Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Gertie]

I'm saying that our human notions of reason, logic and causality are ultimately rooted in the way we humans consciously experience being in the world and interacting with it.

...

Our observations are flawed and incomplete, part of the useful model of the world we create in our minds in order to successfully navigate the world, and the 'rules of thought' arise from this useful way of experientially modelling the actual world into something coherent and thus useful for us. (And our language, including the thinky voice in our heads we reason with, naturally reflects our observations of what the world is made of and how it works. Words label the stuff, and the syntax of grammar reflects how we experience that stuff interacts - Subject --> Verb --> Object.).

So human Logic, Reason and Causation which are rooted in making sense of our observations, seem to be part of our constructed human experiential representation of reality, which work well enough for us to successfully navigate the world. (Hoffman call this Darwinian Fictions, and Seth talks of conscious experience as being in the biz of making useful predictions. I think there's something to that, and Logic, Reason and Causation can be contextualised that way too, rather thanindependently existing outside of that for us to discover).

The crisis of thought (or lack of it) presents itself as doctrines. The reason for this is a crisis of the understanding or worse. How do we relate “an effect without a cause” with the decision of conscious discrimination. As for the “principle” of enantiodromia we must have a positive POV when dealing with the inconsistencies of human nature and congruent with the apocatastasis. Logically, negative or positive transformations have different outcomes.

Beast, if you want a response from me I'm afraid you'll have to re-phrase this more simply, I'm struggling to parse what you're saying.

I find it useful to the understanding to use a function and not a proposition. Your musings of “flawed and incomplete observations” might give track to the idea of the function of existence.

I'm really relying on the difference between ontology and epistemology, there is a state of affairs we call the universe, and a separate issue of what we can know of that state of affairs. If our human experiential knowing kit is limited and flawed, and we can only check it with similarly flawed humans, we only eliminate anamolous humans. That's the 'third person falsifiability' science offers, when it comes things which are observable/measurable, and conscious experience itself is outside even such testing. And if human reason, like human observation, is as I describe, its primary job is to keep our model coherent and useful. The rules of logic, reason and causation help keep the model coherent and useful. That might be because they are close to the ontological reality, or they might just be latching onto patterns.

However, there is no agreement to when existence is positive or negative whether is 60% or 40% since there is bias towards the senses and logical systems work for logical minds. Children are removed from the equation, then critical states of consciousness are removed, then dishonest members and lastly operators with restricted operational methods leave humanity in the conundrum of meaning. As with restricted operational methods I am making clear that this refers to Kant and others with the critique of reason and the restriction of metaphysical as QM wasn’t an identity. Do you consider consciousness (force) as existing and if so, is it local or Universal or both.

Conscious experience certainly exists, the only thing I know for certain is that mine does. I wouldn't call it a ''force'', unless you're talking about us being agents willing our behaviour. In that instance, we run into the mind-body relationship, and nobody can answer that. Mental causation feels real, it seems to perform a function (tho the is a physicalist case for epiphenomalism), and if I ignore it and wait for my dinner to just turn up I'm going to starve. So it plays a real role in the model. (Re Kant, he fails to acknowledge that other minds are part of the phenomenal experiential package our experience is, I see it as part of his pick n mix approach to rebuilding an ontology from Cartesian scepticism)

From what we can tell being an experiencing subject is local. We each have a specific and private first person pov, which manifests as being physically and discretely embodied in a physical world we interact with, located in time and space, with a unified field of consciousness. But again, that's the model. To claim experience is universal would be claiming knowledge which isn't accessible imo, but it might be true.

In some language theories this identity is one of rhetorical predicates that are not binary at all. Any binary or not?

What do you mean here by identity?

[Pattern-chaser]

If you're looking for an 'in between' the what's going on of that, and the sort of 'rules of thought' like the rules of logic, then maybe you could say reason is about structurally formatting ''If....then'' thinking out of our observations? The basic format for that we've come up with ARE the laws of logic, and I'd add causation.

I'm not confident in parsing this last, and possibly most interesting, paragraph. Are you saying that reason adds or removes "if ... then" thinking?

I'm suggesting causation as the way we do ''If...then'' thinking? If the basic rules of logic are essentially about making sense of the underlying nature of how things are/must be (A=A), then causation is about how things behave. (Both based on the way we experience the world).  Eg every action has a reaction, something can't come from nothing, input and output, etc are causal ways we understand change.

...

In terms of ontological reality, if reason is rooted in utility, it's unreliable as a way of understanding how the world really is and how it works. What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully  predictive. 

Interesting. I've taken a while to respond to this, because I couldn't at first see a way to clearly explain where I'm 'coming from'. But let's try this.

"If ... Then thinking" is a strong indication that reasoning is in progress; that Reason is being employed and applied. It doesn't necessarily indicate that causation is directly involved.

All Greeks are human.
Socrates is a Greek.
Therefore, Socrates is human.

can also be expressed thus,

If all Greeks are human, and Socrates is a Greek, then Socrates is human.

I'm not certain that the two are exact logical equivalents, but they come very close. And there's no obvious and direct involvement of causation.

If/Then thinking can surely include and involve causation, but it need not. It could be the expression of the results of a chain of reasoning, "If there are peanuts in the room, Then he must be the murderer." [Context would provide the missing information, already part of the discussion, that there are only three suspects, and two of them have fatal peanut allergies.] We could offer examples all day...

Your final sentence is "What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive." But I might have said "What I think we can say, is that reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive." And I might also suggest that Reason is more than just predictive. It also allows us to find and express new understanding, to derive (deduce; infer; etc) seemingly new information by combining information we already have. And Reason allows us to be reasonably confident in our conclusions, if we follow its rules. Which brings us back to the topic title — what are those rules, and does anything lie below them?

I wonder if causation is simply one of many tools that Reason might employ, rather than a (the?) foundation of Reason?

So far, in this topic, the only foundational part of Reason that I have seen is Stoppelmann's Principle of Reason, whereby, while reasoning, one never takes a step along a chain of reasoning without justification. I.e. without a good, convincing and conclusive reason. This guideline does appear to me to be foundational. Nothing else has convinced me, so far, but maybe that's my problem, and I'm demanding too much?

[The Beast]

The crisis of thought (or lack of it) presents itself as doctrines. The reason for this is a crisis of the understanding or worse. How do we relate “an effect without a cause” with the decision of conscious discrimination. As for the “principle” of enantiodromia we must have a positive POV when dealing with the inconsistencies of human nature and congruent with the apocatastasis. Logically, negative or positive transformations have different outcomes.

Beast, if you want a response from me I'm afraid you'll have to re-phrase this more simply, I'm struggling to parse what you're saying.

I find it useful to the understanding to use a function and not a proposition. Your musings of “flawed and incomplete observations” might give track to the idea of the function of existence.

I'm really relying on the difference between ontology and epistemology, there is a state of affairs we call the universe, and a separate issue of what we can know of that state of affairs. If our human experiential knowing kit is limited and flawed, and we can only check it with similarly flawed humans, we only eliminate anamolous humans. That's the 'third person falsifiability' science offers, when it comes things which are observable/measurable, and conscious experience itself is outside even such testing. And if human reason, like human observation, is as I describe, its primary job is to keep our model coherent and useful. The rules of logic, reason and causation help keep the model coherent and useful. That might be because they are close to the ontological reality, or they might just be latching onto patterns.

However, there is no agreement to when existence is positive or negative whether is 60% or 40% since there is bias towards the senses and logical systems work for logical minds. Children are removed from the equation, then critical states of consciousness are removed, then dishonest members and lastly operators with restricted operational methods leave humanity in the conundrum of meaning. As with restricted operational methods I am making clear that this refers to Kant and others with the critique of reason and the restriction of metaphysical as QM wasn’t an identity. Do you consider consciousness (force) as existing and if so, is it local or Universal or both.

Conscious experience certainly exists, the only thing I know for certain is that mine does. I wouldn't call it a ''force'', unless you're talking about us being agents willing our behaviour. In that instance, we run into the mind-body relationship, and nobody can answer that. Mental causation feels real, it seems to perform a function (tho the is a physicalist case for epiphenomalism), and if I ignore it and wait for my dinner to just turn up I'm going to starve. So it plays a real role in the model. (Re Kant, he fails to acknowledge that other minds are part of the phenomenal experiential package our experience is, I see it as part of his pick n mix approach to rebuilding an ontology from Cartesian scepticism)

From what we can tell being an experiencing subject is local. We each have a specific and private first person pov, which manifests as being physically and discretely embodied in a physical world we interact with, located in time and space, with a unified field of consciousness. But again, that's the model. To claim experience is universal would be claiming knowledge which isn't accessible imo, but it might be true.

In some language theories this identity is one of rhetorical predicates that are not binary at all. Any binary or not?

What do you mean here by identity?

Gertie.
It seems that “state of affairs” and “local reality” are synonymous. The set of propositions may or not be different to describe “the identity”. I am not questioning the validity of any “phenomenal experiential package”. I am saying that the cause of the phenomenal experiential package is a fundamental force.
In some basic proposition a force is needed to change the reality of living. This force translates into work (maybe a physics formula W= F times Change) there is work, there is force and there is change. The origin of the force is the transformation of local/astral energies by the psyche.
In local energies/astral energies.
1.- Food sources are transformed into work/thought.
2.- Solar energies get transformed by methods of the body
3.- Air
4.- water
5.- One basic astral energy in agreement might be the “spirit of the ancestors” in the many methods of which one is the methodology inherited in the DNA.
6.- Quantum theory explains the behavior of energy and in a methodology that can be used to do some work. The methodology in question is not the same as the intrinsic method of matter creation done by the fundamental forces of Nature. However, the known method in the creation of matter has been used by the fundamental force of consciousness in the creation of artificial elements that do not exist naturally. Again, new methodology is being formulated by the fundamental force of consciousness to use QM in doing work. However, I might agree with “it is part of the local reality.”
7.- A personal “phenomenal experiential package” of a Universal fundamental force. Under this scenario the Psyche fundamental force is Universal but different in each characterization or instantiation however with all its values if proportional and it supersedes the major fundamental forces of Nature. It is the power/work of thought in a “identity”

[Sculptor1]

Beast, if you want a response from me I'm afraid you'll have to re-phrase this more simply, I'm struggling to parse what you're saying.

I find it useful to the understanding to use a function and not a proposition. Your musings of “flawed and incomplete observations” might give track to the idea of the function of existence.

I'm really relying on the difference between ontology and epistemology, there is a state of affairs we call the universe, and a separate issue of what we can know of that state of affairs. If our human experiential knowing kit is limited and flawed, and we can only check it with similarly flawed humans, we only eliminate anamolous humans. That's the 'third person falsifiability' science offers, when it comes things which are observable/measurable, and conscious experience itself is outside even such testing. And if human reason, like human observation, is as I describe, its primary job is to keep our model coherent and useful. The rules of logic, reason and causation help keep the model coherent and useful. That might be because they are close to the ontological reality, or they might just be latching onto patterns.

However, there is no agreement to when existence is positive or negative whether is 60% or 40% since there is bias towards the senses and logical systems work for logical minds. Children are removed from the equation, then critical states of consciousness are removed, then dishonest members and lastly operators with restricted operational methods leave humanity in the conundrum of meaning. As with restricted operational methods I am making clear that this refers to Kant and others with the critique of reason and the restriction of metaphysical as QM wasn’t an identity. Do you consider consciousness (force) as existing and if so, is it local or Universal or both.

Conscious experience certainly exists, the only thing I know for certain is that mine does. I wouldn't call it a ''force'', unless you're talking about us being agents willing our behaviour. In that instance, we run into the mind-body relationship, and nobody can answer that. Mental causation feels real, it seems to perform a function (tho the is a physicalist case for epiphenomalism), and if I ignore it and wait for my dinner to just turn up I'm going to starve. So it plays a real role in the model. (Re Kant, he fails to acknowledge that other minds are part of the phenomenal experiential package our experience is, I see it as part of his pick n mix approach to rebuilding an ontology from Cartesian scepticism)

From what we can tell being an experiencing subject is local. We each have a specific and private first person pov, which manifests as being physically and discretely embodied in a physical world we interact with, located in time and space, with a unified field of consciousness. But again, that's the model. To claim experience is universal would be claiming knowledge which isn't accessible imo, but it might be true.

In some language theories this identity is one of rhetorical predicates that are not binary at all. Any binary or not?

What do you mean here by identity?

Gertie.
It seems that “state of affairs” and “local reality” are synonymous. The set of propositions may or not be different to describe “the identity”. I am not questioning the validity of any “phenomenal experiential package”. I am saying that the cause of the phenomenal experiential package is a fundamental force.
In some basic proposition a force is needed to change the reality of living. This force translates into work (maybe a physics formula W= F times Change) there is work, there is force and there is change. The origin of the force is the transformation of local/astral energies by the psyche.

Your thinking seems quite fundamentally confused in terms.
"Local reality" is n odd construction, as reality cannot be constrained to a local or specific environment - to say that would be an abuse of language. Then you double down with this delusion by suggesting that "a force" can change reality. Again this is absurd. forces change things but not reality. You seem obsessed with a queer understanding of "force" too since you seem to think that experience is a force with is totally backward, and also you seem to think that reality is waiting around to impose itself on reality and the motivating factor is the "psyche", which is risible. Psyche if it is a meaningful concept at all is an epiphenomenon, not a way to change the nature of reality.

In local energies/astral energies.

Oooh "astral" -- spooky!

1.- Food sources are transformed into work/thought.
2.- Solar energies get transformed by methods of the body
3.- Air
4.- water
5.- One basic astral energy in agreement might be the “spirit of the ancestors” in the many methods of which one is the methodology inherited in the DNA.
6.- Quantum theory explains the behavior of energy and in a methodology that can be used to do some work. The methodology in question is not the same as the intrinsic method of matter creation done by the fundamental forces of Nature. However, the known method in the creation of matter has been used by the fundamental force of consciousness in the creation of artificial elements that do not exist naturally. Again, new methodology is being formulated by the fundamental force of consciousness to use QM in doing work. However, I might agree with “it is part of the local reality.”
7.- A personal “phenomenal experiential package” of a Universal fundamental force. Under this scenario the Psyche fundamental force is Universal but different in each characterization or instantiation however with all its values if proportional and it supersedes the major fundamental forces of Nature. It is the power/work of thought in a “identity”

[The Beast]

I find it useful to the understanding to use a function and not a proposition. Your musings of “flawed and incomplete observations” might give track to the idea of the function of existence.

I'm really relying on the difference between ontology and epistemology, there is a state of affairs we call the universe, and a separate issue of what we can know of that state of affairs. If our human experiential knowing kit is limited and flawed, and we can only check it with similarly flawed humans, we only eliminate anamolous humans. That's the 'third person falsifiability' science offers, when it comes things which are observable/measurable, and conscious experience itself is outside even such testing. And if human reason, like human observation, is as I describe, its primary job is to keep our model coherent and useful. The rules of logic, reason and causation help keep the model coherent and useful. That might be because they are close to the ontological reality, or they might just be latching onto patterns.

However, there is no agreement to when existence is positive or negative whether is 60% or 40% since there is bias towards the senses and logical systems work for logical minds. Children are removed from the equation, then critical states of consciousness are removed, then dishonest members and lastly operators with restricted operational methods leave humanity in the conundrum of meaning. As with restricted operational methods I am making clear that this refers to Kant and others with the critique of reason and the restriction of metaphysical as QM wasn’t an identity. Do you consider consciousness (force) as existing and if so, is it local or Universal or both.

Conscious experience certainly exists, the only thing I know for certain is that mine does. I wouldn't call it a ''force'', unless you're talking about us being agents willing our behaviour. In that instance, we run into the mind-body relationship, and nobody can answer that. Mental causation feels real, it seems to perform a function (tho the is a physicalist case for epiphenomalism), and if I ignore it and wait for my dinner to just turn up I'm going to starve. So it plays a real role in the model. (Re Kant, he fails to acknowledge that other minds are part of the phenomenal experiential package our experience is, I see it as part of his pick n mix approach to rebuilding an ontology from Cartesian scepticism)

From what we can tell being an experiencing subject is local. We each have a specific and private first person pov, which manifests as being physically and discretely embodied in a physical world we interact with, located in time and space, with a unified field of consciousness. But again, that's the model. To claim experience is universal would be claiming knowledge which isn't accessible imo, but it might be true.

In some language theories this identity is one of rhetorical predicates that are not binary at all. Any binary or not?

What do you mean here by identity?

Gertie.
It seems that “state of affairs” and “local reality” are synonymous. The set of propositions may or not be different to describe “the identity”. I am not questioning the validity of any “phenomenal experiential package”. I am saying that the cause of the phenomenal experiential package is a fundamental force.
In some basic proposition a force is needed to change the reality of living. This force translates into work (maybe a physics formula W= F times Change) there is work, there is force and there is change. The origin of the force is the transformation of local/astral energies by the psyche.

Your thinking seems quite fundamentally confused in terms.
"Local reality" is n odd construction, as reality cannot be constrained to a local or specific environment - to say that would be an abuse of language. Then you double down with this delusion by suggesting that "a force" can change reality. Again this is absurd. forces change things but not reality. You seem obsessed with a queer understanding of "force" too since you seem to think that experience is a force with is totally backward, and also you seem to think that reality is waiting around to impose itself on reality and the motivating factor is the "psyche", which is risible. Psyche if it is a meaningful concept at all is an epiphenomenon, not a way to change the nature of reality.

In local energies/astral energies.

Oooh "astral" -- spooky!

1.- Food sources are transformed into work/thought.
2.- Solar energies get transformed by methods of the body
3.- Air
4.- water
5.- One basic astral energy in agreement might be the “spirit of the ancestors” in the many methods of which one is the methodology inherited in the DNA.
6.- Quantum theory explains the behavior of energy and in a methodology that can be used to do some work. The methodology in question is not the same as the intrinsic method of matter creation done by the fundamental forces of Nature. However, the known method in the creation of matter has been used by the fundamental force of consciousness in the creation of artificial elements that do not exist naturally. Again, new methodology is being formulated by the fundamental force of consciousness to use QM in doing work. However, I might agree with “it is part of the local reality.”
7.- A personal “phenomenal experiential package” of a Universal fundamental force. Under this scenario the Psyche fundamental force is Universal but different in each characterization or instantiation however with all its values if proportional and it supersedes the major fundamental forces of Nature. It is the power/work of thought in a “identity”

Scientific America has an article titled “The Universe is not locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners proved it” Oct 6, 2022. As Gertie articulated, local reality exists as “state of affairs”. I feel validated in my opinion by the tour of your philosophical queer risibility. We all have opinions and that’s my point of identity. However, I do search for understanding. Your point is baseless and mine is not.

[Sculptor1]

I'm really relying on the difference between ontology and epistemology, there is a state of affairs we call the universe, and a separate issue of what we can know of that state of affairs. If our human experiential knowing kit is limited and flawed, and we can only check it with similarly flawed humans, we only eliminate anamolous humans. That's the 'third person falsifiability' science offers, when it comes things which are observable/measurable, and conscious experience itself is outside even such testing. And if human reason, like human observation, is as I describe, its primary job is to keep our model coherent and useful. The rules of logic, reason and causation help keep the model coherent and useful. That might be because they are close to the ontological reality, or they might just be latching onto patterns.




Conscious experience certainly exists, the only thing I know for certain is that mine does. I wouldn't call it a ''force'', unless you're talking about us being agents willing our behaviour. In that instance, we run into the mind-body relationship, and nobody can answer that. Mental causation feels real, it seems to perform a function (tho the is a physicalist case for epiphenomalism), and if I ignore it and wait for my dinner to just turn up I'm going to starve. So it plays a real role in the model. (Re Kant, he fails to acknowledge that other minds are part of the phenomenal experiential package our experience is, I see it as part of his pick n mix approach to rebuilding an ontology from Cartesian scepticism)

From what we can tell being an experiencing subject is local. We each have a specific and private first person pov, which manifests as being physically and discretely embodied in a physical world we interact with, located in time and space, with a unified field of consciousness. But again, that's the model. To claim experience is universal would be claiming knowledge which isn't accessible imo, but it might be true.




What do you mean here by identity?

Gertie.
It seems that “state of affairs” and “local reality” are synonymous. The set of propositions may or not be different to describe “the identity”. I am not questioning the validity of any “phenomenal experiential package”. I am saying that the cause of the phenomenal experiential package is a fundamental force.
In some basic proposition a force is needed to change the reality of living. This force translates into work (maybe a physics formula W= F times Change) there is work, there is force and there is change. The origin of the force is the transformation of local/astral energies by the psyche.

Your thinking seems quite fundamentally confused in terms.
"Local reality" is n odd construction, as reality cannot be constrained to a local or specific environment - to say that would be an abuse of language. Then you double down with this delusion by suggesting that "a force" can change reality. Again this is absurd. forces change things but not reality. You seem obsessed with a queer understanding of "force" too since you seem to think that experience is a force with is totally backward, and also you seem to think that reality is waiting around to impose itself on reality and the motivating factor is the "psyche", which is risible. Psyche if it is a meaningful concept at all is an epiphenomenon, not a way to change the nature of reality.

In local energies/astral energies.

Oooh "astral" -- spooky!

1.- Food sources are transformed into work/thought.
2.- Solar energies get transformed by methods of the body
3.- Air
4.- water
5.- One basic astral energy in agreement might be the “spirit of the ancestors” in the many methods of which one is the methodology inherited in the DNA.
6.- Quantum theory explains the behavior of energy and in a methodology that can be used to do some work. The methodology in question is not the same as the intrinsic method of matter creation done by the fundamental forces of Nature. However, the known method in the creation of matter has been used by the fundamental force of consciousness in the creation of artificial elements that do not exist naturally. Again, new methodology is being formulated by the fundamental force of consciousness to use QM in doing work. However, I might agree with “it is part of the local reality.”
7.- A personal “phenomenal experiential package” of a Universal fundamental force. Under this scenario the Psyche fundamental force is Universal but different in each characterization or instantiation however with all its values if proportional and it supersedes the major fundamental forces of Nature. It is the power/work of thought in a “identity”

Scientific America has an article titled “The Universe is not locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners proved it” Oct 6, 2022. As Gertie articulated, local reality exists as “state of affairs”. I feel validated in my opinion by the tour of your philosophical queer risibility. We all have opinions and that’s my point of identity. However, I do search for understanding. Your point is baseless and mine is not.

Um. And what do you think that article actually says?

[The Beast]

Um. And what do you think that article actually says?

I stated my opinion above. According to Heraclitus’s doctrine a force is a primary constituent of physical reality and a regulative element in the Universe… force equals strength or energy in an interaction to bear a result. Do you have any other definition? Fundamental forces (known) are Gravity, electromagnetism, strong interaction, and weak interaction. As stated, consciousness (if exist) is a fundamental force (fifth) shaping reality and if consciousness does not exist then reality is created by the other fundamental forces.

[Gertie]

PC



Gertie wrote: ↑June 24th, 2023, 3:34 pm If you're looking for an 'in between' the what's going on of that, and the sort of 'rules of thought' like the rules of logic, then maybe you could say reason is about structurally formatting ''If....then'' thinking out of our observations? The basic format for that we've come up with ARE the laws of logic, and I'd add causation.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 25th, 2023, 8:50 am I'm not confident in parsing this last, and possibly most interesting, paragraph. Are you saying that reason adds or removes "if ... then" thinking?

Gertie wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 4:20 pm I'm suggesting causation as the way we do ''If...then'' thinking? If the basic rules of logic are essentially about making sense of the underlying nature of how things are/must be (A=A), then causation is about how things behave. (Both based on the way we experience the world). Eg every action has a reaction, something can't come from nothing, input and output, etc are causal ways we understand change.

...

In terms of ontological reality, if reason is rooted in utility, it's unreliable as a way of understanding how the world really is and how it works. What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive.


Interesting. I've taken a while to respond to this, because I couldn't at first see a way to clearly explain where I'm 'coming from'. But let's try this.

"If ... Then thinking" is a strong indication that reasoning is in progress; that Reason is being employed and applied. It doesn't necessarily indicate that causation is directly involved.

All Greeks are human.
Socrates is a Greek.
Therefore, Socrates is human.

can also be expressed thus,

If all Greeks are human, and Socrates is a Greek, then Socrates is human.

I'm not certain that the two are exact logical equivalents, but they come very close. And there's no obvious and direct involvement of causation.

If/Then thinking can surely include and involve causation, but it need not. It could be the expression of the results of a chain of reasoning, "If there are peanuts in the room, Then he must be the murderer." [Context would provide the missing information, already part of the discussion, that there are only three suspects, and two of them have fatal peanut allergies.] We could offer examples all day...

Good point. That example of If...then thinking is rooted in Identity. The underlying A=A holds (Socrates is Socrates), but he can fit into different categories/sets which we create for convenience by picking out particular characteristics. Some of those sets are entirely within other sets, Greeks are within the set of humans. But if Socrates could simultaneously be Cleopatra, the way wave-particle duality seems to work, the syllogism doesn't work. Socrates can't be Not-Socrates. (The one about all unmarried men are bachelors, just defines the category of unmarried men as bachelors, triangles have 3 sides is too, just a definition of a category. But if a shape could have both 3 and 4 sides, if its identity wasn't set to us, that logic wouldn't hold). A=A is the necessary underlying condition for such deductions used by manipulating our invented categories to work.

So how about this- if logic is about identity, the stuff of the universe, then causality is about how the universe works. So reason emerges from A) How we observe the world to be, its composition or identity, the basic A=A bottom line of logic, and B) How we experience the way the world works/changes/interacts, which is causation. And that the underlying 'Rule'of reason is about useful consistency, coherence and intelligibility (Kant talks of 'organisation'). Reason has to make sense of our sensory experience. Logic tackles what is (identity/composition/stuff) and if we add Causation (forces/will/laws of motion/probability/whatev) we can also account for how it works. All this is rooted in our flawed and limited observations. When we put Identity and Causation together to make a complete working model of the world as we experienceit, its intelligible coherence needs to hold because its based in utility. Its coherency must hold, and reason creates and maintains intelligible, consistent coherence of the model. This would underly descriptions of types of reasoning like deductive, inductive, compositional/reductive, cause and effect.

What do you think?

Your final sentence is "What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive." But I might have said "What I think we can say, is that reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive."

Sorta. I was thinking about change there, how the world appears to work (causally). Hence reason struggles with randomness. You could also include patterns in a compositional/identity sense. We have the physicalist model which takes our experiential model basically at face value and comes up with a structure of forces causally acting on stuff in patterned ways, which is essentially compositionally reductive. You could call the compositional pattern of A=A reduction/emergence, hence reasoning about identity ends with the brute fundamentals, and has nothing to work with in patternless cases of homogeneity .

And I might also suggest that Reason is more than just predictive. It also allows us to find and express new understanding, to derive (deduce; infer; etc) seemingly new information by combining information we already have.

Sure. But underlying that it has to be intelligible, consistent, coherent. That thinky voice in our heads which we do our linguistic reasoning with, also gives a contemporaneous running commentary from moment to moment, helping keep our model's changing narrative coherent and managable, integrating new info into our existing model in a way which makes sense and retains a useful overall structure. 'Oh the bus is late, I'd better phone work and let them know I'm late, oh I've run out of milk, I'd better go to the shops, Oh it's raining, I'd better get my umbrella'.

And Reason allows us to be reasonably confident in our conclusions, if we follow its rules. Which brings us back to the topic title — what are those rules, and does anything lie below them?

Well that confidence is rooted in observing patterns which give rise to predictive theories and rules of thumb. And putting it all together an overall framework which is intelligible, consistent and coherent. The physical/metaphysical divide is thin.

[Gertie]

oops sorry PC I messed up the quotes, here's a tidied up version

Gertie wrote: ↑June 24th, 2023, 3:34 pm If you're looking for an 'in between' the what's going on of that, and the sort of 'rules of thought' like the rules of logic, then maybe you could say reason is about structurally formatting ''If....then'' thinking out of our observations? The basic format for that we've come up with ARE the laws of logic, and I'd add causation.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 25th, 2023, 8:50 am I'm not confident in parsing this last, and possibly most interesting, paragraph. Are you saying that reason adds or removes "if ... then" thinking?

Gertie wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 4:20 pm I'm suggesting causation as the way we do ''If...then'' thinking? If the basic rules of logic are essentially about making sense of the underlying nature of how things are/must be (A=A), then causation is about how things behave. (Both based on the way we experience the world). Eg every action has a reaction, something can't come from nothing, input and output, etc are causal ways we understand change.

...

In terms of ontological reality, if reason is rooted in utility, it's unreliable as a way of understanding how the world really is and how it works. What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive.

Interesting. I've taken a while to respond to this, because I couldn't at first see a way to clearly explain where I'm 'coming from'. But let's try this.

"If ... Then thinking" is a strong indication that reasoning is in progress; that Reason is being employed and applied. It doesn't necessarily indicate that causation is directly involved.

All Greeks are human.
Socrates is a Greek.
Therefore, Socrates is human.

can also be expressed thus,

If all Greeks are human, and Socrates is a Greek, then Socrates is human.

I'm not certain that the two are exact logical equivalents, but they come very close. And there's no obvious and direct involvement of causation.

If/Then thinking can surely include and involve causation, but it need not. It could be the expression of the results of a chain of reasoning, "If there are peanuts in the room, Then he must be the murderer." [Context would provide the missing information, already part of the discussion, that there are only three suspects, and two of them have fatal peanut allergies.] We could offer examples all day...

Good point. That example of If...then thinking is rooted in Identity. The underlying A=A holds (Socrates is Socrates), but he can fit into different categories/sets which we create for convenience by picking out particular characteristics. Some of those sets are entirely within other sets, Greeks are within the set of humans. But if Socrates could simultaneously be Cleopatra, the way wave-particle duality seems to work, the syllogism doesn't work. Socrates can't be Not-Socrates. (The one about all unmarried men are bachelors, just defines the category of unmarried men as bachelors, triangles have 3 sides is too, just a definition of a category. But if a shape could have both 3 and 4 sides, if its identity wasn't set to us, that logic wouldn't hold). A=A is the necessary underlying condition for such deductions used by manipulating our invented categories to work.

So how about this- if logic is about identity, the stuff of the universe, then causality is about how the universe works. So reason emerges from A) How we observe the world to be, its composition or identity, the basic A=A bottom line of logic, and B) How we experience the way the world works/changes/interacts, which is causation. And that the underlying 'Rule'of reason is about useful consistency, coherence and intelligibility (Kant talks of 'organisation'). Reason has to make sense of our sensory experience. Logic tackles what is (identity/composition/stuff) and if we add Causation (forces/will/laws of motion/probability/whatev) we can also account for how it works. All this is rooted in our flawed and limited observations. When we put Identity and Causation together to make a complete working model of the world as we experienceit, its intelligible coherence needs to hold because its based in utility. Its coherency must hold, and reason creates and maintains intelligible, consistent coherence of the model. This would underly descriptions of types of reasoning like deductive, inductive, compositional/reductive, cause and effect.

What do you think?

Your final sentence is "What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive." But I might have said "What I think we can say, is that reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive."

Sorta. I was thinking about change there, how the world appears to work (causally). Hence reason struggles with randomness. You could also include patterns in a compositional/identity sense. We have the physicalist model which takes our experiential model basically at face value and comes up with a structure of forces causally acting on stuff in patterned ways, which is essentially compositionally reductive. You could call the compositional pattern of A=A reduction/emergence, hence reasoning about identity ends with the brute fundamentals, and has nothing to work with in patternless cases of homogeneity .

And I might also suggest that Reason is more than just predictive. It also allows us to find and express new understanding, to derive (deduce; infer; etc) seemingly new information by combining information we already have.

Sure. But underlying that it has to be intelligible, consistent, coherent. That thinky voice in our heads which we do our linguistic reasoning with, also gives a contemporaneous running commentary from moment to moment, helping keep our model's changing narrative coherent and managable, integrating new info into our existing model in a way which makes sense and retains a useful overall structure. 'Oh the bus is late, I'd better phone work and let them know I'm late, oh I've run out of milk, I'd better go to the shops, Oh it's raining, I'd better get my umbrella'.

And Reason allows us to be reasonably confident in our conclusions, if we follow its rules. Which brings us back to the topic title — what are those rules, and does anything lie below them?

Well that confidence is rooted in observing patterns which give rise to predictive theories and rules of thumb. And putting it all together an overall framework which is intelligible, consistent and coherent. The physical/metaphysical divide is thin.

[Gertie]

Beast

I found the Scientific America article (I'm not allowed to link any more) here's the opening para -

''One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking. “Local” means that objects can be influenced only by their surroundings and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead the evidence shows that objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings, and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement.''

The science of this is waaay beyond me, but it has occurred to me that there might be a 'field' of consciousness something akin to the Higgs Field, which somehow interacts with other fields to manifest conscious experience in certain ways. I don't know if this type of idea has legs, but it could put experience into the physicalist realm. Likewise your idea of a different fundamental force is still within the realm of physics, and I'd say part of the model.

The prob which applies to all fundamental theories (eg the ontological isms like Idealism, Physicalism, Dualism and Panpsychism) is they seem to be broad cloth explanations which could work, but they aren't provable or testable. Physicalism has the explanatory gap when it comes to conscious experience, and the others are more speculative still. And ultimately these things themselves are interpretations of the model from within using our flawed and limited knowing toolkit, and we don't/can't know how closely the model reflects ontological reality.

QM reflects a new interpretation at a particular level of observable/measurable resolution we've discovered we can access, does that mean it's any more 'ontologically real'' or true than trees and feeling happy/sad. What else can't we access - have we roughly captured everything reality is, or are we unimaginably far away, or not even on the right track, just adding detail to error. In such circs, when observation and reason can't escape the model, only make it coherent to humans, Don't Know is the only true statement.

It seems that “state of affairs” and “local reality” are synonymous.

Here I find the epistemological-ontological distinction useful, as that's not necessarily so, if you mean the ontological (actual) state of affairs and each person's own first person pov experience are the same thing. It would mean my specific flawed and limited observations are ontological reality, and so are yours, even when they conflict. (This might be true, that somehow relationality for want of a better word, is fundamental and there is no set fundamental stuff 'having'' interactive relationships', but that goes against our intuition/reason that you need Things to have relationships). that isn't how things seem to be. It seems to me there's a real difference between the ontological reality and what we experientially know about it. (The ontological-epistemological divide is real). Or we couldn't learn new things or realise we'd mistaken something.

Consider that I only need move from one end of Russell's table to the other to realise either the table changes shape so that the biggest end is always nearest me, or that the table stays the same shape and my pov causes an apparent change in the state of affairs of the table. If I check with you at the other end of the table, you experience the same, it's bigger your end. A=A compositionally doesn't hold. But if we measure the table we can agree both ends measure the same. So the third person falsifiability of the scientific method, when it comes to observable and measurable stuff - phyysical stuff and processes - means we can have a consistent shared model, which isn't localised to my specific first person pov. My 'local reality' as I experience it can have some inconsistencies with the shared model of the state of affairs of the table-thing corrected as errors of observation when it comes to publically accessible physical stuff. So it seems like there is an ontologically real thing we both experience as a table, which doesn't change when our pov changes.


Does the measurement problem upturn this, does it mean the table thing changes so opposite ends are bigger than the other, that both our 'local realities' are true? Or does it mean we're both flawed and limited observers, with a shared human toolkit which works that way? If the latter, does it mean that at different resolutions of granularity we meet new problems in maintaining a consistent model, and need new types of thinking/models to make our observations cohere... To go back to Hoffman's notion of our experiential model being analogous to a 'Darwinian fiction', we don't need to know what's going on at the quantum level to make good use of a table. We just need a model which allows us not to bump into it, and put our coffee mugs on it. So QM seems weird, doesn't fit our notions of Logic and causation. But extending our instruments to observe at finer granularities still has to be experiencable to us, accessible to our flawed and limited toolkit.

The set of propositions may or not be different to describe “the identity”. I am not questioning the validity of any “phenomenal experiential package”. I am saying that the cause of the phenomenal experiential package is a fundamental force.

OK.

In some basic proposition a force is needed to change the reality of living.

I don't see the need to couch this in terms of a proposition or 'of living'. The claim is an ontological one, an ontological force is needed to cause change in ontological reality. I agree that's how things seem to work.

This force translates into work (maybe a physics formula W= F times Change) there is work, there is force and there is change.

I can't speak to science of this, but here ''work'' seems to be an extraneous metaphor for what force is/does - which is cause change. Force causes change.

The origin of the force is the transformation of local/astral energies by the psyche.

You said is the force is fundamental above (which I take to mean ontologically irreducible), but now you say the force has an origin, it looks like a contradiction? Also, wouldn't ''energies'' be types of force? I'm getting lost, can you be a bit clearer? I'm with you that force causes change, but when we use those terms it's usually in the context of there being an existent something to be changed, what is that if this force is the only fundamental thing?

In local energies/astral energies.
......
6.- Quantum theory explains the behavior of energy and in a methodology that can be used to do some work. The methodology in question is not the same as the intrinsic method of matter creation done by the fundamental forces of Nature. However, the known method in the creation of matter has been used by the fundamental force of consciousness in the creation of artificial elements that do not exist naturally. Again, new methodology is being formulated by the fundamental force of consciousness to use QM in doing work. However, I might agree with “it is part of the local reality.”

Again it's not clear to me - are you adding an extra fundamental force to the physical ones (like I speculated adding an extra field of consciousness above), or saying the conscious force is the source of the physical forces, or emerges from them, or..?

7.- A personal “phenomenal experiential package” of a Universal fundamental force. Under this scenario the Psyche fundamental force is Universal but different in each characterization or instantiation however with all its values if proportional and it supersedes the major fundamental forces of Nature. It is the power/work of thought in a “identity”

I'd formulate this a little differently, if I understand you right. It sounds like a form of pampsychism which suggests the consciousness force is fundamental along with the physical forces, and when they interact then discrete 'experience packages' (eg Me and You) manifest. And the consciousness force 'supersedes' (supplants?) the physical forces in some undefined sense.

The standard objection to panpsychist hypotheses is 'the combination problem' (again sorry I can't link), applying it to your hypothesis it would be about how the different forces interact to manifest the variations of the state of affairs of the universe. I don't think that's a knock out blow the way some do, but it does illustrate how speculative such explanations would have to be with the info available to us, and its untestability. My real prob is - How can we know?

If we put it side by side with physicalism, we see physicalism essentially follows the available evidence (empirical observations) and makes testable predictions. It has a stanfard model which basically explains every variation in the umiverse with a standard model. It just doesn't have a place for conscious experience in that model, because conscious experience isn't observable/measurable and has different qualities to physical stuff. Physicalists say their model has new emergent properties arising everywhere which are the variations in the universe, all in principle explicable by the model of fundamental forces acting on fundamental particles. And it's no great leap to assume that consciousness is another emergent property, they just haven't found the mechanism yet so don't know how it fits in the model. Where-as Idealism, Dualism and Panpsychism have to invent a new fundamental conscious something, and don't have the intricate, evidence-led empirical framework, just a speculative broad cloth 'What if...'

So as a model Physicalism feels a lot more solid, has broad explanatory scope, accounts for the variatons we see and is predictive.

[The Beast]

Very appreciated.
Petition principii.
The above seems to be a Universal principle demonstrated in orbits and celestial galaxies. There is a window and if I am looking out then I am not looking in. In my modest automation (categorical) I consider force and energy and local reality part of Universal automation. In Universal automation, order comes from randomness and in the union of the opposites (automation/free will) lies our local fundamental force. To have a force you need the applied energy to thought. In the local reality, the biological variables are at work. We gather energy sources and apply (force) them into methods shaping our local reality. That is a local fundamental force shaping local reality. The distinction of Universal and local is one of a window and a petition principii (generational for some) for if I am looking in then I am not looking out. Yes, hypothetical but inclusive and broad. A Universal fundamental force crafting automation (QM) and a local fundamental force searching for freewill.

[Relenter]

There are ways to approach this question. For example, one of the axioms of thought must be that thought exists. But thought by definition occurs in the mind; so minds exist (or at least one). But to say minds exist implies the fundamental statement "Something exists". But even to say that something exists implies that the word "Something" and the word "exists" can be combined in a meaningful way to communicate a fact. So we have another axiom which is something like "Language is meaningful". I would start from there: Language is meaningful, and something exists.

Then we can enumerate, according to our theory, what kinds of entities exist and how they relate to one another. But a person who is a solipsist (believes their own mind is the universe) will have different assumptions than a materialist doing mainstream chemistry. So even at a basic level (like how many minds there are) there is disagreement. Ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias even argued that nothing can be known or communicated, rejecting our most basic axiom. Conspiracy theorists will disagree on basic scientific facts. Practically, one of the most significant differences between people is religion. So this quest to find the axioms we all agree on brings us to the understanding that there are no axioms we will all agree on. There are statements, some more fundamental than others, which can be accepted or rejected.

There are, however, some truths which are tautological. Mathematics is like this. 2+3=5 is true by definition, to deny it you have to redefine the terms. Science also has a process of repeating experiments to correctly predict outcomes. This process is able to establish facts. So there are facts. There are just people who won't accept the foundations of the facts (even though it has been demonstrated many, many times).

[Pattern-chaser]

There are ways to approach this question. For example, one of the axioms of thought must be that thought exists. But thought by definition occurs in the mind; so minds exist (or at least one). But to say minds exist implies the fundamental statement "Something exists". But even to say that something exists implies that the word "Something" and the word "exists" can be combined in a meaningful way to communicate a fact. So we have another axiom which is something like "Language is meaningful". I would start from there: Language is meaningful, and something exists.

Then we can enumerate, according to our theory, what kinds of entities exist and how they relate to one another. But a person who is a solipsist (believes their own mind is the universe) will have different assumptions than a materialist doing mainstream chemistry. So even at a basic level (like how many minds there are) there is disagreement. Ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias even argued that nothing can be known or communicated, rejecting our most basic axiom. Conspiracy theorists will disagree on basic scientific facts. Practically, one of the most significant differences between people is religion. So this quest to find the axioms we all agree on brings us to the understanding that there are no axioms we will all agree on. There are statements, some more fundamental than others, which can be accepted or rejected.

There are, however, some truths which are tautological. Mathematics is like this. 2+3=5 is true by definition, to deny it you have to redefine the terms. Science also has a process of repeating experiments to correctly predict outcomes. This process is able to establish facts. So there are facts. There are just people who won't accept the foundations of the facts (even though it has been demonstrated many, many times).

Thank you for an excellent post! And welcome to our dance, Relenter!


When I wrote my OP, I wasn't as clear as I should have been. As a result, some posts here reflect a search for the emergence of reason-based thinking in homo sapiens, which is not what I was/am after. I was thinking more of the way that we tend to formalise such things, and invent a post hoc rationalisation as to the 'rules' we follow when we use them.

Specifically, I'm looking for the intellectual (?) foundation of Reason, not its origin or emergence in humans.

A good example is our so-called 'laws of thought'. They are useful only for binary thinking, but they are useful nonetheless. I doubt we began our analytic thinking with those 'laws'; I think our thinking developed gradually, and the 'laws' were added later. But added they were...

What I still seek is an equivalent to our laws of thought, but something a little more widely applicable. Specifically, I'm looking for 'laws' — rules, guidelines, rules of thumb, proverbs, old wives tales, etc. — that are relevant to all forms of serious and considered thought, however they are used, and whatever they are applied to.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason — whereby one should not take a single step along a chain of reason (or 'reasoning') without sufficient justification. This is about the only axiom/law/etc I have come up with that seems to meet my criteria. I'm sure there must be others, but I haven't arrived there yet...

Stoppelmann offered a similar idea,

Principle of Sufficient Reason: This principle asserts that everything must have a reason or cause. It suggests that nothing happens without a cause or explanation. It forms the basis for understanding and explaining events in terms of causes and effects.

Not exactly the same as my wording, which deliberately does not include a specific mention of causation, but the same basic idea, I think?

[Pattern-chaser]

If/Then thinking can surely include and involve causation, but it need not. It could be the expression of the results of a chain of reasoning, "If there are peanuts in the room, Then he must be the murderer." [Context would provide the missing information, already part of the discussion, that there are only three suspects, and two of them have fatal peanut allergies.] We could offer examples all day...

Good point. That example of If...then thinking is rooted in Identity. The underlying A=A holds (Socrates is Socrates), but he can fit into different categories/sets which we create for convenience by picking out particular characteristics. Some of those sets are entirely within other sets, Greeks are within the set of humans.

To be honest, my intention there was only to offer an example that did not directly feature causation.

But if Socrates could simultaneously be Cleopatra, the way wave-particle duality seems to work, the syllogism doesn't work. Socrates can't be Not-Socrates. (The one about all unmarried men are bachelors, just defines the category of unmarried men as bachelors, triangles have 3 sides is too, just a definition of a category. But if a shape could have both 3 and 4 sides, if its identity wasn't set to us, that logic wouldn't hold). A=A is the necessary underlying condition for such deductions used by manipulating our invented categories to work.

This is interesting. Socrates can't be not-Socrates, that wouldn't make sense. But we could look at Socrates in a number of different ways (perspectives). Using one, we might see Socrates the philosopher. Using another, we might see Socrates the transvestite (?), or Socrates the athlete (?), and so on. But all of them are Socrates. This is wholly compatible with wave/particle duality. We can successfully look at something as a wave or as a particle. Whichever perspective we adopt, we are still looking at the same thing, just in a different way.

So we can confidently say "Socrates is a philosopher." But, by the Law of the Included Middle*, Socrates is not only a philosopher. If my fabrications were accurate, he is/was also a transvestite, and maybe an athlete too.

* — The Law of the Included Middle is almost universally applicable to serious and considered thinking, outside binary thinking.

I suspect this could be more about perspective than identity. What do you think?

So how about this- if logic is about identity, the stuff of the universe,

I assume that, by "logic", above, you mean what I might've described as Reason. But when I so assume, your sentence starts to make a lot less sense. So what have I misunderstood? For it does not seem to me that logic, or identity, is the "stuff of the universe". The latter is something more like (matter + energy), isn't it? Where do logic (Reason?) and identity fit into that? Or are you being more flexible with the "universe", and including (say) ideas and concepts also as parts of the "universe"?

...then causality is about how the universe works.

It's one factor in our understanding of the universe, and how it works, so yes.

So reason emerges from
A) How we observe the world to be, its composition or identity, the basic A=A bottom line of logic, and
B) How we experience the way the world works/changes/interacts, which is causation.

For me, that goes a little too far. I don't see causation to be quite as fundamental as you do. I do not deny it, that would be silly. But I am not 100% convinced that it is universally () applicable. I think Reason is more fundamental, and universal, than mere causation. Reason would (I hope!) still apply to a causeless event, wouldn't it? [Certain QM things appear to be causeless events. I think there are other examples too.]

Other things bother me here, too.

Your "A)" seems to say that the world is as we perceive it to be; it is as we see it. This is not always the case. I believe there are many examples of how our perception and senses can be wrong in some way. And so it seems to me that "A)" cannot be a fundamental part of Reason. It is true, but only sometimes. I think Reason is perhaps a little more all-encompassing than that?

In the same vein, I think our experience of the world, "B)", and the way it works, is not exclusively down to causation. I think our rich experience of life and living is both deeper and broader than that. But perhaps I go too far? Maybe causation lurks beneath all of it, and I haven't realised?

And that the underlying 'Rule' of reason is about useful consistency, coherence and intelligibility (Kant talks of 'organisation'). Reason has to make sense of our sensory experience.

I'm wholly in agreement with your final sentence, but the former seems to me as though we might be trying to dignify our understanding when dignity is not yet earned or deserved? And yet there must be some kind of axiom — assumption — of consistency, and the like. For we do, almost always, assume such things, even within the fairly formal environment of Reason. But I prefer the final sentiment, that Reason — an invention of humankind — must make sense of the world in which we seem to exist. But we should note that the "must" in that preceding sentence is a requirement we place upon our invention (Reason), and not something that the world/universe must do.

Logic tackles what is (identity/composition/stuff) and if we add Causation (forces/will/laws of motion/probability/whatever) we can also account for how it works. All this is rooted in our flawed and limited observations. When we put Identity and Causation together to make a complete working model of the world as we experience it, its intelligible coherence needs to hold because its based in utility. Its coherency must hold, and reason creates and maintains intelligible, consistent coherence of the model. This would underly descriptions of types of reasoning like deductive, inductive, compositional/reductive, cause and effect.

What do you think?

I think your approach is just a little too, er, scientific for the questions I'm trying to ask, which include scientific thinking, but are not limited to it.

And I'm not as convinced as you seem to be of the fundamentality (???) of identity and causation. I do not deny either, but I wonder how far they can be correctly and usefully applied?

Your final sentence is "What I think we can say, is that causal reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive." But I might have said, "What I think we can say, is that reasoning latches onto underlying real patterns, because it's successfully predictive."

Sorta. I was thinking about change there, how the world appears to work (causally). Hence reason struggles with randomness.

It does? For me, Reason can apply to randomness just as it can apply to order. Isn't that so? For reason is a way of looking seriously at stuff, and randomness is stuff just as order is. The world seems to contain chaos and order, just as it contains hydrogen and helium. Reason is applicable to the whole world, in all its wonder, I think?

[Relenter]

Thank you for the warm welcome!

Specifically, I'm looking for the intellectual (?) foundation of Reason, not its origin or emergence in humans.

When you say "the foundation", there seems to be an assumption there that there is a principle, statement, or proposition that all reasonable people must agree to. Having had an interest in this topic myself, I am unconvinced that such a principle exists. Gorgias, as I mentioned, is a historically significant philosopher who used reason to deny that anything can be known or communicated. There are published articles denying the laws of thought you mentioned. Heraclitus is well-known for his "unity of opposites" principle, a direct contradiction to the Law of Non-contradiction. Was he therefore speaking beyond the bounds of reason? You could argue he was, but that would be a subjective matter. In law there is a concept of "reasonableness", and it is a matter for the judge and jury. Put simply, I think every proposition you could dream up has been denied by some philosopher or other. This is unsurprising in a way, as it is part of a philosopher's job to be a contrarian. If you could dream up a principle that everybody uses and expose it, some philosopher would go to work attacking and undermining it.

However, even if there are no principles that command universal assent, there are principles that have near-universal assent. The laws of thought and the principle of sufficient reason are great examples. I wish I could think of more examples. What do you think of this: Scientists have a belief in the uniformity of nature, which was challenged by David Hume. Hume questioned the basis for assuming that the future will resemble the past. Nevertheless science doesn't work without such a principle, or axiom. The belief in the uniformity of nature is the foundation for inductive reasoning.

Are you looking for a similar foundation for deductive reasoning? I would refer you to Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles". This has a discussion that's indirectly about the axiom "If A implies B, and A, then B". It discusses the consequences of simply refusing to believe this; which would undermine any deductive argument.

If someone wants to dig through the work of philosophers like Leibniz and Spinoza and others, you will start to build a good list of fundamental principles used by philosophers, some of which would be more widely applicable than others. For example, Leibniz said the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason were the two main ones used in his philosophy, but he had others such as the principle of the best according to which we live in the best of all possible worlds (which Voltaire ridiculed).