That's not true. I do not concede that sets A = {1, 2, 3} and B = {4, 5, 6} have an element in common. — Magnus Anderson

No. You concede that what the sets have in common is the claim of being elements of the set of all sets that have no elements in common.

So what you concede is the hierarchy of constraints that is the basis of your argument. All elements are really just sets of elements. That is the logical structure to which you appeal.

And that's fine. I'm all for ontic strength structuralism.

But there is then your implied promise of being able to cash out the "elemental" at some ground zero level. And that becomes logical atomism. We already know that to be a busted flush.

The elements of reality have to be cashed out by acts of measurement. If you are really "Heisenbergian" as you briefly claimed, you would get this. The elements of reality boil down to the questions we seem to be able to ask of nature - the ones that return some concrete sign, like a binary yes or no.

That is what the information theoretic perspective is about. Does reality return the sign of a 1 or a 0 when asked some particular question.

And as I say, acts of measurement are themselves informal, not part of the logical structure used to generate good questions.

It might be a good question to ask if that apple in your basket is really a pear. But whether we decide on closer examination to read the reality as "pear" or "apple" remains an epistemic choice.

In the end, we can only satisfy ourselves as to what is the proper symbol - a 1 or 0 - to the degree we choose some end-point to inquiry. To make that translation of reality into information, we have to apply the principle of indifference as a matter of art. It comes down to a judgement that works, not a judgement that is based on some objective "fact of the matter".

Noone cares whether the fruit is ripe or unripe. In fact, noone cares whether what appears to be a fruit is a real fruit or just a toy that looks like a fruit. That's your problem. — Magnus Anderson

You keep speaking for this mysterious "no-one". But clearly you have a very big problem if you want to claim that these are differences that make no difference.

Not least of all because you immediately contradicted your whole position by admitting that differences can fail to make a difference. Ie: You already concede the principle of indifference as your basis for trying to contest it.

A curious logical move at best.

I think that obscurantism is a more fitting name for your position. — Magnus Anderson

I think you confused yourself by trying to maintain a simplicity rife with inherent contradictions.

I mean, what was with that Heisenberg claim?

What you're doing here is you are pretending you are comparing sets A and B when in reality you are comparing sets that are not A and B but that are sufficiently similar to A and B. Properly speaking, you are comparing sets {1, 2, 3, belongs to some other set} and {4, 5, 6, belongs to some other set}. These two sets, you are right, are not absolutely different. However, they are not sets A and B. They are different, albeit similar, sets. — Magnus Anderson

Great. You concede the point. We're getting somewhere.

And as you say, this applies all the way up and all the way down.

Now if we are talking about some set of elements - actual baskets of fruit - then how do we know that the apple in one is actually an "apple"? It could be a rather unripe and round pear.

We can set up logical descriptions that account for nature in terms of claimed hard distinctions - the LEM applies. Something is either the same or different in terms of a more generic classification. We can demand binary boundaries that carve nature at its joints. It all works pretty well.

But the act of measurement, the act of propositional "truth-making", is always an informal business. It is a matter of judgement where to draw the line when we come to borderline cases - like the apple that might just as well be a masquerading pear.

That is, the principle of indifference applies. The very fact we can claim to make measurements, satisfy propositions, is based on our always claiming the right to ignore any details we decide not to matter. We grant ourselves as much flexibility about what counts as we think we need.

Pragmatism rules. As it ought.

interpretation is always done by a subject. — Wayfarer

Interpretation might be always subjective or a point of view, but isn't it a reification to insist on the existence of a subject who does the interpreting? Is it wrong to say the subjective arises via the process of interpretation?

And then in accepting the primacy of "a point of view", what are we to make of the notion of a maximally generic point of view? What kind of "mindfulness" or "divinity" would be involved in the Universe having "a point of view"?

So as usual, I do seek to take the deflationary path without just simply rejecting the mind, or the divine, out of hand. However, it still is a deflationary story.

It is that faculty which attributes or discerns meaning; which means, it actually rather close to the 'active intellect' of the classical tradition of Western philosophy. — Wayfarer

But that is the complexly developed knower. That is the knower modelling a world in a fashion which in fact creates "a knower" as a transcendent self with a purpose. That is a knower able to impose his will on nature.

So it is that knower which I seek to deconstruct to metaphysical simplicity. That is the pan-semiotic project. The question becomes how is the Cosmos itself a kind of memory structure that is dissipating vagueness and becoming crisply developed due to the accumulation of a weight of constraints.

But we don't know what that 'knower' is, because it's never an object of perception, it's never a 'that' to us; trying to say what it is, is like the hand trying to grasp itself or the eye trying to see itself, which is impossible on account of the 'epistemic cut' you refer to, which is the 'gordian knot' of existence. — Wayfarer

We can't actually put our hands on this self. But it arises as that part of experience which constructs the world as its contrast. So the self is "there" when the world is "there". They both emerge sharply in experience to the degree that reality is being interpreted.

So it seems like the self should be another object of perception. And we pretty much succeed in making it feel like that. It is necessary that this is so for "us" to be aware of "the world".

But yes, in the final analysis - as we drill down to discover the primal division - we discover the self, along with "the world", slipping away. Instead of finding a fundamental duality of mind and world, we just discover a generalised vagueness. The self is revealed as just an emergent construct, along with its co-construct, our notion of "the world" as formed in a system of sharp signs.

Contemplative mysticism dissolves that knot through 'union' - in Eastern spiritual traditions, 'union' is conceived not in theistic terms of the 'unio mystica' but in (shall we say) more naturalistic terms, whereby the aspirant realises his/her own being (atma) as to be fundamentally on par with the being of the cosmos (brahman). That is the elaborated in such modern Vedanta texts as the Teachings of Ramana Maharishi. — Wayfarer

I agree that Eastern metaphysics - especially dependent co-arising - is close to what I mean by pansemiosis. But the key difference is that semiosis accounts for the ratcheting memory mechanism by which complexity does get stabilised and so doesn't simply collapse.

This is the important metaphysical advance.

So you run away from the question? You don't want to risk saying your sets are the same in this regard? You pretend instead that this would be irrelevant?

Cool. ;)

No signs without minds, — Wayfarer

You mean without interpretance and a world?

And what does interpretance boil down to? I agree that is a tricky issue. But it seems the productive question in opening up a new and interesting avenue for philosophy.

Interpretance starts with having some sort of memory, some sort of encoding machinery, some sort of epistemic cut.

Turing boiled down computation to something mathematically universal. There is hope interpretance would yield to a similar bare bones understanding.

Or have you already decided there is no interpretance without "the feeling of what it is like to be interpreting". :)

Actually I found a quotation on a reference site about ‘objective idealism’ which puts it well: — Wayfarer

Yep. Metaphysics which attempt to to make reality objectively dependent on the mind, or the divine, don't pan out. But a metaphysics that makes reality objectively dependent on the sign - the possibility of a semiotic sign relation - are a way to bridge the familiar divide.

There's no point in my attempting to address your arguments because they are based on starting assumptions I don't accept (the most glaring of which is that the axioms of your system are not assumptions at all but are somehow self-evident)... — Janus

So I said that naturalism presumes hierarchies founded in ultimate simplicity. You are free to challenge that presumption as well as its consequences for your view. But the fact that it is the generic definition of naturalism is rather a problem if you want to claim some variety of immanent explanation here.

And then likewise, I would only believe in the presumptions of naturalism to the degree that they check out. That is what seems reasonable, wouldn't you say. Or do you not even accept an evidence-backed approach to belief?

If your views boil down to your personal faith, then of course - by definition - you seek no common ground here. Or at best, you can only hope that I find that I want to believe them too because of their aesthetic appeal.

So this thread was about an information theoretic view of reality. And the key thing is that information allows us to treat all reality as a composition of "atoms of form".

That is what modern information theory is about - the surprising quantum fact that reality is atomised at base. And atomised not in terms of matter, but in terms of form.

What limits reality at the foundational level is that top-down constraint turns out to be "grainy". There is a fundamental size to differences. So that means reality is composed of the smallest possible broken symmetries, or degrees of freedom, not the smallest possible "uncuttable" fragments of matter, as conventional atomism suggested.

Materiality pretty much drops out of the picture as a result. So far as we need a theory to explain nature's variety, it is a physical fact that it is constraints all the way down. Particles emerge due to contextual causes. And there is a foundational grain where this in-forming reaches its indeterministic limit - the Planck-scale.

This is why particles are fundamentally unstable - any particle could become any other if the Cosmos is small and hot enough. And yet also, some particles can become utterly stable as the Cosmos cools and expands. It is their formal properties, their internal symmetries, that mean they can't be broken down into anything simpler. At the Planck-scale limit, particles are like knots or twists caught in a solidified fabric. They are directions of action that have become crystallised.

So it is form all the way down. Until order reaches the Planck-scale and then you just have quantum vagueness - unbound material fluctuation.

The information theoretic view applies this to spacetime itself, not just its "material contents". Every point in the vacuum dissolves into unbounded fluctuations if you zoom in close enough for it to be hot enough. The particular forms - like electrons or protons - disappear from sight to leave only a sea of virtual particles, a zoo of all possible forms, all possible symmetry-breakings.

This means we can now use information theory to count the Universe in terms of its maximum density of "informational locations" - the volume of degrees of freedom, or entropy, it could possibly contain. We can count every potential atom of form - both the empty locations and the ones filled by some particle - and describe reality as a rule-following pattern of bits.

This informational view of reality bypasses the issue of whether the degrees of freedom are meaningful or meaningless. The semantics is a higher level issue.

Semantics is the further act of making an interpretation - sorting a pattern of bits into the categories of signal vs noise. The information theoretic perspective just grounds our view of reality in terms of the total possible information content of a spatiotemporal volume.

And it is an astonishing fact discovered by physics that the information content of the world does have this strict quantum lower limit. It has been shown that reality is formed by constraints all the way down. At the bottom level, even spacetime is composed of atoms of form. Beyond that, lies only radical indeterminism.

I don't think naturalism has to be defined in terms of science, but rather in terms of what is immanent to human experience. — Janus

Naturalism presumes a world regulated by its fundamental laws. So it is a hierarchical vision where the complex arises from the ultimately simple.

Science embraces that understanding of the natural. It all starts with some bottom-level simplicity.

If you want to argue for some kind of immanent theism, then any notion of the mind, the divine, the spirit, would have to have the same character. It would have to be spoken of as an ultimate simplicity with the potential to become complexly developed.

Human experience is complexly developed. So whatever is "in it" - like a self and its experiences - is already too much.

Science is only one part of human experience, so what is immanent to human experience would also include aesthetics and ethics, religion and the divine. — Janus

And so all those things would be suspect as they would be the products of an already complex state of organisation. There is no grounds for claiming them to be suitably primal.

By the time anything appears in a human mind, it is long past being connected to a fundamental level of existence.

Science of course is our method for turning our thoughts and observations towards the fundamental. It is how we can hope to drill down towards whatever turns out to be actually primal.

It's been a huge success in this regard.

Since the proposal of the theory of evolution by natural selection we have come to realize that human beings are products of natural processes, just like every other organism. So why wouldn't humans and their creations be considered natural? If bird nests are natural things, then why aren't human homes? — Harry Hindu

Naturalism opposes itself to the supernatural in that it claims all four causes of being are immanent, not transcendent. So it lays heavy emphasis on lawful self-organisation.

The artificial would then be creations within the natural world that are not the product of holistic self-organisation. Their existence would be the result of causes transcendent to them - particular formal and final causes.

So the machines humans make are artificial in that sense. They are not organisms but are engineered. Cars and laptops can't spontaneously self-organise or grow, develop and replicate. They are artificial in being designed to be completely constrained, with no internal degrees of freedom and thus no autopoietic possibilities for change or adaptation.

Cars used to be more natural. They rusted pretty easily. But now they are so plastic that that freedom has been taken away.

Thus it is easy to define the artificial. It lacks four cause self-organisation. It lacks a dynamical dependence on its context. It lacks holism in being crafted.

Like all dichotomies, the difference between the artificial and the natural would only be relative. It would define a spectrum of possibilities. So there would be borderline cases.

A bird's nest is a clear borderline case. And more on the side of the artificial than the natural when it comes to fancy constructions made of mud, woven with chambers, or decorated with collected shiny objects. A more natural nest would be perhaps bent foliage - just nature momentarily flattened into a bowl.

So naturalism vs supernaturalism is an absolute claim. You can't have a little bit of transcendence anymore than you can be a little bit pregnant.

But natural vs artificial is a relative claim. Even laptops and cars are still prone to natural processes like entropification. We can build them, but nature can still express its more general desires and find ways to erode them, like cosmic rays, or floods, or earthquakes, or whatever.

But these two sets do not have "being a set" as an element. — Magnus Anderson

Do these two sets belong to the set of all sets that have no elements in common?

I don't care about QM. — Magnus Anderson

Good luck with your classical realism then.

You have yet to show to me how two well-defined portions of reality that are evidently different in all regards are in fact not different in all regards. — Magnus Anderson

I thought you had to show me two well-defined portions of reality which share nothing in common first. Good luck on that. You've been strangely silent on things like the issue of the collapse of the wavefunction so far.

We distinguish necessities from accidents based on our purpose or intent. — Metaphysician Undercover

Except now we are talking about what the Cosmos thinks about the issue. How does it understand the difference between the necessary and the accidental?

Oh come on, you cannot distinguish what is necessary from what is accidental by reference to the genome. That's nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

If it's all a matter of viewpoint, why do you refuse to generalise your very subjective notion of viewpoint? Why are you so violently opposed to an immanent naturalist metaphysics?

I am not arguing against what you call "the principle of indifference". I am arguing against your claim that there is no such thing as absolute difference. — Magnus Anderson

I'm asking you to think about what viewpoint justifies talking about any absolutes here.

This is the standard problem of a physicist description of material reality. Physics keeps finding that "everything" is only relative. Absolutism keeps melting away and proving only to be an emergent limit. And so I adopt a metaphysics that accounts for that kind of reality.

You keep responding in terms of the predicate logic, the laws of thought, which are designed for reasoning about concrete particulars. And so they take reality to be constituted of parts that are crisp and definite. Things can be absolutely the same, or absolutely different, in the simple-minded fashion you try to demonstrate with set theory. The axiom of choice just applies, no problems.

But the physical facts don't support such a view. The physical facts say that is just the sufficiently coarse-grain approximation. It is a point of view from somewhere in the low energy/large scale middle of things - the classical scale of reality modelling.

You are then falsely extrapolating from a low energy/large scale view to a view universal enough to include the indeterministic quantum foundations of the Cosmos. Congrats by the way if you can do that. You'll get the Nobel for finding the solution to quantum gravity for a start.

So there are two metaphysical views in contention here. I'm pointing out that your logic and its associated classical ontology just don't apply in the final analysis. They are an excellent duo for the middle ground description of what we experience. But we already know a different logic is needed for the actual universalised view of a quantum-based reality.

I also disagree with your claim that reality is not composed of concrete particulars. I have to note that this claim does not follow from "the principle of indifference" either. — Magnus Anderson

It's the other way round. We know from close observation of reality that it doesn't conform to our simplistic logic.

Your ontological vagueness merely introduces vagueness. It makes things unnecessarily complicated. I see no reason for it. — Magnus Anderson

So you are arguing against the principle of indifference by telling me all about how you personally choose to apply it. Congrats.

Could you elaborate on the use of "care" in this context? — Wayfarer

I'm simply saying I accept a causal ontology in which finality always plays a real part. That finality may seem completely attentuated - as in when talking about the entropic desire of the Second Law. But it is still considered real, even if only a material tendency and not a semiotic relation (as in an organismic function or purpose).

See, your principle of indifference doesn't allow that this difference is real. What I claim is fundamental to reality, particulars, with differences, you are saying is just an illusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hardly. It allows me to distinguish between accidents and necessities for a start.

Is an oak tree still an oak tree if it is bent and twisted, blasted by lightning, ravaged by pests?

We are right to say an oak tree is an oak tree because we can point to some shared information - a genome and a history of adaptation which that genome represents. So the genome stands for what is necessary. And then that defines what are merely accidents that particularise oak trees - the differences in form that make this one distinct from that one. It is a matter of indifference if one oak tree has a broken limb, or a different pattern of branching, or whatever.

So my approach introduces a sound basis for separating reality into its formal necessities and accidental differences. Forms, constraints, bounds or limits are "real" to the degree that they "care".

Now humans can pretend they care about absolutely every detail. You can take the point of view where the slightest crinkle in the 1001st leaf of an oak tree is enough to distinguish it from its twin. There is no limit that you are willing to place on your ability to care.

Fine. That is a very idealistic and absolutist philosophical position. It is a very familiar stance, being the reductionism that underlies the classical mechanical/atomistic view of reality.

But here I am talking about a full Aristotelian four causes view of reality, one that is based on systems thinking or holism. This seeks to distinguish between formal necessities and material accidents. And so it talks of the constraints that encode a finality or general desire.

The flip-side of this is then that the constraints must also encode a limit to that desiring. The principle of indifference is what makes finality even possible. It says desires can be satisfied well enough for the purpose in mind. The fact that we can care is made a definite causative fact by their being, in complementary fashion, a limit to the degree we need to care. Accidents can be allowed to happen once they don't make a difference.

So your approach to this is metaphysically lop-sided. You want to argue for the primacy of form and finality. Yet in pretending that all differences can matter equally, you talk yourself into an incoherent position.

Ambiguity is never removed in an absolute way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right. So as I was saying about the principle of indifference....

However, in any case, he would miss the point because he would be comparing portions of reality that we are not interested in. — Magnus Anderson

Right. So as I was saying about the principle of indifference....

I find your argument to be illogical.

OK. So I am saying that out there in the real world, there is only dissimilarity in the limit.

Absolute difference is a “thing” only in the sense of being the limit towards which reality can approach, yet never actually reach.

This is supported by the various fundamental physical laws that science has arrived at.

A merely logical argument against my position doesn’t hold water here. Likewise, saying that humans can impose measurement frames on the Cosmos is not an argument as all such frames are based on choices and so on the principle of indifference. Coordinate systems are mathematical conveniences, not the material reality of which I speak.

What physical evidence do you have to offer that says material being can reach either the limit of the exactly alike in all possible respects, or the exactly unalike in all possible respects?

Your replies are all over the shop. Focus a minute. What essential point do you mean to dispute? I can’t see one.

Seems you are trying to build a lot from some logical contrivance when the conversation is about physical reality.

Really, all your responses are off the point.

Does the Cosmos care about your centimetres? What is it that makes a difference from the Universe’s point of view?

Two objects are said to be completely different if they have nothing in common. Are you saying there is no such a thing as two objects that have nothing in common? — Magnus Anderson

I think you will find that objects have being objects in common. Sets have being sets in common. Etc.

If I’m stating a fact, I’m speaking in signs.

And yes, I can mean to speak of the facts of the world. That is the realism in the indirectness.

What I make, I will call "banana bread", and what you make, you will call "banana bread". But what I make, and what you make are not both the same thing, they are similar. — Metaphysician Undercover

Jeez. And so you agree that there are differences that don't make a difference!

Sameness - like difference - is just the idealised limit. All real things are never absolutely the same, nor absolutely different. They are just relatively alike or relatively unalike.

Where is the problem?

OK, ordinary probability is fine. So if I roll a 7 with a pair of dice, does it make a difference if I roll a 4 and a 3 instead of a 2 and a 5?

Sometimes differences don’t make a difference. And that is determined by the context.

So the probabilistic view accepts no two things are the same. But then the differences might not count.

Under the LEM, I either threw a 7 or I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter how that 7 was composed ... unless you introduce some further constraint that makes it a particular concern.

In just the same way, you are still the same MU you were a month ago ... even if most of your atoms got swapped by the continuous metabolic turnover of your parts.

Without the principle of indifference, our ordinary world metaphysics would indeed be weird.

There is no such thing as a difference which doesn't make a difference. That is contradiction. If it has been identified as a difference, then by that very fact, it has made a difference. That's the point of my argument. To say that there is a difference which does not make a difference is pure sophistry, it's self-deception if you believe that. — Metaphysician Undercover

You sound so Old Testament about this. Yes, it may all be horribly wrong in your chosen metaphysics, but it follows simply from a probabilistic view of reality.

The principle of indifference is a fundamental constraint on actuality in that view. It explains why we get the “weird” statistics of quantum entangled states and the quantum indistinguishability of particles among other things.

So sure. Reality appears composed of concrete particulars. But the emphasis is on appears. It isn’t really.

I was reading a nice article on Peirce/Schelling/Hegel/Emerson that you guys might appreciate. It says something deep about a "philosopher's" notion of the divine.

Returning to the Unformed: Emerson and Peirce on the “Law of Mind”, John Kaag
http://www.pucsp.br/pragmatismo/dowloads/lectures_papers/kaag-paper-04-10-12.pdf

The gist is that Hegel is like all those who make ontological arguments that presume the intelligibility of the world must reflect the already existing intelligibilty of a comprehending and reasoning mind.

But really, ontology has to start by facing the "monstrous ground" of the unformed. Pure indeterminancy or spontaneity.

Any creation story has to begin with uncomprending irrationality as its basis.

At the beginning of Peirce’s “Law of Mind,” he makes a statement that all of us know: “I have begun by showing that tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology, in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products of growth, and a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere specialized and partially deadened mind." Perhaps we are less familiar with Emerson’s comment at the beginning of his “Laws of Mind” in 1870 when he states that, “I am of the oldest religion.
Leaving aside the question which was prior, egg or bird, I believe the mind is the creator of the world, and is ever creating; - that at last Matter is dead Mind.” Peirce suggests that this intellectual overlap between himself and Emerson – about matter being “deadened mind” – was a function of their shared indebtedness to German idealism, and I would argue, particularly to Schelling.

...For Schelling, they were meant to signal a break from the idealism of Hegel, which involved the working out of a well-articulated notion of reason. Schelling’s positive philosophy sought to systematically describe the relationship between the self and the objective world, like most idealist writings of his time, but it also required an account freedom that was not found in Hegel. For Schelling, as opposed to many other idealists of the time, the “alpha and the omega of philosophy was freedom.” Freedom depended on a type of existential contingency that could not be reduced to Hegelian self-mediation.

...For Schelling, as opposed to Hegel, one of these preconditions of freedom is difficult to articulate because it is the “unformed,” or what Schelling often calls the abyss or Abgrund. It is this abyss of the
unformed that serves as the curious ground, or more literally, the groundless ground, of freedom for Schelling.

...Here we begin to get a sense of what Peirce meant by “being stricken” by the “monstrous mysticism of the East.” With these eastern traditions comes a monster: the unspeakable notion that appears in Schelling’s Essay on Human Freedom, namely the idea of the Abgrund. Commentators of Peirce, such as Niemoczynski brush up against the meaning of the Abgrund (which I think he accurately identifies, following Heidgegger, as the ontological difference between nature natured and nature naturing), but he then quickly turn to the closely related concept of Firstness, which he defines as the “potentiating ground” of existence.
A surprisingly large amount is then said about Firstness – how it is possibility, potentiality, “an infinitude that sustains, enables, and empowers all else” (124) By the time we return to the topic of the Abgrund, we find, according to Niemoczynski, that “like Firstness, it remains a pre-rational ground of feeling and possibility lying incomprehensibly at the basis of all thing.”
But then he goes one step further, and perhaps one step too far: the Abgrund is the place “where the life of God swells and surges forth from within ontological difference.” I believe that this theistic reading of the Abgrund, which is certainly consonant with Boehm and Schelling, is misleading if attributed to Peirce.
Certainly, Peirce writes the “Law of Mind” on the heels of his often-cited mystical experience, at a point where he even self-identifies as a religious man, perhaps for the first time. That being said, I am uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable, with something about this reading, namely that it invites to us rest in rather comfortable philosophical conclusion, to develop a system of religious naturalism with clean hands.
Peirce was many things, but he was not restful, and he did not have clean hands. Indeed, a quick look at his papers at Houghton Library makes one thing perfectly clear: his hands were always dirty and always moving. Approaching, experiencing, recoiling from the Abgrund, the name of the unnamable. Repeatedly. Ceaselessly. If Peirce regarded the Abgrund as the locus of God’s life, this fact did not translate into his development of a well articulated religious naturalism (like Robert Corrington’s) or a systematic philosophy (like Robert Neville’s). No, the Abgrund remained, for Peirce at least, necessarily monstrous. It repels and repels repeatedly.
This explains why Peirce and Emerson remained unwilling to systematize existence. They believed that the “unformed” of existence called for a particular kind of response. Emerson writes that “To Be is the unsolved, unsolvable wonder. To Be, in its two connections of inward and outward, the mind and nature. The wonder subsists, and age, though of eternity, could not approach a solution.” Analysis is not sufficient to approach a solution. The best that one can do is dwell in the problem.

...Figuratively speaking, a monster can be any object of dread or awe, anything with a repulsive character. The Abgrund, however, is no object. In fact, it is no-thing at all. How can no-thing at all be
monstrous?
Perhaps a word from Emerson in 1870 might help us understand: “Silent…Nature offers every morning her wealth to Man. She is immensely rich; he is welcome to her entire goods. But she speaks no word, will not as much as beckon or cough only this – she is careful to leave all her doors ajar, - towers, hall, storeroom, and cellar. If he takes her hint, and uses her goods, she speaks no word. If he blunders and starves she says nothing” (bMS Am 1280 212 (1) Harvard Lectures. Introduction “In Praise of Knowledge”).
To one that listens with all ears (to a listener like Peirce) “saying nothing” and being-silent is truly monstrous.

...For Peirce, the groundless ground, the Abgrund, serves as a warning and reminder to those that would like to tell exhaustive and determinate stories about existence, human or otherwise. It poses an unshakable question to those in search of hard and fast answers.

Apokrisis, following Peirce argues that there is vagueness, and violation of the law of non-contradiction which is an inherent aspect of all universals, it is essential to universals. — Metaphysician Undercover

If a difference doesn't make a difference, is it really a difference?

The Laws of Thought are framed for dealing with actual differences - differences that make a difference in relation to some generality. So particulars exist in that they contradict some generality. They only partake in that generality in a specific way.

A white horse and a white rhino are both white animals. So is the fact of their being a horse and a rhino a difference that makes a difference qua the universality of the class of "white animals"? Is it not a pointless distinction to say they are different kinds of animals in this context?

And remember that vagueness and generality are not the same in Peirce's view. They are dialectical opposites.

The vague is where distinctions don't even apply as there is no general context, no formative constraints, against which any such judgement could be made. The PNC has nothing to latch on to.

And the general is where all distinctions are subsumed under a common identity. As with the notion of whiteness applied across the class of animals. No particulars are excluded as the general can include them all within its class. Therefore now it is the LEM that has nothing to latch on to. And that becomes definitional of generality.

I defined indirect in saying that we see signs and not facts. I defined indirect as a triadic interpretive process rather than a dyadic observational one.

If you couldn’t get that from my post then I’ll leave it there.

I'm not following your point.

Peirce likewise was not an atheist, although the spiritual side of Peirce is not mentioned much by his scientific affeciandos. — Wayfarer

It doesn't matter much that Peirce was a believer of some kind any more that it does Newton, Darwin and Einstein were.

As to exactly what kind of theist Peirce might have been - or the various stages that went through - that is a tough question. He wasn't your usual.

His biographers note the strong influence of Emersonian transcendentalism in his circle at the time.

Here's Peirce himself saying he was reared in Cambridge at a time: "when Emerson, Hedge,
and their friends were disseminating the ideas that they had caught from Schelling, and
Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or from God knows what minds stricken with the
monstrous mysticism of the East.”

They couldn’t maintain the code, which had been very heavily customised over many years, — Wayfarer

That seems the likely story. But Porat is still listing it as part of his investment portolio. So all part of some grander clickbait marketing strategy?

http://mutually.com/trending/

Our investments include CringeChannel, BioArts, CyberDissidents, iBeatyou, Indiegiftbox, Loot app, Memegen, Occupywallstreet, Philosophyforums & Thedatingring

https://angel.co/innovate

Zombie PF lingers on in fine company!

I haven't denied that the modes of our experience are culturally mediated, but there must be raw experience that underlies that. You can experience that yourself if you just gaze out your window without thinking about anything. — Janus

As I've just posted, I don't find it possible to literally "not think about anything". And neuroscience explains why that would be the case.

When we sleep, our brain really does try to shut down.

In REM sleep, the brain is active yet the sensory gates are slammed shut at the brainstem. Yet then we erupt with bright imagery and a confused narrative chase after some thread of story.

And even in n-REM sleep, where the neural activity is turned as low as possible, there is still a desultory inner chatter - a meandering disjointed ruminative thinking.

A conditioned brain can't just uncondition itself.

So there are good grounds for disputing your claims that there can be "raw experience" in some foundational sense.

Sure, we can be less talky. We can turn our attention towards a peaceful world and away from our interior chatter. We can lose ourselves in sport, or music, or dance or other absorbing forms of action.

But none of this answers neurologically to an idea of "raw experience".

'There is, however, an unconditioned, an unmade, an unfabricated. Were there no unconditioned, unmade, unfabricated, there would be no escape from the made, the conditioned, the fabricated' — Wayfarer

Yeah. There is no escape from it. And the question is why would one even want to escape from it?

If you do Zen, you will know that you can't actually still the mind. Your inner voice is always itching to yap away. Your training to ignore it, let it go, not pursue it, focus on something as unstimulating as possible, is only an attempt to get it to fade into the background a while.

Once you are shaped by linguistic habits, it is only natural for the brain to want to generate a linguistic response to every attentive moment. Whatever is passing through focus demands some kind of spoken comment. It is no different from seeing objects in the world and automatically having the start of the thought of what to do physically. See an axe and already your mind will be leaping to axe-wielding feelings and actions.

So Zen imagines what the mind might be like if it stopped doing what it was designed for. The mind is designed to find some meaningful point of focus in any instant and become flooded with the behavioural responses most appropriate. These include vocal framing responses in humans. We've already got to be getting going with the commenting as part of "being conscious".

That makes a philosophy of Zen very odd to me. I can accept that meditation may be very good for the modern mind. We now have a culture that could be said to be ridiculously wordy. The weight of comment we want to pack in to cover off every passing instant of awareness might be uncomfortably unbalanced. So unwinding back to a more unconditioned state would be a valuable skill to have in that context.

But to make a complete unwinding of the thinking self a cultural goal would be a strangely self-denying one. For me, the "highest plane" would be the balanced state of a mind well adapted to its world. So not too much talk, and not too little.

If Zen is understood as gaining control over that balance, then that makes sense. But note how that is then a meta- state. It is the gaining of control by stepping back another level to discover the variety to be controlled. So it is not about actually returning to some more primal state. It is about stepping back to make decisions on where on a spectrum of less considered states you might want to set your current state. You now have to have a clear idea of what you don't want to be so as to be the thing you do want to be.

Being "primal" is thus even less primal in being comprehended or measured in terms of what it is not. To achieve that kind of mastery is indeed a higher state of consciousness in being more meta-.

As usual, you miss the fact that subject (that which we say perceives) and object (that which we say is perceived) are both part of the experience. — Magnus Anderson

But that is what I am saying. That is what makes knowledge indirect.

We don't see the world directly - which would be a simple dyadic relation of self and world. We see it indirectly via a system of sign. It is a triadic relation. In-between me and the world are the states of sensation which represent to me the world as I could best understand it in terms of my goals and needs.

So the red I experience stands on the side of the experience. The world isn't actually coloured. It just scatters patterns of radiant energy. At the first step of the retina, this energy is transduced into a neural signal, some change in firing rates of a network of cells. The result is that I see the red of the post-box. It serves to sum up the world in a way that is ecologically useful.

Red and green are barely any different as actual quantities of energy. Red light is about 700 nanometres in frequency. Green is about 540nm. So even if the world reflected an even balance of both, an eye that just registered the energetic content of light would struggle to tell different "colours" apart.

But the visual pathways are set up to turn that slight contrast into a binary signal. Retinal cells are designed so that a "green" receptor is switched off in the presence of "red" light. They signal the absence of green in the presence of red, as well as signalling green in its presence. So a slight difference in frequency is turned into an absolute on-off mental response.

So yes, there is a world of energy that drives the sensory processing. There are real patterns out there. But what I am drawing attention to is the transduction step which creates - for us - an internal realm of signs. And that triadic relationship - where we use constructed experience as our map to navigate the world - is a Kantian epistemology.

It is the reason for saying we can't know the world directly. Experience is grounded already in a pragmatic structure. Right down at the first step - neural transduction - energy has been turned into signal. A particular logical operation has been applied. Wavelength has been turned into yes-no contrast. Everything real or physical about the world has been discarded as information to leave just the signalled output of a mechanical operation. A retinal ganglion cell summed its inputs and changed its firing rate in some way.

Reductionism isn't a bad thing per se. Reduction is a very useful tool. It allows us to create models of reality which in turn allow us to make predictions. We cannot make predictions without reduction. — Magnus Anderson

Note that when I talk about reductionism in contrast to holism, it isn't about information reduction. I am of course a big believer in that. As I have just argued, that is what neurology is set up to do. The brain doesn't want to see "everything". It wants to reduce all the available energy of the world to a simple yes-no choice about what to do. And its starts doing that at the very first step of the neural processing hierarchy.

So the holism vs reductionism deal is about Aristotelean causality. Reductionism is taking the view that only bottom-up material and effective cause is "real". Holism is the larger view which accepts top-down formal and final cause as also "real". So it is about making models of reality which are just bottom-up, versus making models of reality which are about the triadic interaction between the bottom-up and the top-down (triadic, as the real is what emerges from these two complementary directions of cause).

Scientifically, both reductionist and holist models would be reductionist about the world. They are both models after all - maps of the territory. And the best maps are the simplest. They discard the most information.

Reductionist or bottom-up models are fine for most routine human purposes as we are only concerned with how to harness the material/effective causes of the world. We don't need to worry about the formal and final causes of things because that is going to be provided by us humans. We will supply any necessary design and reason when it comes to actually doing something with the modelled knowledge.

However when we come to describing nature itself, then we do have to include formal and final cause in the story we tell. We do have to speak to all four of Aristotle's causes.

The experience that is prior to any speaking. — Janus

But the linguistic framing begins when we are infants and becomes an engrained habit. So this is not about what you report to me using words. It is the very fact that you have the habit of "reporting on states of experience". Your thinking is culturally framed at base.