are the laws all basically physical? Are they describable in terms of the movements of bodies?

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 02:13 PM ----------

OK here's a scenario for the evolutionary development of abstract thought. Imagine one of your ancient ancestors sitting by a campfire in the grasslands when a sabre-tooth lioness bursts into view. Instinct and adrenaline cut in, and he flees. Of course, do this would require nothing more than the brain recognizing the smells, sounds, and above all images reaching it as "lion!" and going into flight response.

And in this, he would be doing the same as any other critter.

Later, however, your great grandad does something no other critter can do: he remembers the lion and imagines a different course of action. What if, he thinks, he had picked up a burning branch from the fire and waved it in the lion's face? He imagines the various possibilities and decides the most likely is that the lion will retreat.

Next time a lion shows up, this is what he does. And not only does he survive, but by doing so, he becomes a Dominant Male, and all the women in the area are suddenly at his beck and call. And thereafter, he and his kind prospers.

It must have been something like this.

Oh, you were capturing my heart until you said immaterial, lol. It is not necessarily an immaterial reality, and it is not necessarily a material one. However, I run off of the assumption that it is material, because I do not feel I have been given good reason to think there is an immaterial reality... what is a good reason for thinking this?

Bear with us pythagorean, a little longer.....

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 02:29 PM ----------

Well I suggest that the 'ability to engage in abstract thought' actually provides us with the means to perceive something of crucial importance about the world, which is not disclosed to any other kind of creature. It is like a supreme organising principle, which seems deeply embedded in the very fabric of the cosmos, and by which we can disover things which no amount of mere sensory experience would reveal. It is an immaterial reality. Now what would it be?

Oh, you were capturing my heart until you said immaterial, lol. It is not necessarily an immaterial reality, and it is not necessarily a material one. However, I run off of the assumption that it is material, because I do not feel I have been given good reason to think there is an immaterial reality... what is a good reason for thinking this?

One word, six letters.......

Well - 'immaterial' is a poor choice of words perhaps. It is *something* which only H Sapiens can 'see'. It is of crucial importance in almost every intellectual operation we carry out. But it pre-exists us in the sense that, it is not something that is simply the product of our mental ability.

One word, six letters.......

Hmm, if you are going to say reason as Reconstructo guessed, I am not sure why it isn't the product of our mental ability. Reason may be structured by the laws of nature, but wouldn't it be the laws of nature that pre-existed, not our ability to reason them?

and the answer is: roll of drums - NUMBER

The salient element here is that space and time, rather than being real things-in-themselves or empirically mediated appearances (Ge: Erscheinungen), are the very forms of intuition (Ge: Anschauung) by which we must perceive objects. They are hence neither to be considered properties that we may attribute to objects in perceiving them, nor substantial entities of themselves. They are in that sense subjective, yet necessary, preconditions of any given object insofar as this object is an appearance and not a thing-in-itself. Humans necessarily perceive objects as located in space and in time. This condition of experience is part of what it means for a human to cognize an object, to perceive and understand it as something both spatial and temporal.

4.2211 Even if the world is infinitely complex, so that every fact
consists of infinitely many states of affairs and every state of affairs
is composed of infinitely many objects, there would still have to be
objects and states of affairs.
5.5561 Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects.
The limit also makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary
propositions. Hierarchies are and must be independent of reality.
5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its
limits. So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and
this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were
excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it
would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for
only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well.
We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot
say either.

and the answer is: roll of drums - NUMBER

Evolution may randomly allow for some mechanical "dance" involving number, but only consciousness can "see" number?

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of
the world.


5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will
say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field.
But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field
allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.


5.6331 For the form of the visual field is surely not like this


5.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is
at the same time a priori. Whatever we see could be other than it is.
Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a
priori order of things.


5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are
followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of
solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the
reality co-ordinated with it.


5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk
about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into
philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical
self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with
which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit
of the world--not a part of it.

Then Ezekiel said. 'The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception: some nations held one principle for the origin & some another; we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius;

'The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men hate God; for there is no other God.'

'Is not God alone the Prolific?' I answer: 'God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.'

and the answer is: roll of drums - NUMBER

Monotheism (Hebrews!) is already almost there. To say that God is One is to be just one step away from the Truth, that "God"(humanity) is negative one. And this negativity drives human progress, for this negativity is the possibility of synthesis, or learning. This "negativity" gives objects their quantity, their objectness, and also is the source of the numinous. All truth is numinous, even error, but error is negated in dialectic, for man is not happy in error, not if he knows he is in error. Animals are "ones' because they do not change. Man is "negative one" because he is essentially cultural evolution. This is Hegel in a nutshell.

One might say that monotheism is the farthest step away from negative one. I see religion as part of the instinctive search for truth. The goal is not to abstract, but to try and define the "true" experience. By means of abstraction and de-abstraction, religion seeks to write down "experience".

I am probably approaching this from my American idea of monotheism... I doubt the above would apply to Spinoza (I bring him up because I am not well versed in the evolution of the god idea, but I have learned and read some Spinoza).

The goal is not to abstract, but to try and define the "true" experience.

Is this idea a part of Eastern philosophy? If it is, I would enjoy a few references you could point me to.

Spinoza was a Jew who studied the Torah and that other book (what's it called?). The rabbis considered him brilliant, until he became a heretic. He lived in a progressive society like the one Hegel thought was ideal. Where no one is master or slave but a synthesis of the two, or a citizen w/ equal rights. That's the only reason Spinoza wasn't roasted!

Monotheism is an advance on polytheism. Just as Heidegger was right near the truth with his questioning of Being. The only next step is to see that being is a collision of transcendentals. All objects/concepts/numbers/unities that man perceives are sliced from qualia/otherconcepts by his mind. From this he infers the slicer! Thank you Mr. Hegel!

But isn't science justmathematical abstraction? A move away from the incidental in a search for essence(which just means concept)? What is Newton? Equations are usually tautologies. Or monotheistic. And they are affixed to measurements by means of words like "force" or "gravity" or "electrons....."

Is any science completely hard? or is it all of it just a little bit soft, or made of words?.....

Have a look at Pythagoras. Seriously. The whole Western tradition (one could argue) started with this insight. That is why the Moon Shot came out of The West, and not China, despite the fact that they invented gunpowder and printing while we were in the Dark Ages.

Think about it. The Greeks thought that our rationality, our ability to perceive the intelligible forms of the Universe, was the imprint of the divine intelligence in Man. There is nothing that we have discussed that really undermines this insight.

We ought to be proud of our philosophical heritage.

I really think that evolution, far from threatening the Great Tradition in Western philosophy, might have been the one missing piece that makes sense of the whole vision.

I am still hung up on the "collision of transcendentals"...
I think I am getting the metaphor of sliced and slicer, however.

I was talking about my idea of monotheism in that sentence, that it seeks to write down "true" experience.

It would seem that this ability to couple abstraction (math) with observation (science) says something about the nature of both, and maybe that is what you are trying to talk about?

I think you are searching for, the Talmud?

I first peered at your question to kenneth confusingly. But now I get it.

You're not looking for a cause. You're looking for one of those reasons. One of those reasons the mystical sort will suppose they know. So, explaining the origin of the mind through a chain of events, evolutionary history, will not suffice for you. Is this right?