Posted on 11/01/2005 6:27:26 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Properties of objects that are immaterial, extra-mental, and in some way causally related to material existence (e.g. Plato's intelligible ideas, Aristotelian intelligible form, the Stoic World Soul, the Christian God, etc.).
Well, I'd simply call those "abstract" ideas. I don't accept on Plato's (or anybody else's) assertion that there is a certain set of privileged ideas that are more "real" than others, or more "real" than their objective embodiments. In fact I don't accept that objects are embodiments of ideas. As I said I believe correspondence between ideas and objects is purely instrumental. Therefore I obviously don't accept that these ideas are "causally related" to objects.
We simply disagree.
Here’s an interesting question: Are there “events” of which we are aware that do not come to us via sense perception? It seems to me sense perception pertains only to material phenomena. But there are phenomena, or movements in consciousness, of which we are aware – our thought processes – completely independently of sensory experience. How do we know about such phenomena, if the only knowledge we can have is mediated by sense perception?
You wrote: “Since elsewhere Plato’s cave has been dragged in: why should the one who recognizes the shadows on the wall for what they are not also question the reality of the light that casts them?”
It seems to me that we recognize the shadows on the wall, and understand them as such, only because of the illuminating source that casts them. That is, the shadows are a fleeting image of a more substantial reality that only becomes visible to us by virtue of the Light. If we “question the reality of the Light that casts them,” and find it an illusion, then how could we know anything at all?
In other words, Plato associates the Light with the truth of reality; he maintains that truth is accessible to human reason, but not solely by means of sensuous experience. In short, it appears Plato thinks man knows a great deal about reality from purely “internal” resources. And this is especially so in cases, not so much of knowledge acquisition per se, where intentionalist consciousness/sense perception are the proper “tools”; but in cases regarding reflections of the great (we might say perennial) questions of human existence, the human condition, our place in the world, our history, our destiny, and so forth, luminous consciousness seems to be the proper method or “tool.” This seems to be a source of knowledge acquisition, too -- of "non-phenomenal" aspects of reality that truthfully bear on human existence, and what we call wisdom (in contradistinction to knowledge). Such experiences are "events" in consciousness only.
You wrote, “Recognizing one appearance as mere appearance, why not all appearances?” As Alamo-Girl has already suggested, perhaps everything we see is “appearance,” or as Einstein put it, an “illusion, albeit a persistent one.” This insight seems closely to fit Plato’s meaning in his great myth of “ascent” and “descent” – i.e., that of the Cave with its “shadow play” that the prisoners are bound to watch….
You wrote, “The natural sciences work … depending on prior knowledge to extrapolate further knowledge.” Oh, most definitely! We all must build on what we already know. But how do we know that what we think we know is truthful? Especially if what we think we know is based on appearances in this sense (i.e., on a “persistent illusion”)?
Anyhoot, clearly I have more questions than answers here!!! I’d be interested in your thoughts. Thank you so very much for writing. (And welcome to FR!)
So if I get your drift.. and I think that I do...
2 + 2 = 4 and if you come up with either 5 or 3 you are equally WRONG.. and any convoluted iterations of the error will be not any more WRONG than you started out.. or did I miss something.?.
How rant.
What you do not know is surpassed only by the ignorance of what you do know.
Speak to me, genius. Try to make sense of your vitriol. I think you must have a point somewhere. Try unfettering it from your coarse villification.
Whew. Went back a bit far. I'm glad we are through all of that.
Pardon the intrusion.
What the heck? Try laying off the crack before you post...
If it were only that simple. My apologies.
But Bohr would not say why "2+2=4 in base 10" should exist at all or what it means in the lofty structure of all that there is. That, he would suggest, is the domain of philosophy/theology.
betty boop: is this your understanding of how Bohr's cut would apply to hosepipe's example?
I am haunted by an issue we have covered that seems to bear reinforcement. As a theologian Newton believed that it was impossible to separate God from the study of nature. As a mathematician he recognized that intelligent design had to be assumed in order to do math.
Are not the very scientists who claim that ID is fallacious in fact assuming ID in order to do their science?
How is it possible for a scientist to apply intellectual rigor unless the system being studied is coherent with intellect? If nature has intelligent character then is not all science engaged in studying intelligent design?
Yes indeed, Alamo-Girl. Bohr apparently didn't think that "why?" questions are in the domain of science. I think he thought about such things "in his spare time," as it were. But you will not find them in his science. And indeed, I believe you are right to say that Bohr thought such questions properly belong to philosophy/theology.
Thanks so much for your kind words, A-G! The Light is not "phenomenal." I've recently been struck by how closely Einstein's remark regarding reality as we experience it -- i.e., it is a "persistent illusion" -- tracks with the meaning of Plato's Myth of the Cave.... In the past you've observed that Einstein really was a Platonist, an unconscious one perhaps, even though he took the "Aristotelian side of the argument" with his friend Godel. I'm pretty sure you are right about this! :^)
In Christianity, important thinkers have said sin is the inclination to non-being, and that idolatry occurs in the embrace of an illusion. This means illusion is instrinsic to thought, not reality.
And how might this compare to Kant who makes space a category belonging to rational intelligence and not to empirical phenomena?
when you say. . .
Me: How do we obtain knowledge of an event except through "sense perception"?
You: By revelation, by calculation, by inference, by other reasoning, by imagining etc. And then there's qualia - our intrinsic likes/dislikes, etc.
I don't see how these get around sense perception. How is a revelation perceived, if not sensorily? As for calculation, inference, imagining, etc., these depend on sensory input, without which they have no material with which to operate. They may help us obtain knowledge beyond what we perceive (we see a bullet hole in a wall and are able to infer that a gun has been fired) but that knowledge ultimately has its basis in perception. Same goes for qualia (essence may or may not precede existence - but our knowledge (or awareness) of essence in no case precedes our experience of it).
Returning to the A/non-A problem. Specifically, material/non-material:
When the investigator does not deny the existence of the non-material, there is no problem. Non-A exists.
The first sentence I agree to; there is no reason, even for a materialist, to deny the existence of the non-material. It is something else entirely, however, for a materialist to affirm the existence of the non-material, as in "non-A exists." This seems to me a bit like saying, "Since what I know exists, exists, then what I don't know exists, also exists." To me, the best one can say is, "That which I do not know exists, may exist." This is why we are able to consider atheism a religious position: because an atheist believes in the non-existence of gods. To me, this is a rational enough belief, but a belief just the same. I myself prefer a certain stoicism: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent." Or a certain William Blake: "I know not, and I cannot know/I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love."
It's when they do deny the existence of non-A that they are at risk of living in a “second reality”
You and BB have returned frequently in this thread to the idea of a "second reality" - which I agree represents a very real problem, and one I plan to return to more thoroughly than I am currently able - but I think it is a mistake to apply the term too broadly. It should not be conflated, I don't think, with the problem of Plato's cave. Even though for the purpose of his parable Plato associates (as BB rightly points out in post 562) the shadow-casting light with the Truth, it seems to me we still have reason to question that Truth (you seem to have agreed to as much), if only because, insofar as we know ourselves, we know how capable we are of Error. Knowing our capacity for Error, we must know that any perception we might have of the Truth (and for the sake of argument I will here include even any non-sensory perception to which we might somehow have access) is subject to our own deep and abiding fallibility. If there is a first Reality, then to some degree we all inhabit second realities; our access to the infinite (and I believe that at times, fleetingly, we do have access) is necessarily limited by our own finitude.
Very good observations.
This is why Aristotle resorts to a provisional (or practical) human ethic. Are people happy after they die? They might be, says Aristotle. Hard to tell and then goes on. In epistemology, anything is possible (an may be illusory).
Christianity's teaching of the resurrection holds that what was possible is real.
Seems to me the angst over intelligence stems from a refusal to accept that intelligence can cause anything to happen and/or a paranoia that accepting intelligent cause is tantamount to the establishment of religion.
I do have a tendency to look at the trees you know - and Plato was clearly a forest person. LOL!
Tin foil hat alert.
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