reality - definite somethingness. The limit on reality is then where things stop being real. And if limits didn’t come in matched pairs, there would be nothing in-between to be real either.

Your approach demands that limits are what exist. And singularly. That’s obviously crazy.

Would it have some sort of genetic coding that is recognizable? — T Clark

There are those like Nick Lane who make a good case that the basic metabolic options for creating life are so limited that it is much more likely that all life would have quite a lot in common in terms of the basic respiratory chain machinery. That counts as a surprising recent twist in theoretical biology.

But then while it might be that protein structures formed from amino acid sequences is somehow evolutionary optimal, would the DNA coding machinery have to look so much the same? Arguably not if all the code has to do is represent the instruction to go grab some particular amino acid.

So logically, the metabolic similarity might be surprisingly more close than expected, while the genetic coding mechanism would almost surely be a completely different kind of language as the meaning of a sign is essentially arbitrary.

Such speculative claims that cannot be verified by the scientific method — TimeLine

Which speculative claims exactly? And how is science not able to constrain the speculation involved?

Then you described "reciprocal limits" in a way in which they clearly were not mutually exclusive. — Metaphysician Undercover

What could be more minimal than zero?

We were discussing dichotomies, not reciprocal limits. And your attempt to turn dichotomies into reciprocal limits is misguided. . — Metaphysician Undercover

Dichotomies are reciprocal limits on possibility regardless of whatever you might pretend to be discussing.

Right, so rest and motion are clearly not mutually exclusive when defined in this way. — Metaphysician Undercover

They are mutually excluding.

So I’m taking an active dynamical or process view of ontology, while you want to believe in some theistic eternality where existence is some god-given brute fact. Where you think in terms of nouns, I am thinking in terms of verbs.

Yes, so it appears like you do not know what "mutually exclusive" means. How are rest and motion mutually exclusive when you define rest as a minimal degree of motion? . — Metaphysician Undercover

Hmm. Will you ever master this tricky notion of reciprocal limits I wonder?

Rest would be minimal motion, and motion would be minimal rest.

It is evident that some things remain the same, and we do not have to wait until the end of time to observe this. — Metaphysician Undercover

Given that the Universe is now scrapping along at less than 3 degrees above absolute zero, you are observing Being towards the end of time.

I accept dualism as the only coherent understanding of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh well, with dualism at least you are halfway there. :)

The way you set the scenario up says we should have no problem with the basic physical environment. The air would be breathable and not poisonous if the composition is the same as Earth.

So how would we cope with alien micro-biology?

Microbes are either going to harm us by infection or poison. So given that their biology is bound to be too dissimilar for an infection issue, then only an inadvertent toxicity would be a problem. Being microbial in scale, and the poison production obviously not enough to alter the general atmosphere, then any harm is likely to be slow acting. But also of high probability just because our immune system would likely have a big allergic reaction to strange organic compounds.

So a lungful of alien air might send us into anaphylactic shock. But more likely is that there will be unpleasant consequences that manifest over a few more weeks on the planet.

The focus would be on the immune system, as you suggest, just not on whether we could fight an infection. It would be about the shock of alien organic chemistry on an immune system not brought up to deal with it.

Ok, so "passivity" does not refer to something which matter is prior to being acted on, it refers to how matter will react when being acted on. See, you are defining everything in relation to action, saying what passivity would be like if it were active. It would be reactive. You give yourself no means for describing what passivity is during that time when it is what it is, passive, i.e. not being acted upon, and not reacting. So passivity is the potential for action. What do you think it means to be capable of reacting? — Metaphysician Undercover

You are distressed because your ontology likes to presume a world of passive and stable existence. But the evidence from nature itself is contrary. As Peircean semiosis recognises, existence arises as the regulation of fundamental uncertainty or spontaneity. The basis of existence is instability. Then formal cause - the emergence of constraints or habits of regulation - is what stabilises being so that it appears to become eventually a realm of classical passivity.

So you get your desired passivity. But only at the end of time. And even then, it is only a relative passivity. There is still going to be a quantum scale thermal jitter at the Heat Death of the universe.

Thus in my ontology, passivity is an emergent quality. It is always relative to the more fundamental state of agitation that is a quantum Cosmos.

Then when it comes to the action~reaction dichotomy that accounts for motion in a (Galilean) relative fashion, inertia is also an emergent property. It treats constant velocity or constant angular momentum as the fundamental symmetries of spacetime. Ground zero is a mass moving freely at a steady rate - all impressed forces being equilibrated or in balance. And thus now it is being disturbed from an inertial state of motion which defines "an action" - either an acceleration, or dichotomously, a deceleration.

And mass is a measure of how fast the rate of an object's inertial motion can be changed. Its "resistance" to change is a measure of its "massiveness". The relation is a reciprocal one. Massiveness is like a quantity of elasticity which introduces a temporal delay. You have to push for longer to get the same amount of change in velocity.

Passivity is really a capacity for inactivity. And a massive object at relative rest has the greatest capacity for inaction. After all, at rest it has the least measurable mass as well as the least measurable velocity.

The point is, that you have the wrong idea of what a dichotomy is. A dichotomy is a division, a separation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Look it up. A dichotomy is a relation that is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

There is the division that is the mutual exclusion - and even that is a connection in being mutual. And there is that same togetherness in thatjointly they exhaust all other possibilities.

One or other alone does nothing. Only when each properly opposes its other, in a perfect binary fit that excludes all others, can it properly be considered a dichotomy. It's Dialectics 101.

That is because your monist faith will not allow you to conceive of real ontological separation. — Metaphysician Undercover

My faith, such as it is, would have to be triadic. You may have heard me mention that once or twice.

Now the concept of "inertia" for you is derived from motion, but as I explained already, "inertia" for me is derived from an observed temporal continuity of existence, a lack of change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Inertia is a positive quality - a resistance to change. So rest is the potential for a reaction to an action. Push a rock to get it to roll and it pushes right back.

But even if you just want to make the dichotomy the difference between passive and active, or static and changing, or inert and vigorous, it’s still about a dichotomy that defines some particular categorical spectrum of possibility in every case.

So, you mistakenly assume that the concept of inertia is derived from actual motion, when it is really derived from an assumption of rest, the foundational assumption that things will continue to exist in an unchanged way, as time passes. Now you have no approach toward understanding this foundational assumption, because you have excluded it from your conceptual structure by associating inertia with motion. And you support this conceptual structure with your foundational assumption that anything outside of this conceptual structure is "archaic metaphysics", which ought to be ignored. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are simply whinging about the fact that Aristotelian physics proved wrong and got corrected by Newtonian mechanics.

The idea that things could be at rest had to be extended to include inertial motion.

But even archaic physics was based on metaphysical dichotomies. The opposed motions of gravity and levity being a prime example.

Creative, if you have an argument, just bring it. Don’t pretend to expertise you can’t deliver.

But all "physical action", including what you call the two maximums, are by definition, within the category of motion. No type of action qualifies as rest. — Metaphysician Undercover

Err, inaction?

Remember inertia? The first derivative of motion? The big deal is that "rest" isn't actually not going anywhere. It is simply a relative lack of motion. A mass can spin or move in a straightline inertially. And it can appear to lack any action if pinned down by an inertial frame. But relativity means that there is no absolute frame which can underwrite a state of absolute rest. If you are moving inertially along with the object you mean to measure, you will both seem at rest. But even Galilean relativity says "seems" is the operative word. Rest is an idea that can be approached, but never absolutely, only relatively, achieved.

Quantum mechanics then tells us that every "resting object" has an uncertainty in terms of its position and momentum (that good old basic dichotomy!). QM tells us that even the empty vacuum has a zero point energetic jitter.

So in the actual physics of action, your presumptions about "rest" being anything else than an asymptotic limit on action is archaic metaphysics.

Then the other side of the coin is that absolute action - the opposite of rest - is bounded too. Nothing goes faster than c. Nothing can be hotter or more energy dense than the Planck-scale limit. The Planck constant, h, defines the fundamental quantum of action.

So post-classical physics is based on the discovery that existence sits suspended between two extremes - absolute action and absolute rest. Together, these are the limits of reality and so can themselves never be achieved.

If you want to keep playing word games, go ahead. But physics confirms my metaphysics in this discussion.

but it is obvious that an object is made of discrete parts, and the parts even overlap each other, — Metaphysician Undercover

So if discrete parts can overlap each other, then you have an interesting definition of "discrete" - one that seems to mean "continuous" as well.

But anyway, the reason mereology fails is that - as a hierarchical account - it is merely taxonomic and doesn't speak to an Aristotelian systems causality.

So in hierarchy theory proper, parts are shaped by wholes. Parts are formed by a functional constraints. Complexity develops by actually producing the simpler parts from which it can be constructed.

An example is bricks. To make construction simple, we shape sloppy and shapeless mud into dry and regular units. The functional constraint of desiring to build a house as easily as possible leads towards the shaping of the most suitable possible part - the repeating unit of a rectangular brick.

So a proper understanding of hierarchical causality sees parts as being emergent along with wholes. The functional desire expressed by the whole is what selects for the right kind of parts to construct that whole.

As I said earlier, a semiotic/process perspective on Being sees it as being about formal certainty regulating material instability. Global information causes local possibility to hang together as enduring structure.

This is the deal that hierarchy theory - based on Aristotelian four causes - recognises.

Mereology is a compositional hierarchy - the view from logical atomism. It's not a metaphysically interesting model.

I've read most of Aristotle's material, and I never saw anything about an object being glued together by a common purpose. I think maybe that's something you are just making up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Err...a house made of bricks?

Are you saying that all the components of my computer are glued to together by the common purpose of being a computer? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, when you go to the shop and buy one, isn't that rather your hope? Do you instead go to the counter and ask for various quantities of transistors and wires and LEDs? You carry home a bucket of parts and then proudly tell everyone you have a new computer?

Sure, my computer was built with intent, or purpose, but it is not the intent, which holds the parts together. Intent, or purpose, may be influential in inspiring a person to put parts together into a unity, but it is clearly not the glue which holds the parts together. — Metaphysician Undercover

I see. You want to be so literal about "glue" that you mean actual glue - the material/efficient cause for how to discrete things became one continuous thing?

Have fun with your careful misunderstandings!

So I have to oppose heat, which is motion, to what is other from it, and this is rest. Now I have a real dichotomy, motion and rest. All the degrees of heat, which are described by hot and cold are placed in the category of motion. Do you see the need for the category of rest, in order that we can account for the reality of things that stay the same through time? Isn't this what continuous means, staying the same through time, not changing? — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for explaining back to me my own argument. But why did you then tack on your wrong conclusion.

So yes, a more fundamental and well formed dichotomy is that of stasis~flux. Or absolute rest vs absolute motion.

Thus if we are talking about kinetics, temperature has this asymmetric direction. There is the spectrum of possible states that are anchored at the two ends of maximum physical action (the Planck heat) and minimum physical action (absolute zero).

The Cosmos then has a dimension of time as there is an irreversible directionality that points from one end of the spectrum - the creation that is the Big Bang - towards its eternal other, the matching timelessness that is the finality of the Heat Death. The Cosmos is a story of absolute change being constrained so as to become absolute unchanging rest by the end of time, thus expressing the Comos's continuity of purpose.

Physics only deals with the physical, and this is why we need to go beyond physics, to metaphysics, in order to relate this category of things which physics deals with (motion), to reality as a whole. You seem to want to pigeonhole all of reality into this one category "what physics understands", with total disregard for the obvious fact that physics is a very limited field of study in relation to the vast whole of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps you ought to brush up on Cosmology 101. You will see that metaphysics is seen as foundational to the physics.

(This really is an excellent introductory site).... http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast123/

A dichotomy is not a category. — creativesoul

Can you please supply the argument and all the working out that supports your conclusion. :-}

Meanwhile, just consider that there has to be some good reason why the philosophy of maths has settled on category theory - the dichotomy of structures and morphisms - as the fundamental basis of mathematical thinking.

I can see that you, like MU, are exercised about identifying the oneness, the inherent continuity, that permits one to speak of "a category" in the monistic singular.

Well stretch your grey matter a bit and you will understand the triadic story I've been providing.

What a dichotomy does is provide a singular definition of some spectrum of possibility, or a metaphysical-strength degree of freedom - that is, some axis or dimension along which reality could be measured.

So if you have the discrete~continuous as a dichotomy, that narrows down the messiness of existence to a fairly singular spectrum of "the possible". Possibility is now measured in terms of what lies in between these two bounding extremes. Possibility is in fact particularised in being made describable according to a particular view of one of actuality's definite categories of variety.

So discrete~continuous is a reduction of vague potential to some singular definite dimension of categorical generality. It is a particular slice across existence that encompasses then a spectrum of possible particulars.

Other metaphysical-strength dichotomies look to do the same thing from some different angle. Different categories of possibilities are revealed. Like the spectrum or measurable dimension that could exist between absolute chance and absolute necessity, or absolute one-ness and absolute multiplicity.

So in fact a dichotomy IS how metaphysical categories get defined. A category is a generality that speaks to single dimension of "acceptable" variety. It is a dimension along which open particularity gets suitably constrained.

I was under the false impression that you were reading my posts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your false impression would be that you made sense.

As I explained, defining a thing with its opposite doesn't ground it. We need to refer to something outside the category to give it meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are just trying to say that categories are monistic. I am pointing out that categories arise via triadic development.

And yes, mine is an internalist or immanent approach. That is the whole bleeding point.

Defining cold as the opposite of hot, and hot as the opposite of cold, does not tell us what it means to be either hot or cold. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've already said hot and cold are pretty weak as a "dichotomy". They are too symmetric and don't speak to some deeper asymmetry.

A strong definition of temperature is one that is concretely bounded. So a kinetic theory of temperature defines heat in terms of motion. From quantum theory, we can then see that motion is bounded by its contrary extremes of the Planck temperature or energy density, and the absolute zero which is the Heat Death or the "empty as possible" vacuum.

So physics understands temperature as a bounded spectrum. Opposing the hot and the cold is at least a start on getting to the root of the story. And now physics can define reality in terms of being bounded by the asymptotic limits of the absolutely hot and the absolutely cold.

So, are you arguing that to be continuous is to be nothing, or that there is nothing which is continuous? — Metaphysician Undercover

Damn! I was under the false impression that you were reading my posts.

Check back and you will see that a proper notion of "an object" is that it is continuous with itself and discrete from the world. So the absolute separation from the world is the logical source of being able to claim the matching fact that the object is absolutely continuous with itself.

This was illustrated by the duality of cardinality and ordinality. The one act secures both aspects. To the degree that an object is discrete from the world, it is continuous with itself and thus obeys your precious law of identity.

And then Janus pointed out how the category of the discrete~continuous connects to the category of the material~formal.

In the four causes Aristotelian view, formal cause is about constraint - the regulating presence of some enduring tendency, function or purpose. So organisms are defined as wholes rather than mere sets of parts because they are glued together by a common purpose. They have a generality or continuity that is real in being actually causal. That is why Aristotle could claim his hylomorphic substantialism. Form wasn't all accident. The glue of a purpose is what is essential to the continuity that makes anything an actual substance.

It boggles that you claim to be any kind of Aristotelian. You seem to have gone way past even Medievalist revisionism in your theistic wildness.

Reason is not contingent on language, so much as language is contingent on the ability to abstract. Apokrisis said that language might become established as ‘a habit of reference’ which might well be so - but hierarchical syntax is a step beyond pointing and making a sound about something. — Wayfarer

My position is that reason comes in grades of semiosis. So animals are reasoning creatures because the brain is organised by the kind of dichotomous principles that break the world down "intelligibly". The neurology of animals with brains exhibits a basic kind of reasonableness just in things like the opponent channel processing of the visual pathways. In Gestalt fashion, brains are designed to break the experience of the world into events vs contexts - create a rational view that sees the world as a collection of definite objects or entities.

The evolution of language then provided humans with another level of semiosis. A structure of grammar and cultural habit could be imposed on the neurology of the animal brain. We could start to see "a world of objects" through the lens of a collective social history. But traditional cultures aren't "rational" in the sense we mean by the kind of rationality which gets positively taught in modern literate society. The reasoning of the peasant can seem curious to a person educated in "the proper way to think".

And so rationality - in it most modern exalted sense - is the product of still higher grades of semiosis.

First the transition from oral to textual culture is a big step up. Writing forces a much greater rigour on speech acts in terms of tight and complete grammatical structure. Writing has to be able to bring to mind everything that is not actually present for the reader. So literacy has a big impact on "the habit of rationality".

Then after that comes the invention of logical and mathematical levels of semiosis. A new completely symbolic or abstract kind of language with a grammar to match. To be rational now means to think mechanically, in utterly constrained fashion - no room for vagueness or allusion. Ideas are constructed from arrangements of elements. Each step in an argument is as absolute as a computation.

So the definition of humans as reasoning animals does get at a major fork in the road - the huge departure that was the human evolution of articulate speech.

But because semiosis is always "reasonable", neuro-semiosis is a recognisably rational process. It is fundamentally dialectic. It is fundamentally "scientific" in being the production of beliefs which are held because they are measurably useful in achieving an organism's purposes.

So animals are rational in their simpler way too.

But then for the majority of their existence, humans weren't rational in the literate and logic-grammar sense. That is yet a further level of reasoning that only began to emerge 3000 years ago.

So if we want to define Homo sapiens in terms of a distinctive evolutionary break, it would be animal+language rather than animal+reason.

Once humans started painting pictures on walls, wearing bear claw necklaces and daubing themselves in ochre, then they had become symbolically organised social creatures. They were reasonable at a collective socio-cultural level of semiosis. They were using signs to take a shareable view of a "world of objects".

So far the idea of continuity has not been grounded. We really haven't agreed at all on a definition. You think it's at the opposite end of the spectrum from discrete, I think it is categorically different from discrete. — Metaphysician Undercover

So one of us has defined it by grounding it as the opposite of the discrete or the divided - the standard dictionary definition, as it happens.

The other of us says it is "categorically different", but can offer no good reason for that claim.

I say let's call this an honourable draw. >:O

Since inertial motion is completely defined by past constraints, and "degrees of freedom" is how you refer to the future, I do not see how inertial motion is at all consistent with any degree of freedom. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, you might not see it, but it's a definitional position in mechanics.

I would say that this is a conclusion which must be made, the divine Forms are particular, as property of one divine mind, and they are present to us as particular things. — Metaphysician Undercover

So this divine mind, is it the bit that is continuous? :-O

In physics, inertia is taken for granted, but this is inconsistent with your assumption of degrees of freedom. — Metaphysician Undercover

But inertial motion is a degree of freedom. So a particle is defined by having six degrees of freedom - three of translational momentum and three of angular momentum.

t is particulars which I was talking about. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think that the general sense of this would be that the Form of the individual thing exists in God's mind prior to it's material existence, such that the ideal — Metaphysician Undercover

So are you saying that the form in God’s mind is always completely particular?

Seems that this leads to more than a few problems regarding change - Janus’s point about the fact you are materially different every day.

Or else that is one hell of a helicopter parent you are imagining there.

I wouldn't equate unity with continuity at all, they seem quite incompatible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again as Janus reminds, continuity of function or purpose seems a trivially obvious reply.

What this adds up to for universals is that as forms of necessity they represent the rules and guideposts that limit and direct possibility: Universals represent all real possibilities. — Kelly Ross

It’s not hard to understand a constraints based approach to these hoary old chestnuts.

But I would add that universals represent the real possibility of a difference.

A universal is a generality and thus the potential for an act of particularisation or individuation. And a strong universal is talking about a dichotomous-strength difference. One that is bounded by mutually definitional limits.

A Pekingese is a dog. A dog is somewhat different from a wolf or fox, and rather more different than a rat or a cat. But the differences are weak or vague. A dog isn’t different to other animals in some absolute sense. So to call a dog a universal is rather a stretch.

A universal really ought to be speaking of properties we would predicate of being itself. The real business of metaphysics was working out the most basic possible divisions of nature - the symmetry breakings that could have got it going like discrete vs continuous, flux vs stasis, chance vs necessity, one vs many, matter vs form, etc.

the general sense of this would be that the Form of the individual thing exists in God's mind prior to it's material existence, such that the ideal Form is the cause of the thing's existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

So does God imagine trees in general, or the particular kinds of trees like oak and larch, or even each particular tree, such as all the individuals in an oak forest? Is there any limit to the particularity of his generality? Or alternatively, any limit to the generality of his particularity?

This is what I learned in grade school. Johnny has two apples, and Bobby has three apples. We describe this as a group of three (3), and a group of two (2). This is not described as five (5). But if we put them together (add them), then we have five (5). A group of three and a group of two is different from a group of 5. — Metaphysician Undercover

So do you think grade school philosophy of maths is sufficient for the questions raised here? Hmm, okay....

But the values united, as 5, is not the same thing as the five individual values, 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1. — Metaphysician Undercover

And the reason for that unity is....some kind of continuity? They were all scattered and part, now you have collected them altogether so they can be tallied within the one act of counting? They are not a disunity. Or something like that. :P

Because it states that if there are no differences between what appears as two distinct things, — Metaphysician Undercover

You meant, no essential difference.

Identity is a brute fact, — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course it is. :)

The law of identity doesn't have anything to do with individual identity as such, it's about logic. — Wayfarer

Even in logic, it is for reasoning about the particular. It axiomatically secures the PNC and LEM.

But then how is the principle of identity itself secured, except in distinction to the notions of vagueness and generality?

So here we now have the principle of indiscernibles - the idea that there are differences that don’t make a difference. A can now equal A to the measurable degree that someone agrees nothing essential is changed by the finer detail.

A man is still a man so long as his functional unity isn’t compromised too much by a missing arm, a micro-penis, or deaf-muteness.

All through this thread, MU and creative show how badly metaphysics can go astray in presuming identity as brute fact rather than being relative to some principled degree of indifference.

Mathematical thought has no problem specifying what counts as indiscernible, as I just explained with the entropic notion of a permutation symmetry.

So there is no real excuse for perpetuating a simple minded atomism or reductionism when it comes to the laws of thought. To apply predicate logic to issues of holistic metaphysics is always going to come up short.

Metaphysics has irreducible triadic complexity for a reason. That is how an immanent nature can bootstrap into being.

Look at the symbol, "5". Depending on how you choose to interpret this you could choose that it signifies one number, the number 5, which is a unity of parts, or you could choose that it signifies a multiplicity. However, the rules of interpretation which are required for mathematical proceedings. dictate that we interpret it as one unit. That is the essence of the symbol "5", that this particular multiplicity exists as one unit, represented as 5, so it is treated within mathematics as one unity. That's how it must be interpreted. If "5" were interpreted as a multiplicity, then each object within that multiplicity would have to be dealt with individually, and the mathematical process would be thwarted. So "5" represents a unity not a multiplicity, because this is what is required for proper mathematical proceedings. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your account needs to say something exact about why fiveness can be regarded as a unity. The continuity has to be explained on logical grounds, not simply treated as a matter of mathematical fiat. A meaningless convention.

Crucial to the notion of fiveness is that it is a permutation symmetry. The five parts that compose the whole can be swapped around without making any difference to their total number. The set has cardinality but not ordinality. And fiveness, in representing pure cardinality/complete lack of ordinality, thus can become itself an ordinal part. It can be placed after fourness and before sixness.

So even when dealing with a paradigmatic conception of atomistic discreteness - the integers or whole numbers - the dialectical logic of metaphysics applies. The fundamental story is the triadic one of a symmetry breaking.

The story goes that in the beginning is some higher state of symmetry - a vagueness or firstness. Then you get a symmetry breaking - the separation towards two mutually opposed bounds of possibility. Then finally you get the arrival at some equilibrium balance - the arrival at a limit to the symmetry breaking which is itself a return to a symmetry. Like a completely thermalised gas of ideal particles, a symmetry is restored in that while the particles continue to move about freely, the changes in position no longer make a difference. They express a permutation symmetry so far as the macroscopic or universal properties of the system go.

So the arc of development is the triadic one of symmetry, symmetry breaking, arrival at a balance where breaking ceases to break and so symmetry again rules.

If we are talking about our conception of numbers, we can see how we go from some conception of absolute unbroken unity - the One - to a conception of the many, the brokenness of multiple ones, and eventually arrive at a permutation symmetry in the sense of the many sets of ones where the internal arrangement makes no difference to the macroscopic state of the set. Five is five, regardless of how it’s composing ones are shifting about and swapping places.

But then ordinality emerges as a new property of this cardinality. The symmetry can be broken by a ranking in terms of some new concept of relative size. Some permutation sets are bigger or smaller than others.

Next stop, some conception of infinity that restores a new level of symmetry, finds a limit to counting sequentially. Counting now becomes a difference that can’t make a difference. Countability just becomes a generic macroscopic property of a counting system. Talk of individual acts of counting make no more sense than worrying about the microstates of a thermalised ideal gas.

So we have two levels of representation. The human mind produces the universal, which is an attempt to represent the divine idea. what is apprehended as the perfect universal. With the use of the universals which the human beings have created, they proceed to produce individual objects. Notice how the entire structure starts and ends with individuals. The divine, "Ideal" bed is an individual. The products produced by human beings are individuals. The "universal" is a medium between these two particulars, the ideal particular, and the material particular which the human being creates. — Metaphysician Undercover

How does this story work when we are talking about nature? Humans can invent notions about beds (and what use God would have for a bed is a mystery). But where is this double representation deal when it comes to an oak tree or a river?

Does the ur-oak tree and ur-river exists as a particular ideal in God’s mind? And how particular would it be, given variety seems an essential part of natural things? (Natural law always seems to have maximum generality according to scientific discovery at least.)

Then in what sense is material nature trying to make an ideal oak tree or ideal river? How is universality the medium connecting two individual representations. Does nature employ a mind when it produces its paler imitations of the divine ideal?

Ideas are mind-dependent.

Ideas are existentially contingent upon thought and belief.

Some ideas talk about things that we discover.

These things are not existentially contingent upon being discovered. — creativesoul

So all ideas about things are mind dependent and some ideas about things are mind independent.

Seems legit.

If we deny the need for a mereological principle we end up with apokrisis' systems approach. As a whole, or as a part, are two different ways of looking at the same thing. Whether it is related to a larger thing or to smaller things, determines whether it is a part or whether it is a whole. This denies the need for a mereological principle to account for unity, but a unity is just an arbitrary designation relative to one's perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

It makes mereology emergent rather than fundamental. So yes, ontically it gets the story the right way around. It explains how hierarchical organisation can arise in nature.

The problem I have with this, which I am trying to explain, is that if you place the opposing limits, within the same category, as "the continuous spectrum" which is assumed to be within that category, then these limits are not real. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well yes. A “category” is thus unambiguously defined in terms of what it is not. Being is shaped by its complementary limits. The polar extremes create an actual range that then allows the third thing of some particular or individuated position on a spectrum of possibility.

Studies of people in deep slow wave sleep show that they were experiencing a desultory kind of ruminative thought when woken. It’s hard to catch and not remembered. But as you say, neurons never stop firing. So the brain can only be turned down low, not shut down.

Is a computer program physical or non-physical? — tom

Like the tree that falls unheard in the woods, is what a computer program computes meaningful without an act of interpretance?

Observables demand observers. Von Neumann spelt out the logical problem that creates for naked physicalism.

The most convincing general argument for this irreducible complementarity of dynamical laws and measurement function comes again from von Neumann (1955, p. 352). He calls the system being measured, S, and the measuring device, M, that must provide the initial conditions for the dynamic laws of S. Since the non-integrable constraint, M, is also a physical system obeying the same laws as S, we may try a unified description by considering the combined physical system (S + M). But then we will need a new measuring device, M', to provide the initial conditions for the larger system (S + M). This leads to an infinite regress; but the main point is that even though any constraint like a measuring device, M, can in principle be described by more detailed universal laws, the fact is that if you choose to do so you will lose the function of M as a measuring device. This demonstrates that laws cannot describe the pragmatic function of measurement even if they can correctly and completely describe the detailed dynamics of the measuring constraints.

This same argument holds also for control functions which includes the genetic control of protein construction. If we call the controlled system, S, and the control constraints, C, then we can also look at the combined system (S + C) in which case the control function simply disappears into the dynamics. This epistemic irreducibility does not imply any ontological dualism. It arises whenever a distinction must be made between a subject and an object, or in semiotic terms, when a distinction must be made between a symbol and its referent or between syntax and pragmatics. Without this epistemic cut any use of the concepts of measurement of initial conditions and symbolic control of construction would be gratuitous.

"That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer. In the former, we can follow up all physical processes (in principle at least) arbitrarily precisely. In the latter, this is meaningless. The boundary between the two is arbitrary to a very large extent. . . but this does not change the fact that in each method of description the boundary must be placed somewhere, if the method is not to proceed vacuously, i.e., if a comparison with experiment is to be possible." (von Neumann, 1955, p.419)

https://www.informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/publications/pattee/pattee.html

I think in the classical understanding, ‘particulars’ are only considered to be real insofar as they are ‘instances’ of universals; so for example an individual is an instance of the species. In fact the sense in which individual things can be considered real is one of the basic factors behind the whole discussion. — Wayfarer

Yep. MU is suddenly now an anti-Aristotelian atomist for some reason. But to call a thing an individual is only to point to something that has been individuated, or in-formed.

But in case you haven't noticed, definitions are usually composed of defining terms, not synonyms. Red is defined as a colour, but this does not mean that "red" and "a colour" are synonymous. — Metaphysician Undercover

I realise you are just pissing about, but it is not a problem that a nested hierarchy of classification - one dependent on the bifurcating exactness of dichotomies - results in genus~species relations, or levels where the one is represented in terms of the many.

That was kind of the (Aristotelian) point. If you have a division defined in terms of opposing limits, then you also get the continuous spectrum of possibility that lies between.

So even with something as psychological as colour, if we have black and white as the limiting opposites - the extremes which lack particular hue - then we get a continuous spectrum of all the hues in-between.

So colour arises between two uncoloured limits. White is all colours. Black is no colours. Then in-between we can count an almost unlimited variety of colours. With three-cone vision supporting a doubled-up set of opponent channel processing - a red~green channel and a yellow~blue channel - we don't get an actual infinity of hues. But we can discriminate hues in their millions.

Of course colour and red don't refer to phenomena at the same hierarchical level.

Colour is one of a variety of sensory modalities. Sensory modalities are the spectrum of possibility created by a more general dichotomy at the level of basic neural logic. In neurology, it is usual to oppose sensation to motor action - input vs output. Sensation involves some general semiotic neuro-receptor transduction which turns physical energies into useful information - a pattern of spikes.

Then red, as I said, is a particular that is "species to the genus" that is colour experience. But red is itself, in turn, a universal - a primary - in terms of colour experience. And that can again be seen directly from the dichotomous logic the brain employs to make reality intelligible. Red stands opposed to green in the circuits of the visual pathway. Neurons will respond to an absence of green as if they were seeing the presence of red.

That is why we look at the brain as a rather logical device. It reasons in precisely the way I say metaphysics reasons. Neuroanatomy finds that the best way to understand reality is dialectically. Not-green = red, and red = not-green. And by defining green~red in terms of limiting extremes in this fashion - repeating the black~white discrimination that is the more general - redness and greenness are sub-universals so far as colour vision goes (along with blue and yellow). As each others limit, they together anchor the range of colour experience we discover inbetween.