So, what's the argument? — Πετροκότσυφας

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

**

Information is matter and energy yes? — “XanderGrey”

No.

The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.

Norbert Wiener (founder of the science of cybernetics) Computing Machines and the Nervous System.

**

thanks to the way we are "designed". — Harry Hindu

According to neo-darwinian materialism - which is why I mentioned Coyne.

This is what I see as the riddle of Kant"s "Critique of Pure Reason". — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree. I looked into 'noumenal' and found that it is derived from 'nous' which is the seminal Greek term for 'mind' or 'intellect'. (Perhaps it means something which can't be expressed in the modern lexicon.) In any case, the 'noumenal object' is indeed something like 'the ideal object' - something as it truly is, as distinct from how it 'appears for us'. Kant says we only know how things 'appear to us'.

But recall that passage from Lloyd Gerson on Aristotle, where A. says that when we know something intelligible, then the mind is 'identical with that intelligible'. That plainly cannot be the case with any actual object which is by its nature separate from us. When we know a logical or mathematical truth, then that truth is immediately apparent in a way in which knowledge of a particular cannot be; it is known 'in the mind's eye' so to speak, which is higher than the 'corporeal eye'.

Plato, on the other hand seems to allow that the human intellect can apprehend intelligible objects directly, through the means of "the good". — Metaphysician Undercover

It is more that they're illuminated by 'the light of the Good'. We see by that light the truths of reason, that possess a certainty that sensible things cannot. That is how we can know 'a priori', and on the basis of reason alone.

(1) Are 'forms' synonymous to 'necessary entities', like the laws of logic and morality? — Samuel Lacrampe

That is an excellent question. I have been proceeding as if they are, but I really don't know if that is correct. Bear in mind, Plato was an ancient thinker and that such ideas as logical laws, hadn't even been devised in his time; it was Aristotle who was to put that into a methodical form. When I go back and read the originals, it is not nearly so neat and conclusive as that. There are hints, to-and-fro's, questions, and aporia, and so on. One thing I am finding, is that Plato seems to think the Forms are real, or are actual existing things, whereas I interpret them as having a kind of implicit reality which is less literal than Plato seems to understand it (or at least as many people says he understands it). In other words, I am abstracting what I think the Forms mean, but I might be taking liberties with the idea in so doing.

Nevertheless, a point that strikes me is this: that the idea of the separation of 'form and substance', which was started by Plato, but finalised by Aristotle, seems really foundational to Western thinking generally. Think of something that we all take for granted: a template. If you have any experience with IT, you will know the concept of 'the template' is used in an enormous number of ways, from simple MS Word templates, to entire bodies of code. Now, how could that concept have been developed without Plato? (Note to self: must read Plato at the Googleplex.)

So anyway, my short answer to your question is Yes, even if it is not actually obvious from the original texts that this is what Forms do mean. I take the knowledge of the forms to be the 'rational insight into principles', in the broadest sense, although in saying that, I know I'm taking liberties.

I don't think there is a particular form for each particular material thing. — Samuel Lacrampe

Agree. This is one of the notions that Ockham exploited - he depicted the forms in such a way that suggested 'a heavily populated universe of discourse'. However

The existence of the form “sight,” by which the eye sees, may be some positive presence in the nature of things (which biologists can describe in terms of the qualities of a healthy eye that gives it the power to see), but the existence of the form blindness in the blind eye need be nothing more than the nonexistence of sight ‒ the form of blindness is [therefore] a privation of 'the form of sight' and so not really an additional form at all. In general, distinguishing and qualifying the different ways there can “be” a form present in a thing goes a long way toward alleviating the apparent profligacy of the realist account of words signifying forms.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH OCKHAM?, JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD

3) I don't think there is a particular form for each particular material thing. It seems to be an unnecessary hypothesis: What could be explained by the presence of the particular form which could not be explained by the matter? — Samuel Lacrampe

This is the essential principle of Aristotle's law of identity, and his hylomorphism. Every object has a "what" it is, which is proper to it, and it alone, this is its form. According to the argument in the middle of his Metaphysics, the important metaphysical question to ask of existence, is "why is anything what it is, rather than something else?". He argues that when an object comes into existence, it is necessarily the object which it is (what it is), and not something else. It is impossible by contradiction that it is something other than what it is. So he concludes that the form of the object is necessarily prior to the material existence of the object, in order to fulfil this condition, that it is impossible that the object is something other than it is.

Plato gets to a very similar conclusion through a long and round about adventure which spans his entire career of writing. He expresses this in the Timaeus, as the creation of material objects from the divine mind. Form is given to material existence, in the process of creation (what I called information earlier in the thread). Plato's method is more like this. We see that things are desired, wanted by the human mind, as "the good". So the human mind designates something as "good", and forms a conception of that object, then proceeds to give physical existence to that object, produces it. So for example, the architect has a conception, makes a plan, the blueprints for the building, then proceeds to produce the material building. In the case of all artificial objects, the form of the object exists within the mind of the artist before coming to be in the material world.

And since naturally occurring things exist with an intelligible order, or form, Plato sees the need to extend this principle to all material things. They must have been created by an intelligent mind in order that they are observed to exist with an intelligible form. So the same principle of creation is followed in natural things as in artificial things, such that the immaterial form of the thing precedes the material existence of the thing. And this is necessary in order to account for the fact that things are intelligible, i.e. that they have intelligible forms.

I hope that this satisfactorily answers your question: "What could be explained by the presence of the particular form which could not be explained by the matter". What is explained by assuming that each thing has its own particular form, is the intelligibility of the material world. Consider that if we could not distinguish one thing from another, the entire world would appear as random nonsense. It is the act of distinguishing differences within the world, which we all do, that is the act of making sense of the world. This is what the various senses have evolved to do, each one distinguishes a different type of difference, and the mind tries to make sense of all the different differences.

So it is the fact that each thing has its own particular form, peculiar to itself, which makes the world intelligible. That is why we manage to tell the difference between one thing and another, rather than being confused. But as soon as we accept this fact, as the brute fact which it is, we are faced with the much more difficult, and very imposing question, which Aristotle asks, of how does it come to be, that any particular object is the object which it is, and not something else.

In any case, the 'noumenal object' is indeed something like 'the ideal object' - something as it truly is, as distinct from how it 'appears for us'. Kant says we only know how things 'appear to us'. — Wayfarer

Right, so this is the difficulty exposed by Kant. How do we reconcile "the ideal object" (what the object really is, it's real form) with "what appears to us"? Kant implies that this cannot be reconciled, and therefore we cannot really know the physical world. All we can know is the phenomenal, what appears to us.

But recall that passage from Lloyd Gerson on Aristotle, where A. says that when we know something intelligible, then the mind is 'identical with that intelligible'. That plainly cannot be the case with any actual object which is by its nature separate from us. — Wayfarer

So this is the exact problem which I've been referring to, how the human mind is deficient. The mind cannot become identical with any particular object, because it desires to know every object. Therefore it has evolved to know universals rather than particulars. The result is that we cannot know any particular object to the point of perfection, because we identify with these particulars through the means of universals. This principle indicates that we cannot know, completely, any particular object.

When we know a logical or mathematical truth, then that truth is immediately apparent in a way in which knowledge of a particular cannot be; it is known 'in the mind's eye' so to speak, which is higher than the 'corporeal eye'. — Wayfarer

A logical or mathematical truth is a universal truth. But remember, according to Plato's hierarchy, this is not the highest form of knowledge. The highest knowledge is knowledge of the Forms. And to understand the Forms is to understand that each particular has a Form proper to it, which cannot be completely apprehended by the human intellect. This knowledge of the Forms is not sense knowledge, it is derived from reasoning, but is indicative of the defect of sense (phenomenal) knowledge. And through extension we learn the defect of logical and mathematical truths. As universals they cannot completely know particulars. Despite the fact that mathematical principles are grasped immediately and completely, they cannot give us a complete understanding of reality, which consists of particulars. There is a categorical gap which we need to reconcile through principles other than mathematical principles.

It is more that they're illuminated by 'the light of the Good'. We see by that light the truths of reason, that possess a certainty that sensible things cannot. That is how we can know 'a priori', and on the basis of reason alone. — Wayfarer

I agree, it is "the light of the Good". The Good is the light which makes intelligible objects intelligible. But this principle casts our attention in the direction of "the good", if we desire to follow, and understand the true nature of intelligible objects. And the good is inherently subjective, it is determined from within, by the subject and that's why it is associated with pure reason, not requiring anything empirical. It is the basis of the a priori because it is what inspires us to agree on a definition, we see that it is good. But in recognizing "the good", we are required necessarily to turn our attention inward, and recognize the particularities of the subject. And when the particularities of the subject are recognized as real, we are induced to extend this to all material existence, and recognize the particularities of all material things as a fundamental aspect of reality.

Agree. This is one of the notions that Ockham exploited - he depicted the forms in such a way that suggested 'a heavily populated universe of discourse'. — Wayfarer

Please read my reply to Samuel, above, as to why it is necessary to assume particular forms of individuals in order to account for the intelligibility of material existence.

I should add, the reason why the ancients so esteemed mathematical certainty, is because when we say X + Y = Z, then Z is, in a way that mere material objects can never be said to be. Because the ‘form of the answer’ is perceived directly, the mind is, as it were, at one with the answer, in a way that it can never be in respect of judgements about material particulars. And that goes back to the Platonic epistemology, in which dianoia is of an intrinsically higher order than pistis or doxa. (This is also the point of the Lloyd Gerson quotation on Aristotle that I mentioned earlier in this thread.)

The reason this is alien to us, is that we have been brought up in a culture which assumes a naturalist viewpoint. It doesn’t occur to us to question the testimony of sense, and it’s not something we know how to do. The idea that there is some level or domain of reality that is superior to the domain of what we regard as common-sense experience is simply incomprehensible, such is our culturally-instilled understanding of nature. What this is not appreciating, is the ascetic or world-denying characteristic of early philosophy. Its practitioners were much more like religious renunciates than today’s academicians (which is subject of the books of Pierre Hadot, e.g. ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’.) This provided the means to really question the sense in which the common-sense understanding of the world was radically mistaken. (I suppose this has been preserved in some sense in modern science, but at the expense of eliminating any metaphysic of value.)

The problem with wistfully harking back to ancient, Eastern and medieval thinkers is that they were not aware of many things about the world which we moderns take for granted, and cannot, if we wish to be intellectually honest, ignore. — Janus

I am not harking back to ancient and Eastern philosophy out of nostalgia or misplaced idealism. That is not the motive at all. Modern Western liberalism, whilst it has many obvious benefits, also suffers from some major flaws, in my view; it takes for granted many plain falsehoods, which, as they're so familiar to us, we often can't see; we look through them, rather than at them. Basically one of the consequences of living in the modern West, is that normative judgement concerning ethical and metaphysical questions is to all intents subjectivised. I notice you take others to task for ‘scientism’, and yet when challenged on what an alternative to ‘scientism’ means, you’re unable to articulate anything beyond a ‘subjective feeling’ which is apparently so self-evidently true that nothing can or should be said about it (e.g. here, here, here, and here).

What I’m actually doing is attempting to articulate what is scientism, and analyse its origins and causes, partially historically, partially philosophically. An aspect of that is, I believe, retrieving the 'forgotten wisdom' of the Western philosophical tradition. The whole point of Platonist philosophy was articulating a metaphysic of value, identifying what is truly good, independently of anyone's opinion of it. That, I believe, has been lost and forgotten, and that's not 'nostalgia' or 'wistfulness' - it's a hard historical fact, as far as I'm concerned. I am trying to retrieve that insight, without having had the benefit of a education 'in the Classics', as they are described, and without getting too bogged down in meaningless obscurantism and nonsense (of which this thread has suffered an unfortunate surfeit.)

The same quest for a domain of real values is also true of Buddhism albeit via a radically different conception of the Good. But being able to look at such questions from diverse perspectives is, I would have thought, one of the unqualified goods of modern liberal democracies. (And I might add, I went to the lengths of doing an MA in Buddhist Studies at the cost of $20k, for no professional or material end, simply to understand.)

As for your responses to my posts - I have found quite a few of them quite unfriendly, not to mention badly informed, to be blunt. If you really do understand what the arguments are, and then can criticize them constructively, then I'm more than willing to take it on, but I'm not hearing it.

A lot of these points have been discussed over the last two months since this thread started.

You say you're arguing for a form of hylomorphism, yet it seems closer to some form of cartesian dualism and when you're asked to provide details (for example, what counts as a substance in your version of hylomorphism, what is form, what is matter, what are particulars, what are universals etc), you just don't. — Πετροκότσυφας

There was a very succinct statement from a text book on Thomist psychology given in this post here. It is a clear statement of ‘hylomorphic’ (form and matter) dualism. Actually you might notice that directly above that post, I am in total agreement with Metaphysician Undercover on the key point of the whole thread. The key phrase in this passage is:

if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized.

That reflects the Aristotelian version of the Platonic forms, which are said to be imperishable and are perceived by ‘the intellect’ directly, in a way comparable to how the grasp of rational truths are apodictic. (Lloyd Gerson gives the example ‘equals less equals are equal’ as a self-evident truth of logic.)

What ‘forms’ are, is of course a huge question, but the way I understand it is that the ability to understand abstract truths relies on the ability of the mind to grasp representations which signify ideas and particularly general ideas, i.e. ideas that operate universally. Within that context, I understand ‘universals’ in the same way they are usually explained in text books i.e. ‘a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things.’ But I also think that mathematical entities such as natural numbers are types of universals. So by universals, I mean numbers, natural laws, conventions, grammatical structures - all of which require the activities of a rational mind. We are, as the Greeks said, ‘the rational animal’, and reason works because it perceives universal principles.

So the above passage is saying that the ‘corporeal senses’ perceive the particular qualities of individual things (accidents) while the intellect grasps its type, its essence.

As for substance - that is a bearer of attributes; it is ‘always a subject, never the predicate’. The original term for ‘substance’ was ‘ousia’ which is nearer in meaning to our word ‘being’ than what we think of as ‘substance’ nowadays.

The difference between hylomorphic dualism and Cartesian dualism is that the latter depicts ‘res cogitans’ as something which exists separately from the physical, as a kind of self-existent substance that exists in its own right. The earlier forms of dualism doesn’t depict it in those terms, as they are not conceived of as existing separately. ‘The soul is the form of the body’, I think is one of the doctrinal sayings of Aristotelianism.

The key point I’m trying to elucidate is that the aspect of the mind that sees meaning, and is capable of abstract reasoning, is not something that can be explained in physical terms, because the objects of such judgements, be they mathematical, or be they judgements of kind and type, are not themselves physical. I often use numbers as paradigmatic cases. When we count, we’re performing a rational operation by which we discern a truth which is common to all who are capable of counting, but which can only be grasped by such a mind. That is why logical and mathematical laws mean something - precisely because they have a common meaning, to all who think. You can’t choose what ‘7’ equals, or how many sides a triangle has. That is where I differed strongly with Metaphysician Undiscovered, who keeps insisting that such ideas only exist in individual minds. I say they are independent of individual minds, but are still mental in nature, as they can only be grasped by a rational intelligence. Hence, ‘objective idealism’.

Clearly scientific reasoning relies on mathematical thinking - I think that’s impossible to dispute. But what kinds of things are numbers? How do they exist? That is the exact question that the passage from Aristotle was about and one of the central questions of Platonic realism. Platonists generally say that numbers are real - both Frege, and Godel were Platonic realists. But a number - say, the number 7 - is not an existing thing, as it can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting. So it’s an ‘intelligible object’. That is the point of Platonic realism, as far as I understand it. And if Platonic realism is correct, then the fundamental objects of the Universe are not necessarily material in nature - they might be ‘more like Platonic ideas’, in Heisenberg’s comment.

Augustine on Intelligible Objects

In a way, it's funny (to me) that you have both Plato and Kant as favorite philosophers, because in many ways, they are opposed to each other. — Agustino

There are divergences. Kant did a dissertation on the Ideal Forms in his early days, but changed his view later. But arguably they became internalised in Kant as forms of understanding. I'm still looking into it. (There's an Egyptian philosophy blogger, D S Kashaba, that I have discovered who is totally into all this, I'm reading his articles.) But overall whilst Kant had his differences with Plato, he was still very much in the Platonic tradition. Aristotle and Kant are both Platonists! (And Lloyd Gerson would say so.)

There we go, this is a realist position and is opposed to the Kantian. — Agustino

Not so - only perceptible by a mind, a rational intelligence, that is capable of understanding 'north'. Hey, cows graze facing north, but try explaining that to a cow. They do it without thinking about it (and science doesn't know how!)

Newtonian physics was reductionist in being a realist physics based on just observables — apokrisis

Except that for Newton, physics was never going to be a complete account. He believed that the Universe was actually held together by God (now 'dark matter' ;-) )

It is a priori knowledge. — TimeLine

You're right. Everyone is very blasé about a priori knowledge, as if we understand what that means; but I think this example calls attention to what Kant designated the 'primary intuition of space'. The 'synthetic a priori' is key here.

In accordance with Leibniz's law of indiscernibles it its accepted amongst scientists and philosophers alike that no 'one' thing in the universe can be exactly the same as another 'one' thing: if they are exactly the same, then they must be the same thing. Therefore if I begin my math with the assumption that 1=1, I am beginning with a subjectively accepted falsity. No things are alike, and no one thing in the entire universe is exactly equal to another 'one' thing IE: One is not equal to One . It is equal only to itself. Beyond subjective thinking we can have no two things that are actually equal. — Marcus de Brun

One thing to consider, is that numbers and other symbols are not actually things or phenomenal objects. They're meanings which are assigned to a particular shape or form. So A = A is a matter of definition, it is true a priori. Without that being the case, then it would be impossible to converse, as there would be no agreed definitions or conventions whatever. This holds for all the basics of logic and arithmetic, which are likewise true by definition.

Another point that is relevant here, is that in Aristotelian and Thomistic dualism the 'form' of a thing, or the 'value' of a numerical symbol, is entirely intellectual or intelligible in nature. It is immaterial - and that is precisely why, in such traditional philosophies, the knowledge of an arithmetic proposition is of a higher order to the knowledge of material objects. 2 - 2 = 0 is by its very nature an abstract and general truth. We see it, in our mind's eye, with a certainty that doesn't pertain to the seeing of material particulars (even though it can be applied to them).

in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. ... Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on [in other words, any thing]. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally. The fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Lloyd Gerson, Platonism Vs Naturalism.

We have a subjective personal understanding that 1 thing plus another makes two things. — Marcus de Brun

It is not subjective, it is the same for all who can count. But it's also not objective, as number (etc) is not strictly speaking 'an object' except for in an allegorical sense. (This is a point I tried to make at the beginning of this thread, in respect of the distinction of a priori and objective truths. My claim is that you have to have the former in order to establish the latter.)

David Johnson had a great takedown:

Naturalism Undefeated: A Refutation of the Argument from Reason — Uber

That is a good paper - but here is why I wouldn't agree that it amounts to a refutation. At issue is the fact that all of the arguments in such a paper rely on the very faculty which they're trying to rationalise, or to declare as being within the scope of naturalism. Whenever a judgement is made about what is objectively the case, what a neural phenomenon means, and so on, the very faculty which is the subject of the analysis is being utilised to make the case. To provide a completely objective and indeed physical account of the operations of reason, you would have to treat reason from a point that is outside of it; put it aside, so to speak, and then demonstrate that it is inherent in the object of analysis, or located in the objective domain, without appealing to it - otherwise, you're essentially appealing to the thing which needs to be explained, or begging the question. But that, you cannot do.

So I am saying you can't 'get outside' of reason, or treat it as an entirely objective process (which is the subject of a chapter in Nagel's book The Last Word). Indeed I claim that reason is required to determine what is objective, so reason is ontologically prior to objectivity. That is why, as Maritain says, in humans, the sensory faculties are 'permeated with reason'. Even to define naturalism or make such arguments as those in the paper, relies on the very 'ground-consequent relations' which the paper is trying to argue can be explained or understood in naturalistic terms. Every time a conclusion is argued, that Y must be the case because of X and Z, then you're engaging in ground-consequent arguments or syllogisms, which by definition comprise the relationship of ideas.

So, the very fact that we're able to arrive at the generalisations required to frame such arguments, relies on the capacity of abstraction, which in turn relies on the grasp of meaning. And that is epistemologically prior to even defining what 'physicalism' or 'naturalism' comprises.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism. (Emphasis added.)

Is a physical mental state a contradiction? To truly argue that, you would need to provide your understanding of the word "physical." Have you automatically defined "physical" as everything that exists outside the mind or the brain? — Uber

The definition of the word 'physical' is the domain of the discipline of physics. And as you're no doubt well aware, there are enormous philosophical issues surrounding this very question, many of which arise from the 'nature of the probability wave'.

But, leaving that aside, I have a much more quotidian argument for the distinction of matter and meaning (as this is what is basically at stake). This is based on a form of the multiple realisability argument, although one original to me, as far as I can tell. It is the fact that the same information/proposition/idea can be represented in any number of languages or physical media. I can write out the recipe for chocolate cake, or the specifications for building a box-girder bridge, in any number of languages or codes. I could even invent a completely novel system for representing numbers, provided I made the key available to others. But in both cases, the thing being described, and the outcome of the operation, is identical; you end up with a chocolate cake, or a bridge.

So, the material representation is completely different, but the information is the same. So how can the information be the same as the material representation?

This is where I tend towards dualism. But the crucial caveat is, that mind is *not* a 'substance' in the sense that it is now universally misunderstood. It never appears as an object, but is always that to which everything appears. The profound error of modern philosophy is to reify or objectify mind and then ask what kind of thing it could be. It is simply 'that which grasps meaning', and in that sense the ground of meaning itself. I think from my sketchy knowledge of philosophy generally, the philosopher that I'm nearest to in this regard is Husserl.

I think a combination of sound theoretical arguments and the "weight of the empirical evidence" is good enough for believing that naturalistic explanations are sufficient to describe what we see, notice, and measure. — Uber

The problem with this is that it looses sight of the fundamental concerns of philosophy, as distinct from science. Philosophy is concerned with the human condition and questions of meaning and value; science is a method of analysis of objects and forces. (Incidentally, this does not at all deprecate science, I am an absolute believer in the application of science in its proper domain.) The problem is that philosophical materialists mistake the axiom of methodological naturalism, for a conclusion or an hypothesis - which it is not. This shows up in the 'is/ought problem' which is a constant undercurrent of debates on ethics here.

On the other hand, metaphysics has often flirted with becoming totally detached from empirical reality, depending on who was using it. And that's when you start getting things like angels, Platonic realms, and Jedis. — Uber

No - it is detached from 'the empirical domain', but if you look at the Platonists, they always attempt to ground such arguments in reason (although it's true that some neoplatonism got pretty far out). But that rationalist element is what distinguished Greek philosophy from mysticism pure and simple (although it does have its mystical side.)

Again, the 'realm of natural numbers' is real but it is emphatically *not* an aspect of the empirical domain. But to equate it then with Star Wars does indeed betoken the deep cultural confusion that arises as one of the cultural consequences of empiricism.

People often insist that science is 'rational' - which it is. But it's more than that - it is 'empirico-rational', in that it insists that whatever it is to investigate is knowable in the third person, quantifiable, and demonstrable in public. Empiricist rationalism is to declare that only what is tangible and measurable is real: not what might be rationally compelling, but what can be detected by senses or by instrument. This is the sense in which scientific empiricism is essentially anthropocentric: because it declares the human sensory faculties the yardstick of what is real. As far as the scientist is concerned, he or she is the only detectable intelligence or intentional agent in the Universe (although if you were to believe Dennett even that is questionable.)

Here is good old Lucretius in the Nature of Things: — Uber

I got a high distinction for my essay on Lucretius, back in the day (Philosophy of Matter, under Keith Campbell.)

Why do you have to operate outside of reason in order to show that reason is amenable to a naturalistic treatment? There seems to be no obvious contradiction in supposing that we can use the tools of reason to investigate what reason is and how it surfaced. — MetaphysicsNow

Because of the 'postulate of objectivity' that is basic in natural philosophy. This says something like that knowledge can only be obtained of mind-independent objects - by the analysis of what is objectively existent or real. It falls out of the paradigm of naturalism generally - the distinction, or the 'split', between observer and observed, the scientist and the thing being analysed. From the beginning of modern science, 'reason' is presumed to be something internal to the workings of the mind. And where is 'mind' in the modern scientific view? It's an epiphenomenon, or emergent phenomenon, of the (physical) brain. The mind is therefore generally is regarded as an aspect of the subjective order.

So in order to investigate how reason arises in the brain, we have to examine the workings of the brain; understanding the mechanism of reason, turns out to require an immense knowledge of the massive complexities of neuroscience. But, I'm saying that even to do neuroscience, we're constantly invoking and relying on the very thing we're wanting to explain, because whenever we assert that 'this data means that...' then we're already employing the tools of rational inference. And then when you do that, ask yourself whether what has been demonstrated with respect to the 'nature of reason' resides in the data, or is it inferred in the mind of the observing scientist (and yourself, when you understand what it means?) In order to 'see the nature of reason' you yourself must be a rational being; you can't see it from some point outside of it.

This is why I'm saying that reason can't be understood as a physical (or neuro-physiological) process. And this is basically one of the transcendental arguments, descended from Kant - that reason transcends natural science, because the natural sciences presume and are required to use reason to even frame the question or investigate anything whatever. But, the way modern science developed, from the early modern period, the constructive role of reason in the formulation of hypotheses is forgotten or neglected. That is one of the main points of the CPR as I understand it ('things conforming to thoughts'.)

Kant understood that both everyday life and scientific knowledge rests on, and is made orderly, by some very basic assumptions that aren't self-evident but can't be entirely justified by empirical observations. For instance, we assume that the physical world will conform to mathematical principles. Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason that our belief that 'every event has a cause' is such an assumption; perhaps, also, our belief that effects follow necessarily from their causes; but many today reject his classification of such claims as “synthetic a priori.” Regardless of whether one agrees with Kant's account of what these assumptions are, his justification of them is thoroughly modern since it is essentially pragmatic. They make science possible. More generally, they make the world knowable. Kant in fact argues that in their absence our experience from one moment to the next would not be the coherent and intelligible stream that it is.

Kant claims that nothing in our experience is just “given” to us in a pure form unadulterated by the way we think. Our cognitive apparatus is always both receptive and active. Variations on this theme have become commonplace in modern philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics. What we call “facts” or “data” are theory-laden or concept-laden. Hegel, Nietzsche, Sellars, and Kuhn are among those who have developed this insight. Some, like Hilary Putnam, take it further, arguing that so-called facts are value-laden since how we apply concepts like causality reflects our interests. As William James famously remarked, “the trail of the human serpent is over everything.” 1

As I quoted from Jacques Maritain previously, the sense are 'permeated by reason'. So you can't put reason aside and study it from the outside as a natural phenomena - it is always assumed by the act of rational analysis. (This is also the basic approach of Husserl's critique of Naturalism. If you can get hold of Dermot Moran's Routledge Reader in Phenomenology, it's laid out succinctly.) As someone else recently quoted here, 'facts' are like ships in bottles -carefully constructed so as to appear that nobody put them there.

Because I associate "mental representation" with semantics, and "material representation" with physical signs, I would re-phrase your conclusion as follows:

The signs (in this case, recipes and specifications encoded in different languages, i.e., physical information) are completely different, but their associated semantic information is the same. — Galuchat

Right - I'd go along with that. It still enables me to make the point that the signs and what they convey are of a different order. Whenever we read anything, we're interpolating, interpreting, inferring - that alone is the capability of the rational mind. (Of course we can now build instruments that do likewise, but they're creations of, and extensions of, that same mind.)

Monism doesn't preclude the possibility of a spiritual realm. — Galuchat

I would have thought any monism would preclude the possibility of separate realms.

Anil Seth's predictive theory of consciousness addresses the major points that you raised. He literally sees the brain as a biochemical prediction machine. — Uber

'Materialist predicts eventual success of materialism'.

. Reason is prior to any objective process. So then: how do we know that reason is prior to objectivity? Did you not use an objective process to determine that reason is prior to objectivity? — Uber

No, because the postulates of pure mathematics are true prior to any objective validation. It only becomes a matter for empirical validation when it's applied to the sensory domain. But we know the truths of reason intuitively and without reference to anything whatever. When we know a concept, that knowledge is not reliant on sensory experience, or any experience.

Of course, knowledge proceeds step-wise, creating postulates, making predictions, testing them out, going back and re-thinking. Nothing I've said undermines that. What I'm saying is that, science itself relies on reasoning, some component of which is always implicit, internal to thought, pre-conscious etc. This is one of the main findings of philosophy of science, Kuhn, Polanyi, and the like.

Interesting tidbit to remember here: even if you fully accept the argument from reason, it does not mean that naturalism is false. It just means that it's not a rational belief. But it could still be true. Plenty of irrational and unjustified beliefs can be true, and often are. — Uber

Naturalism isn't necessarily false - what is at issue is whether naturalism explains the nature of reason, if the faculty of reason is within scope for naturalism and natural sciences. My argument is simply that reason precedes science, in the sense that, for there to be a natural philosophy or science at all, then from the very outset, principles have to be elucidated, axioms discovered, inferences made. So reason is epistemologically prior to naturalism, in the sense that it already must be operating for naturalism to get out of bed. But that has been lost sight of, or forgotten.

That is why, every such argument ultimately appeals to neo-darwinian materialism. It thinks that it has an 'in-principle' account of how the brain evolved which underlies the various forms of naturalised epistemology and physicalist theories of mind. And that is what is being called to question: because I don't accept that the nature of reason is ultimately a matter of biology. That is not to say that evolutionary biology can't study the stages by which h. sapiens evolved to the point of being able to use reason and language; but I take issue with the idea that these faculties can therefore be understood through the lens of biology or even modern science, insofar as it holds to a materialist paradigm.

By not mixing up terms and equivocating. The information is stored as neural memory in the brain. — Uber

But it's not established. That all relies on the 'computational' model of consciousness, which is itself subject to much dispute. As I replied to MN above, even to determine the sense in which information is 'in' the brain, involves an equivocation between form, structure and meaning.

This point matters because you seem to be making the same mistake as Lewis, using a kind of theoretical (read: BS) definition of reason that does not apply to how human beings actually think. — Uber

This point matters, because it indicates that you haven't understood the argument, and of course have no real interest in so doing, any more than I would have an interest in a materialist philosophy of mind.

And the quotation I provided from Lloyd Gerson argues that, if materialism were true, you couldn't think. I wonder if you see the point of that argument?

I reject the subtle implication that philosophy only cares about the human condition. That narrows philosophy too much. As a matter of practice, philosophers also study the wider state of the world and try to make sense of it. — Uber

Not 'philosophy only cares'; 'only philosophy cares'. I said the difference between science and philosophy is that the latter is concerned with qualitative questions, with the domain of meaning and value - precisely those qualities materialists never tire of informing us are completely absent from the 'real universe' (as if this amounts to a triumph of secular humanism.)

...providing us with a nice performative contradiction. — Janus

Right! I mean, the idea that your statements 'correspond to reality' seems intuitively obvious, but when you actually consider what such 'correspondence' entails, then it gets interesting. What I'm saying is that even to assert , there is an implicit ability to grasp abstractions - 'this must mean that' - prior to an empirical claim.

Modern Platonic realism is a form of idealism which does not, in itself, provided a good representation of dualism. Aristotle sufficiently refuted Pythagorean idealism, and the form of Platonic idealism which is basically the same as modern Platonic realism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually - and I know we've discussed this quite a few times - what I'm starting to understand through research, is that the 'hylomorphic' (matter~form) dualism of Aristotle is what was incorporated into Thomas Aquinas. Now, Lloyd Gerson, whom as you probably know of, says that in his view, despite their differences, Aristotle remained broadly speaking Platonist and that regardless of their differences, Aristotle is still broadly Platonist.

And the only real 'modern Platonic realists' I am familiar with are neo-Thomists (although there's probably very many that I don't know of). But all of them accept the reality of abstract objects. As for your 'Aristotle refuted Pythagorean Idealism' - that is based on one sentence in the Metaphysics which refers to 'the geometers'. So - let's not muddy the waters by getting into what an arcane sub-debate about what is/is not modern/traditional Platonism/not Platonism. At issue is wholly and solely the reality of abstracts, as far as I'm concerned, and that is where Platonists of whatever stripe have a case to make.

Actually - and I know we've discussed this quite a few times - what I'm starting to understand through research, is that the 'hylomorphic' (matter~form) dualism of Aristotle is what was incorporated into Thomas Aquinas. Now, Lloyd Gerson, whom as you probably know of, says that in his view, despite their differences, Aristotle remained broadly speaking Platonist and that regardless of their differences, Aristotle is still broadly Platonist. — Wayfarer

I agree that Aristotle was, broadly speaking, Platonist. But through the terms of his dualism, matter and form, which are associated with "potential" and "actual" respectively, he manages to refute Pythagorean idealism, and what he refers to in my translation as "some Platonists". This can be found in book nine of the Metaphysics.

Plato himself turned against this form of idealism, commonly called Platonic realism today. I've seen it argued that he actually refutes this idealism (Pythagorean idealism, or Platonic realism) in the Parmenides. And, in the Timaeus, which is of his latest works, he offers a completely different form of idealism, which relies on a divine mind, similar to Berkeley.

The key problem which arises in Plato's extensive expose is the nature of the separation between the ideas which you and I have, and the proposed separate "Idea", which is represented by Parmenides as eternal unchanging truth. In his earlier works, such as the Symposium, you can find Plato describing and explaining the concept of "participation". We come to apprehend the reality of independent Ideas in this way. As individuals we form an idea of "beauty" (the example in The Symposium) from observing things which are said to be beautiful. But to validate this subjective notion of beauty we must assume that the things actually partake in an independent "Idea of Beauty" in order that there is any truth to saying that they are beautiful.

Notice the extremely subjective nature of the example, "beauty". This is intentional to expose the difficulties of the independent Idea. Since all ideas, concepts are essentially the same, the example holds right through to the most certain and "objective" of the mathematical ideas. So Plato uses an extremely subjective idea, to demonstrate that even the most objective ideas, such as the ones utilized in mathematics, receive their objectivity in the same way that an extremely subjective idea could receive objectivity. This is by means of the assumption of the independent "Idea". Mathematics receives its objectivity through the assumption of independent mathematical objects, "Ideas".

Having exposed this principle in his early works, Plato moves along to analyze the problems which develop from this assumption, the assumption of independent Ideas. The first logical consequent, which is already accepted by Parmenides and the Pythagoreans is that these ideas, independent from the changing human mind, must be eternal. If we remove the forces of change to the Idea, the human mind, the Idea cannot change.

This eternal uinchangingness becomes a very serious difficulty for Plato. It is basically the "epistemological problem" which Uber points to. These eternal Ideas are necessarily passive, being actively "participated in", or "partaken of" by the activities of material things. You can see that Plato gets a glimpse of this issue in The Republic with his introduction of "the good". "The good" can be understood as the inclination to act. What causes a person to act is a perceived "good". So "the good" becomes representative of the cause of activity, the cause of actuality. Now Plato has the principle whereby he can move "Ideas" from the category of eternally passive, to the category of active in causation. Under "the good", ideas are associated with the will to act, as having causal relevance. The problem of giving causal power to independent Ideas is resolved by allowing for an independent will. In theology this becomes the will of God. God created the material world because he saw that it was good.

You can see in the Parmenides that Plato is still trying to cling to the notion of participation, in which material things actively participate in the passive, independent Ideas, but it is not working out. Socrates gives a very heartfelt defence of the Parmenidean Ideas, arguing that the Idea is like the day. No matter how many different places partake of the day, it changes nothing of the day itself. But we can see through this, knowing that in reality the day is actively passing. So while the day appears to be passive, and partaken of, it is actually active, actively imparting itself to the places that partake.. And while it appears like the physical things are actively taking part in the passive day, and this constitutes the passing of the day, what is really occurring is that the passing of the day is the activity which imparts itself, as the cause of all the apparent activities of the passive things.

So this is the principle that is present in the Timaeus which is key to understanding dualism and getting beyond the objections of Aristotle, and the "epistemological problem". The independent Forms are active, as necessitated by the above discussion, and Aristotle's cosmological argument. It is the human misconception of "time" which renders the Forms as passive, non causal, outside of time, eternal. When our conception of time excludes the possibility that something non-physical (Forms), may be active (being impossible because the conception of time leaves them outside time, therefore inactive), then these Forms are necessarily eternal, therefore passive and non causal. This misconception of "time", as a premise, produces the conclusion that immaterial Forms are necessarily outside of time, therefore inactive and non-causal. This is Uber's epistemic problem. But the epistemic problem does not refute dualism as Uber claims, what it does is serve as evidence of the human misconception of time.

At issue is wholly and solely the reality of abstracts, as far as I'm concerned, and that is where Platonists of whatever stripe have a case to make. — Wayfarer

The point then, in a nutshell (if the above is too rambling) is this. When we conceive of Forms, mathematical objects, laws of physics, and this type of constraint, as outside of time, eternal, our principles are subject to this "epistemic problem". "Outside of time", eternal, renders the Forms as inactive, passive, and necessarily non-causal. So we are forced to either reject the independent Forms as the materialists and physicalists choose to do, or reconceive the relationship between the Forms and time, such that the Forms may be active, as the theologians have done. If we choose the latter, then it becomes immediately evident that we cannot have a conception of time which is derived from the motions of material objects. This will place the activities of the immaterial Forms as outside of time, incomprehensible, unintelligible, contradictory, as time is required for activity.

I do make an effort, but on the other hand, this is a public forum. The last time I did any degree work, 2011 - 12, in a different but related subject, my academic results were satisfactory. But on this forum, I'm exploring a theme - I read various articles and books along this theme, and I cite them. And I think I present a reasonably coherent argument.

My pre-suppositions ought to be abundantly clear, but in case they aren't, I will spell them out - that scientific materialism, and therefore a great deal of what goes under the name of 'philosophy' in current culture, is based on a mistaken premise, namely, that what is real is material. The basic Platonist premise that I often start from, is that number is real, but not material; that, therefore, there is something real that is not material, and that this therefore falsifies materialism. And as science itself is inextricably bound to mathematics, this is something of an 'inconvenient truth' for naturalism (as Jim Franklin points out in that essay.)

And that is also why I am saying that something has been forgotten, or fallen into neglect, to the extent that what it is that has been forgotten can't even be discerned any more. This is the traditional (or traditionalist) understanding of idea of the intellect (actually, 'nous') as corresponding with the immaterial aspect of the human being. And it's not difficult to make the case that this is what has happened in the transition to modernity. There are many books and articles about it, some of which I cite.

So, I know there are all kinds of ways in which Plato and Arisotle differ, I've even borrowed Gerson from the library and tried to familiarise myself with it. I have a backlog of books on hand on this very topic, which I am intending to try and tackle. But the argument I'm making is a general one, and I shall continue to make it.

If you think mine is not good, then tell me why. — Πετροκότσυφας

For instance:

you're willing to ignore any difference between "ancient" doctrines, as if they were one and the same. — Πετροκότσυφας

I didn't ignore them. The post you're criticising was in response to a question about the differences between Plato and Aristotle in respect of the nature of universals (etc). I mentioned the essay by James Franklin which discusses this same topic, then I gave a quote, from that essay, which is his synopsis of the way Platonism sees it. Then I gave three examples of a Platonist style of argument, about this same fact, in support of that view. Then another brief quote from the Franklin essay on the subject which mentions the differences between the Platonist view and Aristotle's view. I'm not saying they're all 'one and the same' but he says that they're both at odds with current, naturalistic philosophies of maths, and I agree with him in that.

Do they agree with each other? Not really important. Do they agree with Gerson's Plato or Plato himself? — Πετροκότσυφας

If I was obliged to write a detailed account of the differences, then I would do that, although as I said, it would amount to a long essay. But the point I wished to make was simply that both Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies of mathematics, even if they have many internal differences, are both at odds with current, naturalistic philosophies of mathematics, as Franklin's essay states. And it's significant that neo-Aristotelian philosophy is being discussed, even though obviously many people think it is indeed a museum piece, or ought to be.

I also know that McDowell or Deleuze have nothing to do with, for example, Rosenberg. The critique of the former can't resemble the critique of the latter. — Πετροκότσυφας

Of course. When I refer to the shortcomings of scientific materialism, I am generally referring to popular science writers and commentators who do propagate reductionist views. There are many scientifically-inclined philosophers and commentators who I wouldn't include in that.

It seems to me a particularly good way of viewing it. — prothero

:up:

My view is that the mind is inextricably involved in every judgement about every matter, even those things that are so-called ‘mind-independent’.
— Wayfarer

Of course, for judgements are acts of mind. That does not mean that existence depends on our judgement of existence, a la Berkeley's esse est percipi. — Dfpolis

On the contrary, I take it to mean something quite similar, although I prefer Kant's 'transcendental idealism', which he took pains to differentiate from Berkeley's 'subjective idealism'.

But what scientific realists advocate is actually what Kant would describe as 'transcendental realism', i.e. the implicit acceptance that the world would appear just as it is, were there no observer. But the problem with this is that it forgets the role that the mind plays in organising cognition. The world is not truly 'there anyway' - or put another way, the 'there anyway' world of scientific realism is also a mental construction (in the sense that Schopenhauer means by 'vorstellung'). Now that doesn't mean that, if I close my eyes, the world ceases to exist - like Kant, I too an am empirical realist. But the entire vast universe described by science, is still organised around an implicit perspective - in our case, the human perspective, which imposes a scale and an order on what would otherwise be formless and meaningless chaos. But having imposed that order, it then forgets where it has originated, and believes that what it has discovered and knows has a reality over and above what is imputed or understood by the knowing subject.

Schopenhauer:

All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufacture of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism [we might as well say 'scientific realism'] seeks to explain what is immediately given, 'the idea' (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists).

If the electron did not exist, it would not be measurable. — Dfpolis

Whether it exists, or the mode in which it exists, is exactly what is at issue. As you no doubt know, this question is at the heart of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' which says there's not an electron lurking within the probability wave until we measure it; the probability wave is all there is, until the measurement is made. That is why Bohr remarked something along the lines that the particle doesn't exist until it is measured; which is why the ontology of the 'probability wave' is still such a vexed issue.

. Either way, *2* does play no role in us knowing there are two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule. — Dfpolis

But you have to know what 2 denotes - in other words, you have to be able to count - before you can make any deductions about the composition of water molecules. It's the fact that 2 = 2 and always has an invariant meaning that makes it a universal. Furthermore, that formula H²O thoroughly specifies the chemical compound called 'water' - the symbols specify something exactly. That is the sense in which concepts are deterministic, in a way that no physical thing can be. As Gerson says of Aristotle's argument in De Anima, 'thought is an inherently universalising activity - were materialism true, then you literally could not think'.

Your "intelligible objects" must have minds or they could not judge, could not be aware of the truth of a proposition. — Dfpolis

Not my invention - the passage is from St Augustine

Augustine managed, with the aid of Platonist direction, ...to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal. When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, "Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?" he is acknowledging the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.

The mistake that animates modern naive empiricism is to explain the phenomenon of convergence -- such as the discovery of laws of nature, or of general logico-grammatical features shared by (most) natural languages -- as a result of the faithful (or approximate) reproduction, as contents of our mental representations, of the structure of an independently existing empirical ('external') reality. — Pierre-Normand

That would naturally flow from representative realism, in that there is a tacit assumption that the mind 'mirrors' or 'represents' the world, which ultimately stems from Locke, and is ubiquitous in empiricism.

One might avoid both mistakes though recognizing that the phenomenon of convergence is a dynamical product of the enactment of the social practice of arguing for or against doing and/or believing things. — Pierre-Normand

However, the cardinal difference between modern and ancient philosophy in this regard, is that modern philosophy is largely underwritten by biological science, which situates h. sapiens along a continuum with other species, and which brackets out any sense of there being either a first cause or final end.

Whereas

For Platonism, the universe is itself alive and filled with living things. Soul is the principle of life. Life is not viewed as epiphenomenal or supervenient on what is non-living. On the contrary, soul has a unique explanatory role in the systematic hierarchy. Though soul is fundamentally an explanatory principle, individual souls are fitted into the overall hierarchy in a subordinate manner. ...

Persons belong to the systematic hierarchy and personal happiness consists in achieving a lost position within the hierarchy. All Platonists accepted the view that in some sense the person was the soul and the soul was immortal. Since perhaps the most important feature of the divine was immortality, the goal or telos of embodied personal existence was viewed as ‘becoming like god’

Lloyd Gerson, What is Platonism?

Our physical world is not some random junk of accidents. It has an intelligible structure. But the problem with Platonism is the way it suggests a flat plane of forms - where the perfect triangle exists alongside the perfect turd. That problem can be addressed by the addition of a selection principle - a hierarchical story - which does then separate reality into its accidents and its necessities. — apokrisis

Platonism - and Aristotle - both assume an hierarchy, but it's from a top-down, not bottom up, perspective.

'The Platonic view of the world – the key to the system – is that the universe is to be seen in hierarchical manner. It is to be understood uncompromisingly from the ‘top-down’. The hierarchy is ordered basically according to two criteria. First, the simple precedes the complex and second, the intelligible precedes the sensible. The precedence in both cases is not temporal, but ontological and conceptual. That is, understanding the complex and the sensible depends on understanding the simple and the intelligible because the latter are explanatory of the former. The ultimate explanatory principle in the universe, therefore, must be unqualifiedly simple. For this reason, Platonism is in a sense reductivist, though not in the way that a 'bottom-up' philosophy is. It is conceptually reductivist, not materially reductivist. The simplicity of the first principle is contrasted with the simplicity of elements out of which things are composed according to a 'bottom-up' approach. Whether or to what extent the unqualifiedly simple can also be intelligible or in some sense transcends intelligibility is a deep question within Platonism.

....

The hypothesis that a true systematic philosophy is possible at all rests upon an assumption of cosmic unity. This is Platonism's most profound legacy from the Pre-Socratics philosophers. These philosophers held that the world is a unity in the sense that its constituents and the laws according to which it operates are really and intelligibly interrelated. Because the world is a unity, a systematic understanding of it is possible' (Lloyd Gerson, 'What is Platonism')

(Incidentally, whether there is indeed 'cosmic unity' is very much in question in current physics, is it not?)

What we are getting at with mathematical physics at least is the objective point of view - the one from the perspective which would be the Cosmos contemplating its own rational structure. — apokrisis

That also has a precedent in Aristotle - 'The Prime Mover is simply the formal-noetic structure of the cosmos as conscious of itself' [ibid].

And I find it plausible that we don't have the same notion of intelligibility. But how would we know? If you, for instance, have access to this notion, then it's not really lost — macrosoft

It could be demonstrated with reference to the texts - that’s what I tried to do with those two quotes from Gerson and Feser. I’ve read some books on the idea, but it’s hard to explain.

There’s book by a professor of English at Uni of Chicago called ‘Ideas have consequences’, Richard Weaver. It is exactly about the dissolution of a real metaphysics and its pernicious consequences for Western culture. (Unfortunately, it is a book that is now mainly associated with American conservatism. But then I also agree with much of the analysis in Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason, which is archetypal New Left, so I hope that balances it up a bit.)

But in any case, the really key point, the crucial fact, is the nature of the reality of ideas. They’re not real because they’re generated by some piece of meat that grew in the Petri dish of evolution; they’re real whether anyone knows them or not.

This is one of the big themes in Heidegger.... — macrosoft

Husserl’s critique of Descartes in Crisis of the European Sciences anticipated that. In any case, it is true - it is the consequence of treating ‘res cogitans’ as a ‘that’ (whereas in reality it is always unknown.)

Have you heard about the purported relationship between Pyrrho of Elis and Buddhism? Also see Katja Vogt.

I agree Hegel’s conception of dialectic is profound.

It could be demonstrated with reference to the texts - that’s what I tried to do with those two quotes from Gerson and Feser. I’ve read some books on the idea, but it’s hard to explain. — Wayfarer

Not to be difficult, but anything less than direct experience would seem to be a talking about what is finally not understood, a difference as difference without further specification.

But in any case, the really key point, the crucial fact, is the nature of the reality of ideas. They’re not real because they’re generated by some piece of meat that grew in the Petri dish of evolution; they’re real whether anyone knows them or not. — Wayfarer

This is a bold thesis, a theological thesis even, assuming these ideas are of central significance. For me this is hard to make sense of in the same way as mathematical platonism is hard to make sense of. We have access to 'intersubjectivity' (a non-neutral word), which provides the phenomenon that might be interpreted in terms of a faculty that 'sees' an otherwise invisible realm. For me, though, the phenomenon in its being is the 'reality' of the situation. Attaching additional concepts to this direct experience of the intuitions (they exists 'outside' us) would just be contexualizing the experience among other experiences. This is not to say that experience must be interpreted in terms of a subject having experience. The word 'experience' points at what is given, that which we try to describe and understand.
Or which it itself (experience) tries to understand as an embodied, self-clarifying field of meaning.

Husserl’s critique of Descartes in Crisis of the European Sciences anticipated that. In any case, it is true - it is the consequence of treating ‘res cogitans’ as a ‘that’ (whereas in reality it is always unknown.) — Wayfarer

I take your point about 'unknown,' but maybe 'elusive' is better? Something always unknown is arguably not worth troubling ourselves about. The 'pure witness' gets some of what's important. Existence is its there. But the pure witness (subject as bare possibility of experience) is outside of time, and this implicitly freezes being out of time, since such a subject must be being itself. Or being in the sense of that which lights up or discloses or gives beings. I'd say an immanently historical stream of meaningful experience that experiences itself as experience is not too far from the situation. We might also talk of a 'thrown open space' that 'worlds.' Hegel seemed to be pointing at this in a lingo that was either insufficiently dynamic (crystalline as in shard of conceptual glass) or just too hard to understand (is the concrete concept continuous?).

Have you heard about the purported relationship between Pyrrho of Elis and Buddhism? — Wayfarer

No, but that is what I had in mind. I suspect that some dialectical/argumentative/epistemological thinkers had breakthroughs and got 'behind' language, 'behind' an objectifying grasp of existence. To speak of an elusive becoming at the ground of beings is not enough, since those in the objectifying mode must take this becoming and this ground as one more being and not as the thrown open space for beings. IMV, Wittgenstein's ability to be shocked that the world exists is a becoming-aware of this thrown-open-space. Any purported ground of this space must be yet another object within this space and not its ground. That's why I suggested that intelligibility itself (the space of meaning) was the great mystery. All other explorations, questionings, and explanations presuppose this space. Man is the biological foundation of this space and simultaneously this space itself in which he roams for a ground apart from himself., his own mortal abyss-for-ground. Cue the organ music.

It could be demonstrated with reference to the texts - that’s what I tried to do with those two quotes from Gerson and Feser. I’ve read some books on the idea, but it’s hard to explain.
— Wayfarer

Not to be difficult, but anything less than direct experience would seem to be a talking about what is finally not understood, a difference as difference without further specification. — macrosoft

Here it is again:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

I bolded the last, because it’s key to the point. I think that we nowadays instinctively understand the nature of such things in terms of ‘what brains do’. But

Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what is ultimately real. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental stuff. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists as surely as a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.

In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them.

Thoughts are Real

Platonic idealism basically affirms that ideas are real - not only by virtue of their being in individual minds. But of course the immediate objection to that - one that Plato himself didn’t have an answer for - is ‘where or in what sense do they exist?’ What I argue is that they precede and inform existence; that they subsist at a different level to phenomenal objects. Russell says:

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. This is, of course, denied by many philosophers, either for Berkeley's reasons or for Kant's. But we have already considered these reasons, and decided that they are inadequate. We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create. 1 .

So the view that I am developing is that universals in this sense, are constitutive of our experience and knowledge of the world. They provide the conceptual foundations of reason itself. But since the advent of nominalism, this is no longer understood; instead, reason is seen in Darwinian terms, as an adaptation. And that is where my other pinned article comes in, Maritain’s criticism of empiricism. But that is more than enough for one post.

Nietzsche is skeptical of this. He thinks that Plato was a skeptic, that he too knew he did not know. Laurence Lampert’s “Nietzsche and Modern Times” discusses how Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche all read Plato as a skeptic. There is a growing number of prominent scholars of Plato who now read him in this way as well. — Fooloso4

Plato hardly claims the power to grasp absolute truth for himself. Very often, when approaching the territory of final metaphysical ideas, he abandons the style of logical exposition for that of myth or poetry. There is something characteristically unfinished about his thought; he eschews neat systems and his intuitions often jostle one another. ... The dialogues are, each one, a drama of ideas; in their totality, they depict the voyage of a mind in which any number of ports are visited before the anchor is finally east. And at the end, it is as though the ship of thought were unable to stay in the harbor but had to cast anchor outside; for according to Plato the mind must be satisfied with a distant vision of the truth, though it may grasp reality intimately at fleeting intervals. — Raphael Demos

Introduction to Plato: Selections.

I think this makes the important point that Plato was not, and didn't claim to be, a systematic philosopher, especially when it comes to first philosophy. In many of the dialogues there are aporia, resolutions considered and rejected, sketches of ideas, possibilities explored. But it is animated throughout by a kind of faith in the Form of the Good (which later was appropriated into Christian theology), and by the hint of glimpses of some 'distant vision of truth', which in my judgement is often omitted from later readings. Not the faith in religious dogma that came to replace it - let's not forget the Academy was closed by Christians - but a striving towards a rational demonstration of the ultimacy of the good.

Lloyd Gerson identifies five doctrines of the Sophists which Plato and later Platonists particularly sought to challenge:

* Materialism, all there is is just material bodies and their physical properties
* Mechanism, all events happen because of physical cause-and-effect
* Nominalism, only individual objects exist, and any properties which they share have no reality beyond the names we may give them
* Relativism, what is "true" or "good" is simply what is true or good as it appears to me
* Skepticism, gaining knowledge of truth, or of what truly is, is impossible

(From Plato to Platonism, 10-14)

All of these themes are of course current in today's philosophy, and are arguably ascendant in Anglo-American philosophy, in particular.

Relocated from here

They would only be mistaken if, using your example, the books we [i.e. 'the prisoners in the cave'] see are only images of the one real book which exist in an eidetic realm. Two peculiar things about this - first, the connection between eidos (Forms) and images in the mind, second, since the Forms are singular, what would be contained in the book and how does this relate to the content of books as they exist in our experience, that is, within the cave? — Fooloso4

I believe there is an 'eidetic realm' in the same sense of there being 'a realm of natural numbers'. In other words, 'realm' is here a metaphor, as is a 'place' or 'domain', but ought not to be interpreted literally to mean an actual place or realm. I say that because, in long experience, the idea of a 'ethereal realm' constantly haunts these discussions. But it's not located anywhere, it's not a realm in that sense.

Second - I don't know what 'the forms' really are. But I think in the Platonist view, geometric forms and real numbers are real in somewhat the same sense as the forms are - that is, as intelligible objects.

As for the relationship between ideal and particular, that would be the subject of many a book-length study. But I think some of Feser's examples help to understand the matter:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it, is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect (nous) is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism.

That's close to the Platonic sense of an 'ideal object' (which actually is also close in meaning to the term 'noumenal', meaning, 'an object of nous'.)

Platonism is a misunderstanding of Plato. — Fooloso4

Certainly Platonism is not ‘the philosophy of Plato’ but I think that's too strong a description. Lloyd Gerson has a book, From Plato to Platonism, which addresses the distinction between Plato's philosophy and the broader philosophical movement

The Neoplatonist Plotinus makes a great deal of the idea that the Good as the source of what is is not something that is. Some contemporary theologians, most notably Tillich, follows this line of thinking and thus claims that God as the source of being is not. — Fooloso4

The way I try and conceive of this - an heuristic, if you like - is to distinguish 'reality', 'being', and 'existence'. Generally speaking, I think of 'what exists' as 'the phenomenal domain' or the realm of existing phenomena. But then, the question arises, as per the above, what is the nature of the existence of such things as natural numbers, logical principles, geometric forms, and the like? I like to say that these are real but not necessarily existent. (Of course, in practice it is quite correct to say that 'the law of the excluded middle exists', but the point I'm trying to make is that this is something which is real only for a mind capable of grasping it; it's not existent in the same sense as phenomenal objects.) Think about the fact that 'all compounded beings are subject to decay' i.e. they're temporally bound and composed of parts. Whereas, mathematical objects do not come into or go out of existence - I think that is why, for ancient philosophy, they're regarded as being of a superior order to objects of sense.

So Tillich and other exponents of the via negativa, are, I think, talking about 'what is beyond existence', in other words, what transcends the phenomenal domain. When it is expressed as 'beyond being', I think this is confusing, because 'the One', no matter how conceived, is a being, or is being qua being, i.e. is not simply a force or object; but is not subject to the vicissitudes of existence/experience.

thanks! Actually after your recommendation previously I started reading up on Strauss, although he seems a formidable writer and not someone to tackle casually. I’ll definitely look into that other one, sounds just my cup of tea. And I’m trying to find the motivation to study Plato in depth, but it’s daunting, as it’s such well-tilled ground, there’s a ton of material to read, and my reading is likely to diverge considerably from a lot of modern interpreters. Lloyd Gerson seems pretty good though, I might start with him.

Or is the modern world a mess due to mis-reading philosophy? — ZhouBoTong

These are all deep and difficult questions and open to very different kinds of answers.

There's a political reading of Plato, which concentrates on the political implications of his philosophy. I think that is the most usual reading in today's culture.

But there's also 'the spiritual Plato' which was much emphasized by the adoption of Platonic principles by the early Christian theologians.

Each will give very different answers.

A traditionalist reading would probably answer 'yes' to your above question. So in that reading, what is preserved in writing is only one facet of a text, there is a kind of hidden meaning, or a meaning which is only able to be interpreted correctly by one who is suitably prepared.

Recall that above the gateway of the Academy, there was an admonishment, 'let nobody who is unlearned in geometry enter here'. In some ways, the Academy was almost like a guild or a secret society. Indeed that aspect of Plato is why Karl Popper regarded Plato as an enemy of 'the open society'. (It's no co-incidence that there's a relationship between philosophical traditionalism and reactionary political movements, as according to traditionalism modernity is basically a corrupt form of culture doomed to self-destruct (about which see Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick.)

However I was searching around recently for other interpretations of Plato and found this blog post. The blog owner says she is a professor of philosophy and published author, which I can't vouch for, but I favour the general drift of the interpretation given there. Also check out Lloyd Gerson's lecture, Platonism vs Naturalism.

That's a difference that determines whether you see particulars as imperfect representations of ideal forms (per Plato), or instead as exhibiting form (per Aristotle). — Andrew M

I’m sure your depiction of the contrast between them on the question exaggerates the difference, but I really need to hone in on some writing about it. I’m thinking ‘Aristotle and Other Platonists’ by Lloyd Gerson.

For Aristotle, these abstract objects are ultimately grounded in concrete particulars, not in a Platonic realm. — Andrew M

I think the question would have to be asked, then, why Aristotelian philosophy is not nominalist. Because nominalism denies that 'forms' or 'types' have any reality outside the things which instantiate them; nominalism means 'name only'. So we call something a triangle because it happens to have three sides comprising straight lines that intersect; there is no triangle other than specific instances of triangles. But the very reason we can recognise a triangle, or a circle, or what have you, is because it obeys the requirements of a particular form - that it is a flat plane bounded by three intersecting lines, or a line drawn by points equidistant from a centre, and so on.

So there, the 'form' is truly 'an idea', not simply the shape of something, but the defining feature - the essence, if you like, which is what is perceived by the rational intellect.

Aristotle "immanentized" the Forms. This meant, of course, that there still were Forms; it was just a matter of where [or in what sense ~ WF] they existed. So Aristotle even used one of Plato's terms, eîdos, to mean the abstract universal object within a particular object. This word is more familiar to us in its Latin translation: species. In modern discussion, however, it is usually just called the "form" of the object.

The Aristotelian "form" of an object, however, is not just what an object "looks" like [in other words, not just it's shape ~ wf]. An individual object as an individual object is particular, not universal. The "form" of the object will be the complex of all its abstract features and properties. If the object looks red or looks round or looks ugly, then those features, as abstractions, belong to the "form." The individuality of the object cannot be due to any of those abstractions, which are universals, and so must be due to something else. To Aristotle that was the "matter" of the object. "Matter" confers individuality, "form" universality. Since everything that we can identify about an object, the kind of thing it is, what it is doing, where it is, etc., involves abstract properties, the "form" represents the actuality of an object. — Kelly Ross

http://www.friesian.com/universl.htm

“EVERYTHING in the cosmic universe is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and identifies it as a particular something.

“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.

~From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941. (Additional paragraphing and emphasis added).

https://thomasofaquino.blogspot.com/2013/12/sensible-form-and-intelligible-form.html

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible.

Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism, 39:00

Mysticism: A term used to cover a literally bewildering variety of states of mind. Perhaps the most useful definition is that given by Jean Gerson: "Theologia mystica est experimentalis cognitio habita de Deo per amoris unitivi complexum" (Mystical theology is knowledge of God by experience, arrived at through the embrace of unifying love). Three points to notice: (1) the use of the term mystical theology (which was traditional in the Church until comparatively modern times) associates the mystical state with, while distinguishing it from, natural theology, which enables man to arrive at some knowledge of God by natural reason: also from dogmatic theology, which treats of the knowledge of God arrived at by revelation. (2) We do come to know God through mystical theology. (3) This knowledge is obtained not by intellectual processes but by the more direct experience implied in the term "unifying love." — New Catholic Encyclopedia, T. Corbishley, J. E. Biechler

Well, that clears everything up..

Thank you for sharing that. I found the article very helpful. Some Platonists accuse Aristotle of laying the groundwork for nominalism. I don't think it is fair to accuse Aristotle of nominalism. Are there other good Aristotelian responses to nominalism? — DS1517

You're welcome. (Actually decades ago I was manager of a University computer store, and Jim Franklin was one of my customers!)

Have a listen to a couple of minutes of this lecture starting from where I've bookmarked it. 'Thinking as a universalising activity....literally, you could not think if materialism was true' :clap: . When we recognise kinds, types, species, they're all essentially manifestations of form. I think this is a reference to the famous passage in De Anima about the 'active intellect', the faculty which grasps 'the forms' and is able to reason on that basis.



(If you don't know Lloyd Gerson, by the way, he's probably one of the leading academics in Platonist studies. That lecture he's reading is Platonism vs Naturalism.)

Nominalism proper only took root with William of Ockham, Francis Bacon, and others, in medieval times. I believe that the debate between scholastic realists (who accepted the reality of forms) and the nominalists was a watershed in Western thinking. The nominalists - precursors of later scientific empiricism - won the day, and, as is said, 'history is written by the victors'. So much so that in this particular matter, that it is very hard for us moderns to even understand what the argument was about. But the upshot was, in my view, that with the victory of nominalism, the possibility of a real metaphysic was lost, as this depends on there being degrees of reality, which neither nominalism nor later empiricism can accomodate.

For the sake of clarity, then, an edited passage from Ed Feser, with my comments on it:

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

That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. — Feser

I would say, that what Feser designates 'thought', I would designate 'reason' or 'judgement', and that what he designates 'intellect' is clearly descended from the Greek term nous.

He gives some examples:

First, the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular (hence the remark by Gerson above, paraphrasing Aristotle, that 'reason is a universalising activity'). Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But my concept man applies to every single man without exception. Or to use my stock example, any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept triangularity applies to all triangles without exception. And so forth.

Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people. And so on. — Feser

Have a look at the Gerson video above - it’s been bookmarked to the passage about this point.

This then means that there are different kinds of thinking. Which do you think these are and how do they differ? — Two

More than two. Remember the analogy of the divided line - there are gradations of knowledge from 'mere opinion' upwards to noesis. (Galileo was to seize on Plato's 'dianoia' with enormous consequence.)

I think the key point about Gerson's paraphrase of De Anima, is that when the intellect (nous) knows an intelligible, it does so by something like a process of identification - as in the example he gives, 'equals less equals are equal'. There's a kind of apodictic certainty inherent in such rational truths which are absent from judgements about sensible objects; they are seen, as it were, with the 'eye of reason' which is immediate, whereas sensory knowledge is by nature mediated. My feeling is that the ancients still had a 'distrust of the senses' whereas modern culture with its emphasis on naturalism, regards sensory experience as the sine qua non of knowledge (which after all is the basis of empiricism). The knowledge of mathematical and 'formal' truths constituted an insight into the real nature of things, whereas (the ancients would say), moderns have an exceedingly high regard for normality.

Remember also that Platonism sets the bar very high for what constitutes 'knowledge'. Again from my inexpert understanding, many of the dialogues about this question conclude with aporia or various hypotheses none of which are conclusive. But the general drift is that the uneducated person, the hoi polloi, don't possess real knowledge all, it can only be won by the arduous exercise of reason. (There are parallels with the Eastern concept of 'vidya' as 'true knowledge' although in the Greek philosophers, there's much more emphasis on mathematics and reason, as Russell remarks in HWP.)

At any rate, without going too far into all these digressions, the notion of 'matter' and 'form' provides a solution, in that 'matter' is said to be intrinsically inchoate and therefore unintelligible until it receives form (as a seal is impressed on wax). Matter itself is unintelligible in this picture. In Aquinas' rendering of hylomorphic dualism:

If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. 'To understand' is to free form completely from matter.

This is at least an echo of the 'contemplation of the Forms'.

"The existence of the form 'sight' by which the eye sees" and "fire warms by informing objects with its heat."

That is the kind of verbiage and muddled thinking that Occam was right to reject. — Andrew M

Ah, but in context it makes an important point. Ockam says of Aquinas' 'inherence theory of predication' (Aquinas' account of universals) that it:

requires, in addition to all the beings about which I can form true propositions, a whole new set of beings, namely, the natures or forms, which verify any true proposition about those beings. For Ockham, this proliferation of objects was the ground for grave objection. In Ockham’s judgment, it is at best a meaningless play of language, and at worst an irresponsible complication of our theorizing, to insist that “the column is to the right by to-the-rightness, God is creating by creation, is good by goodness, just by justice, mighty by might, an accident inheres by inherence, a subject is subjected by subjection, the apt is apt by aptitude, a chimaera is nothing by nothingness, a blind person is blind by blindness, a body is mobile by mobility, and so on for other, innumerable cases.” Why should we “multiply beings according to the multiplicity of terms”? This is, for Ockham, “the root of many errors in philosophy: to want it to be such that, to a distinct word there always correspond a distinct significate, so that there is as much distinction between the things signified as between the nouns or words that signify.”

You can see here the reasoning that was to become known as 'Ockham's razor'.

However, says Hotschild, what this doesn't see is that there is not a 1:1 relationship between 'forms' and their manifestations:

among all the kinds of forms which can be signified by terms, according to Aquinas, there is no one uniform way in which they exist. The existence of the form “sight,” by which the eye sees, may be some positive presence in the nature of things (which biologists can describe in terms of the qualities of a healthy eye that gives it the power to see), but the existence of the form blindness in the blind eye need be nothing more than the nonexistence of sight ‒ the 'form' of blindness is a privation of the form of sight and so not really an additional form at all. In general, distinguishing and qualifying the different ways there can “be” a form present in a thing goes a long way toward alleviating the apparent profligacy of the realist account of words signifying forms. Arguably such qualification of modes of being, and not theological discourse, is the real theoretical crux of Aquinas’s views on the “analogy of being.”

Aquinas’s famous thesis of the unicity of substantial forms is an example of another strategy: linguistically I may posit diverse forms (humanity, animality, bodiliness) to account for Socrates being a man, an animal, and a body, but according to Aquinas there is in reality just one substantial form (Socrates’ soul) which is responsible for causing Socrates to be a man, an animal, and a body. In this and other cases, ontological commitment can be reduced by identifying in reality what, on the semantic level, are treated as diverse forms.

Hothschild goes on to argue, and this is the crux of the essay in my opinion, that

A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.

The absence of this sense manifests in the pervasive attitude that the Universe is 'irrational' or 'purposeless' which underlies the modernist outlook.
— Joshua Hothschild

I think it's necessary to clear the ground and take a fresh look at the original Aristotle. — Andrew M

The scholastics adopted Aristotle to their purposes, no doubt. But at least they retained him. Philosophy since Galileo has tended to through Aristotle out with the bathwater of geocentrism. I think the reason Aristotle is making a comeback, is because the notion of formal and final cause is indispensable to any mature philosophy.