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From: John Jones on 15 May 2010 11:48
Can developments in philosophy can take us beyond any supposed limits of
natural understanding?

Types (e.g.slow cars, fast cars)are not subject to the rules that govern
tokens (the car). Types are not, for example, identical with, similar
to, or different than "other" types. There is no similarity or
difference between, for example, colour and sound, but there is among
their respective tokens.

Take a popular example that is barnied about by academic philosophers
and logicians today. To claim that "causality comes in different types"
- mental and physical - is to invert the type/token distinction.

If we want to cast that into common parlance then we might first restate
the general understanding that causality is physical. Any use of the
sign "causality" that doesn't follow that understanding at best employs
causation as a metaphor.

But even if it is used as a metaphor for thoughts, a "physical
causality" doesn't do a good job, if any job at all. We can say, for
example, "that made me think of.." but there is no need to employ
physical causality as a metaphor to help us understand what it is to be
"made to think", even less to audaciously re-employ all the participants
of the metaphor as interactive ontological agents.

For we could, if we so wanted, turn the dubious enterprise of
establishing a link between mental and physical events on its head, by
claiming that physical events, based on the metaphor of mental events,
vanish and appear, without the consideration of any physical, causal
redress. Woof.
From: Zerkon on 16 May 2010 07:46
On Sat, 15 May 2010 16:48:52 +0100, John Jones wrote:

> Can developments in philosophy take us beyond any supposed limits of
> natural understanding?

First, what is an example of a development in philosophy?
Secondly, how can understanding be beyond the natural limits? Doesn't
understanding persistently redefine 'natural' and 'limits'?

From: John Jones on 16 May 2010 08:22
Zerkon wrote:
> On Sat, 15 May 2010 16:48:52 +0100, John Jones wrote:
>
>> Can developments in philosophy take us beyond any supposed limits of
>> natural understanding?
>
> First, what is an example of a development in philosophy?

The accumulation of technical jargon.

> Secondly, how can understanding be beyond the natural limits?

That's why I added the term "supposed".

> Doesn't
> understanding persistently redefine 'natural' and 'limits'?

I wouldn't know about that.

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