tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post180210356874665140..comments2024-03-28T21:43:44.433-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: The access problem for mathematical PlatonismEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-17904329466406754522021-01-18T23:35:38.037-08:002021-01-18T23:35:38.037-08:00Altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com see his dec ...Altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com see his dec 2020 math post. Non commercial add freeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64992485745532562502021-01-02T08:40:03.282-08:002021-01-02T08:40:03.282-08:00Thank you Talmid. I’ve read through much of the Qu...Thank you Talmid. I’ve read through much of the Quantum Thomist web pages. It’s interesting and he makes many very valid points, but I’m not convinced on his way to retain realism (not that I’m qualified to judge). I’d love to know what Aquinas thought about his mystic experience, how that sense of unity and connectedness fits his metaphysics.Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-4877096375389795892021-01-01T19:53:32.572-08:002021-01-01T19:53:32.572-08:00I don't understand much about science really, ...I don't understand much about science really, so i don't think i can help here. At least i pointed to Aristotle Revenge, so there is that :)<br /><br />Also, this is the blog from the thomist i mentioned: http://www.quantum-thomist.co.uk<br /><br />I'am sure that he and Dr. Feser could help way more that me, so good luck there!<br />Talmidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04267925670235640337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-71782365855254683392021-01-01T05:34:44.265-08:002021-01-01T05:34:44.265-08:00Thank you for the pointer to Aristotle’s Revenge. ...Thank you for the pointer to Aristotle’s Revenge. I’m definitely interested in how realism can survive in Quantum Physics. As far as I can tell, the recent “No Go” experiments have left very little room for realism, unless you invent countless trillions of new universes every second, or via superdeterminism where the books on my shelf were effectively written at the time of the Big Bang. It seems far more likely that matter only exists as part of an observation, and that two different observers can observe a different reality. If matter is just the representation of “the thing in itself”, then I guess there is a kind of realism there, but of course the next question is about the nature of this ‘thing in itself’ (which allows Bernardo to posit that it’s ‘mind’). This is where my question was coming from, it’s not really a question of thomist causality which I’m relatively comfortable with (although it seems closer to how science uses causality in chemistry than in modern physics). What sits between particles and god? The suggestion is that its ‘fields’ (in QFT anyway), but what are these fields from a metaphysical perspective?<br /><br />Anyway I already have Dr Fesser’s book on Aquinas which is on the ever growing list of things to read, which now includes Aristotle’s Revenge :)Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-11781480467982585192020-12-31T20:44:04.932-08:002020-12-31T20:44:04.932-08:00Pretty interesting history, a lot diferent than mi...Pretty interesting history, a lot diferent than mine own. A cool thing is that even with me never actually becaming a atheist in my life(thought i did try) and my conversion being more "intelectual", i can relate to liking idealism and eastern thought in general. I also can see how Kastrup work can appeal to someone who is more interested in science, like he himself clearly is. <br /><br />About science and thomism, i believe that there is a physicist that does try to apply thomism to his work, he goes by the name of "Quantum Thomist" i think. Not to mention, Dr. Feser himself, who published "Aristotle Revenge", from what i read about it, that book seems what you are looking for.<br /><br />About God and the universe, in classical theism the universe is real but limited and contingent, so while it is not independent of God it is a seperate thing, since God is unchanging, necessary, unlimited, non-composite etc, so the world can't be a part of Him. The idea is that God is not one with us, but that He still created and still sustain us, i think that this video would help a bit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZGxWctjzk<br /><br />Aquinas 101 is amazing by the way, specially if you are a beginner in thomism. The philosohy is a bit hard to understand if you do not already have a good familiarity with classical philosophy(as Ed said several times before), but i would say that it is worth it, so hope that you can study more! Talmidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04267925670235640337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-50020883549499671742020-12-31T04:56:37.071-08:002020-12-31T04:56:37.071-08:00@Talmid Yes well put, you are of course correct ab...@Talmid Yes well put, you are of course correct about the substances versus accidents etc.<br /><br />When I was a lot younger (as an atheist) I read some philosophy like Hegel and Jung which seemed to offer some insights, but then moved to the likes of Sartre and soon decided Philosophy was mostly about logical word games divorced from any search for truth. I then started meditating and went through Buddhism and some eastern areas, before I started reading the gospels one day, and all things changed very quickly as these simple words came alive. <br /><br />Since then my intellectual side has been mainly focused on science, and why that had lead me to an atheist view in my search for truth. This is a long rambling way of explaining why Bernardo’s Idealism is attractive to me, as it addresses many of these areas in science that made me reject religion in general. The other reasons such as suffering I resolved through contemplation and the bible, and so I’ve only fairly recently been drawn into philosophy in order to address the ways in which Bernardo’s idealism is clearly lacking from a theological perspective. I was hoping there would be a modern theologian with a metaphysics that took the church’s great and learned tradition, and fitted the likes of quantum physics and neural imaging as well as Analytic Idealism does. However whilst I feel the Thomist metaphysics could be slightly reframed and expanded in a way to fit, I don’t see anyone who has done this. My philosophy knowledge is too poor to do so myself, although I am working my way through the history of philosophy. <br /><br />My biggest question at present is about the relationship between god and the universe. Clearly he ‘gives’ being to all things, so there is a creating and sustaining ‘role’. As the first person he is unchanging and simple, so there is this mystery of being in all but different from all. He spoke the universe into existence, so is it like the relationship we have with our words and thoughts? But then the word of god is the second person, and Jesus is not the universe. The universe was created THROUGH him, is not him, but is contained within him. So is the closest way we can conceive of the reality, something like the universe being his dream?<br /><br />I’m sure this has all been addressed and apologise for my very primitive knowledge of philosophy. I’ve just reached the early scholastics so maybe that will help reconcile the different perspectives!Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60257442041126932872020-12-30T19:34:34.003-08:002020-12-30T19:34:34.003-08:00Kastrup really is very good in comunicating his id...Kastrup really is very good in comunicating his ideas, even if i'am not i idealist myself i still like that his work is showing to a lot of people how science does not implies materialism at all. Just by showing how the empirical data does not say anything by itself on this question he is doing a great help. <br /><br />About Plato and Aristotle, i think that the problem is that Descartes seemed to confuse accidents with substances, that is why matter to him is extension and mind thought. If you divide things that way, them of course the interaction problem happens, these things have no point of contact.<br /><br />The classical philosophers(at least essencialists) would reject that, as your Aquinas example show. There is substances and its acidents, they are not the same. So while each substance is diferent it has a kinda of similitude in all being substances, in all participating in Being*. So idealism would not make sense to most of these thinkers, for to they things like consciousness or thought are acidents and not substances. Instead of these bizarrely separate cartesian two worlds, we have a kinda monist cosmos where there is a hierarquical chain of being, so there is no interaction problem.<br /><br /><br />*Note that God is not part of that in the same way, of course, the exactly language to use here will vary between platonists and aristotelians Talmidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04267925670235640337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87532408885621245732020-12-30T08:57:23.294-08:002020-12-30T08:57:23.294-08:00"Gödel's incompleteness theorems imply th..."Gödel's incompleteness theorems imply that there is no formal logical system that can prove anything nontrivial in number theory" -- that makes no sense. First Order Peano Arithmetic is able to prove things such as the Prime Number Theorem (which surely counts as nontrivial). Unless you define "nontrivial" as "independent of a given set of axioms" your comment borders on mathematical crankery.John Colemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00928351371908665103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-12983106264619454572020-12-30T06:06:44.488-08:002020-12-30T06:06:44.488-08:00Yes I think Bernardo explicitly wants to keep his ...Yes I think Bernardo explicitly wants to keep his metaphysics as closely aligned to the empirical as possible, which is understandable given his mission to overturn physicalism (although he does “speculate” fairly far into the spiritual). I don’t think he does himself any favours with book titles like “Why Materialism is Baloney” etc, but equally he communicates in a way that allows people without degrees in Philosophy or Physics to understand that there are alternatives to materialism that are parsimonious and fit the abstractions of science at least as well. I only wish there were theologians with a metaphysics as clear and strong at contesting materialism, and which accords as closely as the things I have understood on my journey from atheism to Catholicism.<br /><br />As to whether Aristotle and Plato were idealists, we have had multiple mindset changes since then which make it difficult when applying labels like “dualist” or “idealist” (not helped by Descartes or Berkley). If you think about the forms, how can they function unless in a kind of idealist framework? If matter really is an ontologically separate substance from forms and mind, how do they interact? My view is that Descartes read Augustine etc and borrowed many of the old ideas, without really appreciating this underlying “idealist” context, which lead to all kinds of problems including Aquinas being seen as a dualist (when Aquinas clearly saw the body and mind as aspects of the soul).Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-85131850361347677312020-12-29T20:41:08.357-08:002020-12-29T20:41:08.357-08:00Yea, i also don't understand this idea. I know...Yea, i also don't understand this idea. I know who Julius Cesar was and he never really helped me in doing that directly. Just like i know him indirectly, the mathematical-platonist could say that our knowledge of the Forms is indirect, it comes from our contact with things of the material world. <br /><br />Of course, how the material world is similar to something that has literally no contact with it is quite bizarre, but that is another issue. Talmidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04267925670235640337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23153973134235109822020-12-29T20:28:40.371-08:002020-12-29T20:28:40.371-08:00I also like Kastrup, he seems to understand pretty...I also like Kastrup, he seems to understand pretty well some problems with both materialism and panpsychism and his work helped me at least respect idealism, which i find superior to most metaphysical views. A shame that classical theism, which he likely does not know, would probably not apeal to Bernardo, i remember, for instance, a video where he denies that casuality is a real feature of reality, so someone like Aquinas would likely be convincing to him, they start with diferent presupositions. <br /><br />But i don't see why we should call Aristotle and Plato idealists. They did not believe that mind and body where as metaphysically separate as Descartes did, sure, but i never got the feeling that they thinked that all is mental. Talmidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04267925670235640337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57992523120672166982020-12-29T18:43:10.240-08:002020-12-29T18:43:10.240-08:00Since Kastrup’s Idealism is mentioned:
In a respo...Since Kastrup’s Idealism is mentioned:<br /><br />In a response to a comment Bernard Kastrup said: <br /><br />“Personal identity, if I am right, is an illusion right now. Your desire for its preservation is just a consequence of your ego's grasping for its imaginary existence. It's a symptom of the delusion, without any true reality.” <br /><br />Sounds very much like Buddhism. My Buddhist friends would be very happy with Kastrup’s published paper mentioned in https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/01/on-why-idealism-is-superior-to.html?m=1 <br /><br />Note the following request by Kastrup for critique as mentioned in the link above:<br /><br />“I ask for your help in spreading the word about this white paper. I am making it available for free everywhere I can, despite the fact that it took me a lot of time and energy to put it together. If you know academics, scientists, philosophers or mathematicians who have an interest in the areas of metaphysics, ontology, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, etc., please forward it to them and urge them to forward further. You can also download the PDF file and then upload it elsewhere in its entirety. Just do not edit it or quote it extensively out of context, please.”<br /><br />:)<br /><br />johannes y k hui <br />reasonablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14971948580051107601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-43046674359618821782020-12-29T18:37:34.988-08:002020-12-29T18:37:34.988-08:00Is Robert Pasnau a Catholic? Or at least, a theist...Is Robert Pasnau a Catholic? Or at least, a theist?ficino4mlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00805116221735364590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-59253300338396173322020-12-29T17:14:30.933-08:002020-12-29T17:14:30.933-08:00I'm just curious why one would insist that som...I'm just curious why one would insist that something known must exert a causal influence on the one knowing? Or why the same objection doesn't come up in the case of Thomistic forms as well as Platonic Forms? Sure, an individual rabbit exerts a causal influence on me when I see it, and thus I know the individual rabbit, but when I abstract to the form "rabbit" and therefore know the form rabbit, is any Thomist going to claim that the form rabbit is exerting a causal influence on me?<br />GoneFishingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-12056832967063029392020-12-29T12:06:54.467-08:002020-12-29T12:06:54.467-08:00This site includes another possible framing -> ...This site includes another possible framing -> https://sites.google.com/site/nondualistlogic/tetralemmic-polarity<br /><br />It’s far from a complete metaphysics, and arguably further from theology, but if you look at the article there about postmodernism, you get an idea about how adding an idealist framework can help to reset some of the ever increasing absurdities ?Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-8467304537087864422020-12-29T10:59:13.364-08:002020-12-29T10:59:13.364-08:00Very interesting. I have been reading much on Kast... Very interesting. I have been reading much on Kastrups idealism recently, and am now working through his new book in which he offers a novel interpretation of Shoppenhauer's metaphysics.<br /><br /> Kastrup does not try to explain why mind at large' exists, and why it is dissociated into 'alters' ( individual conscious agents ), so his scheme is clearly incomplete. I hope that he is soon led to a study of classical theism so that he might perhaps combine insights from it with those of his own. I am personally impressed by the various arguments which point to a ground of being with conciousness and agency, but am far less convinced by the rest of Christian theology. FreeThinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12542926199146156167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-71599816011211098342020-12-29T07:56:49.038-08:002020-12-29T07:56:49.038-08:00I was wondering what Divine likeness does to answe...I was wondering what Divine likeness does to answer the question, but it seems that's what Augustine's point boils down to (sort of).T Nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06287822708519943071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65630373728789278102020-12-29T02:23:26.339-08:002020-12-29T02:23:26.339-08:00My take is that there is a bigger factor at work i...My take is that there is a bigger factor at work in the concerns modern philosophers have with the idea of platonic numbers. Since Descartes and his false dichotomy of cartesian dualism, everything has become a big mess. In reality both Aristotle and Plato (and the scholastics) were essentially what we now call idealists. The material and mental worlds are not composed of different ontological primitives, the substance itself is the same.<br /><br />To explain this more clearly to the modern mind, someone like Bernardo Kastrup has a very straightforward way of expressing this, with the material world being the representation of mental processes across a transpersonal boundary. The material world is the ‘external’ image of mental processes. This fits extremely well with quantum mechanics, including the recent “No go” Bell experiments.<br /><br /> Of course Kastrup’s view of God (at least as far as he will admit publicly) is closer to Averroes than to Aquinas. However we will never overcome the mistakes Descartes introduced into philosophy and even the public consciousness unless we have a clear description of this aspect. Once this hurdle is jumped, the fact that nature is deeply mathematical is self evident and no problem at all.<br />Simon Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08967831833822936845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73287081947499031512020-12-29T01:11:19.558-08:002020-12-29T01:11:19.558-08:00Alexander, it's impossible to reduce the Logo...Alexander, it's impossible to reduce the Logos to the Demiurge of the Platonists and Neoplatonists, who is not a creator in the Christian sense. It's clear why the comparison is made, but it's like the attempts to assimilate the three "divine" modes of Plotinus to the Trinity. These efforts fall flat because each of these modes had aspects incompatible with God, something obviously impossible in the Blessed Trinity. <br />Miguel Cervantesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23695189369177851292020-12-28T10:53:13.517-08:002020-12-28T10:53:13.517-08:00BTO, it is your understanding of Goedelian results...BTO, it is <i>your</i> understanding of Goedelian results that's inaccurate. The three theorems you cite prove that no single algorithm exists that can prove <i>everything</i> about the abstract entities in question. You are claiming that they show no algorithm exists that can prove <i>anything</i> about them - a much stronger claim, and clearly false.Michael Braziernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62115844729521408432020-12-28T08:56:19.475-08:002020-12-28T08:56:19.475-08:00"they say that it is impossible to even repre..."they say that it is impossible to even represent in English language the intellectual process"<br /><br />Stop there. Goedel's theorems (and the related work of Tarski, Church and Turing) have nothing to say about English or any other natural language, because English is not a formal logic. The very fact that English <i>has</i> a word for truth is enough to show that - Tarski's Theorem states that no formal logic can represent the set of true statements it can express, but English speakers can assert that a statement is true quite easily.<br /><br />And if a "unifying idea" for mathematics has to be a project like Bertrand Russell's, to get all of math into one formalized system - then yes, Goedel's work showed that there isn't, and cannot be, any such "unifying idea". But just as not having a single equation that describes all material phenomena is no obstacle to doing physics research, not having a single set of axioms to derive all mathematics from is no obstacle to doing mathematical research.<br /><br />Indeed, it's very much in doubt whether the work in "foundations of mathematics" is even a fruitful direction for mathematical research. For instance, the set of finite ordinals in ZF set theory does represent the concept of the natural numbers; but it does not IMO give any more insight into that concept than the Peano axioms do. In practice mathematicians forget the set-theoretic representation of numbers when they work on number theory.Michael Braziernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52696332523926030292020-12-28T02:38:28.659-08:002020-12-28T02:38:28.659-08:00
@Ficino: building on your phrase “Form F is what ...<br />@Ficino: building on your phrase “Form F is what causes F things to be F”:<br /><br />1. The Form/Idea of Roundness grounds the roundness of those round things/entities existing around us (eg plates, balls, moons, planets, etc).<br /><br />2. The Form/Idea of Roundness does not necessarily result in the actual existence of any round thing/entity outside the mind because the “extramental existence of round objects” is not contained within the Idea/Form of Roundness. Our world/realm of senses could have been one in which there is no round thing at all. Hence the actual EXISTENCE of round objects/entities such as plates, balls and moons in our world/realm of senses needs to be grounded not in the Form/Idea of Roundness, but in some other Form/Idea that is relevant to the actual EXISTENCE of such round entities (and all other entities) in our world.<br /><br />3. The relevant Form/Idea to ground the extra-mental existence of all the objects/entities that happened to be existing in our world now must be the Form/Idea of EXISTENCE. Without the Form/Idea of EXISTENCE, there would be nothingness. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because there exists the Form/Idea of EXISTENCE (or BEING).<br /><br />4. So the Form/Idea of EXISTENCE/BEING enables the existence of all the contingent/conditional entities existing extra-mentally in our world now.<br /><br />5. Further analysis of this Form/Idea of Existence would lead to the conclusion “and this all classical theists understand to be God”. (adapting Aquinas’ phrase)<br /><br />(Some form of Ontological Argument can also be constructed along this line. It is a logical contradiction for the Form/Idea of Existence/Being/Pure Actuality to exist only as an idea in the mind but not existing as an actual entity outside the mind.)<br /><br />Cheers!<br />johannes y k hui <br /><br />reasonablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14971948580051107601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40239496355588421312020-12-28T01:54:20.974-08:002020-12-28T01:54:20.974-08:00"How does this strongly imply ( or imply at a..."How does this strongly imply ( or imply at all ) that 'logic is broken'?"<br /><br />It doesn't. Gödel's incompleteness theorem(s) is a *theorem* after all, a logical deduction formalizable in some background theory, so if "logic is broken" so would be the deductive argument known as Gödel's incompleteness theorem.grodrigueshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12366931909873380710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-79876292901524178792020-12-28T01:32:26.336-08:002020-12-28T01:32:26.336-08:00An eternal sufficient condition cannot have a temp...An eternal sufficient condition cannot have a temporal effect.Walter Van den Ackerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16101735542155226072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80480007618577024822020-12-27T18:08:21.447-08:002020-12-27T18:08:21.447-08:00@Alexander Gieg: good point, but very controversia...@Alexander Gieg: good point, but very controversial. Lloyd Gerson, for example, holds that universals have no causal powers and that therefore Platonic Forms are not universals, because the Form F is what causes F things to be F, and so on. Fascinating stuff, and I don't know when a definitive interpretation of Plato will ever be acknowledged by all.ficino4mlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00805116221735364590noreply@blogger.com