I have argued in defense of God by arguing against materialism. But what if God is just an unusual kind of material entity. After all, matter is just what science describes. If you include God as a theoretical entity in a scientific explanation, then God becomes a an unusal mateiral entity. No skin off the nose of Christians, right? If we can predict the activitiies of God to some extent (and we can) we can form testable theories about God.
No??????
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1 – 200 of 268 Newer› Newest»Victor,
"But what if God is just an unusual kind of material entity."
In that case god would be a testable scientific hypothesis, or an untestable materialistic speculation.
"No skin off the nose of Christians, right?"
Under most forms of Christianity there would not be any skin left on that nose.
On most forms of Christianity god is necessarily immaterial and scientifically untestable.
"we can form testable theories about God. No??????"
That would be stretching the commonly used meaning of "scientific theory".
There is no scientific theory of god.
A scientific hypothesis is generally considered to be falsified if it is found to be self contradictory. Most forms of Christianity are logically incoherent due to there being so many mutually exclusive properties assigned to god, such as omniscience and free will, being outside of space yet omnipresent, being outside of time yet acting in different ways at different times.
Deism, on the other hand, while remaining mere speculation, at least cannot be immediately dismissed as incoherent (as most forms of Christianity are). Deism simply puts a god label on our present set of scientific unknowns, so it isn't scientifically valuable, or falsifiable, just not immediately incoherent like Christianity.
The gift that keeps on giving.
But for this to work we need a clear definition for materiality. What's yours?
Victor,
That is one of the most difficult questions to answer in a one size fits all definition, a bit like trying to define life.
Nobody knows what material IS, at base. Maybe I am god floating about somehow while you and all the rest are just figments of my divine imagination. But, I am convinced that is not the case, since it would seem egotistical in the extreme to seriously consider myself to be the entirety of existence, and I don't do well holding my breath while telling myself that air is just a figment of my divine imagination.
Thus, I have concluded (as I think nearly everybody has, so no big accomplishment on my part) that our senses provide some fair representation of some real stuff, real material.
I am not the first person to notice that this stuff seems very regular, has properties that we can build instruments to measure, and pretty much everybody agrees on in much the same way, as opposed to some sort of vision or story or imagined entities that might seem real to one person but are completely undetectable to others.
Whatever this material stuff is, precisely, we have a very great deal of sensory evidence to tell us that it is highly divisible down to some rather amazingly small bits, the smallest of which yet identified we give names like photon, electron, up quark, down quark, and neutrino.
So, one way to describe the material we know of is all the stuff that is made up of all these particles and fields we have thus far identified.
At least a couple problems jump out immediately with that definition, however. Those particles and fields already identified might not be the simplest entities in the cosmos, and there might be some physical limits that prevent us from ever observing the true underlying real material beables.
Well, tough luck for us then, if they exist then they simply have their own ontological reality whether we can figure out their natures or not.
Further, who knows what sort of material might exist elsewhere in the cosmos, perhaps in some other big bang or other cosmic structure? Again, there is likely no way we could observe such speculated material, which does not mean it does not exist, just that we cannot coherently insist that is certainly does not exist. So there is where the deistic god can persist in the human imagination with no logical disproof.
Now, just supposing some sort of god does exist. What could be more natural then the most fundamental aspect of the cosmos? How could god somehow be unnatural? If there is a necessary being then that would be the most natural thing of all.
If god exists god would have to be some sort of material, what else? Absolutely nothing at all? In what sense does absolutely nothing at all exist at all?
If god is not nothing then god is something, some thing, a thing, some sort of material.
What sort of something has no spatial extent yet is omnipresent? Is outside of time but acts throughout time? Is perfectly simple yet does so many different things?
If god has knowledge how is that knowledge stored? Nowhere? With nothing?
Pretty much all of the assertions about god on offer are nonsensical.
Materialism, on the other hand, entails zero logical contradictions.
William Lane Craig once debated Sam Harris and stated very simply that on atheism there can be no objective morality, and he is correct. Sam tried all manner of mental gymnastics to make that sound not true. All Sam did was make himself sound incoherent.
That sort of thing goes back to the behaviorism piece from 100 years ago, and much else. People in our culture are just stuck on those old ideas of objective morality, ultimate purpose, true human rights, and all the rest.
The answer for a coherent materialism is as simple as it is obvious, eliminate those ancient myths.
Everything we know of is made of purposeless, amoral, bits of submicroscopic stuff we call material. There are no objectively good or bad moral sentences, there is no ultimate purpose to our lives or the cosmos, there is no ultimate teleology.
If there are other sorts of material in existence, fine, maybe we will observe them, maybe we won't, all just what we would expect on materialism.
So to be clear, this definition could be compacted to "Everything that exists is made of something". While leaving open room for expounding, is that a fair one-liner summary?
What are "fields" made of?
Generative AI is experimental. Info quality may vary.
Dangerous Idea is a blog that discusses topics such as philosophy, chess, politics, and C. S. Lewis. The blog is a place to discuss whatever the author is in the mood to discuss.
Dangerous ideas can include ideas that cause people to neglect or abuse their children, become indifferent to the environment, devalue human life, accept violence, and prematurely resign themselves to social problems.
Other blogs with "dangerous" in the title include:
Dangerous Minds: A compendium of new and strange-new ideas, new art forms, new approaches to social issues, and new finds from the outer reaches of pop
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Daniel Dennett looks at Darwinian theory and what follows from that
C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: Victor Reppert champions C. S. Lewis
Just an fyi.
Google has a new AI search enhancement.
The above is what google says when the search term is
Dangerous Idea
At first I thought that was a pretty harsh indictment of your site, Victor!
Maybe AI is a radical anti-theist ideological engine, a sort of monster that has taken on the attributes of its liberal creators in that Sodom On The Bay.
Then I realized the AI had segued to a general discussion of what dangerous ideas (note the new use of the plural) are, or at least can be. The indictment was of dangerous ideas in general, not your site in particular, Victor.
Whew!!! For a second there it seemed like AI had you pegged for a really rotten guy!!!
I had a friend once who developed an AI program based on Thomistic principles. Unfortunately, he passed away before the orihect could be completed.
the project
AI using Thomistic principles? Hmmm, I am kinda drawing a blank on that one!
How would that even work? I mean, there are various approaches to coding AI, depending on the goals, such as working with large databases of text, or machine vision, autonomous vehicles, generating audio/visual, etc.
Pretty hard to see how Thomistic theology, metaphysics, or Aristotelian physics could inform AI coding.
>Pretty hard to see how Thomistic theology, metaphysics, or Aristotelian physics could inform AI coding.
I too have a hard time seeing this, as Thomistic metaphysics is so obvious as to be basically unavoidable. If you code an AI, you have particles (the computer, the software) in a particular form or pattern (the code), which has specific characteristic behavior (behaving as a chatbot, or image creator).
Martin.
"If you code an AI, you have particles (the computer, the software) in a particular form or pattern (the code),"
Coding in a pattern is hardly somehow Thomistic. Stuff has characteristics, no kidding. The sun also appears to rise in the East. The sky looks pretty much blue on a clear day.
HOW ARISTOTLE CREATED THE COMPUTER
"He then pays tribute to Aristotle, the inventor of logic,"
Ha Ha Ha.
Nobody reasoned or argued logically until Aristotle. How absurd.
Mathematics is a formalization of logic. Apparently Aristotle invented mathematics.
Oh, wait, Pythagoras invented bridges, because bridges are designed with right triangles.
Newton and Leibniz invented moon rockets because calculus is needed to design and fly moon missions.
"Trying to improve on the logical work of Aristotle was an intellectually daring move."
No it wasn't. Aristotelian logic was just one step between his predecessors and many that followed.
Inventors invent what the actually invent, not everything for the next 2000 years that is in any way related to what they invented.
Inventors always build on the work of their predecessors. Most of what Aristotle did for logic was to write down and organize ways of thinking and reasoning and arguing that were already well known and in practice, which was an important contribution generally.
Newton and Leibniz made some very important breakthroughs, but they did not start from scratch. A very great deal was already known about the mathematics of calculating slopes and areas. For example, the method of exhaustion was well known, which leads directly the the method of integral calculus.
Newton and Leibniz did not create everything that uses calculus. The fact that both men independently derived pretty much the same system of mathematics at nearly the same point in history indicates that the foundational concepts needed to invent calculus had matured in that time frame so there was a degree of inevitability that somebody would figure out the next step.
Nobody reasoned or argued logically until Aristotle.
Some can't do that even after Aristotle showed them how to.
>Coding in a pattern is hardly somehow Thomistic.
If there is A) a substrate, and B) a pattern, then you have the matter/form distinction.
>Stuff has characteristics
Final causes are unavoidably obvious, huh?
Martin,
"matter/form distinction."
No, matter and form are not distinct in that they are not separable.
That is a fundamental error of Thomism generally, the reification of our limited analytical capabilities. We think of the ontology of material in terms of the matter itself and also its form. Thomists make the mistake of imposing their own limited capacity to conceive of mutuality upon reality, which is a rather short sighted and egocentric view of ontological reality.
Existence without essence is incoherent.
Essence without existence is incoherent.
"Final causes are unavoidably obvious"
You are confusing teleonomy for teleology.
Of course, Thomson doesn’t think they can be separated either, and also that essence without existence is incoherent and vice versa. You’d know this if you bothered to study it, which of course you have no interest in doing, because it would be the end of the easy-to-knockdown strawman you’ve invented in your own fevered imagination, and you’d no longer have your sense of superiority.
*Thomism, obviously.
Uhm, Martin, dunno your background, butttt....
"Thomson doesn’t think they can be separated either, and also that essence without existence is incoherent"
In Thomism there is the notion of "existence itself".
It is thought that there must be a being of pure actuality with no potentials, no accidents.
In Thomism there is the notion that existence and essence are distinct, in other words, separable.
"Distinct" does not entail "separable." This point is made when Aristotelians speak of, for example, the marble and form that make up a statute. The marble and form are distinct: the form of a statue is not identical to the marble of the statue, as that form could be realized by clay, copper, etc. And the marble is not identical to the form of the statue, as that marble could take on many other forms. So the matter and form are distinct: i.e. not the same thing.
But this does not entail separability. The form of a statue cannot exist without marble, copper, etc. And the marble of the statue cannot exist without being in some kind of form (i.e. shape and characteristic).
"But this does not entail separability."
Logically, yes.
In Thomism, no.
In Thomism there is the notion of "existence itself" or "pure existence".
Makes no sense, I agree, but there it is.
Here is just one example, pretty easy to find if you just search for a couple terms.
"One of the more puzzling contentions of historic Christian philosophical theology is surely the claim that God is not a mere ‘being among beings’, but rather ‘Being itself’, or ‘Existence itself’. Though typically associated with Thomism, the above quote from Augustine shows that this way of conceiving of God has much deeper roots."
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/religious-studies/article/existence-exists-and-it-is-god/C54DB6DD97C677187BF67407D4B185F0
The author goes on with the usual pretzel logic to try to justify such nonsense. But, that is what all Christians are forced to do if they wish to use reason to defend Christianity.
Christianity is intrinsically incoherent. All attempts to rationally justify Christianity necessarily lead to goofy, incoherent, logically invalid "arguments".
You said:
First, I showed how "distinct" does not entail "separability." You never refuted this point. You tried to point out that Thomists separate essence and existence, but in fact they do not. They simply argue that essence and existence in the first cause are identical, which entails them not being separate, either.
>The author goes on with the usual pretzel logic to try to justify such nonsense.
This is a fallacy known as "ad lapidem," and you're need to feel superior to others by continually using it does not have the effect you think it does.
Materialism is intrinsically incoherent. All attempts to rationally justify materialism necessarily lead to goofy, incoherent, logically invalid "arguments."
Christianity is intrinsically incoherent. All attempts to rationally justify Christianity necessarily lead to goofy, incoherent, logically invalid "arguments".
All attempts to convince Stardusty of anything fail, is the accurate version of this statement.
Kevin,
"They simply argue that essence and existence in the first cause are identical,"
Then they are not distinct.
Further, at other times Thomists also claim "existence itself" which is a claimed separation to pure existence.
It is all a very great deal of incoherent nonsense that goes in circles of nonsense at various times and in various expressions.
"First, I showed how "distinct" does not entail "separability." You never refuted this point."
Right, and if Thomists would just stick with that consistently they would be fine, but like all Christians, they go on to make incoherent claims.
"This is a fallacy known as "ad lapidem,""
No, it is a reasonable description of absurd arguments. All Christian arguments for the existence of god lead back to absurdities at base.
"Materialism is intrinsically incoherent."
That would be a perfectly fine statement to make, if you had previously made a sound argument to support it. But you did not, so it is really just another absurd assertion.
But by all means, do provide a sound argument that shows a contradiction in materialism.
Spoiler alert, I already know you cannot. I know that because many have tried and all have failed. I also know that because I have specifically formulated my expressions of materialism to be immune to any sound charge of self contradiction.
Victor has attempted repeatedly to show that the very fact we reason shows a self contradiction in materialism. Reppert, Lewis, Plantinga and all the rest fail, of course. Their arguments contain strawman, equivocation, and various other logical fallacies.
But by all means, do put forth a sound argument that shows the self contradiction in materialism.
Kevin,
"All attempts to convince Stardusty of anything fail, is the accurate version of this statement."
On the subjects of materialism, immaterialism, Christianity, atheism, and Thomism that is true.
The reason is that I have studied these subjects for many years and have a great deal of experience examining a wide variety of arguments pro and con. I hold the positions that are free of self contradiction. I long ago discarded positions that contain self contradictions. So, the chances of you finding a self contradiction in one of my expressed positions is vanishingly small.
By contrast, I can quickly summarize some of the more common failures of Christianity and immaterialism.
It is incoherent to assert a god that is outside of space and has no spatial extent yet is omnipresent and acts throughout space.
It is incoherent to assert a god that is outside of time yet does different things at different times.
It is incoherent to assert any sort of objectively true moral propositions or facts or sentences regarding an objective good or an objective evil, because the Euthyphro dilemma is a true dilemma, the WLC attempt to create a third alternative is incoherent in the first instance and just a rewording of the arbitrary case.
It is incoherent to assert omniscience and free will simultaneously.
It is incoherent to assert perfect goodness, and omniscience in the presence of manifest evil.
But by all means, do show some sort of incoherence in materialism. Victor has tried with his argument from reason, but there is no such sound argument, as I have shown again and again.
...
It is incoherent to assert the necessity of a first mover in the presence of manifest inertial motion.
It is incoherent to assert the necessity of a first sustainer, a first changer, in the presence of manifest existential inertia, because it is incoherent to assert that material would necessarily spontaneously change itself from existing to not existing if it were not for the continuous action of the necessary first changer, all to account for the manifest non change of material in its existential aspect.
It is incoherent to assert the necessity of an ultimate director of universal teleology in the presence of manifest teleonomy.
I hold the positions that are free of self contradiction. I long ago discarded positions that contain self contradictions. So, the chances of you finding a self contradiction in one of my expressed positions is vanishingly small.
You've demonstrated repeatedly that the issue isn't the existence of a problem in your reasoning, but rather your ability to recognize problems in your reasoning. Can't have a conversation with someone who says if you think you've found a flaw in his beliefs, that's your first clue you messed up somewhere.
Maybe that's why you refuse to say "God", because that title is already spoken for in your mind?
I would argue with you on pretty much every alleged contradiction you listed (not on Thomism), but you've demonstrated no ability to entertain the possibility you are wrong. So there's no point in doing so. My knowledge that you're wrong is sufficient.
Kevin,
"Can't have a conversation with someone who says if you think you've found a flaw in his beliefs, that's your first clue you messed up somewhere."
You could if you wanted to learn some things.
""God", because that title is already spoken for in your mind?"
I was raised as a Latter Day Saint. I am looking forward to getting my own planet to rule over :-)
"I would argue with you on pretty much every alleged contradiction you listed"
Not soundly, I am quite sure. But if you want to learn where you are going wrong in your thinking you can try, and I will then point out your errors for you. You're Welcome!
"no ability to entertain the possibility you are wrong. "
On the contrary, I find the idea that you might point out my errors very amusing!
" My knowledge that you're wrong is sufficient."
Translation, my summaries are so clearly correct that you cannot muster even an attempt to show where they are wrong.
But people do not change so quickly, it's a human thing. We change slowly, by repetition, in increments, over time.
See, I am not like Trump, who just blurts out a claim, and when pressed for details provides none, merely blurts out the claim again. I, on the other hand, can and will go into great detail of precisely why my claims are correct. And when presented with counter claims I can and will drill down with detail and precision to show just where the counter claims are wrong.
Now, perhaps you consider me to be arrogant in all this.
Lorenzo's Oil - Etymology of Arrogant / Arrogance / Arrogare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDcPjTXOz3U
Either a humorous answer or confirmation, or both. Either way, that works for me.
Ok, Kevin, perhaps you could lend some support to the main argument of this blog, the one Victor seems to prefer to focus on, what is known as The Argument From Reason?
Just what is the argument from reason supposed to be?
I admit, I have a hard time reciting it back to you from memory.
That is typical of me. When I cannot make sense of a thing it becomes difficult for me to remember the specifics of it.
For example
"See Jane run"
I can remember that.
But
"Ene eJsr nau"
I would have a very difficult time remembering that particular sequence of letters. To me it looks like gibberish, which for me makes it very hard to remember.
What exactly is the argument from reason supposed to be?
*We reason, therefore god.*
Please do excuse me for being underwhelmed. I suppose there must be more to it than that.
I think it might go something like this:
Suppose we are just particles in motion.
Particles do not reason.
Therefore, if we were made of particles we could not reason.
But we do reason.
Therefore we are not just made of particles.
Therefore god exists.
Mmm, so...
A stone cannot channel water.
A Roman aqueduct is made of stones.
Therefore a Roman aqueduct cannot channel water.
Or...
A stone cannot channel water.
A Roman aqueduct channels water.
Therefore a Roman aqueduct is not made of stones.
Turns out logicians have a name for that sort of argument, the fallacy of composition.
I have found it is important, when analyzing arguments for god, to keep in mind these known elements of logically invalid argument:
Fallacy of composition
Fallacy of reification
Fallacy of equivocation
Fallacy of non-sequitur
Can you write an Argument From Reason, for example, that does not contain such logical fallacies?
Kevin,
Have you entertained the possibility that he is just plain dumb?
Can you write an Argument From Reason, for example, that does not contain such logical fallacies?
I would expect proponents of that particular argument to defend it. I don't oppose it, I simply don't care about it.
Have you entertained the possibility that he is just plain dumb?
Not-dumb people can get suckered in by dumb ideologies, like New Atheism.
But I doubt not-dumb people would give an example of something that was designed by an intelligence for a purpose in order to counter the argument that everything is designed by an intelligence for a purpose.
Maybe being a New Atheist is a chicken-egg situation wrt dumbness.
Still don't see an argument from reason, or any other argument for the necessity of god, that does not rely on logical fallacies...tick tock
Stardusty,
You praise the New Atheists, a singularly contemptible group of immature non-thinkers who worship their own powers of reasoning despite frankly sucking at using it.
You act like their team mascot - you tell people if they disagree with your beliefs, they went wrong somewhere. And you do it without any sort of indication that you're joking. That's New Atheist self-worship on steroids.
You constantly insult the thinking of theists in general and Christians in particular - not just the ideas themselves, but the actual thinking capacity of those who hold the beliefs. And you always make sure to abuse proper grammar so God, a name/title, isn't capitalized. This is a common tactic of New Atheists, to bring themselves down to the seriousness of junior high delinquents in order to mock or disrespect others and their beliefs.
So if you won't entertain the idea that your powers of reasoning aren't cutting edge and you can in fact be wrong, and if you disrespect and insult not only the beliefs of others while discussing them, but the belief holders themselves, then here is a logical conclusion for you - I would not consider a debate attempt with you to be anything but a waste of time, because you're going to deny what is said whether you are right or wrong.
I've given the reasons for my belief to plenty of curious or thoughtful atheists in my time. I have never met a single New Atheist-type who qualified as either. For them, I simply respond in kind, because entertaining myself is the most productive outcome of an interaction.
Waiting for a single counter-example. Tick tock.
Kevin,
"You praise the New Atheists,"
Where did you get that from? Of the handful of folks generally associated with that title I often agree with their assertions, disagree with others.
This seems like projection on your part. I don't feel a need to worship. I am not casting about looking for something or somebody to worship.
"a singularly contemptible group of immature non-thinkers"
Hilarious.
"you tell people if they disagree with your beliefs, they went wrong somewhere"
If you disagree with my belief in heliocentrism, rather, favoring a stationary Earth model, you went wrong somewhere. It's like that.
If you disagree with my belief that chocolate is better than vanilla, well, fine, up to you.
"And you do it without any sort of indication that you're joking"
Right, I am not joking.
All arguments for the existence of god on offer are unsound.
If you have any such argument you think is sound you went wrong somewhere.
I am not joking.
"but the actual thinking capacity of those who hold the beliefs"
That is a highly complex issue. The human brain is highly complex. One can be very good at many things yet find certain specific tasks exceedingly difficult. That mix of capabilities varies from individual to individual.
For the theist, when analyzing logical arguments, the capacity to reason is indeed poisoned by religion in that narrow band of reasoning processes.
"God, a name/title, isn't capitalized."
In your narrow view god is personified, given a name, a title. I have a much broader view of the potential concepts of god.
Also, no, I will not use the pronoun "zir" for god, or whatever else somebody dreams up. You are free to hold whatever titles you wish in your imagination, but I am not obligated to accommodate them.
"So if you won't entertain the idea that your powers of reasoning aren't cutting edge and you can in fact be wrong"
Been there, done that. The conclusion has been 100% that all arguments for the existence of god on offer are unsound.
I have reviewed them in detail, examined, re-examined, re-analyzed again and again.
At this point in my life it takes me a single pass through a clearly worded argument for the existence of god to identify its errors. Other arguments are quite convoluted and have their faults embedded in novel definitions that require a bit more time to unpack.
"I would not consider a debate attempt with you to be anything but a waste of time,"
Ok, you learning how wrong you are is a waste of time to you.
See, that is a key difference between you and I. I always appreciate somebody who can show I am wrong on the merits, because that person taught me something.
"you're going to deny what is said whether you are right or wrong."
No, mere denial? No, not at all, you are just making up excuses out of whole cloth now.
"I have never met a single New Atheist-type who qualified as either."
Maybe that is a part of what is "new". Some of us have been at this so long, and have examined such a wide variety of arguments that there is no significant question that some re-wording or this or that argument for the existence of god is going to be any better than any other.
Thank you for proving all my points.
Similarly, Chesterton asserts that the argument is a fundamental, if unstated, tenet of Thomism in his 1933 book St. Thomas Aquinas: "The Dumb Ox":
Thus, even those who appreciate the metaphysical depth of Thomism in other matters have expressed surprise that he does not deal at all with what many now think the main metaphysical question; whether we can prove that the primary act of recognition of any reality is real. The answer is that St. Thomas recognised instantly, what so many modern sceptics have begun to suspect rather laboriously; that a man must either answer that question in the affirmative, or else never answer any question, never ask any question, never even exist intellectually, to answer or to ask. I suppose it is true in a sense that a man can be a fundamental sceptic, but he cannot be anything else: certainly not even a defender of fundamental scepticism. If a man feels that all the movements of his own mind are meaningless, then his mind is meaningless, and he is meaningless; and it does not mean anything to attempt to discover his meaning. Most fundamental sceptics appear to survive, because they are not consistently sceptical and not at all fundamental. They will first deny everything and then admit something, if for the sake of argument--or often rather of attack without argument. I saw an almost startling example of this essential frivolity in a professor of final scepticism, in a paper the other day. A man wrote to say that he accepted nothing but Solipsism, and added that he had often wondered it was not a more common philosophy. Now Solipsism simply means that a man believes in his own existence, but not in anybody or anything else. And it never struck this simple sophist, that if his philosophy was true, there obviously were no other philosophers to profess it.[18]
Lot of this going around.
I'm sure that solipsist professor thought he was being perfectly rational. His train of reasoning led him down a winding road on a path that ended up contradicting his fundamental assumptions. But instead of thinking there was something wrong with his fundamental assumptions or with the steps in his reasoning, he accepts an absurd conclusion and wonders why other people can't see what he sees. He is simply blind.
I doubt there is much anyone can do to help such a person if he doesn't want the help. We should probably pity him as he yells at everyone for not "seeing" what he sees.
"I doubt there is much anyone can do to help such a person"
No need, because that person is just a strawman figment of the imagination of the anti-naturalist.
As usual, Chesterson argues like an idiot. That is not the same thing as being uneducated, of generally low intelligence, inarticulate, or generally stupid. It just means that his arguments are patently stupid.
"I suppose it is true in a sense that a man can be a fundamental sceptic, but he cannot be anything else: "
How stupid. Does this actually make sense to you?
To be a skeptic is to doubt, to recognize the inability to absolutely prove.
I am a skeptic of all existence except my own first person experience. I cannot absolutely prove the reality of anything other than my own first person experience.
Nor can you absolutely prove any reality other than your first person experience.
Cogito ergo sum.
That is as far as our absolute proof of reality can ever go, even in principle.
Chesterson then creates the strawman of the assertion that the skeptic affirmatively asserts that nothing other than his own first person experience is real. That is the stupid part.
P1-I recognize that I cannot absolutely prove any reality other than my experience.
P2-I assert that nothing other than my experience has ontological reality.
The stupidity of Chesterson is to ascribe P2 to the skeptic instead of P1.
Are you really yelling at your own hallucinations? That truly is pitiful.
Then all expressions are pitiful, since all expressions are in the context of our ongoing hallucination, that of our first person experience of what we commonly consider to be ongoing first person reality.
Yes. All your expressions are pitiful. Watching someone struggling with their hallucinations without being able to help them is sad.
We are being told how it "really is" from someone who thinks he is "really" hallucinating. That's one reason I stayed away from drugs. I saw some of my intelligent friends take drugs and start talking like this.
Psychoactive drugs distort our ongoing waking hallucination, our sensory conscious experience.
The effects of psychoactive drugs provided evidence against any sort of human soul, and evidence for the physicality of consciousness.
The word "hallucination" is typically associated with an implied qualifier of "unreal" or "imaginary". It is true that we often think in the manner of hallucination, that is what dreams are.
I can only presume that you have experienced many such hallucinations, and that they occur for you when you are sleeping. That seems to be a fairly universal human experience. Your sleeping hallucinations likely vary, sometimes short and disjointed, sometimes containing irrational combinations of perceptual features, sometimes vivid and highly realistic.
Most people have experienced such sleeping hallucinations that are so realistic, so vivid, that for a moment while awake it seems as though the hallucinated experience was real.
What most people do not realize is that when they are awake their entire perceptual experience, visual, auditory, and all the senses, is an ongoing realistic hallucination. It seems so real and is such an integral part of our lives that most people do not even realize this is in fact happening.
The great mistake most people make is assuming there must be the word "unreal" as a qualifier to "hallucination". Actually, your waking hallucination is materially causally linked to an external reality.
Consider a webcam that results in images and sounds on your screen and from your speakers. Those images and sounds are realistic. The images and sounds are causally linked to an external reality (external to the webcam-computer system).
However, very clearly, the images and sounds are not that external reality, or even a highly accurate representation, being pixilated, flattened, and color distorted. Yet, the images and sounds are highly realistic.
That is how consciousness proceeds, very broadly. Your eyes are like the camera, your ears are like the microphone and your ongoing visual-auditory hallucinatory experience is like the monitor and speakers.
Who then, you would logically ask, is watching the show? The answer is simple, other brain processes, you have many working in parallel, interconnected, and also sequential.
Yep. Sounds like my friends after they took drugs for a while. Unfortunately the psychosis did not go away after they stopped.
Hallucinations are where you hear, see, smell, taste or feel things that appear to be real but only exist in your mind. Get medical help if you or someone else have hallucinations.
You can try to help, but they need to want to accept the help.
I know on Planet Stardustypsyche, there is a false dichotomy of A) either materialism is true, or B) there are ghosts and psychics and Christian fundamentalism.
But in the real world, there is no such false dichotomy. For example, the Brazilian philosopher Bernardo Kastrup is, like Stardustypsyche, an atheist and naturalist. He doesn't think there is a creator God, and he thinks the natural world is all that exists. It's just that he thinks the "natural world" consists of a single, unitary mental experience of which all of us individuals are temporary localizations of. There is no such thing as matter. His view is basically a modern defense of George Berkeley's idealism. In his book "Why Materialism is Baloney," he addresses this "hallucination" theory that Stardustypsyche speaks of.
If all that exists is matter, and if consciousness is somehow produced by the suitable arrangement of matter represented by the brain, then it must be the case that all subjective perception resides in the brain; and in the brain only. Thus, according to materialism, the only way you can experience a world outside your head is if signals from that outside world penetrate your brain via the sense organs and, then, somehow modulate the creation of a brain-constructed hallucination that corresponds to the outside world. Ergo, your whole life – all reality you can ever know directly – is but an internal ‘copy’ of the ‘real reality.’ Nothing you see, touch, smell, feel, or hear around you right now is a direct apprehension of the ‘real reality.’ It is all, instead, an internal copy-of-sorts generated by your brain. Materialism, thus, requires a doubling of all reality: it presupposes an abstract and unprovable ‘external’ universe next to the known, concrete, and undeniable universe of direct experience. No ‘spiritual realm’ postulated by the world’s religious traditions is as abstract or metaphysical as the ‘external’ reality of materialism, for the latter is, by definition, forever beyond experience. One is forced to wonder whether this can really be the simplest, most parsimonious and most reasonable metaphysical explanation for our observations.
The he goes on to list what you need to accept if you want to be a materialist:
Materialism requires the following four statements about reality to be true:
1. Your conscious perceptions exist;
2. The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from your
own, also exist;
3. There are things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious
perception;
4. Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception
generate conscious perception.
After showing that statements 1 and 2 are entirely reasonable, he then takes materialists to task for the non-parsimonious nature of 3 and 4:
Statement 3, on the other hand, requires a much more significant leap of faith, since it postulates an entirely new category – namely, things outside conscious perception – for which you can never have any direct evidence. Indeed, everything you can ever know comes into consciousness the moment you know it, so the belief that there are things outside consciousness is an abstraction beyond knowledge.
Statement 4 is even worse. It postulates that things you can never know to exist are actually responsible for the only thing you can be absolutely sure to exist: your own consciousness. It postulates that abstractions generate what is concrete. This is quite an extraordinary statement in that it completely inverts the natural direction of inference: normally, one infers the unknown from the known, not the known from the unknown!
Idealism requires only statements 1 and 2 to hold. In other words, it acknowledges the most certain and then requires merely a small leap of faith. The reigning materialist worldview, on the other hand, requires all four statements above to hold; a gargantuan leap of faith. Clearly, idealism is the more skeptical, cautious metaphysics.
The great mistake most people make is assuming there must be the word "unreal" as a qualifier to "hallucination".
I can't find anyone else using the word "hallucination" like you are, while literally every other source I'm finding in scientific journals, dictionaries, etc is using it to inherently indicate "unreal" in a particular sense that excludes imagination, memory, or conscious experience that corresponds to external reality. Even dreams are excluded due to the different brain state involved, and as someone who suffered from hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations for years, I can readily attest to that difference. I can only imagine what that would be like fully awake.
Just because our experience is a biochemical representation does not make it hallucinatory, otherwise the word has no meaning. I see no evidence that the way basically everyone uses the word is mistaken, let alone greatly.
Kevin,
"I can't find anyone else using the word "hallucination" like you are,"
That is largely due to the very traditional notion of what nearly all people have considered to be reality, our ongoing first person sensory experience.
Research into consciousness, intelligence, and how the brain functions is ongoing. A great deal of progress has been made.
Scientists who are on the leading edges of such research are realizing that our entire waking sensory experience is a controlled, causally determined, hallucination.
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo
"I see no evidence that the way basically everyone uses the word is mistaken"
Ok, well, it seems you have not yet encountered this view. It was fairly inevitable that you would.
I certainly would not want to minimize or make light of your near sleep hallucinations, particularly if you found them chronically disturbing, but I think most people would find that to be a highly relatable experience.
I have had the experience, occasionally, of having auditory stimulus mixed into my dreams, particularly if I am already dreaming and sounds are tending to wake me up in the middle of a dream.
A nightmare can be quite disturbing, and even after waking up and realizing it was "just a dream", still, the emotional impact is quite real.
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose
Question-Moody Blues
Is a memory realistic? I would say, yes, if fairly accurate, say, the memory of a face. In my dreams I sometimes "see" familiar faces. Those are realistic hallucinations, but time delayed. Like playing a video file.
Suppose I use my webcam to make a video of somebody, but store it directly to computer memory. Then, later, I play that video file. Is that unrealistic, merely because the display is time separated from the capture of the image data?
Suppose I watch that same scene in near real time, is that realistic? What is the difference? I see the same moving images on the screen either way.
How much different from what you consider to be your waking reality is a vivid dream? Scientists are realizing that the mechanism of "display", the hallucinatory process, is basically the same comparing ongoing waking first person sensory experience, versus sleeping vivid dreaming experience.
The main differences between waking realistic hallucinations and sleeping hallucinations are the time delay by use of memory for sleeping hallucinations, and the added distortions that occur in the storage-retrieval process of a dream.
That's why a vivid dream, especially a nightmare, or perhaps you had some disturbing near sleep hallucinations, are impactful, because they are essentially the same perceptual process, so they seem so very real.
That is why we react so strongly to a graphic depiction of violence or sex or beauty or ugliness on a movie screen, because it seems so real. We can reason that it is just a picture, but our sensory perception reactions are largely beyond such consciously willed control.
Here is another indication that was somewhat inevitable you would learn of these perspectives. I think Kastrup in general is presenting new-age woo that solves no problems, but this paragraph is fairly accurate.
www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/transcending-our-brain-created-reality-a-new-call-to-lift-natures-veil
" The currently accepted view in neuroscience is that the ordinary, waking reality we experience every day is in fact a brain-constructed ‘hallucination’ analogous in nearly every way to a dream. Indeed, the same neuronal mechanisms underlie our experience of dreams and of waking reality.
The difference between the waking hallucination you live your daily life in, on the one hand, and your dreamed-up hallucination during sleep, on the other hand, is merely this: The former is believed to be modulated by electromagnetic signals emanating from a supposed external reality that we can never have direct access to, for we’re irremediably locked into our brain-generated hallucination.1 It is this abstract, assumed external reality that, supposedly, explains why our waking experiences seem to be shared with other individuals, while our nightly dreams are highly individual and idiosyncratic."
Martin,
"he then takes materialists to task for the non-parsimonious"
Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
"His view is basically a modern defense of George Berkeley's idealism."
I refute Kastrup thusly (kicks rock, stubbing toe, and crying out in pain).
If Berkeley or Kastrup are really so convinced then I suggest holding of one's breath permanently, because, after all, material air is just an extravagant speculation!
The 4 items listed are close to correct, but inaccurate in key ways that makes the further analysis so much "baloney".
"Statement 3, on the other hand, requires a much more significant leap of faith"
Faith is for the religious, I don't need it at all.
3 is just a rational conclusion indicated by the evidence I have available. I cannot absolutely prove it, I don't have faith in it, it just seems like the most reasonable conclusion so I am personally convinced of it, unless somebody can show some good evidence otherwise.
"the belief that there are things outside consciousness is an abstraction beyond knowledge."
All thoughts are abstractions, that is just what the words mean, they are pretty much synonymous.
The assertion though, is not of an abstraction, rather, of an ontological reality. It is the height of egocentrism to fail to assert 3. To fail to assert 3 is to make yourself not only the center of the cosmos, but the entirety of the cosmos.
Really? Do you really believe you are all that exists? You believe that nothing exists beyond you? I call that childish. That is babyish. If you really believe that then you just never stopped being a baby, in your grossly egocentric view of existence.
"abstraction beyond knowledge"
Now the idealist fudges, moving from ontology to epistemology.
How do you define knowledge? Justified true belief?
Ok, in that case, my justification is all the perceptual evidence I have which has led to my belief. Now, if that belief is ontologically realistic then I have knowledge, so the assertion of being beyond knowledge is, well, "baloney".
"Statement 4 is even worse. It postulates"
Right, it is a postulate, not an leap of faith at all. A postulate is an axiom, something that seems to be true, but is self consciously provisionally accepted as true, but subject to revision, at least in principle.
"It postulates that abstractions generate what is concrete."
Ridiculous.
Kastrup has it back to front. The concrete is what is concrete, how obvious is that? That is so obvious that it has the truth of a tautology. Yet, somehow, new age woo man Kastrup does not get that.
The concrete generates the abstractions, on materialism.
"Idealism requires only statements 1 and 2 to hold."
Indeed, idealism is extremely simple minded, with the simple minded babyish egocentric view of the cosmos.
I think, therefore I am all that exists.
I think, therefore my thoughts are the entirety of all existence.
I am god and you are all figments of my divine imagination.
That is indeed a very simple outlook on existence.
"Simple" in the pejorative sense of the word.
Ok, well, it seems you have not yet encountered this view. It was fairly inevitable that you would.
I've encountered the view for years, just not the co-opting of the word "hallucination" to describe it.
I dug deeper, trying to stay away from Anil Seth since I am skeptical when looking for an idea pops up one name (highly likely to be a kook), and finally found the phrase "controlled hallucination". Nothing there I didn't already know, except it seems they are broadening the definition of "hallucination" and putting adjectives in front of it to differentiate between normal function and abnormal function, which is what almost everyone thinks of as a hallucination.
Of course, if everything is hallucination, then like a woman, if anything can be one then nothing is. That's more a mangling of the language than any sort of insight. You can agree with the obvious fact our perception is a biochemical model that can pull some shenanigans, which has been known for decades, without calling it a hallucination, which has a diagnostic function to help people who need it. Much like there is a difference between murder and justifiable homicide despite both ending in a death at the hands of another.
I disagree with their word usage, as it obfuscates the meaning of a perfectly functional word to indicate abnormal perception with no external correlation that can very possibly require medical intervention. We don't need to water that down by calling normal function a hallucination. A lot of people claim to be on the autistic spectrum because of some stereotypical autistic trait they think they possess, while I have to deal with the reality of autism every day, and people watering it down to nothing really annoys me. Same here.
I won't argue the point, but I also won't use the word to describe normal function. Neither useful nor helpful to those suffering.
Of course, if everything is hallucination, then like a woman, if anything can be one then nothing is.
Yes. Using the word "hallucination", which has always meant un-reality, to describe our experience of normal reality is just plain garbled nuts. If our normal experience of reality reflects that reality (yes, I that coffee cup I'm reaching for is really there) then we are not experiencing a "hallucination" but reality. On the other hand, if we "really" are normally experiencing "un-reality" by hallucinating, then how could we possibly know that even in principle? (Nonsense warning. 99% chance of incoming circular arguments).
If that's the state of "neuroscience" then the entry requirements to the profession must be pretty low.
"Of course, if everything is hallucination"
Everything is what it ontologically is.
Our perceptions of external reality are irrelevant to the ontological reality of the cosmos.
Try to think this through, OK? Or not, up to you.
Our perceptual experience is a sort of controlled hallucination, that is not everything, that is our perception of that tiny subset of everything that we can perceive.
Try to think this through, OK? Or not, up to you.
Are you always intentionally a jackass, or are you simply unable to grasp that someone can disagree with you without having failed to "think things through"?
Our perceptual experience is a sort of controlled hallucination
Hallucination refers to abnormal sensory perception during the waking brain state that has no external basis. So no, our normal perceptual experience is not a hallucination. If you'd ever had one, you would understand the difference.
If normal function is hallucination then there is no such thing as a hallucination, that's just normal function at work.
He obviously cannot understand what is being said aside from the fact that the author he follows without question is illiterate.
Regardless of his misuse of the term "hallucination" the assertion is that we cannot know reality because what we perceive is not reality. You are being fooled. How do you know that? Because some dope who "knows" he is being fooled insists you believe him. Did the dope compare his experience with "reality" and find a difference? No. Because "reality" cannot be known. Yet we must believe that electromagnetic waves "control" our thoughts because (although we cannot know there really are electromagnetic waves because they are part of the external reality we cannot know), the dope who tells us he is being controlled by the electromagnetic waves says so. Get a tinfoil hat already.
Kastrup is right. Materialism is baloney on steroids.
So Hal.
Why do you say that the agent is the person rather than the brain?
Hal,
I don't really understand your objection. Kastrup is basically a Berkleyan idealist, so there isn't any "brain," there are only persons.
I agree.
I also agree that just because Kastrup has pointed out how materialism is baloney doesn't mean that his scheme is not also baloney. The problem is that they've both just assumed the anti-realism of Kant as a starting point although I suppose it started with Ockham and his nominalism.
I think that is the root of the problem rather than mistaking the brain/mind as an agent. But perhaps it follows that if you look at your hand (or other any other part of yourself) and convince yourself that what you're seeing isn't real then what are you left with as being real? A mind?
The problem, though, is why stop there? Why not be consistent and deny reality outright. If you're convinced you can't experience reality then why insist you have a "real" mind that has "real" experiences. You couldn't even be a consistent solipsist.
If someone is trying to convince me that what he is experiencing is not real so I must not be experiencing reality either, the last thing I'd do is think "Yes! He's right! Nothing is real!". It's like he's trying to give me an IQ test (or a drug test). I'd conclude he's high.
But maybe that's a different way of saying the same thing?
I haven't read Wittgenstein but I've read about him.
I get the impression that he was very concerned about language, maybe so much so that reality was a secondary concern. If that was so, then it seems to me to put the cart before the horse. I get it that we need to communicate our concepts properly and that a lot of philosophy has made a mess of that communication by sloppy or imprecise definition or usage so it needs to be cleaned up, but that seems like a technical problem rather than the goal of philosophy to me. I get the impression that some people think words create reality rather than just describe it.
You could be right.
I say that because of an article I read that there are still arguments over whether he was a realist, anti-realist or considered his views outside the scope of those 2 positions. I suppose I also get that impression because of his analysis of the confusion in philosophy as being mostly about "word games".
So what was it about this that changed your mind? And what was your previous assumption?
I'm interested in what led you from reductive materialism. Where you challenged and then investigated further and were convinced otherwise? What did you find lacking in materialism and what did you find in your current philosophy that makes more sense?
It's interesting that you chose that book since it's a criticism of materialism.
How did you come about choosing that book to read? Did someone recommend it to you?
" Confusions arising from the work of philosophers such as Dennett, Chalmers, Churchland, Nagel and Searle are subjected to detailed criticism. These criticisms are complemented by constructive analyses of the major cognitive, cogitative, emotional and volitional attributes that lie at the heart of cognitive neuroscientific research. "
I suppose criticizing materialist philosophers as being confused is not per se anti-materialist. But I also recall you mentioning that you have (or had) an appreciation for Aristotelian ideas which are certainly not materialist.
So did you read the book not knowing that these philosophers and their ideas were going to be criticized? Why did you choose this book specifically? There's a bunch of them out there. Was it random?
OK.
I get the impression you're avoiding my question regarding the motivation for choosing this book in particular. I guess I'm left to imagine a nefarious scheme. :-)
Hal,
OK I got it. You were looking for books on the subject and you found the description (and maybe the reviews) interesting.
Your latest quoted paragraph is a good one. I've seen materialists get mad at me for pointing out the incoherency of them talking about something as existing but not being real. What could that even mean? If something is not real, then either it doesn't exist at all in which case it is nothing and is indistinguishable from all other nothings or it is something like a concept, perception, activity, etc. in which case it is real and does exist, but just is not a material object.
Hal,
Why are you sure of that?
BTW, what was your profession? You mentioned your age range so I assume you are retired.
And I think the dispute about ‘it exists’ and ‘it is real’ boils down to the second paragraph in your quote from the book.
The materialist will argue the point that "running" does not exist because "running" is not a material object. Yet spend many calories explaining how this "something that does not exist" operates. If something does not exist, it is nothing. If it is nothing we can not in principle know anything about it. So how can we describe how nothing works?
That's probably why you don't understand. It doesn't make the slightest sense.
Peter Hacker: Resolving the Mind-Body Problem (Royal Institute of Philosophy)
If you like videos.
Hal,
Yes, you could call it neo-Thomistic. Do you think that concept of substance is different than yours?
Thanks for the lecture link. I'll take a look.
Have you read:
The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature
Wondering what he as to say about good and evil but can't find any short descriptions.
Hal,
Thanks for those 2 links. I'll read them soon.
As I understand it, Wittgenstein didn't read a word of Aristotle, but it seems that Peter Hacker was led back to Aristotle's ideas by Wittgenstein's thought. Too bad Wittgenstein didn't broaden his horizons by reading Aristotle.
Hacker asserts that there is such a thing as a soul since he follows Aristotle, so I a assume you must also.
Plato thought that when an animal died, it's form (or soul) returned to the realm of souls. Aristotle denied that because he thought that, although an animal has a soul as part of its makeup, the soul was entirely corporeal since all of an animal's interaction with the world was through senses via the sense organs. Since corporeal things are composites of material and form, once those separate, the thing is no longer in existence. Period.
Not so for incorporeal things though. Since they are incorporeal, they have no parts to dis-integrate so they cannot cease to be. There is no organ associated with the operations of the intellect (how could there be since intellectual operations are not material), yet humans, as opposed to animals, do those operations while animals cannot. What happens to the intellect part of the soul when a human dies?
You say:
In my view, when the human being dies he ceases to exist. The dead body is now a corpse.
And I agree with that but with a qualification like Aristotle. There is no longer the substance of a human being present. But there is a part of the soul, the intellect, that cannot possibly dis-integrate since it has no parts. Here is the Aquinas commentary on Aristotle's work:
Commentary on De Anima
I find if you read a commentary on Aristotle rather than Aristotle straight up, you will get a better understanding. That's because the commentator explains the methodology of the steps Aristotle is going through which is bewildering if you were wondering if he actually holds this or that idea or whether he was merely exploring it only to reject it later.
But I'm afraid you are too quick in assuming he is using it in the same way that a Thomist would.
Or maybe he is showing how the Cartesian concept of the soul is different than the Aristotelian-Thomist account. I think this is more likely since that is what Wittgenstein was criticizing.
Here is the section of De Anima that goes into the role of the agent intellect. So you don't have to wade through everything.
I'd be interested if you find something from Hacker that denies the immateriality of the agent intellect.
I think your 3 quotes above are an argument against Cartesian concepts of the soul. I say this because of what he says regarding animals not having a "soul". In that context he is speaking only of the "rational soul".
In the video I linked to he has Aristotle explain the vegetative soul, the animal soul and the rational soul starting here:
48:14 What Is Distinctive of all Living Things
So, if he is following Aristotle, he will also acknowledge that the form of animate things are also called a certain type of soul.
The "agent intellect" is explained in my latter link to the commentary on Book III, Chapter V of De Anima. Briefly, since the intellect sometimes acts and other times doesn't it A divided it into agent and patient. The patient (or potential intellect) the contents to be operated on by the agent intellect in the act of doing intellectual actions. You may want to read some of the sections before that if the commentary is not clear to you.
Hal,
Maybe it's the word in different languages that is causing a problem?
On the Soul is just English for the Latin De Anima which in Greek is Peri Psychēs
This is the introduction of On the Soul in Wikipedia.
On the Soul (Greek: Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Peri Psychēs; Latin: De Anima) is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC.[1] His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.
"Expositio et quaestiones" in Aristoteles De Anima (Jean Buridan, c. 1362)
Aristotle holds that the soul (psyche, ψυχή) is the form, or essence of any living thing; it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in. It is the possession of a soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul — the intellect — can exist without the body, but most cannot.) Note that is is Buridan's commentary, not Aquinas'.
I doubt that Hacker is contradicting Aristotle and Aquinas is not either. I just think Hacker's project is to point out the problem with the Cartesian idea of the soul. That's why I mentioned I would be interested in you could find Hacker saying that Aristotle was wrong wrt to the intellect being able to exist without the body (the agent intellect to be precise). That would contradict the section on De Anima I pointed out.
If you prefer I will use psuchē from now on rather than soul. (I don't know how to make that mark above the e, so I'll have to copy it from your text.)
So Aristotle held that although the psuchē of a human being perishes at death, the agent intellect part of that psuchē is different since it is immaterial. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle on this so Aristotle's position just is the Thomist position.
Hal,
Thanks for the quote that implies Hacker rejects the agent intellect of Aristotle. I'm not sure calling it "not obviously coherent" is an outright denial, but OK.
Hacker isn't using the word 'soul' in the way you and other Thomists use it.
I and other Thomists use the word in the same way Aristotle used it, so perhaps you're right and we should all stop calling it "soul" and call it "psuchē".
The question in my mind was if Hacker believes humans have the rational psuchē of Aristotle. It seems you're saying he doesn't. If he doesn't, I wonder how he justifies adopting every concept in Aristotle's De Anima (as far as I can tell) except this one facet. If you're saying it's because of Wittgenstein I wonder how that can be so since Wittgenstein didn't read a word of what Aristotle wrote and so would be unaware of the reasoning used in De Anima that Hacker has adopted (aside from this one detail).
Please let me know if you find that justification.
Hal,
Since Aristotle was a pagan and neither Hacker nor myself are Christians I see little reason for this continured focus on Thomism.
I was unaware that we were focusing on Thomism. My intention was to focus on what Hacker thinks and what you think Hacker thinks. In that regard, I have been focusing on what Aristotle wrote because it seems to me that Hacker bases his philosophy on what Aristotle wrote. If Hacker accepts the reasoning in De Anima regarding what the psuchē is and what it does then I wonder what his reasoning is to dismiss a certain aspect. Per your point above I agree that I won't mention Aquinas again if you don't.
He doesn't reject the agent intellect.
It seems to me he does in the bolded part of what you quoted above he called it a "not obviously coherent idea" and you agree with him. Aristotle defined the agent intellect as immaterial and as such can not become corrupt. So how could Hacker accept the idea of the agent intellect but call it non-coherent? That's why I think Hacker rejects it.
In his view, none of the powers or capacities of a human being has can survive a human being's death. I agree with him.
If you look closely you'll see that there is no denial of the intellectual powers. Rather it is the view that those powers can survive death. Aristotle equivocated over whether that power was itself immortal.
I notice that Hacker puts a lot of emphasis on powers and capacities and I think that is a good thing. But sometimes it looks as if he is saying that powers and capacities are what exist or not rather than "the something" that has the potential to exercise those powers and capacities. I notice that in the 2 statements of yours I just quoted. For instance the second quote only talks as if powers and capacities themselves exist apart from the thing that exercises those powers and capacities. No one claims powers and capacities can be immortal. What would that even mean?
As I understand it, Aristotle starts his philosophical investigation trying to understand change and the varieties of change we experience. If I recall he lists 4 types of change. One type of change is that of a thing "coming to be" and "passing away" or generation and corruption. When something comes to be, as a material thing, there is a combination of form and matter. When it passes away, the form and matter separate. There is a conclusion that anything that can be divided is therefore corruptable . The matter of the former substance assumes a new form and becomes something different. But what happens to the form? Plato says it returns to the realm of forms. Aristotle says that the form of a material thing only exists if it is forming the material thing and material things are corruptable. But the intellect is not material and humans have an intellect. What now?
I think that is where people think there is an equivocation. Something that cannot be divided cannot perish. The intellect is indivisible due to its immateriality and therefore cannot perish even though it cannot cause any effects to the body that has perished. Aristotle discussed this but apparently not to the satisfaction of all.
Hal,
He does employ some of Aristotle's ideas in his work. But that is only in relation to Wittgenstein's philosophy.
OK. That's where I went wrong. I thought he was arguing for the Aristotelean account of the
psuchē, not Wittgenstein's. I was unaware that Wittgenstein had a developed philosophy of the
psuchē.
Here is the quote you are referring to:
No. I was referring to the 2 quotes of yours right after I wrote:
"That's why I think Hacker rejects it." and right before I wrote:
"I notice that Hacker puts.." Look at the parts in bold. They reference powers and capacities rather than what exercises them.
In a sense it is the human being that exercises them. But then Hacker discusses the power and capacities of the psuchē. So I would have expected you to say that the psuchē which exercises those p&c's does not not survive death rather than the p&c's themselves. That phrasing raised a question in my mind if you meant that p&c's were an existent part of the human rather than the psuchē.
Why would you think that he is saying the powers and capacities can enjoy independent existence? That is the opposite of what he is saying here.
Yes I agree with you. I hope you understand why I asked from my explanation.
I'm getting the impression that you think this rational psuchē is the agent that has these intellectual powers. And that it is this rational agent that survives the death of the body.
What I have been trying to tease out is what you think Hacker's position is regarding the the psuchē. It seems to me to be remarkably similar to Aristotle's conception in almost every detail except one that you brought up in the beginning. It's remarkable because he is basing his ideas on Wittgenstein who boasted he never read a word of Aristotle. Did Wittgenstein even use the word psuchē?
Regardless. According to both Hacker and Aristotle, the human being has a psuchē with the 3 divisions you listed before. Aristotle goes on to list the intellect as part of the rational psuchē and the passive intellect and the agent intellect as making up the intellect. The sections I mentioned from De Anima discusses these distinctions. Hacker apparently rejects the agent intellect and I wonder why if he accepts the rest.
I also wonder how what I think to be the case should enter into a conversation where you don't want to talk about the Saint that shall not be named :-)
What I do think is that Aristotle thought that part of the intellect, the agent intellect, survived death. I understand that people disagree about what A meant in his brief discussion of the agent intellect, but I think the strongest case is for his concept that the agent intellect survives death.
SEP entry here:
Among the reasons most scholars agree upon are these:
Having been separated, the active mind alone is deathless and everlasting (DA 430a23–24).
Passive mind, by contrast, is perishable (DA 430a24–25).
Because the active mind is unaffected, we are not in a position to remember—something or other at some time or other.
So the active mind alone (active intellect) survives death while the passive mind (potential intellect) is perishable. The active mind does not remember x.
It is clear that this is talking about the active mind of a human and not the Divine mind since the Divine is eternal (so talk of death wouldn't make sense) and could not in principle forget anything.
Hal,
Here is Hacker's views on the translation of Aristotle's 'psuchē':
...
So the psuchē are sets of powers.
If the psuchē are merely a set of powers then what are they the powers of? If they are merely the powers of a human being then why use a different word for that than "powers of a human being"? And why use the same word that Aristotle used to mean the form of a human being rather than the human being. And then contrast DesCartes with Aristotle to get your point across that Aristotle is right and DesCartes is wrong?
Just because Hacker makes some use of Aristotle's concept of the powers of living things doesn't mean he has to agree completely with that concept.
But you're saying that he disagrees completely with Aristotle's concept of psuchē in that he replaces the psuchē with "the powers" of the psuchē and then calls it the same thing.
I see that you keep insisting that the soul/psuchē/intellect is/are not a substance or entity. We are all in complete and total agreement in that respect. So you don't have to repeat that any more. We are discussing parts/aspects of a substance.
Hal,
You disagree with Hacker's understanding of what Aristotle is saying. So what?
As I understand Wittgenstein, using language unmoored from its' context leads to confusion not clarity. I agree with Wittgenstein. If Hacker is using Aristotelian terms ripped from their framework and giving them a different definition he is doing the opposite of providing clarity.
I find it irrelevant to this discussion if you really want to understand Hacker's views on human nature.
It is relevant because he is using Aristotelean terms. If he is changing the definition without explaining that he is and why he is, then I have to think either he doesn't know what he is talking about or he is being deliberately deceptive. Both are reasons for not paying attention to his views since taking them seriously would be a waste of time.
Perhaps I'm wrong and I misunderstand Aristotle and your understanding of what Hacker means is correct. Then I need to do some more reading and that's what I will do. At the end of that I hope to be satisfied knowing the truth of the matter. What I will find is that either I misunderstand Aristotle or Hacker (or your view of what Hacker thinks) is a misunderstanding.
Then there is the question of whether the theories of A or H (if they actually different) are closer to the truth. Which is the a important question than who has what theory. So I'm willing to listen to theories that make some sort of sense.
Let me ask you a question. Does Hacker believe the intellect is exercised by an organ in the same way that sight is exercised by the eye? I mean if a person loses his eyes, he no longer has the organs associated with sight and so no longer can exercise the powers and capabilities of a human being. Is he now no longer a human?
Hal,
He explains what he means by them.
I haven't read his books. You have. It seems that you don't care if he's misconstrued what A was talking or is being deceptive. So be it. I care for the reasons I stated.
Based on this, what do you think his answer to your question would be?
Doesn't seem to address my question.
Humans don't stop being human if and when they lose some of their powers. They stop being human when they die.
This doesn't seem to follow. If it is merely this assortment of powers that makes one a human being then if one does not have that assortment of powers he must not be human being. How can it be anyway else if that is the definition of what makes a human being?
Hal,
Not a part of a human being
The eye is not part of a human being? The eye is the organ associated with sight. Does Hacker think we have the power to see without the organs to see?
I haven't seen a response to this post:
I'm not sure what you want me to respond to. Aristotle's "agent intellect" is not a substance nor an entity.
He doesn't believe that sight is exercised by the eye.:
So a human has the power to see without the relevant sense organs? Does the same go for the other 7 senses?
Hal,
Please quote the text where Hacker says the eye is not a part of the human being.
I asked if Hacker believed the power of intellect was like exercised like the power of sight in that if the eye was lost so was the power of sight. You presented a quote that said the intellect was not a part of the human being....here:
Not a substance
Neither identical with the human body, nor distinct from the human body; i.e. the questions of sameness and difference makes no sense
Not a part of a human being
Informs the living organism, but is not ‘embodied' in it
If the power of sight is associated with an eye, it is as much a part of the human being as the eye is. Right? If not, what is it a part of? So if power of intellect is the same as the power of sight, then he seems to be saying that neither is associated with any organs of the body or the eye is not part of the body.
How about the power of hearing? Does the person with no eardrums have the power of hearing?
Hal,
Regarding the claim that sight is exercised by the eyes.
It is not the eye (let alone the brain) that sees, but we see with our eyes
I'm not satisfied this answers my question:
So a human has the power to see without the relevant sense organs? Does the same go for the other 7 senses?
Let me try to be explicit.
The powers Hacker listed of the human psuchē are what make something a human.
Sight is one of those powers in the list.
The power of sight requires eyes to actually occur.
If a power cannot be exercised it is not an actual power.
So the power of sight must be removed from the list of "powers of the psuchē" for this individual.
If the individual lacks a "power of the psuchē" that makes the individual a human being, then the individual is no longer a human being.
But if the "power of sight" remains and therefore the human being remains a human being, when there is nothing for the power to exercise, then it appears there is more to being a human being than just a "list of powers". No?
Hal,
Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
You're welcome. And thank you for engaging in this dialog. It's given me an incentive to do some deeper reading that, being lazy, I wouldn't have otherwise. It is helping me sharpen my understanding of things.
You've again supplied the quote where Hacker describes the Aristotelian idea of the psuchē. From our discussion it seems to me that Hacker does not accept that idea. If that is the case then it seems he is merely discussing A's idea as an historical curiosity, not something he holds as being true himself. I think he mostly gets A's idea right but I don't think he understands the underlying framework. I say this because I'm not sure he understands what "'form' of the living body" means within A's framework and so maybe why he finds part of A's analysis of the psuchē incoherent.
You say, we are not discussing A's ideas but H's. I'm afraid I don't know how to proceed in light of the fact you've used H's summary of A as an apparent illustration of H's position on the psuchē. It seems to me we should then discuss what A means and which parts H agrees with and which he disagrees with. Don't you think so too?
Hal,
Not a part of a human being
Organs are a part of the human being. The mind is not an organ.
So obviously the intellect is not exercised by an organ in Hacker's view. I agree with him.
I had been thinking about what I wrote and it was muddled. Certainly organs are part of the body and the body is part of the human being. Here H is discussing the intellect. I think I misread before and thought he had written: "Not a part of a human body". But he says being. I wonder how the can consider the intellect not being part of a human being? Again I am interested if he conceives the sense of sight in the same manner. Is the power of eyesight not part of a human being?
Hal,
Yes, I understand that he says "This, not obviously coherent idea," referring to the "rational soul" (shouldn't he say "rational psuchē"?)/agent intellect as being immortal. But from this we don't know what he finds incoherent.
According to Aristotle, what makes the intellect different from the animals' psuchē is the ability to understand what type of thing a thing is. The essence, nature, or form of the thing which is not material but immaterial. This is understanding is finally done by the intellect after being processed through the senses and the form extracted from the object. It is this form, fully immaterial, that is present and understood by the intellect. And so there must be at least a part of the intellect that is immaterial in order to understand and process the form. This idea is central to A's explanation of the intellect and what makes humans different from animals.
Also according to to Aristotle things that have parts can be divided and so can perish. But things without parts cannot be divided and cannot perish. All material things have parts. Besides being extended in space (and so capable of being divided) they are a composite of form and matter. So once form and matter separate the thing has perished.
But the intellect of the human being is immaterial and so is without parts per Aristotle's theory of how the intellect has to work. Accordingly it cannot be divided an perish although all other material parts of the substance, the human being, can. So it must continue to exist, although it is not a substance but only part of what once was the substance of a human being.
To me, the idea is coherent. If there is no immaterial part of the intellect, forms, being immaterial, would be unintelligible to human beings. If one claims the intellect is perishable then one contradicts other foundational blocks of A's philosophy that leads up to his philosophical understanding of the rational psuchē in the first place.
That's why I think he doesn't understand the framework, or at least doesn't accept some other part of the framework that he is not expressing.
And that is why Aquinas used it because it accords nicely with the Christian doctrine of the immortal soul.
I thought we weren't going to mention this person :-)
Hal,
You think that the mind (the agent intellect, the intellectual powers, or whatever other term we want to use) is an immaterial substance that can exist forever. Interestingly, Descartes thought the same thing.
This is what I think. Descartes and Plato thought the soul was an immaterial substance that could not perish. Aristotle did not. He thought there was an immaterial part of the soul that could not perish that he called an agent (where did you get the idea that "medieval philosophers" invented this? ) in this chapter from De Anima from the link I posted previously:
Now since in all nature there is a factor that is as matter in the genus, and is potentially all that is in the genus, and something else which is as cause and agent as making everything in it (thus art is related to its material): so there must be these differences in the soul. There is that intellect, which is such as being able to become everything; and there is that which acts upon everything, as a sort of state, like light; for light too, in a way, makes potential colours actual. §§ 728-31
And this is intellect separable, uncompounded and incapable of being acted on, a thing essentially in act. For the agent is always more excellent than the recipient, and the principle than its material. §§ 732-9
Knowledge in act is the same as the thing itself. But what is potential has temporal priority in the individual; yet this, is not true universally, even with respect to time. Mind does not know at one time and not know at another time. §§ 740-1
Only separated, however, is it what it really is. And this alone is immortal and perpetual. §§ 742-3
It does not remember, because it is impassible; the passive intellect is corruptible, and the soul understands nothing apart from this latter. § 744-5 [See NOTE.]
End of quote but discussion continued.....
Hal,
Hacker has clearly laid out here his views on Aristotle's position and also where he disagrees with him.
Where but not why. Wittgenstein was all about clear language. I see violations of Wittgensteinism in play here.
As I said before I'm interested in the truth, not who said what. If it's more important to you to only listen to what Hacker has to say (or what you think he's saying) than listening to criticisms that's your right. I realize you don't have much time left in this life so I don't want to hasten your end by distressing you. So maybe you should just stop reading my responses since I find the topic interesting and I plan on keeping up the research and thinking about it.
The only way you could persuade me that your views regarding the mind are correct is if you could demonstrate that Wittgenstein's philosophy is deeply flawed or that I've completely misunderstood Hacker and Wittgenstein.
I could recommend some books to start with. :-)
Right now I think Aristotle's view of the mind are better than any other so I would characterize that as Aristotle's view not mine. But I don't know how anyone could demonstrate Wittgenstein's philosophy is deeply flawed since from what I've read, no one understands it. So you're safe from anyone changing your views. Congratulations.
I thought you had given me a free pass to mention him if needed. :-)
I don't remember any free pass. Are you sure you aren't a retired lawyer?
Hacker would disagree. The body is not part of the human being. A human being can be said to have a body.
So the body is not part of makeup of a human being. I guess another disagreement with Aristotle. And another position that sounds unreasonable.
But the mind is not a thing or entity of any kind. So it makes no sense to say it is immaterial or material. Nor that it has parts or is without parts.
Here is your quote from Hacker:
The psuchē is conceived to be the source of the distinctive activities of a living thing
The soul is not an entity attached to the body, but is characterized, in Aristotelian jargon, as the ‘form' of the living body.
The form/matter distinction in Aristotle's philosophy is now called hylomorphism. Matter is material and has the potential to be anything when it is united to form which is immaterial. The cause that causes them to be united is called the efficient cause and the telos of the thing is called the final cause. A human being is also a composite of form/matter like everything else, it's just in this case we call the form the soul and the matter the body. Since the body is material and the soul is not, it is by definition immaterial. As to the soul not having parts your Hacker quote says the human soul has a vegetative part, a sensitive part and rational part. Are you only thinking of material parts?
Those are grammatical truths.
It is a normal human being with a normal mind that thinks normally under normal conditions. I think this a more grammatically correct truth. But saying it's so doesn't make it so.
Pardon the interruption.
"So, the idea of an immortal disembodied soul or mind is not at all promising"
I think Hacker is trying to make the soul to be more than what Aristotle would try to make it. My understanding is that a soul is thought to *persist* but it isn't a stand-alone entity that can think, see trees and have experiences without being conjoined to a body that gives it the ability to do those things. Hacker's list of complaints seems more directed at Plato.
A human that dies and decomposes ceases to exist, however the form of a human (soul) persists. Because the human soul persists, it's possible for a new human to begin to exist when it is conjoined to matter.
How does Hacker explain a human being coming into existence through the mere physics of causality?
Hal,
Based on your frequent comments that you believe Wittgenstein thinks this or that Hacker thinks that it is pretty clear to me you have a poor understanding of their philosophical positions.
I haven't read anything by Wittgenstein but only about what he has written. Most of what I understand you to believe is not from Wittgenstein but from Hacker. From what I have read about Wittgenstein he was a mechanical engineer that turned to mathematical philosophy under Russell and wrote a major work where he thought he had solved all the problems of philosophy and so walked away. He later thought this work was baloney so he started again coming up with his "language games" that no one can understand and that he himself could never resolve. I get the impression that he was more of a Kantian anti-realist than a realist and I think that Kantian anti-realism, like materialism, suffers from the ad hoc need for matter. So Kastrup's idealist criticism of materialism is devastating but also wrong. I feel the same way about how you understand Hacker wrt neuro-science.
Having said that, I am having a discussion with you, not them so it doesn't really matter that I read them to understand them because I may understand what they are saying differently than you and I think that is indeed the case.
Continuing...
Hal,
"I would think any book on sex and the birth of human beings should be able to answer that question for you."
Given your comments that follow below, you're saying the physics of sex and the act of birth doesn't fully answer my question.
"Not sure why you are brining up physics here. I'm not a reductionist who thinks everything can by explained by physics."
Good to hear that, Hal. What thing that isn't explained by physics can explain a human being coming into existence? That was my question, basically. Telling me what a human being is doesn't explain how they come to exist in the first place. Does Hacker go into this?
Hal,
Thanks for clarifying your difference with Descartes and Plato. But the claim that the immaterial part of the soul can exist independently for eternity clearly shows it to be an immaterial substance.
I suspect you meant the difference between D/P and A, because I did not distinguish between D and P so I will make that assumption.
There seems to be a disconnect on the definition of certain terms an ambiguity on top of that. Hacker sometimes uses the terms soul, psuchē, rational psuchē, mind, intellect interchangeably. I think this is a source of confusion.
The quote you supplied where he uses the term psuchē is a good example. He says it shouldn't be translated as soul, but then goes on sentences later and calls it the human soul. For A, the soul is not a substance but for D/P it is. So I suggest we designate it A-soul or P-soul to avoid confusion. Likewise the A-soul has metaphysical parts that H himself identifies as vegetative, sensitive and rational so there are distinctions within the soul that we should all agree on and not muddle those distinctions together. I have assumed that H is using A's terminology and definitions but if you think differently that may be why you think I don't understand him. Better to make distinctions and stick to them if clarity is desired.
Continuing...
Hal,
(a) "I'm not a reductionist who thinks everything can by explained by physics."
(b) "Human beings come into existence in the same way as other animamls: through sexual reproduction. The human species is a result of biological evolution."
Perhaps it's a language problem, but from my viewpoint (a) conflicts with (b) in that (b) is something that any reductionist would embrace as the full and complete explanation. Stardusty would give me the same answer and he's a complete nutter in my opinion.
If they aren't in conflict then I was hoping you could answer the question I posed previously. Aristotle gives us his answer and it involves a persistent soul. How does Hacker explain this?
Hal,
Now for the definition of substance.
The A-soul is not a substance so we cannot use a substantial predicates to talk about it. We have to use non-substantial predicates if its exists. But the soul is part of the reality of the human being and so it exists. It is not material. If it exists and is not material then it must exist immaterially otherwise if is not material and not/not material it is nothing and non-existent and so would have no distinguishing intelligibility. That is why your statement: So it makes no sense to say it is immaterial or material. Nor that it has parts or is without parts. itself makes no sense.
The substance that is you is an instance of composite of the material and immaterial. There is a part that processes the immaterial part of other substances and that is how we come to know them. It is how we experience reality. Since this part is itself not composite, it cannot come undone. So although the human substance comes undone at death, this partial substance cannot come undone.
There are of course immaterial substances that have no material component and so we can use substantial predicates of them but human beings are not those kind of substances.
To recap, if H is using A terminology and framework, and it appears he does, then the human being is a composite substance of form and matter with form being the immaterial part and matter being the material part. When the form and matter separate, the substance ceases to exist, but the form cannot possibly separate because it is not composed of parts.
It seems that you cannot conceive of something immaterial existing that is not fully a substance. But that is the contention.
Things that are part of existence exist as either material things or immaterial things. Things can either exist as substances or part of substances if the substance is a composite. Composite substances come to be when the parts combine and pass away when they come apart. What is immediately left are the parts not the substance until when and if they combine again to form a substance. The A-soul is such a part.
Regardless of whether we finally agree or disagree we should agree or disagree about the same concepts. It seems to me that you have unexplained suppositions regarding the concepts of the material and immaterial and how there can be parts of substances or not. I would be helpful to for you to tell me where you disagree with the concepts I just outlined.
SteveK,
Welcome. Long time no see!
bmiller,
Your convo with Hal is interesting and I couldn't help myself. Just had to comment one time - but now it's turning into 3,4,5...10+ comments. Maybe I should quit before I get sucked back in!
Watch it bmiller, don't want to come off as an A-soul
:)
Hal,
Under Hacker's conception the mind is not a thing or an entity of any kind. Nor is the mind an agent.
It seems you made this response to a statement I was making about reality in general and not about the A-soul or mind part of the A-soul, so you clearly missed my point.
A substance is something that can enjoy independent existence. If you conceive of the mind as a thing that can survive the death of the human being then it is some sort of immaterial substance.
It may mean that to you, but not to Aristotle. Aristotle has a complete coherent system unlike what you are presenting. He didn't start off by assuming there is no afterlife as a starting point and build up his philosophy ad hoc from there. Like I mentioned before, it seems you cannot conceive, even for the sake of argument that there can be things that are immaterial, whether substantial or not.
Sorry, I'm not going down that rabbit hole.:-)
You keep saying that from your underground hutch ;-). Someone disagreed with someone else's interpretation of Aristotle so I'm right and you're wrong! Since I know I'm right and Hacker is wrong you're correct that you should stop appealing to medieval philosophers and defend your own position with your own arguments.
If you wish to know more about Wittgenstein's or Hacker's views I will be glad to provide you with any help I can.
I don't see any reason to ask you about their views. I'm interested in your views whether you understand what they said or not. They're not going to respond to my questions but you may.
SteveK,
Watch it bmiller, don't want to come off as an A-soul
Funny. I have been called that before :-) But then again so was Wittgenstein so I think that's why Hal likes engaging with me!
Hal,
One more retort to your "medieval philosophers" disagreeing rabbit hole you keep bringing up but say you're not going down.
Wittgenstein disagreed with almost everyone about everything. Even himself. He was praised for being "self-critical" rather than for being inconsistent. At least the "medieval philosophers" thought consistency was a virtue. That's another reason I think reading his works would be a waste.
Hal,
It seems you are only interested in my views on Aritstotle.
I've already given them. I don't agree with the the Thomist interpretation of Aristotle you are presenting here. You obviously think I am mistaken. I think you are.
You keep bringing up quotes from Hacker where he explains Aristotle's views as illustrations of his own views so how can I avoid being interested in those views? You also keep bringing up Aquinas after I told you I wouldn't. Nothing I've written is a view peculiar to Aquinas so I wonder why you keep talking about him. I'm left to speculate what the motivation is.
Regardless. I am also left to guess whether you think there are things such as immaterial substances or whether there are things that are composites of matter and form. SteveK's question also looks like it hasn't been answered. And more generally, What is the meta-philosophical explanation of why things come to be and why they pass away?
I find the conception of an immaterial mind to be deeply flawed.
Do you think anything can be immaterial? If so, what?
Sorry I forgot to add that Dr. Feser thinks Hacker's book Philisophical Foundations of Neuroscience is a good criique of philosophical fallacies made by neuroscientists.
Yes. I knew that. As has been discussed in this thread, Kastrup the idealist, has devastating arguments against materalism. They are more effective because no one can claim he is a "Thomist" even though he uses the same arguments. Its funny how the same argument is taken by people as being more or less believable depending on who is making the argument.
Hal,
"Biology cannot be reduced to physics. That is why we have different sciences. I don't accept the unity of science which a reductionist presupposes"
I should have used a broader term that encompasses more than just 'physics' - my bad. Saying as you did that human beings come into existence in the same way as other animals is reductionistic in my view because it reduces human beings to something less than what they are. It's like saying the existence of a novel can be fully explained by a series of machines that put ink blots on sheets of paper that are bound together in a specific order.
I was looking for Hacker's (or your) philosophical / metaphysical / non-reductionistic explanation to the question and what I got was something Stardusty would say.
VR: If we can predict the activitiies of God to some extent (and we can) we can form testable theories about God.
I must be dense. After 170 comments I'm none the wiser. What kind of activity or theory are we thinking of here? Example please!
Hal,
Regarding the immaterial soul, I'm trying to understand Hacker's basis for the claim that what Aristotle argued is "incohert". The 'incoherency issue' is the reason why I decided to post my first comment and I still don't have a clear understanding. My first comment pointed out that Hacker isn't discussing the A-soul (see your September 23, 2023 6:27 AM) so we still don't know WHY it's incoherent.
What are Hacker's reasons for the A-soul being incoherent?
Hal,
Especially in regard to whether or not you still think I am a reductive materialist.
Call yourself whatever you want. I was commenting on what you said and interpreted it as being reductive - which is my way saying that I think human beings are more like a novel than a book because humans have qualities that plants & animals don't have. You seem to agree (see below).
I'm trying to understand Hacker's (and your) reasoning behind the claim that Aristotle came to the 'incoherent' conclusion that humans (novels) are not an entirely material entity, needing an A-soul to explain their existence, whereas plants & animals (books) don't.
Hal said:
"Looks like you are describing how a book comes into existence"
"A description of how a novel comes into existence would be quite different. A novel is not a material entity"
Hal,
I'm going to respond in the same way that you did to me previously :-)
I'm sorry, but your reply doesn't appear to address my last post. If you have any comment on that I'd be interested in hearing it. Especially regarding understand why Hacker thinks the A-soul is incoherent.
It seems that the language we use is the starting point of philosophy for some philosophers and some of those philosophers found use of Aristotle's views in this matter. So it may be of interest to read Aristotle's analysis of language itself so we can understand what language is and what it is not.
It seems Aristotle arranged his analysis into 3 categories corresponding to the 3 types of reasoning of the human intellect with the titles:
Praedicamentorum = Categories
Perihermeneias = On Interpretation
Priorum = Prior Analytics
Cheers.
From the commentary on Aristotle's De Intepretatione
There is a twofold operation of the intellect, as the Philosopher says in III De anima [6: 430a 26]. One is the understanding of simple objects, that is, the operation by which the intellect apprebends just the essence of a thing alone; the other is the operation of composing and dividing. There is also a third operation, that of reasoning, by which reason proceeds from what is known to the investigation of things that are unknown. The first of these operations is ordered to the second, for there cannot be composition and division unless things have already been apprehended simply. The second, in turn, is ordered to the third, for clearly we must proceed from some known truth to which the intellect assents in order to have certitude about something not yet known.
2. Since logic is called rational science it must direct its consideration to the things that belong to the three operations of reason we have mentioned. Accordingly, Aristotle treats those belonging to the first operation of the intellect, i.e., those conceived by simple understanding, in the book Praedicamentorum; those belonging to the second operation, i.e., affirmative and negative enunciation, in the book Perihermeneias; those belonging to the third operation in the book Priorum and the books following it in which he treats the syllogism absolutely, the different kinds of syllogism, and the species of argumentation by which reason proceeds from one thing to another. And since the three operations of reason are ordered to each other so are the books: the Praedicamenta to the Perihermeneias and the Perihermeneias to the Priora and the books following it.
We have seen Categories referred to in regard to the definition of words, but On Interpretation discusses how we make sense of language and what it's purpose is. Prior Analytics gets into logic which doesn't seem appropriate in this current discussion.
Hal,
"I've responded to what you have written in your post."
Not the most important part that I've asked you about several times: Hacker's reasoning as to why he thinks the A-soul is incoherent.
Hal,
"A novel has no physical or mental attributes. Not is it an entity. It occupies no space as a human being does. A novel is not a living being. It has no powers at all."
We are talking past each other here. My comments were based on the following understanding: A novel is a physical entity with ordered pages and ink blots that have the inherent qualities of intentionality, purpose, meaning whereas a book is a physical entity that has ordered pages and ink blots without the other qualities.
What that out of the way, if you were to say that a novel came to exist, and continues to exist, in the same way as a book, that would be an example of reductionism in my view.
"Why do you think the powers of plants and animals are material entites?"
Because they are beings that, by nature, lack a rational mind.
FYI, I wouldn't have used the term 'book' and only kept using it because you used it first. I though it was odd to call a meaningless stack of ordered pages a book, but thought to myself "Hey no big deal, I'm flexible. I can adjust to using words in unusual ways"
Hal,
What was once his body is now a corpse.
Wasn't the body once part of a human being?
Apparently Hal has never sat down by the fire and sipped a cup of hot tea while reading a novel. Poor Hal.
Hal,
The power of immaterial mind, via the power of the intellect, creates an immaterial story and also the physical novel. There's a causal relationship there between immaterial reality and physical reality. By its very nature physical matter cannot create immaterial entities so how does Hacker explain the origin of the human mind?
Hal,
"It can be said that a human being has a mind because he can exhibit an array of powers of the intellect and the will. So, in my view, it makes no sense to say that the mind is either a material or immaterial thing. It makes no sense to talk of it interacting with the body."
If the powers of the mind don't direct the body as it writes a book then what powers are doing this?
I'm reading the article below on Hacker. I have too many questions to list about his metaphysics so I ask myself what this all means if Hacker is correct. To this human being it means that human beings aren't obligated to live out their existence in any particular way. Each human being is free to express, in any way possible, the various capacities of the intellect and will that each human organism possesses. Logic, morality and truth will evolve and change along with the human beings that come to know it.
Link:
https://joannamoncrieff.com/2019/05/08/the-uniqueness-of-life-a-review-of-peter-hackers-human-nature-the-categorial-framework-and-its-implications-for-the-mind-body-problem-and-our-understanding-of-mental-disorder/
I figured the existence of some capacity/entity/thing/power to obligate the human intellect and will would've been mentioned since it's a very important aspect of human existence. Do you have any good links that discuss this?
Hal,
Pardon my interruption but I was hoping you could clarify this in the context of a human being writing a novel:
It can be said that a human being has a mind because he can exhibit an array of powers of the intellect and the will. So, in my view, it makes no sense to say that the mind is either a material or immaterial thing. It makes no sense to talk of it interacting with the body.
Then when SteveK asked if "the powers of the mind" don't direct the body to write the book, then what powers do?
You responded:
Human beings like most other animals are capable of self-movement. It is the human being who has the power to write, not the mind of the human.
Are you saying that "powers of the intellect and the will" (aka mind) play no part in the human being writing a novel? It was you that mentioned that the intellect and will have powers after all, not SteveK. The second quote says the mind doesn't have powers only the human.
"The human being's powers of the intellect, the will and self-movement are all working together"
They don't exist separately so there is no such reality under which they can work together. Another facon de parler?
"The word "mind" is a façon de parler. It a way for us to refer to and talk about the intellectual powers of a human being"
Whether through "figure of speech", euphemisms, metaphors or analogies we're either talking about something that, at bottom, has actual existence, or not. Regardless of whatever form of existence it takes, that much must be true.
Hal,
The human being's powers of the intellect, the will and self-movement are all working together.
I think I'm getting it, but why use the definite article "the" in front of "intellect" and "will" and not "self-movement"? Shouldn't it be "powers of intellect, will and self-movement"? That may be adding to my confusion.
It a way for us to refer to and talk about the intellectual powers of a human being.
Does "intellectual powers" mean "will" and "intellect"? Sorry, but it's confusing to me when so many different words are used to refer to possibly different concepts.
To talk of interaction between the mind and the body simply makes no sense under my conception of the mind.
It seems that you say the powers of "mind" and self-movement interact to write a novel but they do not interact with the body? How then does the pencil move if those powers don't interact with the body? This may be just a re-wording of SteveK's question.
Thanks for letting us know. No hurries or worries.
While Hal is away I'm going to type out some thoughts directed at nobody in particular.
"This is all being done by the human being"
I would probably say the same thing. Similarly, I would say the human hand picks up an apple and further clarify that the hand doesn't act/exist by itself so the human being is doing this.
"It a way for us to refer to and talk about the intellectual powers of a human being"
Here things seem different. Hal is saying the human mind has existence, has powers and he previously said it's neither material nor immaterial. Very mystical language that needs unpacking, but that's okay for now.
Back to the hand comparison...the hand has no powers of its own to pick up the apple but still we can say that the hand is doing something - the hand is participating in what's happening in the world beyond/outside the human being.
Hal says the human mind does NOT do this despite the mind having powers. If the human mind has existence and powers that "work together" then what does that power contribute to the world around us? Hal says "nothing", which leaves me very confused.
Hal,
From the Roots of Value:
"Morality is essentially a social phenomenon – it is an aspect of the form of life of a community. In evolved societies, it overlaps with and fades into law, on the one hand, and social mores, on the other. Virtue, or moral goodness, as well as the virtues, are attributes of social beings who are, and who identify themselves as being, members of a community, a people, or nation. This does not imply that there are no self-directed moral principles or duties to oneself"
"(b) Moral norms or rules that specify what one ought to do or refrain from doing in recurrent situations. These are duty- and obligation-imposing rules, primarily concerned with prohibitions and agreements. As von Wright sapiently observed, the path of duty is laid out in advance (although often defeasibly so). It is these norms and conformity to them that enable mutual predictability and determine the sphere of protected individual liberties."
Does Hacker explain how this 'path to duty' comes to exist in advance and what powers created them?
Perhaps the most important issue isn't related to any of this. We can grant that all of what Hacker is saying and what's missing is the issue surrounding the nature of the entity in question and why that nature is in a position to obligate human beings.
Hal,
force me to clarify my own thoughts.
And me to clarify mine.
Let me ask a quick question about this:
These powers don't fall under the category of substance. They aren't material objects or entities. We attribute them to the various substances that exist in the world.
When you say that "We attribute them to the various substances that exist in the world." can I assume you are saying that substances have powers and not that my substance has powers attributed to various other substances in the world?
it is way shorthand way for us to refer to the intellectual powers of the human being. Those powers actually exist. So it is true to say that a human being has a mind.
As I mentioned before I had thought we were discussing a generally Aristotelian system but as you pointed out that's not right. An Aristotelian would agree that we could refer to the intellectual powers of the human being as a mind although it may be surprising to some how he categorizes operations of the human that are similar to the animal. It seems that you are making a distinction among the various powers of the human. Yet you pointed out that for Hacker it is wrong to think that the intellectual powers are part of the human being. What is Hacker's distinction between saying that a human has intellectual powers as part of his suite of powers and denying that powers are part of the human being. An Aristotelian would say that it is part of human nature to have powers and a human being is just an instance of human nature and so has those powers as part of his nature.
Hal,
Since humans (like almost all animals) have the power of self-movement, it is quite easy for him to move the pencil in any way he wishes.
But it seems you are implying there is a distinction between the power of self-movement and will and I agree. In my experience I will (powers of intellect)to move (powers of self-movement) a pencil and the pencil moves. These seem to happen sequentially in time. So how does the power of self-movement actuate if there is no coordination or interaction with the power of the intellect?
Hal,
"We know that humans have the power to write novels. But we can't use the power itself to explain how or why they write novels."
I think that I agree with this if what you are saying is something needs to explain how/why the power is directed to specific ends.
Strictly speaking, a human being cannot change/move itself, per the First Way argument. Do you agree with this Hal?
Hal,
Appears to me you are making the same mistake I did earlier.
Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I thought the powers of a being were independent of the being. It seems to me that when I write I (the being) both will and move, but in a certain sequence. I wouldn't have moved the pencil until I have executed some other power(s) first. So in that sense the will is prior to the movement in the action of writing isn't it? And if this sequence is normal then there is some sort of relationship between the powers of will and movement in the human I would say.
Or do you think it's nonsensical to examine how the powers seem to operate in a human being in order to better understand the nature of a human being and his interaction with the world?
Hal,
"Also, the actualization of a potentiality is a logical relation not a causal relation. From you post I gather you want to treat it as a causal one."
I think you're more interested in metaphysical arguments that you think you are.
Hal,
I will go one step further than SteveK in that this statement of yours appears to be a metaphysical argument, or at least a metaphysical assumption.
Also, the actualization of a potentiality is a logical relation not a causal relation.
Are you denying cause and effect? If so, that is a metaphysical claim isn't it?
But if you wish to know how a human can do what he does then you have to engage in an empirical investigation.
I don't think you can separate empirical investigations from metaphysical assumptions. In fact it seems to me that Hacker starts out from an empirical basis by making observations how people use language and assuming those observations tell us something about reality.
Sorry. SteveK was more concise than I was.
Hal,
"I also believe there are logical relationships."
Relationships can only exist between entities that have existence. Does the human being actualize the potential of logical relationships or do the logical relationships exist independent of the human being?
I don't
Hal,
Don't logical relationships compel a human being to take some kind of action? Isn't that a cause and effect relationship?
Hal,
"I am thirsty"
Whatever state of existence you are in, there's a reason why you are in that particular state and not some other state. You are thirsty because, for example, you are in a state of dehydration. There are other reasons for being thirsty I suppose but this one is the most obvious. The state of dehyration results in the human being becoming aware of this, which is way of saying that there is a causal relationship between being dehyrated and being aware.
Logical relationships do the same in my view. Logical relationships are the reason you have a certain intellectual awareness which then compels you to do something. In Hacker terms, the powers of the human being are redirected because of the logical relationship. Cause and effect.
Hal,
Does that address your question?
No but that may be because I don't understand in what sense you're using the term "logical relationships". It didn't help to use a mathematical expression to illustrate what you consider a logical relationship and how that is what you refer to as "the actualization of a potentiality". 2+2=4 is the same as making 1)a decision to move 2) and then move, in what way?
What I did actualized the potential for me to do all that.
Is that to say you caused all that?
I know which potential was actualized because there is an internal relationship between a potentiality and its actuality.
I would say that is true in an Aristotelean framework so it seems Hacker agrees with that much.
There is no causality involved in that relationship.
So you are saying that act and potency have a logical relationship to each other? Those from an Aristotelean framework would agree. However, having a logical relationship does not necessarily involve a change from potency to act which was the intention of my question (leaving aside the question of whether something can be the cause of itself).
Hal,
"We know that humans have the power to write novels. But we can't use the power itself to explain how or why they write novels."
I know SteveK did indicate some agreement with that. Do you agree with it?
I agree that we don't use our power to write novels to explain how we write novels, except if we were writing a novel about how that power works.
Regarding your Hacker quote:
the theme of the following philosophical investigations is human
nature. But it is simultaneously the grammar of the description of what
is distinctively human.
I assume the investigation of human nature is an investigation of reality. I assume the grammar of the description is different than that. So maybe the confusion is that I can't tell when you are talking about actual human nature and when you are talking about grammar.
I will reply separately to your 3 response.
Hal,
In my example of getting the glass of water, I was the agent. So I was the one causally interacting with the chair, glass, faucet valve, etc.
I didn't cause myself to move in the process of doing that. I simply moved to accomplish the task of getting a drink of water.
...I am thirsty and so I stand up ...
I didn't cause myself to move ...I simply moved...
I'm certainly not getting this. When I do those things I end up having moved. So either something else moved me, or I moved myself (by moving parts of myself but ultimately not even that). Are we talking grammar or actual movement?
Yes. The possibility did not cause me to act.
OK. Got that.
I don't understand the point you are making here. Are you saying that a possibility is not a necessity?
The context was about a person and the sequence of willing to write followed by moving a pencil. You seemed to imply that this was a logical relationship not a causal relationship because of act and potency and used 2+2=4 as an example. I don't understand how act and potency can be in a "logical relationship" unless you hold an Aristotelean view of those terms. Then a being can be in act in a certain respect, in potency in a certain respect or moving from potency to act in that respect. But there must be some agent other than the thing in potency to cause the movement. But that movement is then a causal relation, not a logical relation any more than the logical relationship of F=ma causes a stone to move.
Hal,
I agree with you that we could also use pictures or body language to represent reality.
Then it would seem that grammatical rules are set by our nature if we can communicate naturally without using words rather than everything being set by grammatical rules. If I understand you correctly it seems to me that the cart is being put before the horse. Regardless of whether I agree with the concept or not I want to make sure I understand the concept so I can speak of it correctly even if I don't hold it to be true.
I don't understand what you are saying here. What is this "something" you are referring to?
I am speaking in general about the concept of act and potency. A stone is moved from potentially being at position B while actually being at position A. Something (an agent) caused the stone to move from that potentiality to actuality. Maybe it was a hand moving it or maybe it was another stone that moved it.
As I understand it a power is the existence of a possiblity.
I don't understand potency and act that way. Potency is something that is within the nature of something while possibility is not necessarily. For instance I have the potential to learn French and remain the same substantial being, but, although it is possible I turn into an elephant I don't have that potency.
I hope that we can agree that possiblities don't do anything.
Yes, that is my understanding. Possibilities and potencies don't do anything. An actual agent needs to change something from potency to act, because as you say, potentials can't do anything.
The concepts of a possiblity and of the actualization of a possiblity are grammatically related.
And they are only true if the grammatical relationship corresponds to reality. If you agree with that I think we are on the same page.
May I break down and analyze your Yellowstone trip a bit with the concepts of act and potency in mind then and see where you agree or not?
Let's say at time t1 I am in LA and at time t2 I am in Yellowstone. At time t2 the potency for me to be in Yellowstone does not exist because that former potency is actual. A train was the proximate agent that caused this change from potency to act. But I had to get from my home to the train station, so the agent for that change from potency to act (p->a) was Uber. To get from by home to the Uber is another (p->a), so the agent for that was my body (more specifically, parts of my body moving other parts of my body). But the (p->a) for body parts to move has to be caused by another agency (they don't just move by themselves right?). It appears now we are at the level of the A-soul in act rather than in potency. The next question is what agency caused the change of the A-soul to move from potency to act.
Hal,
I'd say it is impossible.
People who don't think things have natures could say that. That's why I specify potency.
I don't believe in the correspondence theory of truth.
Neither do I. So I don't understand the reference.
Hal,
I don't understand.
That's OK. We both share the general idea of essentialism so the distinction is not important in this discussion.
Regarding "the correspondence theory of truth" and your latest quote.
Maybe it's time for me to ask you exactly what you mean by "grammatical relationship". I take it to mean the rules for constructing a grammatically correct sentence. A grammatically correct sentence does not necessarily make it a true sentence.
So if I say "Socrates is with me eating a ham sandwich", the grammatical relationships are all satisfied. But the statement is really false. I was not referring to "grammatical relationships" (such as objects wrt predicates) themselves being true or false.
The concepts of a possiblity and of the actualization of a possiblity are grammatically related.
So exactly how are these 2 concepts "grammatically related" as being opposed to being a feature of external reality?
Hal,
Here is what I wrote:
And they are only true if the grammatical relationship corresponds to reality. If you agree with that I think we are on the same page.
Thanks for showing Hacker's distinction between grammatical relationships and causal relationships.
Whatever name you want to refer to these "x-relations" (internal or grammatical) they seem to be nothing more than descriptions of relationships. If the subjects of those relationships are only imaginary, then they are imaginary relationships. Consequently if the concept of potency implies the concept of act, those concepts may or may not be features of reality, only something in one's mind. That is my concern with discussing these types of relationships without first establishing that what we have in our mind corresponds with reality.
Regardless. I now understand the difference.
Would you like to tell me what you agree or disagree with regarding my analysis of the "Yellowstone" trip?
Hal,
Thanks.
I disagree that the potency to travel to Yellowstone no longer exists because you are actually in Yellowstone. That is equivalent to saying because I am drinking a milk shake the possibility for me to drink another one no longer exists.
I say this because since you are in Yellowstone you no longer have a potency go there since you are already there. Just like if you drink a milkshake you can no longer drink that same milkshake since it's gone. Drinking a different milkshake would then be like taking a different trip.
The only agent I see in that example is you.
OK that's interesting. It seems you think of an agent only as something with a mind. I was using it in the sense of #2 below:
Agent:
1 : one that acts or exerts power
2 a : something that produces or is capable of producing an effect : an active or efficient cause
3 : a means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result
Maybe we are misunderstanding each other because of the senses of particular words we are using.
You still seem to think that there is something (A) acting inside you that causes you to move.
Yes. Muscles for instance. Aristotle has a solution for the infinite regress so that doesn't concern me.
I do think that it is impossible for a thing to move itself from potency to act because:
The same thing cannot be at once in act and in potency with respect to the same thing. But everything that is moved is, as such, in potency. For motion is the act of something that is in potency inasmuch as it is in potency. That which moves, however, is as such in act, for nothing acts except according as it is in act. Therefore, with respect to the same motion, nothing is both mover and moved. Thus, nothing moves itself.
Hal,
Thanks.
Those are two different possibilities.
I agree, but only if K is not in Yellowstone at the beginning of your 2 scenarios. If so, and K is not in Yellowstone then he is potentially in Yellowstone but not actually in Yellowstone. If he is actually in Yellowstone he can potentially be anywhere else except Yellowstone.
Sorry if you think I'm being pendantic, but I'd like to know why we talk past each other. If we are really understanding the concepts we're talking about in different ways or whether we are just phrasing them in ways that make it seem that way.
Your example was in reference to the poossibility for one to travel to Yellowstone. So of course he was the agent that actualized that possiblity by his actions.
Yes in the first sense of "agent". However, this particular agent used instruments to actualize that potential.
3 : a means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result
The man used a train to physically transport him to Yellowstone and so in that sense (#3) the train can be called an agent. The train also produced the effect of the potential of the man physically not being in Yellowstone to the man physically being in Yellowstone, so the train can also be said to be an agent in the #2 sense.
Does that make sense to you?
We have different conceptions of what it means for a living animal to have the power of self-movement.
I thought I was describing commonly known biological facts about how animals move by saying that muscles are involved. Is it wrong to say that an animal moves by moving its muscles?
Scope for confusion here. We have the Aristotelian potency/act distinction and the modal possible/actual distinction. They are not the same. As I understand it, a potency or potential for something to be X is a kind of internal power of natural change that is exhausted in the thing becoming an X. So, almost by definition, a potential X is not an actual X, they are exclusive states. On the other hand, an actual way things are has to be a possible way things are. The actual world is one of the possible worlds, in that language.
David,
Thanks for pointing that out.
I am certainly using the Aristotelian distinction and I assumed Hal was too. I'm not sure I would characterize the distinction as an internal power, but the concepts are contraries and so you're right to say they are exclusive states.
Hal,
Is Hacker talking about possible worlds?
Also Hal,
The existence of a possiblity does not imply that it is possible that it is, was or will be actualized.
If the existence of a possibility does not imply that something is possible for something to happen, then why couldn't the possibility of me to turn into an elephant exist?
Hal,
"We have different conceptions of what it means for a living animal to have the power of self-movement. You appear to conceive of it as a causal relationn between something in an animal that moves its body like one moves another object. I don't.
I don't cause my body to stand up, I stand up."
I'm not sure why you want to avoid the word "cause" when clearly what you describing is a causal relationship taking place. You are going from the physical state of sitting to standing.
Hal,
The existence of a possiblity does not imply that it is possible that it is, was or will be actualized.
Please explain this part of the sentence:
"The existence of a possiblity does not imply that it is possible"
This is what is confusing me. It seems to me that if a possibility of x exists (ie the existence of a possibility) then that not only implies that x is possible, it asserts that x is possible.
Did you mean to say instead:
"The existence of a possiblity does not imply that it is, was or will be actualized."?
Hal,
Of course, travelling to Yellowstone is not the same as being in Yellowstone. That is the only sense I can make regarding your claim.
Yes. This was my statement:
At time t2 the potency for me to be in Yellowstone does not exist because that former potency is actual.
You say that perhaps you can make sense of it. Does it make sense?
I brought this up to understand what you mean when you speak of agents, powers, change and how substances change yet remain the same.
Hal,
I usually have a reason for moving but a reason is not a cause.
Why reference "a reason' in a discussion about moving if "a reason' is unrelated to your movement? Your muscles are causing the body to move and adding in "a reason' is like adding in 'a unicorn'. Since 'a reason' does nothing then tell me why are the muscles suddenly contracting?
Hal,
I think he expressed it that way because even if the possiblity exists it still has to be possible for the agent to actualize it.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. Here is how I understand it. Where do I go wrong?
a. The possibility of x exists to be actual.
b. In other words x is possible to be actual,
c. Just because x is possible to be actual does not mean that x is possible to be actual.
a and b mean the same thing to me. c says a and b are false.
Hal,
I prefer my conception. It makes more sense to me. But I'm sure you feel pretty much the same about yours.
I don't understand what you mean. They are completely different concepts so how can you "prefer" one to the other if they both make sense. Unless you mean something like you prefer to do division rather than addition.
Regarding your new Yellowstone story. Yes I understand it, it makes sense and I never mentioned that it didn't make sense. You mentioned that my analysis didn't make sense. Was that because you didn't (or still don't) understand that I was talking in terms of the states of the physical location of the traveler? Do you think it makes sense now?
Hal,
I reference a reason because that explains the actions and acitivites I am engaged it. Humans are rational beings. They act and refrain from acting for reasons.
In what way is 'a reason' related to physical motion? Explain it however you want to explain it. I'm not a materialist so don't bother accusing me of that. Aristotle isn't a materialist either and he would be pressing you on this as well.
I don't accept the claim that a reason is like a unicorn.
I didn't mean to imply that reasons aren't real like a unicorn isn't real. Reasons have existence. I meant that you appear to be adding something that isn't relevant to the subject we are discussing. If I said "I'm standing up because ducks have feathers", that answer doesn't explain anything. Reasons appear to be like duck feathers.
I am surprised and rather alarmed at the kind of modal speech that Hacker allows himself. He talks of the 'existence' of 'possibilities' and their 'actualisation'. This opens up the potential (sorry!) for yet more confusion, in my view. In formal treatments of modality we find sentences of the form 'Possibly, p' and 'Necessarily, p' where p stands for another sentence. Hacker's statement on p91 seems to be saying that 'Possibly, p' does not entail 'p', which is indeed generally agreed. In general, modal talk can be done without resort to reification, that is, talk of 'possibilities' and 'necessities' as if they were things in themselves. Sentential operators suffice. That way we avoid the confusion between 'actualising a possibility' and the concept of a thing being 'in act' with respect to some state as opposed to being 'in potency'. It's not so easy, though, to paraphrase away talk of potentials and powers. I think of these as real qualities of things not immediately apparent from their surface appearances.
Hal,
Both concepts are about the powers of a human being.
The example you used was about "knowing" that something was possible. That is epistemology. The example I used was about a state of being. That is ontology. They are different in that way.
This opens up the potential (sorry!) for yet more confusion,
Ha. I think David is possibly correct!
The possibility of x implies the possibility of not x.
There is possibility that I am not an elephant implies that there is a possibility that I am an elephant.
Now if I am necessarily not an elephant then I can not possibly be an elephant.
If I have no potential to be an elephant, then that would be equivalent to me necessarily not being an elephant.
I'm generally receptive to the Wittgensteinian way of thinking but I'm with BM on this. If it's possible that I tie my shoelaces then it's possible that I tie my shoelaces. This implies that I have the knowledge, the dexterity, etc, required for this and that there are no external constraints like having my arms tied behind my back. Else it's just not possible that I tie my shoelaces. I agree that such a constraint has nothing to do with my power or potential to tie shoelaces. But it prevents me from exercising that power and makes it impossible that I tie my laces. Powers and possibilities, if I might break my no reification rule for once, are not the same. The power is intrinsic to me, the being tied up is not. Just as extrinsic lack of rain, soil, etc will inhibit the realisation of the acorn's intrinsic potential to grow into an oak.
Having said that, I should also say that the 'power to be in Yellowstone' seems to me to be no more or less than the power of locomotion possessed by animals but not plants or most inanimate things. As far as I can tell my locomotive power is independent of my starting point and destination though it will wax and wane with nourishment and tiredness. Again, whether it is possible for me to get to YS will depend on extrinsic factors that supplement or diminish my power, such as a train service, or heavy luggage, say.
I have snapshot a paragraph from Hacker's Human Nature courtesy of Google Books (so it's an image, not text) and put it up here. It's clear, I think, that H is using 'actuality' here in a specific technical sense that is not the usage some of us may be familiar with. He says the book is concerned with 'can's rather than 'may's. I hope this is useful.
Hal,
Does that make sense to you?
Yes. But I that's not the statement I said doesn't make sense.
This was the statement:
but that a certain possibility exists does not imply that it is possible that it is, was, or will be actualized.
David and I see the problem being that if something is possible it "just is" possible. Saying that it is possible but saying that although it's possible it may after all be impossible is what doesn't make sense.
Hello Hal, Glad we are in agreement. We have been talking past each other because of semantic differences. I have never before come across Hacker's terms 'actuality of a possibility' and 'possibility of an actuality'. What I have glimpsed of his book via Google Books has intrigued me. Have ordered a copy.
Hal,
This is the first link that comes when you google "possibility of an actuality". Does the article describe Hacker's view or is his view different?
Hal,
I think it can often be different distinguishing the differences and similarities between say a medeival and a modern concept of something like powers.
The idea of powers rooted in the nature of a substance was abandoned in the Pre-Modern era. That concept was known as the formal cause in the Aristotelian tradition. So I don't know if the Wittgensteinian inspired concept of powers incorporates some of the Enlightenment commitments that would be incompatible with the formal cause or not. I get the impression that most modern philosophers, being creatures of the Enlightenment, would be run out of town if they didn't throw shade on Aristotle in some way. So I find it interesting that some philosophers are taking timid steps in the direction of Aristotle. Will be interesting to see how long they last.
Thanks for the link to the book. I've been reading an online English translation of De Anima but mostly a commentary that helps me to understand the method the author is using and ties it together to Aristotle's other works. I have little faith that modern scholarship will get things right since they must not only be able to translate the particular ancient Greek that Aristotle used but also understand the philosophical context he used it in. It takes a considerable commitment to understand that context. And by that I mean a considerable commitment to understand it without an Enlightenment tainted framework. And by the way....I'm cheap.
I understand the interest in approaching philosophy from the way we use language since the way we use language reflects how we categorize things when we try to make sense of the world. It just seems to me that philosophy hasn't done a great job of keeping in touch with reality by myopically focusing on language use.
Regardless, since we have been discussing semantical descriptions of reality, here is a semantic and metaphysical discussion of the soul, mind, powers and acts in the Aristotelian tradition Klima
Objections are considered and answered.
Thanks bmiller for that document. I downloaded it and scanned it quickly. He does a better job than I do at distilling a very complex subject. I liked the opening statement below because I think it sets the stage well.
It is at this point that Aquinas’ discussion of how the immaterial act of thinking pertains to the intellective soul as its proper act (and to the whole human being on account of the soul) becomes crucial. For the immaterial act of thinking, because it is immaterial, cannot be directly an act of the composite substance (or any of its quantitative parts, such as an organ, say, the brain). Therefore, it must have as its immediate subject an entity which itself does not contain matter as its integral part. This, according to Aquinas, is the intellective soul.
okay so it's not an opening statement but a statement toward the beginning.
Hal,
How else can philosophers engage in a discussion of reality without using language?
But I didn't say that philosophers shouldn't "engage in a discussion of reality without using language". That would be absurd. But merely focusing on using language logically does not solve all problems.
We use language in talk about math and logic for instance, which do not necessarily reflect reality. Propositional logic is a useful tool for certain things but can lead to paradoxes if we apply it unreflectively to certain conditions of reality. The "paradoxes of strict implication" for instance demonstrate this. So you can be perfectly grammatically logical under the rules propositional logic and end up with nonsense when compared to reality.
SteveK,
He does a better job than I do at distilling a very complex subject.
Me too!!!!! But he doesn't make the big bucks like you :-)
What I mean wrt Enlightenment bias in my comments before and what I mean wrt modern propositional logic in my later comment:
Bias against Dispositions
Hal,
I tried reading the link on Intentionality but it's 50 pages long and it seems to be based on some unexplained suppositions. Maybe the those suppositions are explained elsewhere, but it seems he is reacting to philosophical theories that I'm not familiar with. Also it seems more of a history of the development of Wittgenstein's thoughts, so I got kind of lost. What did he ultimately embrace and what did he ultimately reject? Doesn't seem clear to me.
I did do some outside reading the history of the project of the Analytical Philosophy and so I have a better understanding of what the goal of the project originally was. If the entirety of the world is facts and the relationships of those facts via propositions, then it is a waste trying to understand what objects are. It is the propositions that need to be studied and propositions are mathematical. So the entirety of the world can be understood by symbolic logic and truth tables and the sort with mathematical precision. Maybe that was what he was finally getting at. That the world cannot be reduced to mathematics and with that I agree.
Hacker says:
We conceive of the natural world as populated by relatively persistent material things standing in spatio-temporal relations to each other.
I'm not sure all materialists would agree with the idea of substances. But for those of us who do agree with the idea of substances, how can we explain the persistence of a substance while changing in time. Certainly no single atom of me has been with me since the beginning and many more are now part of me (maybe too many more!). Certainly I've changed my mind, gained knowledge, gained and lost the capability to actually do this and that. What is the best explanation for the persistence of my existence?
David Oderberg argues for the Aristotelian concept of the composite of form and matter HERE
It's pretty long (maybe an hour read) but I think that is because he spends time explaining how his concepts are different than the others he disagrees with and why (to an reasonable degree without getting too deep in the weeds).
Hal,
So it is only by undergoing continual changes (a body's metabolism) that a human can exist.
Maybe I worded the question you quoted too ambiguously since it looks like you provided an answer to a question I did not intend to ask.
The Hacker quote looks to be what makes an animal substance different from other substances. It doesn't attempt to explain what exactly persists such that we can say that any substance persists at all. Neither does observing that an animal must change to remain in existence. In fact that observation seems to argue against an animal being a "spatio-temporal continuant". Claiming that in order for a thing to remain the same thing it must change seems prima facie contradictory. I assume that I am a "spatio-temporal continuant". But I, as a whole human being, obviously change. What then is the continues to be the same?
Similar to bmiller's question:
- We can remove various arms, legs, organs, etc and replace them with artificial 'parts' or just leave them removed. The human being persists.
- A human being can degrade to the point where some of the human powers, the potential to think rationally does not exist as part of the human being. The human being persists.
- An embryo with no actual potential for human powers will persist as a human being by nature and not an animal by nature.
What actual reality is persisting such that it remains a human being by nature?
Hal,
This question make no sense as written.
You're right. Was thinking of 2 ways to phrase it and bungled both.
Should have been something like: "What then continues to be the same?"
Let me try again.
If I, as a human being, am continually changing, then how can I be said to remain the same being throughout that change. Something must remain the same for a "spatio-temporal continuant" to remain the same throughout space and change and it's certainly not the human being as a whole.
Here are 2 possible explanations that don't involve substances.
1) What we call a human being is not the same moment to moment. This is observable. In fact everything, not just human beings, is constantly changing. So the entire idea that there are stable "things" is observably false.
2) How can something change at all? A change means a thing stops being a certain thing. But if something stops being a thing it ceases to exist as that thing. If it ceases to be a thing, it is nothing. Also nothing can come from nothing. So there can be no new things since they would have to come from nothing. So all there is is all there has ever been and all there will ever be and change is an illusion.
Both claim the idea of substances is false.
Hal,
I gave you 2 arguments for the way things are that deny the existence of substances. I don't believe either one to be the case for my own reasons, but I want to see how Hacker would argue against them.
Claiming that "Only a substantial change can lead to something turning into another kind of thing and therefore lose its identity. " simply begs the question of whether substances exist or not. The person claiming there are no substances could just point to the fact that what you call substances are changing just as the things you call non-substances are changing. That there is simply no difference.
If nothing remains the same, then nothing is the same over time. There then is no such thing as a "spatio-temporal continuant". Continuant" : something that continues or serves as a continuation
It is only by undergoing changes that a living substance such as we are can retain its identity.
Claiming that something needs to change to remain the same identical thing doesn't seem to make sense. Change is the opposite of something remaining the same identical thing.
Is it the case that Hacker simply does not address this objection?
Hal,
I was using "same" as an adjective:
2
a
: being one without addition, change, or discontinuance : IDENTICAL
And regarding 'continuant'. Yes. That is my point. Just because you call something a 'continuant' doesn't make it one in reality if in reality everthing about it changes.
Sorry, s/b everything.
Hal,
yet appear to deny that substances are spatio-temporal continuants because they undergo changes during their existence.
Then you misunderstood me. I've been attempting to find out exactly what part(s) of a "continuant" must remain unchanged in order for the "continuant" to remain the same identical "continuant" while all other parts change (according to Hacker). I gave some examples in an attempt to elicit a response in that direction. Looks like I failed.
It doesn't make sense to me that everything can change and the "continuant" remain the same. Does it make sense to you?
Hal,
I read the chapter. I remember having read it before. I did not find an answer pertaining to my question there.
If everything about a continuant can change then in what respect can it be called an identical continuant? But if something about a continuant must remain the same in order for a continuant to remain the identical continuant then what is that something?
Hal,
It makes sense to me because we observe and encounter numerous spatio-temporal objects that can undergo change and still remain the same kind of object throughout its existence.
It seems you are using "object" and "continuant" to mean the same thing.
So you are asserting that "the something" that remains the same of the "continuant" while changing is "the same kind of continuant". So if "kind" remains the same, what exactly is "kind"? Is it it a real feature of the "continuant"? What does "kind" do?
I'm reading the chapter on substances by Hacker. There's a lot that I agree with and many sections that I don't understand what he's trying to say. In my opinion he tends to ramble and the point he wishes to make isn't being made very clear. I have the same questions bmiller has and I cannot find a clear response.
Hal,
The best that I can make out is that he is claiming a substance can only maintain its identity if some part of it never changes.
I'm not really making any positive claims about anything. Maybe I was earlier when I thought that Hacker held Aristotle's position of form and matter and that he got it wrong. You then pointed out that he did not hold that position. I stand corrected. Now I want to simply understand his position.
With regard to your quoted statement you should not take it that I am making a claim. I am simply asking a question. The question is how can one and the same thing be said to change yet retain the same identity.
Here are the relevant definitions from Merriam-Webster as I am using them:
1) To change is to not remain the same 1 : to become different
2) The identity of a thing is the
3 a: sameness of essential or generic character in different instances
b: sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : ONENESS
3) same (again the same definition as before) 2 a : being one without addition, change, or discontinuance : IDENTICAL
What are your definitions?
You seemed to understand what I was asking when you indicated that the something, you called "kind" remained the same. I would like to understand what "kind" means to you and Hacker. Is it merely a description? Or does it exist as something real and therefore can interact with reality.
Another difference that hasn't been addressed is he seems to assume that the particles at the subatomic level are a kind of substance. I don't share that conception.
I have no idea where you got this idea from.
Hal,
"And all material objects can undergo changes without losing their identity."
We're asking for Hacker to explain his metaphysical worldview. In logical terms, the question is how can "A" still be "A" when everything about it is "not-A"?
In addition to what you said above Hacker also says that material objects can undergo changes which cause them to cease to exist. Why doesn't something new/different begin to exist with each subsequent change? Why do some natural changes not result in an identity change (embryo to adult), but others do (adult to corpse)? All of this seems to entail some kind of essentialism but I don't think Hacker is an essentialist.
Hal,
I don't see a problem understanding the example sentence.
I however don't understand what it has to do with "different kinds of substances".
Wouldn't a different "bay gelding" be the same "kind" of substance rather than that particular
"bay gelding"? In that case it wouldn't be the same identical horse would it?
SteveK,
All of this seems to entail some kind of essentialism but I don't think Hacker is an essentialist.
I'm coming to the same conclusion. At least not what I would consider a consistent essentialism.
You don't have to respond to me Hal. I'm trying to help break the cycle too and maybe there's something that I say that will help do that. I'm praying for divine inspiration.
Hal,
Do you agree that is the same horse when using that definition?
Yes. I agreed last time that it made sense and I agree it makes sense this time.
What do either have to do with being the same kind of substance? Do you mean Trigger (the bay gelding) is an instance of a particular kind of substance? Simply saying "substance" is ambiguous according to Hacker. There is primary substance and secondary substance. Trigger would be considered a primary substance but horse would be considered a secondary substance.
I take it when you speak of something being the "same kind of substance" you mean "horse" (secondary substance) instead of "Trigger" (primary substance).
What I want to know is how everything about "Trigger" can be said to change, yet "Trigger" retain the same identity. In the senses of "change", "same" and "identity" that I stipulated.
Hal,
He is certainly not identical to the horse on the dude rannch. But I believe he has stil retained his identity.
How can something be "not identical" and remain identical by retaining its identity? Perhaps you mean that Trigger has changed in some non-essential respect but did not change in some essential respect(s)?
So would you agree now that it is possible for a living substance, a particulare spatio-temporal continuant to undergo changes and still keep it's identity?
It depends on what those changes are. If everything changed I would say no. If only non-essential things changed I would say yes. Wouldn't you agree?
Hal,
BTW. I'm just wondering.
You say you think we are talking past each other. You also think we are using different definitions. SteveK and I have basically been asking the same question in a number of different ways, and I have supplied the definitions of the words of the question that you think we are using different definitions of.
How do you think this can be resolved by ignoring the definitions I supplied that give the question the precise meaning I intended? If you attempt to answer the question using your different definitions you will be answering a question I did not intend to ask. I don't understand how that will resolve anything.
Hal,
I am going to keep providing examples of a word's usage when it looks like we are talking past each other.
Don't you think it would make more sense for you to ask me for examples of what I mean by the word I use in a question rather than for you to tell me what you mean by it? How will that help you to understand the question I am asking?
I don't know what you mean by "everything changed". It would be helpful if you could clarify that. Maybe provide some examples.
OK. Thanks for asking.
This particular branch started with your response to my question of:
What is the best explanation for the persistence of my existence?
Your response was that:
So it is only by undergoing continual changes (a body's metabolism) that a human can exist.
So I asked how something that continually changed in every way could be the same identical thing.
Can I assume now that you are saying that a substance cannot change in every way and remain the same thing? That there must be at least one way that cannot change for it to remain the same thing?
And from the answer to SteveK that that/those things are "properties" that are called essential? If so, may I ask about those "properties"?
Hal,
If I don't agree with your usage of a word I am certainly going to tell you. If we can't agree on the terminology then we will just end up talking past each other.
I don't understand what you mean by disagreeing with my usage of a word. I provided dictionary definitions. Do you mean the dictionary is wrong? Do you mean I misunderstand the dictionary definitions? Or that I'm using the word in a sentence incoherently? If you could point out which of those you think is the case, or even something else, I think that would go a long ways toward resolving us talking past each other.
Do you still want me to provide an example of "everything changed"? It means not a single thing remains the same, including "being warm-blooded" being a certain size, being a certain color, being a rational being, being a substance etc. It means literally nothing remaining the same. I consider that you've answered that essential things cannot change while accidental things can change but you can correct me if I got that wrong.
Why not simply "same thing"? Or "identical thing"?
OK. I probably used too many adjectives. I'm not a professional writer or editor so I don't know if that is acceptable for an author. Now I'm interested so I will look it up.
I never claimed that something (like a human) continually changed in every way.
I see out discussion differently from you and maybe that is why you think we are talking past each other. I am asking questions to establish a baseline since I don't know what Hacker is thinking. So for instance by asking you if something "continually changed in every way" I wasn't asserting anything nor making any claim. I just wanted to know what exactly makes something a "continuant". What exactly is the it that he considers to be remaining the same throughout the thing's existence?
Regarding your 3 (ish) quotes from Hacker:
It seems the first is discussing the material properties of a secondary substance.
The second discusses the material differences between secondary and primary substance. A primary substance being materially composed of various secondary substances.
The third explains how the particular bits of matter of a substance do not remain the same and so do not contribute to the substance's continuity.
And so this again causes me to wonder if some or all of the particular material parts of the substance can be replaced then what makes the substance a continuant. Have you heard of "The Ship Of Theseus"? That is the type of question I'm asking. I'm certainly not the first so ask it. How does Hacker respond?
bmiller
From the chapter on substances
"However, some of the parts of an artefact can be, and often are, replaced without loss of identity. To that extent, then, change of some of the constitutive matter of which an artefact is made is compatible with its continued identity. Whether gradual
replacement of all of the parts over a prolonged period of time (as in
the famous example of Theseus’ ship) is compatible with continued
identity or not is contentious. Every rotten plank of the ship that is
lovingly rebuilt on shore is identical with a plank of the original vessel,
but it is clear which way the marine insurance company should decide
if the question of which ship is the one insured should arise. In this
case, the identity of the artefact is not impugned by the complete change
of its parts, and hence its specific (as opposed to generic) constitutive
stuff, over a prolonged period of time"
Hal,
Regarding "the same identical thing":
I tried to find out if it was legitimate for me to write that according to The Chicago Manual of Style". The article I found mentioned that maybe it needed a comma between the 2 adjectives, but maybe not. So I still don't know if I used the phrase correctly.
There is one thing I do know. I didn't mean THIS :-) Sorry for the confusion!!!
An interesting footnote to that quote:
"It is interesting that we would not, I think, say the same about the continued identity of a painting, all the pigments (and even the plaster, panel or canvas of which) were gradually replaced over time. At some stage, one might suppose, Leonardo’s Last Supper may well cease to be Leonardo’s Last Supper, even though a painting continues to exist on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria della Grazie."
So Hacker is saying that replacing the parts over a prolonged period of time CAN change the identity. It's at least possible. That seems rather incoherent. If essential properties of a being can be stripped away then they aren't inherent to the being itself. Can your identity be removed from you???
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