I agree there’s no single canonical definition. But don’t you think my simple formula is pretty workable?:
“If Thought A supervenes on Brain Process B, all we’re saying is that, without B, we would not have A, whereas the reverse is not the case.”
I think that makes a substantial-enough target for folks to agree or disagree with, though you’re right that at the moment we lack a deeper explanation for why supervenience might obtain.
No.
Yes.
But the trouble is, ‘Brain Process B’ can never be defined. The processes involved are fantastically complex - there’s an argument that the human brain is the most complex natural phenomenon known to science. And even to attempt to define it, you have to invoke the very faculty which you’re trying to explain! That’s the meaning of ‘thoughts you can’t get outside of’ - which is what the supervenience relationship is trying to do.
There would be no idea of equality unless there were things that are equal. When what is on one side of the scale balances what is on the other we say that they are of equal weight. When we Six drachma is equal to six drachma. Counting tells us that six drachma is equal to six drachma. It is counting not knowledge of a form that tells us this. A stone that fits tightly into a space is equal to another stone that fits in that space. They are equal because they fit and other stones do not.
According to the Phaedo forms are hypotheticals, not realities:
So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.99d-100a)
(In the Republic Socrates says:
Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic, making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses—that is, steppingstones and springboards—in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole. (511b)
We have not reached what is free from hypothesis. We have not gotten to the beginning of the whole.
What you see is a sick or healthy animal, not the form ‘health’. We measure aspects of health - blood panels, blood pressure, respiration rate, and so on. This is all the result of observation, experience, and testing on living organisms.
Circular argument, though. We are able to count, judge things equal, and so on, because as rational beings, we have the ability to perceive equality. Yes, humans can count, weigh, measure, multiply, divide, and so on - which other animals cannot do (except for in the most rudimentary form.) And we do that, because the rational faculty, intellect, nous, can ‘see reason’. So, again, all your examples presuppose what they need to explain: look, we develop the concept of equals because we can count. But we can’t effectively count without the concept of equals.
Perl’s point is that this is what the forms are - not static entities floating in the mythical Plato’s Heaven, but cognitve acts by which principles and likenesses are grasped. So much of the debate about the ideas is, I think, based on their reification.
Who do you have in mind here? I’ve just been reading from Lloyd Gerson’s Plato’s Moral Realism, which starts with the statement:
Plato tells us in Republic that the Idea of the Good is the “unhypothetical first principle of all.”
Gerson is pretty scathing about much of the modern scholarship on Plato, just because he says they disregard or deprecate this claim and any substantive ‘idea of the good’.
If we develop the concept of equals because we can count, then the ability to count does not depend on the concept of equals.
The criticism of the Forms in the Timaeus, is that they are static and unchanging. A criticism that Socrates not only accepts, he defers to Timaeus in order to hear about the just city in action. But all that Timaeus can offer is likely stories.
Everyone who does not possess transcendent or divine wisdom.
First, Plato does not tell us anything. Only his characters speak. Second, Socrates does not claim to know the good. To the contrary, his wisdom is his knowledge of his ignorance.
I think you’re misrepresenting it altogether. The relevant passage is Timaeus 27c-29d. I have reproduced it here from The Platonic Foundation translation by Horan.
Well, Socrates, that is just what anyone with even a little sound-mindedness does before they embark upon any undertaking, great or small. They always, I presume, call upon God. And we who are somehow going to make speeches about the Universe, how it has been generated or whether it is actually ungenerated, if we are not to go entirely astray, must call upon the gods and goddesses and pray that everything be spoken acceptably to them in particular, and less importantly, to ourselves. Now, let that be our invocation to the gods, but we must also invoke that which is ours so that you may learn easily, and I may expound my thoughts on the subjects before us as best I can.
In my opinion, we must certainly make this distinction first. What is ‘that which always is’ and has no becoming, and what is ‘that which is always becoming’ but never is? Now, the former, being ever the same, is comprehended by the activity of nous, together with an account, the latter by opinion, together with sense perception devoid of an account. It comes into being and passes away and never actually is. Again, all that comes into being must come into being from some cause, for it is impossible for anything to be generated without a cause. Now, whenever a craftsman, looking always to the unchanging, refers to something like this as his model, he will reproduce its form and character, and all that he fashions in this way will necessarily be beautiful, but if he looks to something that has come to be and uses a generated model, the product will not be beautiful.
Now, there is something which must be considered first about the entire Heaven or Universe. In fact, let’s call it by whatever name it most readily accepts. This is a fundamental question that must be considered at the outset in relation to anything, whether it always was, with no beginning in generation, or whether it has come to be, having originated from some beginning. It has come to be, for it is both visible, tangible, and it has a body, and all such things are perceptible, and perceptibles are grasped by opinion and the senses, and, as we saw, come into being and are generated. What’s more, we say that a thing which has come to be has, of necessity, come to be through some cause. Now, to discover the maker and father of this Universe is a task indeed, and, having discovered him, it is impossible to describe him to everyone.
Now, on every subject it is most important to begin at the natural beginning. So, there is a distinction we must make in relation to an image and its model. Accounts are also akin to the very subjects they expound, so accounts of anything stable and certain and discernible by nous will be fixed and unchanging, and such accounts must be irrefutable and incontrovertible, and insofar as this is possible, appropriate for accounts, they should not fall short of this. However, accounts of something copied from that model, something which is therefore a likeness, are likely accounts, and stand in a relation to the other accounts; as being is to becoming, so too is truth to belief. Therefore, don’t be surprised, Socrates, if in many cases on numerous subjects such as the gods or the creation of the Universe, we prove unable to furnish accounts that are entirely and in every way consistent with themselves and exact. Indeed, if we can offer an account that is as likely as any other, we should be content, remembering that I who speak, and you who judge, possess a human nature, and so, accepting the likely story about these matters, it is appropriate to seek nothing beyond that.
Timaeus distinguishes:
In my opinion, we must certainly make this distinction first. What is ‘that which always is’ and has no becoming, and what is ‘that which is always becoming’ but never is? Now, the former, being ever the same, is comprehended by the activity of nous, together with an account, the latter by opinion, together with sense perception devoid of an account. It comes into being and passes away and never actually is.
So here the distinction is made between ‘that which always is’ - the idea or principle - and ‘that which is always becoming’ - but never truly is. The former is comprehended by the activity of nous together with an account. Meaning, with comprehension or understanding. The latter - the realm of becoming- can only be a matter of opinion, devoid of an account - it comes to be and passes away and never truly is so cannot be an object of true knowledge.
Now 29c:
Now, on every subject it is most important to begin at the natural beginning. So, there is a distinction we must make in relation to an image and its model. Accounts are also akin to the very subjects they expound, so accounts of anything stable and certain and discernible by nous will be fixed and unchanging, and such accounts must be irrefutable and incontrovertible, and insofar as this is possible, appropriate for accounts, they should not fall short of this. However, accounts of something copied from that model, something which is therefore a likeness, are likely accounts, and stand in a relation to the other accounts; as being is to becoming, so too is truth to belief. Therefore, don’t be surprised, Socrates, if in many cases on numerous subjects such as the gods or the creation of the Universe, we prove unable to furnish accounts that are entirely and in every way consistent with themselves and exact.
‘Accounts are also akin to the very subject they expound, so too with the ‘accounts’ of what is grasped by nous. ‘Accounts of something copied from that model’ are a [mere] likeness, so it the account of likenesses that can only be a ‘likely story’. That is the lot of ‘human nature’.
It’s patently not that the forms themselves are ‘a likely story’ but only that when considering the empirical/sensory domain, then a likely story is what we have to settle for.
This is true of all of us, by default, insofar as we are ‘the natural human ‘. But notice that the Dialogues are shot through with references to the divine.
SOCRATES: It seems that I am going to be repaid, fully and magnificently, with a feast of discourse.
Apparently, it is your turn to speak next, Timaeus, once you have invoked the gods in the
customary manner.
TIMAEUS: Well, Socrates, that is just what anyone with even a little sound-mindedness does before they embark upon any undertaking, great or small. They always, I presume, call upon God.
I presume ‘invoking the Gods in a customary manner’ comprises a ritual recitation or some such. From my time in the company of Buddhists, they too have many ritual expressions of religious devotion, common to practically all cultures in the pre-modern world.
So, whilst I don’t believe that Timaeus or Socrates are claiming to be in possession of ‘divine wisdom’ it is nevertheless a live option for them, in a way it probably cannot be for those disposed towards naturalistic accounts of man. I don’t believe that this ‘higher knowledge’ is the least hypothetical for that mindset.
Plato speaks through his characters, plainly. He doesn’t always lay his cards on the table, but his meaning can be discerned.
Why does Socrates want to see the city he creates in the Republic at war? He says:
“It is as if someone who has seen beautiful animals, either in a picture or actually alive but remaining at rest, were to develop a desire to see them moving and also competing in a
contest which seemed suited to their nature. I, too, feel just the same about the city we described.” (19b-c)
He goes on: “I myself am quite unable to sing the praises of these men and this city adequately.” (19d)
The Forms, because they are static and at rest, are an inadequate model for a city in action.
With regard to the gods and the creation of the universe that the best we can do is a likely but not entirely consistent account.
The fixed intelligible world, the world of Forms, is not the whole of the story. The Forms are part of a whole that is indeterminate, a whole in which there is contingency and chance. Sensible things are not as they are simply because they are likenesses of Forms. They are as they are because of the random actions they are involved with in the chora. By being shaken the chora both acts on and is acted on by what is in it.
Timaeus identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, nous and ananke. Necessity covers such things as physical processes, contingency, chance, motion, power, and the chora. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. It is called the “wandering cause” (48a). It can act contrary to nous. The sensible world, the world of becoming, is neither regulated by intellect nor fully intelligible.
In addition to Forms and sensible things, Timaeus introduces a “third kind” (triton genos, 48e), the chora (χώρα).
The three kinds are:
“… that which comes to be, that in which it comes to be, and that from which what comes to be sprouts as something copied. And what’s more, it’s fitting to liken the receiver to a mother, the ‘from which’ to a father, and the nature between these to an offspring.” (50d)
Like intelligible things, the chora always is. But unlike intelligible things, it is changeable. (52a) Unlike sensible things it does not perish. Befitting its indeterminacy, the chora does not yield to simple definition.
It is said to be the seat of all that has birth. (52b)
Exactly right! We are human. In the Apology Socrates talks about his human wisdom and denies that he possesses divine wisdom.
Is Plato in agreement with Thrasymachus or some other sophist who speaks? If Socrates is his mouthpiece then Plato too is ignorant of the Forms. In that case, all he can provide are what at best are likely stories.
The fundamental distinction is between fact and opinion. So if someone can state as fact what is in their mind, and state as fact what is in the world, then both what is in the mind and what is the world are the same matter of fact category.
The important concepts are fact and opinion, which are the basis for reasoning. Objective and subjective must be defined in respect to these concepts. So it is wrong to say that subjective means, dependent on the mind, and then it is a matter of fact what is in the mind, so that subjective would mean statements of fact about what is in the mind. Subjective must be exlcusive to opinion, and objective must be exclusive to fact.
And efficiency then demands that the substance of what is objective is called material.
And you can just have objects in the mind that do not model anything found in nature. Not just fantasy, but also equality as you point out. So being equal is an object of the mind, and not something in the world, so what. Equal is still a matter of fact, and therefore the substance of this mind object called equality is called material.
But it is completely different if people assert that emotions are somehow material or a product of what is physical, that is a category error. Because emotions are identified with a statement of opinion, and not with a statement of fact.
I look back at the extensive debates over the thinking of Neo-Platonism championed by Gerson on the old site and now we are back at zero.
My knees hurt.
Let’s confine ourselves to The Phaedo. Plato’s corpus is vast in extent. I’ve learned a lot in my debates with Fooloso4, mainly from going back to the texts, often for the first time, and reading them again.
I see the basic issue as the incompatibility of today’s naturalism with Plato’s philosophy. I believe the ‘philosophical ascent’, the escape from the cave, and many other of his allegories, are clearly references to higher states of being which enable insights that untrained minds cannot grasp. So there is nothing in naturalism which maps against those ‘states of being’. Much of what was best about Platonism ( ‘Ur-Platonism’ in Gerson’s terminology, the philosophies that grew out of, but are not restricted to, the dialogues) was incorporated by Christianity in the early period, by the Greek-speaking theological philosophers. So the revolt against religious authority that characterises Western philosophy since the Enlightenment catches the spirituality of Platonism in the same net.
But this is outside the scope of what is now called philosophy, which is set against a background of what I call ‘presumptive naturalism’ which provides no conceptual space for the so-called ‘higher knowledge’ of ancient philosophy. This is where a background in comparative religion brings an alternative perspective. There is some common ground, but also vast differences, with other philosophies of the ancient world, chiefly Indian and Chinese, that also recognise higher states of being, but without the distinctive intellectual character of Platonism.
Is this a reply to my comment?
A general observation based on many such discussions. The same fault lines appearing time and time again.
Let me see if I can figure out what you’re saying here. There is a thought (A), and a specific brain process (B) is a logical requirement for (A). So if A then B. On the other hand, the inverse is not true, we cannot say if B then A.
This looks very strange to me. The brain process (B) is a particular activity. A thought though, is generally understood as a universal. This would make a category error, because we know that the same universal can be in the minds of different individuals, therefore associated with different brain processes.
So I conclude that you must mean a particular thought. However, this leads to a problem of identity. If that particular, B, is required for the particular A, then how could it be possible that the reverse is not the case? How could that particular B have occurred without the associated particular A?
For example, we could assume a causal relation, B is the cause and A is the effect. That’s a relation of necessity. B and A are particular occurrences, and we cannot say that B could have occurred without A, because particular means specific to the circumstances, with temporal continuity and identity. If you propose that B could have occurred without A, then it would not be the same particular occurrence anymore, therefore not be B.
And if B is assumed to be a general type of brain process, then the position suffers from what @Wayfarer pointed out. It looses all force because you’d just have a specific type of brain process required for a specific type of thought, but not necessarily producing that thought. Therefore something else would be the actual cause of the thought, and this might be something completely different and unknown, something immaterial.
Drawn as you see it.
There are different points of view. There is an exclusionary aspect to your argument.
Damn right. I wish to exclude the tendency in 20th century philosophy to deprecate the transcendent face of Plato’s philosophy in favour of ‘civic virtue’ and the like.
While I can’t say much regarding Plato, I can help by agreeing to exclude as insufficient, 20th century philosophy’s tendency to favor “civic virtue” and the like, over and above the human subject’s sense of pure inner need-to-know, and a suitable method by which the satisfaction of it, is possible.
Nagel: “religious temperament”, 2010;
Einstein: “cosmic religious feeling”, 1930.
Fits the bill, “…..a disposition to seek a view of the world that can play a certain role in the inner life..…”
On the other hand, from the essay, pg 35:
“….. We have come on the scene after the appearance of reason, and reason allows us to move beyond the world of mere experience by forming conceptions of possible general accounts of reality whose observable properties can be rationally deduced, enabling them to be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. Reason also plays a role in the search for general principles of normative justification, permitting collective as well as individual decision.
The Platonic picture, without being religious, makes this way of proceeding intelligible. It is essentially the Cartesian picture without God. The reductionist picture, by contrast, leaves the existence and authority of human reason a mystery, though it cannot undermine its authority, since there is no other way to think. So-called naturalized epistemology assumes this authority rather than establishing it…..”
That’s right. Supervenience of this sort is meant to describe the relation of a particular thought in a particular mind to the brain process that accompanies it.
I don’t think the brain/mind relation is one of causality; an attraction of supervenience theory is that it doesn’t require B to cause A.
We could put it in terms of grounding. The brain grounds the mind, not vice versa. We say, “As a result of there being physical brains, mentation occurs.” We don’t say, “As a result of there being mentation, brains occur.” Rather, we say, “Because there is mentation, there must be a brain in the vicinity.” But I’m sure you’ll agree that’s very different. A mind does not result in a brain coming into existence, whereas supervenience suggests that the opposite is indeed true, in a way that is not strictly causal.
I totally agree with @Wayfarer that we lack the exact right verb to describe the relation, so things can get fuzzy. “As a result of there being” is meant to be different from “as a result of B causing”. How to characterize the difference is the subject of much discussion in supervenience literature, but I’m just trying to sketch out the picture and respond to your question about the asymmetry. Does this seem clearer?
The idea of a “particular thought” is very problematic. Thinking occurs as a continuous, multilayered activity, so any separation of one part of thinking from another, as a particular thought, would be somewhat arbitrary, or an extremely subjective judgement of division at best. And if you think of “a thought” in the sense of an idea, then it’s not a particular at all, but a universal.
That’s explicitly causation, one thing is the result of the other.
Much philosophy does place mind as prior to brain.
On what basis do you deny this?
It appears to me, that all you have done here is claimed that “supervenience” relieves us of the causal relation, so that we do not have to answer which is first in time, brain or mind. But then when you explain supervenience you explain it as the mind being the result (effect) of the brain. So your claim is deceptive as the explanation does not support the claim.
According to what I said above, that specific discussion appears to be about the best means of deception.