Cosmos Created Mind

I’m glad we’ve finally got a credible source of evidence for your ideas—a Dan Brown novel.

Quoting T Clark

a Dan Brown novel

:lol:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-of-self/202510/the-secret-of-secrets-is-the-science-accurate :monkey:

Reply to Gnomon :sparkle: wt_?

Quoting T Clark

I’m glad we’ve finally got a credible source of evidence for your ideas—a Dan Brown novel.

Sarcasm noted. This novel is no more scientific than The DaVinci Code, and not cited as "evidence" for any particular aspect of objective reality. But its discussion of a controversial philosophical concept is evidence of some far-out philosophical conjectures that are out-there in the ether. Quite a few prominent scientists have embraced Panpsychism*1 as an explanation for the emergence of human sentience.

I'm not buying the notion of brain tissue as receiver of divine signals*2, but I'm open to the possibility, pending further evidence. And I use this forum as place to explore unconventional ideas, honed by skeptical reasoning, not ridicule. :smile:


*1. Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scientists+and+panpsychism

*2. "I find it difficult to accept that my thoughts & feelings are signals from some central transmitter, like the robotic clone army of Star Wars." ____excerpt from OP

If it is true that the

Quoting Gnomon

brain [is] acting as a receiver for consciousness.

is that not another instance of "forms" activating "matter?"

In that case, not an inversion of the Wayfarer thread.

Quoting Gnomon

Quite a few prominent scientists have embraced Panpsychism*1 as an explanation for the emergence of human sentience.

Quoting Gnomon

Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do?

Quoting Gnomon

discussion of a controversial philosophical concept

This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

Quoting Gnomon

And I use this forum as place to explore unconventional ideas, honed by skeptical reasoning, not ridicule.

The forum used to be much stricter about keeping out pseudoscientific theories. I don’t really mind that it’s become more lenient, but many such theories still do deserve ridicule.

Reply to T Clark
Quoting T Clark

Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.
— Gnomon

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do?

discussion of a controversial philosophical concept
— Gnomon

This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

William James might have begged to differ with you. In his essay ‘Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine’, he raises the question whether consciousness might depend on, or even originate from, sources “outside” the brain, but James does so in a way that deliberately blurs the boundaries between psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience.

Reply to T Clark :up: :up: Yeah, (@Gnomon's) pseudoscience —> ridicule.

Quoting Joshs

In his essay ‘Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine’, he raises the question whether consciousness might depend on, or even originate from, sources “outside” the brain,

The idea that the essence of humans—the soul, consciousness, the spirit—originates outside the body is nothing new. As I understand it, that is one of the fundamental ideas in Christianity. I haven’t read the James essay, so I can’t really say what exactly he’s talking about. The usual suspect tertiary sources on the web say he did not believe that consciousness originated outside the body.

Reply to T Clark
Quoting T Clark

The usual suspect tertiary sources on the web say he did not believe that consciousness originated outside the body.

In earlier works , like Principles of Psychology, his approach was mainly materialistic. But toward the end of his career his thinking became more speculative. In the essay, he proposes that the idea that the brain transmits rather than produces consciousness is philosophically and scientifically conceivable, and perhaps better fits the facts than strict materialism.

He writes:

“Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual. Then the diminutions of consciousness which accompany brain lesions may not be due to the destruction of consciousness itself, but to the failure of its physical organs to transmit it properly.”

Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual.

For the record, I really like James. As for this quote, that’s not all that far from what I believe. The material world affects the spirit through our senses and perceptions processed by our nervous system. I don’t know if that’s what he meant.

The ancient Stoics were stubborn materialists, but believed in a rarefied form of material, generally called pneuma, which was the generative force of the cosmos. Pneuma was a part of all things, organic and inorganic, but had different grades, one of which formed the rational mind/soul of human beings.

Perhaps they were pantheists or panpsychists--I don't particularly care which. I find the general idea of such a cosmos attractive. But I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma it will be established through science, not philosophy.

Quoting Ciceronianus

I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma it will be established [falsified] through science, not philosophy.

:up: Like a vacuum or atom or aether ...

Quoting T Clark

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do? . . . .
This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

This question is off-topic, because the thread is about a fictional pseudo-scientific worldview, not (or not yet) a mainstream scientific hypothesis. I was hoping to get some feedback from Wayfarer to see if the novel's implicit --- not explicit --- Cosmic Mind worldview is similar to his own Idealistic philosophy. I made-up the Cosmos Created Mind label, as an inversion of the Mind Created World thread.

FWIW, I don't consider Panpsychism to be a scientific theory, because it may be untestable. But it is a legitimate philosophical ontological hypothesis. Nevertheless, the previous link names some serious scientists*1*2 who find the concept of a Mind-based Universe plausible. If you are really interested, you can do a Google search to find a lot more credentialed scientists, who admit to taking the Mind before Matter notion seriously. Personally, I'm skeptical of the Cosmic Signal hypothesis. But I could be proven wrong. :nerd:


*1. Neuroscientist Christof Koch is a proponent of a modern, scientifically-informed version of panpsychism, the belief that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=koch+panpsychism

*2. How scientists are engaging with panpsychism :
[i]# Experimental research:
Some scientists, like Michael Levin, are actively looking for empirical evidence of consciousness in simple organisms that lack a nervous system.
# Theoretical exploration:
Some have proposed that panpsychism could be a "physics of panpsychism" that would provide a scientific basis for the idea. Others, like Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory, have developed frameworks that are compatible with panpsychism.
# As a response to the hard problem:
Panpsychism is seen by some as a way to address the "hard problem of consciousness," which is how subjective experience arises from purely physical matter. By positing that consciousness is fundamental, panpsychism offers a way to bypass the difficulty of explaining its emergence from non-conscious matter.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scientists+and+panpsychism

Quoting Paine

is that not another instance of "forms" activating "matter?"
In that case, not an inversion of the Wayfarer thread.

I don't know. What do you think?
Regarding "inversion" see my reply to TClark.

Quoting Gnomon

1. Neuroscientist Christof Koch is a proponent of a modern, scientifically-informed version of panpsychism, the belief that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter…

*2. How scientists are engaging with panpsychism :

You’re OP is not about panpsychism. It’s not even mentioned. It’s primarily about consciousness being the result the transmission from outside the body.

Quoting Joshs

In earlier works , like Principles of Psychology, his approach was mainly materialistic. But toward the end of his career his thinking became more speculative. In the essay, he proposes that the idea that the brain transmits rather than produces consciousness is philosophically and scientifically conceivable, and perhaps better fits the facts than strict materialism.

I was not aware that W. James had speculated on brain as receiver or transmitter*1. Reply to T Clark accused me of promoting pseudoscience, where I'm merely exploring an idea that is novel to me.

My current view of Human Consciousness is that it is emergent from Information processing, and ceases when the processor dies. But, confronted with the Hard Problem, I have tried to trace the path of Information (EnFormAction)*2 --- both causal & meaningful --- back to the Big Bang and beyond. Hence, the Ontological & Epistemological question remains : where did the Energy & Laws --- two forms of Information --- of the nascent universe originate? Modern science has no empirical answer ; so we speculate. :smile:


*1. The idea that the brain transmits consciousness rather than produces it is a minority theory that suggests the brain acts as a receiver or filter, similar to a radio receiving a broadcast. This perspective, first explored by William James, proposes that consciousness is a fundamental field that the brain tunes into, which explains why the brain's structure and health can affect its perception of consciousness. In contrast, the prevailing view in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity, generated by the brain itself, and ceases to exist when the brain dies
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=brain+transmits+rather+than+produces+consciousness

*2. Is Information a Fundamental Force of the Universe? :
[i]A distinguished geoscientist and rising-star astrobiologist offer a stunning new theory . . . .
Robert Hazen and Michael Wong discuss their bold proposal for a new law of nature, centered around the idea that information is as fundamental to the cosmos as mass, energy or charge.[/i]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/videos/is-information-a-fundamental-force-of-the-universe/

Quoting T Clark

You’re OP is not about panpsychism. It’s not even mentioned. It’s primarily about consciousness being the result the transmission from outside the body.

First, let me clarify that the title of this thread does not describe my own philosophy, but an attempt to encapsulate the worldview underlying Noetic "science" as described in Dan Brown's mystical mystery novel. The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism.

So, when I'm accused of promoting PseudoScience, I have to strenuously deny it. But from a hard-core Materialist perspective the difference is literally immaterial. My non-scientific & non-religious personal philosophical worldview may sound like PanTheism to you, but I call it Enformationism*2, which is based primarily on Quantum Physics and Information Theory. And it's more like Taoism than theology. :smile:


*1. The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown is a novel that explores themes of consciousness, noetic sciences, and mysticism, which are closely related to panpsychism by suggesting that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality and can exist beyond the physical brain. The book's central premise involves the brain acting as a "mind receiver" for consciousness, aligning with the idea that mind and consciousness are not just byproducts of matter, but are a fundamental part of the universe itself.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=novel+%22secret+of+secrets%22+panpsychism

*2. Creative Mind and Cosmic Order :
Even Darwin implied that the evolution of cognition enhanced the survival of organisms : “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” In other words, wisdom is the most powerful force for surviving and thriving in a world of constant change, and of competition for life’s necessary resources. In 1907, Henri Bergson published his book, Creative Evolution, in which he postulated the existence of a Life Force (elan vital)²?. In my own hypothesis, I denote that creative causal force by a technical term : EnFormAction²?, denoting a combination of change-causing Energy and organizing Information. Where Energy provides the transformative force, and Information (blueprint) delivers the design intention for configuration.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page10.html

PS___ A century ago, Einstein made some "cosmological" calculations, and was appalled to see that the result indicated a dynamic universe instead of the static world he preferred. So, he added an arbitrary constant lambda (?) to balance the equation, and later recalled it as his greatest "blunder". Today, I could use the dynamic & directional term EnFormAction in place of lambda, but then I'm not a scientist. Merely, a theorising amateur philosopher. :joke:

Reply to Gnomon
I read Wayfarer to be saying that emergence of new life came from someplace rather than nothing. That demands a different response than the constant refresh of the world required for the opposing view counting upon an unknown agency.

Since we are poorly positioned as a species to sort this out as a matter of fact, the difference in question becomes a collapse into a tautology where the opposite ends fail to be a contrary for the other.

Quoting Gnomon

The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism.

This is not true. Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

Quoting T Clark

Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

:100:

Quoting T Clark

The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism. — Gnomon
This is not true. Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

You are just being contrarian & polemic & off-topic. I didn't say they are the same thing, but only that they are related, as a general Form and and a particular Thing are related (hylomorph). Do you understand the relationship between Islam and Monotheism? One is a specific doctrinal religion, while the other is a general doctrine regarding Deity : Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all philosophically monotheistic, but differ in specific doctrinal beliefs.

The quoted -isms are different in that Pantheism is a religious worldview, while Panpsychism is a philosophical theory. By analogy, Theism is a religious belief, while Deism is a philosophical concept. Can you see the relationship (world creator) and the distinction (miraculous intervention vs natural evolution)?

Now that you have made your us-vs-them political position clear, can we get back on the philosophical topic : "The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-local, i.e. Cosmic Mind (Panpsychism)".? :cool:


Pantheism is the belief that God is the universe, identifying divinity with all of existence, while panpsychism is the philosophical idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, present in all matter. Pantheism is a religious concept, often seen as an alternative to traditional theism by rejecting a transcendent, separate God. Panpsychism is more of a metaphysical theory about consciousness itself, though it is often explored in conjunction with pantheistic ideas to consider whether the universe can be a conscious, divine mind.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pantheism+panpsychism+religion

Pantheism and panpsychism are related but distinct concepts; pantheism is a religious philosophy equating God with the universe, while panpsychism is a philosophical view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. Panpsychism can be used to support pantheism by suggesting that the universal consciousness is divine.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pantheism+panpsychism+religion

Quoting Gnomon

You are just being contrarian & polemic & off-topic. I didn't say they are the same thing, but only that they are related,

No, they are not related except they both have a "pan" prefix which refers to "all," "of everything," or "completely." They are completely different things. And no, I'm not being contrarian. I'm being irritated because your OP is so vague and inconsistent and you present half-baked ideas without support and without a willingness to take responsibility for them. It's not philosophy at all, it's a book report.

Quoting Gnomon

The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-local

It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

What could be universal, basic and fundamental, and therefore non-local is the witness itself of experiences, which I call Awareness, and would be what one truly is, which is not one's experiences.

Note that again, either way, the Universe does us.

Quoting T Clark

I'm not being contrarian. I'm being irritated because your OP is so vague and inconsistent and you [@Gnomon] present half-baked ideas without support and without a willingness to take responsibility for them. It's not philosophy at all, it's a book report.

:up: :up:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD [eternal, nonlocal] versus a live band [present, local].

Exactly.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

Thanks for making a rational philosophical suggestion, instead of emotional political derision. :razz:

Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)?
In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)? Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label? :smile:

Radio analogy : "The key presumption is that Consciousness is non-local, but Cosmic (Pantheism ; Panpsychism)". ___ From OP
If my personal sense of awareness (receiver) is actually processing a broadcast signal or narrowcast message, what does that imply about the source/transmitter? : (e.g. Theistic Pantheism vs Atheistic Panpsychism) :nerd:

Quoting T Clark

Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

Panpsychism can be rather a broad church. Hartshorne coined the dichotomy of synecological and atomistic panpsychism to cover this.

So pantheism, or indeed panentheism, is a variety of synecological panpsychism under his classification scheme. Broadly this is the difference between a top-down constraints and a bottom-up construction view of things.

That is, consciousness as either a holistic constraint imposed on material being down to its finest grades of division, or instead the opposite thing of consciousness originating at the level of atomistic events – even particles in interaction – and then becoming complexified as it becomes built up into more elaborate structures like bodies and brains.

So it is the same old causal debate. Top-down holism vs bottom-up contruction. Two ways of treating consciousness as a reified "thing" – an elemental property of nature. But two opposite ways of framing that fact. Either human minds emerge from atomistic fragments appropriately combined, or from the generalised divine mind appropriately constrained – as in being confined to inhabit the particular circuitry of some human or other, or some shape and form of animal, tree, or mountain or river, or other.

What is shared is seeking to elevate "consciousness" to something maximally general and fundamental to material reality. Either the panentheism of participating in the generality of the divine whole, or the more familiar reductionist model that sounds more scientifically respectable and which thus popularised the actual brand name of panpsychism.

If Nature was fundamentally atomistic in its causality, we’ll just assume consciousness begins right there where the first particles arise. That bottom-up construction view felt always more properly sciencey and less like religious woo.

But of course I have to add that all this pan- talk is guff as its seeks to reduce reality to either its whole or its parts. The systems view seeks to find reality in the interaction of its extremes. A holism that is triadic and which thus incorporates both its holist and reductionist tendencies.

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world. It gives a sharp reason why consciousness can arise when a particular modelling process arises within Nature at a certain sufficiently cool, large and complex moment in its Big Bang history.

But that would be leading the conversation back into the realm of the actually scientific. :grin:

Quoting Gnomon

Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)?

B> live event, because Eternalism requires infinite precision, but, everything leaks…

Quoting Gnomon

In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)?

Our personal ideas come from the history of the Cosmos.

Quoting Gnomon

Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label?

No copyright; give cosmic credit; no fame… but no blame either.

Quoting Gnomon

Radio analogy

I am listening to the World Series of Canada versus Japan on the radio, ha-ha.

Quoting apokrisis

But that would be leading the conversation back into the realm of the actually scientific.

I didn't intend for this thread, on a philosophy forum, to be a scientific analysis of evidence for "signals from the cosmos". Other than as a Noetic postulate to resolve the Hard Problem of Consciousness, I'm not aware of any scientific evidence of intelligible signals being received and interpreted by the brain, except of course as energetic inputs (light, sound) from the local environment. Instead, I'm asking for philosophical reasoning about the likelihood or possibility of "non-local" inputs of meaningful signals from an intelligent source out there in the Cosmos at large. :chin:

Quoting apokrisis

So it is the same old causal debate. Top-down holism vs bottom-up contruction. Two ways of treating consciousness as a reified "thing" – an elemental property of nature. But two opposite ways of framing that fact.

Now, we're getting somewhere! My own --- philosophical, not scientific --- musings, about the hard problem, point toward Causation (natural energy, gravity, forces) as the precursor of Consciousness in biological entities. This is a holistic interpretation instead of a reductive inference from specific observations. If so, then perhaps human awareness is a high-level function of brain processes, not a reified thing or substance like the aether. All natural processes must have some evolutionary fitness function to avoid being weeded-out by natural selection. And all physical processes, including brain functions, require Energy.

Moreover, professional scientists have recently inferred from their observations that change-causing Energy is a special form of generic Information*1. And ideas in the human mind are also forms of meaningful information, yes?. Therefore, practical Science points to a natural relationship between Consciousness & Causation. However, the topic of this thread is about the possibility that some Cosmic Intelligence --- (gods or aliens or overflowing black holes*2) the novel leaves the Source open to interpretation --- is beaming meaningful signals into our brains in order to produce the ideas that we arrogant apes assume are our own creation. :nerd:


*1. The statement "energy is information" is a complex and debated concept, but it reflects the deep relationship between the two: energy is a fundamental aspect of information, as physical information requires energy to be carried, and information can be viewed as a form of energy or a measure of a system's organization. While not a simple equivalence, theories propose that information and energy are intrinsically linked and potentially convertible, as demonstrated in a physical experiment where information was converted into energy. {details in the link}
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+is+information

*2. black hole information paradox, a conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity. It questions what happens to the information of matter that falls into a black hole, as quantum mechanics dictates that information cannot be destroyed, while Hawking's theory suggested black holes radiate away matter without recovering this information. This paradox arises because a black hole's only observable properties are its mass, electric charge, and angular momentum, which are not enough to reconstruct the original information of what fell in.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=black+hole+information
Note --- Like Energy, perhaps Information cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. But, no, I don't take the Black Hole Source seriously. Do you?

Quoting Ciceronianus

The ancient Stoics were stubborn materialists, but believed in a rarefied form of material, generally called pneuma, which was the generative force of the cosmos. Pneuma was a part of all things, organic and inorganic, but had different grades, one of which formed the rational mind/soul of human beings.

Good point! Pneuma (air ; fire) was an ancient materialistic theory that equated invisible Breath (oxygen) with Life, Spirit, Soul & Mind. Today, we know more about the transparent chemical gas that is essential to Life, and ultimately to Mind. But, the modern essence of Life (animation) is Energy, and Oxygen is merely a catalyst*1. Yet, while we know what Energy does (action ; causation), scientists can't say what it is (essence).

The enduring concept of Pneuma as the ethereal essence of dynamic reality ("generative force of the cosmos") is now retreaded in a modern theory of consciousness*2. This evolving terminology is similar to ancient Aether, which was long-ago debunked as a non-scientific spiritual concept, but the name has recently been resurrected in Quantum Field theory*3. So, Pneuma is now portrayed as a vacuum full of immaterial Energy. But how does such an ethereal notion relate to the title of this thread? :smile:


*1. Oxygen as Energy matchmaker :
Most aerobic organisms, including humans, use oxygen to break down food, a process that generates chemical energy in the form of ATP, which is necessary for all life functions.

*2. Quantum consciousness :
Theories, such as Roger Penrose's Orch-OR theory, are seen as modern successors to pneuma, suggesting consciousness is not a mere byproduct of matter but a fundamental aspect of reality itself.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pneuma+modern+science

*3. Aether as energy field :
In the 21st century, the concept of aether is largely considered obsolete in mainstream physics, having been replaced by quantum field theory and the quantum vacuum.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=21st+century+aether

Reply to Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

Quoting Ciceronianus

?Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

:smirk:

Reply to apokrisis
Interesting, keeping in mind I was not arguing for or against pantheism, only that, as I understand it, pantheism and panpsychism are different things.

Sorry it took me so long to respond.

Quoting Ciceronianus

?Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

I was hoping you might suggest a hypothetical answer to the topical question : "But how does such an ethereal notion [pneuma ; aether] relate to the title of this thread?" What feature of the Cosmos, as a whole system, could explain the emergence of both Life & Mind (processes) on a minor planet in an ordinary galaxy?

I've been exploring alternatives to ancient Materialist theories (e.g. Pneuma ; Aether) in my blog*1. And the only common factor I've found is phenomenal Causation (energy ; force ; power) directed by noumenal Organization (natural laws), which together I call EnFormAction (the power to transform) or just Information*2. But what is the ultimate source of Cause & Laws of the universe*3? :chin:


*1. Cosmology and Evolution :
Divine Design vs Teleological Evolution vs Scientific Serendipity
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page41.html

*2. Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

*3. Schopenhauer’s Will as Intention :
[i]Ironically, as a critic of religion, Schop’s “Will” combines phenomenal causation and noumenal representation? into a single concept, similar to the Holy Spirit of the Bible. . . . .
Schopenhauer argued that the flawed world is not rationally organized?. But, if so, how could reasoning beings evolve, and how could human Science gain control over the physical realm?[/i]
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page19.html

# Factor : a circumstance, fact, or influence that contributes to a result or outcome.

Quoting T Clark

No, they are not related except they both have a "pan" prefix which refers to "all," "of everything," or "completely." They are completely different things.

I assume that you are passionately defending the worldview of Spinoza's philosophical PanTheism from the ancient "New Age" notion of PanPsychism. But they are only antithetical for devout believers. I'm aware that Reply to 180 Proof likes to portray Panpsychism as "nonsense" compared to Spinoza's scientific sense. But from an objective perspective, someone not ardently committed to one belief system or the other may not see any incompatibility*1.

I'm not a true believer in either view, but a loosely related "pan-" label, PanEnDeism*2, could be applied to my own non-religious philosophical understanding of how & why the world works as it does : supporting the immaterial processes of Life & Mind. But my thesis uses the more scientific term Information instead of spooky Psyche. :smile:

PS___ I don't know enough about Noetics to pin any of these "-ism" labels on it.


*1. Spinoza's philosophy is both pantheistic and panpsychist because it identifies God with Nature and sees everything in the universe as an aspect of this single substance, including mind and matter. His pantheism is the view that God is identical with the universe ("God, or Nature"). His panpsychism is the view that mind is a fundamental and pervasive feature of reality, such that every physical thing has a mind as one of its attributes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spinoza+pantheism+and+panpsychism
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

*2. Panendeismis a belief system that combines elements of panentheism (God is in the universe) and deism (God does not intervene supernaturally after creation), asserting that God both pervades the universe and transcends it.

Reply to Gnomon
Well, I think you'll find my thoughts, such as they are, disappointing.

As for the title of this thread, I'm leery of the use of the word "created" (or other variations of "create"). I think it's too often associated with a conscious choice or act. I have the same concerns when it's claimed that we, or our minds, "create" the world. We don't. We're organisms having certain characteristics that are part of an environment. We don't make the world of which we're a part.

So I don't think it's appropriate to speak of the cosmos creating mind if it's intended to suggest the cosmos somehow intentionally made mind, or us for that matter. I know of no evidence supporting those claims. Nor do we have any evidence that something transcendent (outside of the universe) did so.

Given the information we have, I think the best evidence suggests mind arose as a result of substances or processes that are part of or take place in the universe. If that's the case, I have no idea how that worked. We seem to have a lot yet to learn about the universe, so maybe we'll know someday. Now we can only speculate.

Quoting Gnomon

Spinoza's philosophy is both pantheistic and panpsychist ...

:lol:

Only silly blinkers like you, sir, who have not themselves closely read (and comprehended) the Ethics, so conspicuously misunderstand Spinoza's philosophy. To wit

– not "pantheistic" (2020)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116

– not "panpsychist" (2020)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509905

Quoting Ciceronianus

Well, I think you'll find my thoughts, such as they are, disappointing. . . .
So I don't think it's appropriate to speak of the cosmos creating mind if it's intended to suggest the cosmos somehow intentionally made mind, or us for that matter. I know of no evidence supporting those claims. . . . . .
Perhaps they were pantheists or panpsychists--I don't particularly care which. I find the general idea of such a cosmos attractive. But I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma {animating principle} it will be established through science, not philosophy.

"Disappointing"? Do you think I am emotionally invested in the "science of Noetics"*1? For me it's just an interesting philosophical approach to the Hard Problem of Consciousness : phenomenal experience, or what it's like to be a person. My interest in the elusive topic of Mind is philosophical, not scientific*2. Any "science" of Noetics is limited to the soft science of Psychology, which draws inferences about holistic mental states (e.g. intentions) from particular neural states (electro-chemical activity). But, how do neurons & electrons create meaningful ideas? Noetics postulates that ideas are signals from outside the brain. Personally, I'm skeptical. But the analogy with immaterial radio signals (mathematical waves, not material particles) is suggestive. So, I can't categorically deny the possibility. Hence, this thread.

"Appropriate" relative to what standard? If your philosophy is Materialism, then of course any talk about immaterial stuff like metaphysical Minds & Cosmic signals would be inappropriate. But this is a Philosophy forum, so if discussion of immaterial stuff is banned, then it should be renamed The Physics Forum. Is the "animating principle" of Life & Mind elucidated in an authoritative physics text? Does Physics have a material definition of the Causal Principle of the Cosmos? Materialism seems to treat Mind as immaterial, hence it literally & figuratively doesn't matter. Scientism treats the "Hard Problem" as solved finito, hence the hay is in the barn : cut & dried. Do you agree?

If discussion of Intention on a philosophy forum is inappropriate, then yes I would be disappointed. But what kind of "evidence" do you think is appropriate for the topic of Cosmos Created Mind? The title of this thread was intentionally flipped from Reply to Wayfarer 's Mind Created World thread. Which did not imply that your mind created the whole physical world, but left open the possibility that some cosmic intentional (teleological) Mind created the dynamic physical Universe, which in turn created (by evolution) living & thinking creatures. Instead it referred to the common understanding that human mind imagines a metaphysical model of its physical environment that the person treats as-if it's real*2.

If you think the Hard Problem of Mind has been solved by Science, then you may be influenced by the dogma of Scientism, which holds that All Truth is revealed by Physics & Chemistry. But what about Mathematics? I'm currently reading a 1948 memoir by philosopher/mathematician A.N. Whitehead. In a chapter on Axioms of Geometry, he discusses "absolute and relative theories of space", noting that Isaac Newton believed that "space has an existence . . . independent of the bodies {matter} which it contains". Whitehead concluded that "geometry is not a science with a determinate subject matter". Does that mean Math exists only in Minds, hence is not Real?

Then along came Einstein with his Theory of Relativity, indicating that objects are knowable only in relation to other objects, and that "only relative motion is directly measurable". The relevant point being that all we know about the world is subjective ideas in a Mind. Do you think physical science provides us with Absolute Knowledge, so that exploring Metaphysical (mental) aspects of reality is a waste of (immaterial, immeasurable) Time? :chin:


*1. Noetic science is not considered real by mainstream science because its claims, such as telepathy and telekinesis, are not supported by empirical evidence and are classified as pseudoscience by organizations like Quackwatch.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+noetics+a+real+science

*2. Cosmos : The mind creates a model of the world by actively constructing a perception of reality based on sensory input, past experiences, and predictions. It doesn't passively receive information but instead interprets and pieces together fragmented data to create a coherent, subjective experience that allows for prediction and survival. This internal model is constantly being updated and is why individuals can have different interpretations of the same events
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mind+creates+a+model+of+the+world

Quoting Gnomon

But, how do neurons & electrons create meaningful ideas? ... immaterial radio signals (mathematical waves ... immaterial stuff like metaphysical Minds & Cosmic signals ... the possibility that some cosmic intentional (teleological) Mind created ... all we know about the world is subjective ideas in a Mind.

:yikes: :lol: :rofl:

Quoting apokrisis

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world

Indeed, functionalists do tend to end up defining 'consciousness' by fiat as a function, just as they have with 'life'. But in doing so making the concept irrelevant to the philosophy and what people actually mean by 'consciousness'.

Quoting Joshs

“Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual. Then the diminutions of consciousness which accompany brain lesions may not be due to the destruction of consciousness itself, but to the failure of its physical organs to transmit it properly.” ~ William James

The 'receiver/transmitter' model of mind and consciousness. Alduous Huxley also considered that idea when tripping on mescaline. In Doors of Perception, he wrote that the total potential of consciousness, which he terms "Mind at Large," is too vast and overwhelming for biological survival. The brain and nervous system have evolved to perform an "eliminative" or "reducing" function, filtering out the mass of "useless and irrelevant knowledge" from the Mind at Large. What remains is a "measly trickle" of consciousness, which is the selective awareness necessary for us to stay alive, focus on practical matters, and operate on "this particular planet." This idea has many resonances, not least in current models of 'predictive processing' and 'relevance realisation'.

Quoting apokrisis

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world. It gives a sharp reason why consciousness can arise when a particular modelling process arises within Nature at a certain sufficiently cool, large and complex moment in its Big Bang history.

The question that is begged, however, is why it should it? Not that I expect that you or I or anyone can answer such a question, but it can at least be contemplated.

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised.

Quoting C S Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.101

The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution, and that evolution is of the nature of a psychical process, by which the confused becomes distinct.

Reply to Gnomon In all of this, it is important to get a grasp of the history of the emergence of scientific worldview. And if that is difficult it is because we're situated within it, so we tend to look through it, rather than at it.

Michel Henry, Barbarism: ...Modernity resuts from a clearly formulated intellectual decision whose content is perfectly intelligible. It is the decision to understand, in the light of geometric-mathematical knowledge, the universe as reduced henceforth as an objective set of material phenomena. Moreover, it constructs and organises the world exclusively on the basis of this new knowledge, and the inert processes over which it provides mastery.

Within this worldview where does mind or consciousness fit? Why, it doesn't - for the very simple reason that it has been excluded at the very outset of the method, which accords existence only to those fundamental objective existents within the purview of the objective sciences. Hence the interminable arguments, confusion and controversy about whether or how 'consciousness exists'. Science seeks to define the mind in terms of the objective realm from which it was excluded at the outset. That, anyway, is the hardcore reductionist attitude, exemplified by such thinkers as the late Daniel Dennett.

So if you're asking what mind or consciousness is from within that implied framework you can only approach it by asking what kind of thing it might be, or where it might be, or what it might cause, and so on. Which is bound to fail, because it overlooks the exclusionary step that was taken at the very beginning of the modern scientific method.

Phenomenology realises this from the outset (Michel Henry, quoted above, was a phenomenologist, as was Edmund Husserl, who initiated this kind of analysis in his Crisis of the European Sciences.)

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epoch?, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method. However, there are now hybrid schools of phenonenological science appearing which do take this into account.

A recent example of this shift is The Blind Spot (by Marcelo Gleiser, Adam Frank, and Evan Thompson), which argues that science’s major omission has been the exclusion of lived experience from its own self-understanding. The authors, two scientists and a philosopher, call for a renewal of science that recognises consciousness not as an anomaly to be explained away but as the condition of all observation and knowledge (from book description.)

Quoting bert1

Indeed, functionalists do tend to end up defining 'consciousness' by fiat as a function, just as they have with 'life'. But in doing so making the concept irrelevant to the philosophy and what people actually mean by 'consciousness'

Why not check your terms before trotting out the nonsense.

AI as the impartial observer says…

The core difference is that functionalism views neurocognition and consciousness purely in terms of their computational or causal roles (what they do), while biosemiotics views them as processes of meaning-making and interpretation that are intrinsic to all living systems, emphasizing the biological context and the subjective "umwelt" (experienced world) of the organism.

Functionalist Approach

Focus on Causal/Functional Roles: Functionalism defines mental states (like pain, belief, or consciousness) by their causal relations to sensory inputs, other internal mental states, and behavioral outputs. It is unconcerned with the specific physical substrate (e.g., neurons, silicon chips) that carries out these functions, a concept known as "multiple realizability".

Analogy to Software: The mind is often compared to software running on the brain's hardware. The essence is the functional organization or program, not the physical material.

"Easy Problems": Functionalism is good at addressing the "easy problems" of consciousness, such as how the brain processes information for detection, discrimination, and recognition.

Third-Person Perspective: It primarily relies on an objective, third-person perspective, seeking to explain functions that could, in theory, be performed by any suitable system, including a sufficiently advanced computer.

Consciousness as an Outcome: Consciousness is generally seen as an emergent property or a functionally integrated pattern of the brain's activity, important for adaptive behavior and survival.

Biosemiotic Approach

Focus on Meaning-Making (Semiosis): Biosemiotics argues that life is fundamentally a process of sign production, interpretation, and communication, which is the basis for meaning and cognition. It studies pre-linguistic, biological interpretation processes that are essential to living systems, from bacteria to humans.

Embodiment and the "Umwelt": This approach emphasizes that meaning is actively constructed by an embodied agent within its specific environment, or Umwelt (subjective, self-experienced surrounding world). The mind is not just in the brain but deeply integrated with the body and its interactions with the world.

Addresses the "Hard Problem": Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes, which then expands to higher degrees of consciousness through complex, hierarchical information processing in the brain.

First-Person Perspective: It incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

Causality and Context: It introduces different modes of causality, including "sign causality" (meaning-based influence) and a focus on biological context (pragmatics), which are often overlooked in standard functionalist models that rely primarily on efficient (mechanistic) causes.

In essence, functionalism abstracts away from the biological substrate to focus on the logical architecture of cognition, while biosemiotics insists that biological context, embodiment, and inherent meaning-making processes are crucial to understanding consciousness and neurocognition.

So with less effort than it takes for you to make one of your little three line posts, you could have sorted out your confusion even before you started.

Quoting Wayfarer

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised.

Well biosemiosis has now turned all this from metaphysical speculation into firm science. What is woven into the initial conditions of the physical world is the incipient inevitability of its Second Law entropic drive running into a form of systemhood that can exploit its own loophole.

This is Pattee’s point about the symbol grounding problem. And the solution that biophysics has since delivered in discovering the lucky coincidence of the “convergence zone” of physical forces that arises in room temperature water at the semi-classical nanoscale of organic chemistry.

The problem for organisms that run on information is how a molecule can act as a message. And biophysics now tells us that the convergence zone is a place where all forms of energy arrive at a single narrow band of “currency exchange rates”. The cost of switching energy from one form to another becomes suddenly equivalent. And so an organism just has to pay the tiny extra cost of flipping some switch in a direction of its own beneficial choice.

I’ve described this for you at least 10 times in the past. But in one ear and out the other I guess.

But it says that the convergence zone effect was always going to be manifested by a Big Bang with the initial conditions that ours had. And then - not as a consequence of any entropic drive but due to emergence of this “unexpected” entropic opportunity - life and mind suddenly evolved,

Physics just needed to accidentally create the right habitat - something like the porous and mineral rich thermal vents of the ocean floor about 500 million years after the Earth’s crust started to stabilise - and boom. Life couldn’t help but get going as all it had to do was set up the most rudimentary self-organising metabolic loop and it would be off.

So symbol processing were always going to arise if a convergence zone was always going to emerge and result in a scale of physics just begging for the next thing of a symbol processing mechanism to take advantage of it free energy flow.

It switchability was a thing - however not a thing pure physics could do, yet information could - then that is why life and mind seem both continuous with physics, but also a little … detached.

Quoting apokrisis

I’ve described this for you at least 10 times in the past. But in one ear and out the other I guess.

Nothing I said is in contradiction to what you have said, although the dimension your analyses always seem to omit is the existential.

I’m also interested in the idea the biosemiotics puts back into science what Galileo left out, although that may not be of significance to you, given your interests mainly seem to be from a bio-engineering perspective, rather than the strictly philosophical.

Quoting apokrisis

Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes

Notice that this elides 'biological processes' and 'matter' by conjoining them with the "/" symbol.

Quoting Wayfarer

Nothing I said is in contradiction to what you have said, although the dimension your analyses always seem to omit is the existential.

So now I’m guilty of not being a dysfunctionalist instead of being guilty of being a functionalist? :sweat:

Quoting Wayfarer

I’m also interested in the idea the biosemiotics puts back into science what Galileo left out, although that may not be of significance to you, given your interests mainly seem to be from a bio-engineering perspective, rather than the strictly philosophical.

If by strictly philosophical, you mean free to just make shit up, then of course guilty as charged now. I don’t take that intellectual liberty. The facts constrain me.

Quoting Wayfarer

Notice that this elides 'biological processes' and 'matter' by conjoining them with the "/" symbol.

Or instead underlines the metaphysical claim being made. Nature is dissipative structure. And biology continues that physicalist story at the semiotic modelling relation level.

Reply to Gnomon
Gosh. You sure seem disappointed to me. Extensively so, in fact. Or is indignant a better word? Regardless, quod scripsi, scripsi.

Quoting apokrisis

strictly philosophical.
— Wayfarer

If by strictly philosophical, you mean free to just make shit up, then of course guilty as charged now. I don’t take that intellectual liberty. The facts constrain me.

:smirk: :up:

Quoting apokrisis

Nature is dissipative structure. And biology continues that physicalist story at the semiotic modelling relation level.

And philosophy?

Quoting Wayfarer

And philosophy?

Again, as I have told you so many times, I’m with Stanley Salthe in reviving natural philosophy as the argument against science’s reductionist turn. That is why we can agree on Scientism as being a bad thing, but then not agree that science is inherently non-philosophical.

You have your hobby horse on this point. But I believe that is only because you don’t want to be constrained by real world facts. There are just inconveniently too many of them.

AI summarising Salthe:

Stanley Salthe's Argument

Stanley Salthe, a theoretical biologist and complexity theorist, argues for a return to natural philosophy as a way to reintegrate the natural sciences and provide a more holistic understanding of the world. His main points include:

Counteracting Fragmentation: Salthe contends that modern science has become excessively specialized and fragmented. Different disciplines, and even sub-disciplines within them, operate with their own specific paradigms and often fail to communicate effectively or see the bigger picture. Natural philosophy, with its broader scope, can serve as a unifying framework.

Addressing Reductionism: He argues that a purely reductionist approach—breaking systems down to their smallest components to understand them—is insufficient for grasping complex, emergent phenomena like life and consciousness. Natural philosophy encourages a focus on holism, organizational hierarchies, and the relationships between levels of organization.

Reintroducing a Philosophical Perspective: Salthe suggests that modern science often avoids or dismisses fundamental philosophical questions (e.g., questions about purpose, emergence, or the nature of existence) as being outside the realm of empirical science. A return to natural philosophy would re-legitimize these questions and reconnect scientific inquiry with broader humanistic concerns.

A "Grand Narrative": He advocates for a more integrated, encompassing view of the world—a new "grand narrative" that acknowledges the emergent properties of complex systems and the directionality observed in nature (e.g., the flow of energy, the emergence of life and complexity).

Are you telling me there is even one point on that list you disagree with? So quit belly aching.

Reply to apokrisis I completely agree with that, and, astounding as it might seem, I'm not actually trying to pick a fight with you about it. And as for 'in one ear and out the other', I've read quite a bit of biosemiotic literature since being introduced to it by you. As I said, I think the argument can be made that the whole semiotic movement re-introduces the first-person element that Galilean scence tended to bracket out (in a different but complementary way to phenomenology. And no, I'm not "making shit up".)

Reply to Wayfarer So make up your mind whether you agree or disagree with me at this general level. Then if you have some more particular point to make it, then make it. Present that argument..

Reply to apokrisis I agree with you in some ways, but not in others. I respect your learning, but I'm not on board with Naturalism Triumphant.

And

First-Person Perspective: It (biosemiotics) incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

Where in your reckoning does this point figure?

Reply to Wayfarer

The 'receiver/transmitter' model of mind and consciousness. Alduous Huxley also considered that idea when tripping on mescaline. In Doors of Perception, he wrote that the total potential of consciousness, which he terms "Mind at Large," is too vast and overwhelming for biological survival. The brain and nervous system have evolved to perform an "eliminative" or "reducing" function, filtering out the mass of "useless and irrelevant knowledge" from the Mind at Large. What remains is a "measly trickle" of consciousness, which is the selective awareness necessary for us to stay alive, focus on practical matters, and operate on "this particular planet." This idea has many resonances, not least in current models of 'predictive processing' and 'relevance realisation'.

I had a trip once where I realised that the atoms in my brain were 99.999% (or something) empty space and if I rocked the boat too much I would fall into the gaps between these atoms and never be able to get back out. Also on another trip, the distinction between me and the outside world became reversed. So I was the outside world talking and thinking back at me and my body was external (other) to that, or the subject being talked to.

Quoting Wayfarer

Where in your reckoning does this point figure?

Enactivism.

Reply to apokrisis :up:

Reply to Punshhh Both, I can completely relate to.

Reply to apokrisis I am grateful to you for using an AI to generate your answer, which I will take to represent your view. It is much easier to understand than your posts typically are. I heartily recommend you copy its style. I note with relief it does not begin any paragraphs with 'So'.

ApoAI:Biosemiotics argues that life is fundamentally a process of sign production, interpretation, and communication, which is the basis for meaning and cognition.

I don't see a significant difference between mind as a process and mind as a function in relation to the conceptual issues. Both are a system doing something. In either case, whether it be a system performing interpretation embedded in an environment, or a brain realising a function, there is still a conceptual disconnect with that and consciousness.

ApoAI:]Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes, which then expands to higher degrees of consciousness through complex, hierarchical information processing in the brain.

This is panpsychism, which you have previously distanced yourself from. ApoAI's apparent separation of proto-experience from consciousness is conceptually mistaken; consciousness does not admit of degree.

ApoAI:First-Person Perspective: It incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

That's interesting. What is needed for an emergentist account such as this is sufficiency, not necessity. Necessity requires that consciousness is already there. What is needed is the conceptual link that moves from sign production, interpretation, and communication to consciousness, without presupposing consciousness, on pain of begging the question. Why must the processes of sign production, interpretation, and communication embody/enact/realise/constitute (pick your concept please) consciousness?

Thank you for getting help to write an intelligible post. If it wasn't a potential violation of the site rules, I would encourage you to do so again for the sake of clarity. However the hard problem remains untouched.

Quoting bert1

I note with relief it does not begin any paragraphs with 'So'.

:grin:

Quoting bert1

This is panpsychism, which you have previously distanced yourself from.

Well no. Biosemiosis would say that only biological systems that model - that stand in some sign relation with their physical reality - are making meaningful relations with the world. And to get to what you would want to call consciousness, they would need some kind of neurosemiotic model.

So biology is in a modelling relation mostly in the sense that it is running an intelligent relation with its own metabolism. And neurology is where an organism is in a modelling relation that is a self in relation to its wider environment.

Quoting bert1

Thank you for getting help to write an intelligible post.

But what use was it if you just misinterpret it in your usual fashion, bending it to your prejudices and not getting the point at all?

Quoting apokrisis

And to get to what you would want to call consciousness, they would need some kind of neurosemiotic model.

Why?

Reply to bert1 Why what? You mean why is it worth even getting AI to answer the questions you could ask it yourself directly.

Feel free to irritate machine intelligence all you like. Report back on what sense it can make of your fixed prejudices.

Quoting apokrisis

Why what?

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

Quoting bert1

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

You say that what you call consciousness is accounted for by panpsychism – the simpleminded non-theory that matter is mind and mind is matter.

They are just the one universal substance and so "co-exist" as a brute fact. End of discussion, as no discussion can find a difference worth the bother of cranking up a causal account.

Panpsychism is simply an article of faith among its adherents. It's best metaphysical support is that its adherents claim anything which smacks of a scientific theory or causal account fails before it starts. Consciousness is interior to material being, and so cannot be explained in exterior fashion. Mutter the magic incantation "the Hard Problem" in a profound and reverential tone and your job is done.

If you are convinced by this epistemological position, any further words are wasted on you. You are not even listening. Pure faith protects your prejudice.

Reply to apokrisis The question I asked was this:

Quoting bert1

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

Reply to bert1 So stop being a lazy bugger and define what you mean by consciousness in a way that is relevant to how I treat it.

Panpsychism is a brute fact claim rather than a causal account. So why do you badger me endlessly for my causal account except to again crow about your brute fact claim.

You show no interest in what I say. And yet you won't leave me alone.

Quoting apokrisis

So stop being a lazy bugger and define what you mean by consciousness in a way that is relevant to how I treat it.

No. This is a philosophy forum. Show how your worldview solves philosophical questions of consciousness as philosophers define it.

Quoting apokrisis

Panpsychism is a brute fact claim rather than a causal account. So why do you badger me endlessly for my causal account except to again crow about your brute fact claim.

I am merely pointing out your repeated error.

Quoting apokrisis

You show no interest in what I say. And yet you won't leave me alone.

It's because I love you.

Quoting bert1

No. This is a philosophy forum.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Reply to apokrisis You never give your causal account. And now we have further confusion, is consciousness caused, realised, enacted, or what? As for panpsychism, the AI you used said biosemiosis incorporates the view that all matter has proto-experience, which is indistinguishable from panpsychism. I didn't say that, you did, via an AI, in your post. You're not engaging with any of the philosophical issues, and again and again, you decline interrogation.

Quoting bert1

?apokrisis The question I asked was this:

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?
— bert1

Quoting bert1

You never give your causal account.

I've given it way too many times.

Quoting bert1

...again and again, you decline interrogation.

Do I hear the furious stamping fury of the world's tiniest jackboots? :broken:

Reply to bert1 So elsewhere you do try to stack up some sort of causal account. We can use that given you are only going to take the "Vee ask der questions here!!" approach in any "philosophical" discussion with me.

In reply to...

I'm not saying they re not conscious but a primitive immature consciousness and so his experience is... very simplistic and immature.
— Raul

You answered...

Oh sure. I don't disagree with that. However I do think it entails that consciousness does not admit of degree. 'Primitive immature consciousness' is still consciousness. Complicated mature consciousness is still consciousness. The consciousness of an adult is the same kind of consciousness that a baby has, namely the kind of consciousness that permits experiences to happen at all. It is that very simple basic capacity to experience that is the subject of discussions in philosophy. It is in that sense that I don't think the concept of consciousness admits of degree.

EDIT: To put it another way, the adult is no more or less able to have experiences than the child. They do differ in the kind of experiences they can have. But that's a difference of content, not a difference of consciousness.

EDIT: To put it a third way, the hard problem is located at the difference between no experience happening at all, and some experience, no matter how 'primitive' it is.

So this gives us some glimpse of your hidden argument. And what jumps out is the need to explain how one can call on "the primitive" as a concept that one could measurably substantiate.

Biosemiosis offers its primitive in Pattee's notion of the "configurable switch". So a completely concrete argument is being made. And about ten years ago, biophysics added the evidence to substantiate the theory. So problem solved I say.

Whereas we can see your completely question-begging approach to this issue of where the "epistemic cut" between mind and matter is to be found in Nature. Your approach is that it goes down at least as far as newborns and probably any level of living organism – which is thus far, perfectly biosemiotic.

But then the hands start waving. As not biosemiotic cut off point has been identified, you say well, no choice chaps, we got to roll on all the way down to fundamental particles. Or something. Mumble, mumble.

That leaves nothing much to argue against as nothing much of any metaphysical import is being said.

Here is an AI refresher on Pattee's epistemic cut, on which I've posted so often...

Howard Pattee used the metaphor of a configurable switch (CS) to help explain how the non-physical realm of formal information can exert causal control over physical processes, a mechanism necessary to bridge his proposed "epistemic cut".

The epistemic cut describes a fundamental, unavoidable boundary between the physical world (governed by continuous, rate-dependent, deterministic laws) and the symbolic/formal world (governed by discrete, rate-independent rules, such as descriptions or measurements).

Key aspects of the switch metaphor:

Arbitrary Control: A switch's physical construction is irrelevant to its function of simply being "on" or "off" in a circuit. Its operation is "arbitrary" with respect to the underlying physical laws of matter, yet it exerts control over the flow of electricity.

Formal Prescription: The setting of the switch (e.g., open or closed, "on" or "off") is a formal, informational decision (a form of "prescriptive information") that dictates the path of physical events (the flow of current).

Bridging the Divide: The "configurable switch" serves as a conceptual model for how a formal choice can be instantiated in physical reality, allowing the symbolic (e.g., genetic code instructions) to direct the material (e.g., protein synthesis in a cell) without violating physical laws, but rather by applying non-integrable constraints.

The "switch" metaphor helps to illustrate the mechanism by which top-down, intentional control (the symbolic side) can interact with bottom-up, physical dynamics (the material side).

And here is an old post of mine about the biophysical evidence for this biosemiotic theory....

On the transition from non-life to life

Biophysics finds a new substance

This looks like a game-changer for our notions of “materiality”. Biophysics has discovered a special zone of convergence at the nanoscale – the region poised between quantum and classical action. And crucially for theories about life and mind, it is also the zone where semiotics emerges. It is the scale where the entropic matter~symbol distinction gets born. So it explains the nanoscale as literally a new kind of stuff, a physical state poised at “the edge of chaos”, or at criticality, that is a mix of its material and formal causes.

The key finding: As outlined in this paper (http://thebigone.stanford.edu/papers/Phillips2006.pdf) and in this book (http://lifesratchet.com/), the nanoscale turns out to be a convergence zone where all the key structure-creating forces of nature become equal in size, and coincide with the thermal properties/temperature scale of liquid water.

So at a scale of 10^-9 metres (the average distance of energetic interactions between molecules) and 10^-20 joules (the average background energy due to the “warmth” of water), all the many different kinds of energy become effectively the same. Elastic energy, electrostatic energy, chemical bond energy, thermal energy – every kind of action is suddenly equivalent in strength. And thus easily interconvertible. There is no real cost, no energetic barrier, to turning one kind of action into another kind of action. And so also – from a semiotic or informational viewpoint – no real problem getting in there and regulating the action. It is like a railway system where you can switch trains on to other tracks at virtually zero cost. The mystery of how “immaterial” information can control material processes disappears because the conversion of one kind of action into a different kind of action has been made cost-free in energetic terms. Matter is already acting symbolically in this regard.

This cross-over zone had to happen due to the fact that there is a transition from quantum to classical behaviour in the material world. At the micro-scale, the physics of objects is ruled by surface area effects. Molecular structures have a lot of surface area and very little volume, so the geometry dominates when it comes to the substantial properties being exhibited. The shapes are what matter more than what the shapes are made of. But then at the macro-scale, it is the collective bulk effects that take over. The nature of a substance is determined now by the kinds of atoms present, the types of bonds, the ratios of the elements.

The actual crossing over in terms of the forces involved is between the steadily waning strength of electromagnetic binding energy – the attraction between positive and negative charges weakens proportionately with distance – and the steadily increasing strength of bulk properties such as the stability of chemical, elastic, and other kinds of mechanical or structural bonds. Get enough atoms together and they start to reinforce each others behaviour.

So you have quantum scale substance where the emergent character is based on geometric properties, and classical scale substance where it is based on bulk properties. And this is even when still talking about the same apparent “stuff”. If you probe a film of water perhaps five or six molecules thick with a super-fine needle, you can start to feel the bumps of extra resistance as you push through each layer. But at a larger scale of interaction, water just has its generalised bulk identity – the one that conforms to our folk intuitions about liquidity.

So the big finding is the way that contrasting forces of nature suddenly find themselves in vanilla harmony at a certain critical scale of being. It is kind of like the unification scale for fundamental physics, but this is the fundamental scale of nature for biology – and also mind, given that both life and mind are dependent on the emergence of semiotic machinery.

The other key finding: The nanoscale convergence zone has only really been discovered over the past decade. And alongside that is the discovery that this is also the realm of molecular machines.

In the past, cells where thought of as pretty much bags of chemicals doing chemical things. The genes tossed enzymes into the mix to speed reactions up or slow processes down. But that was mostly it so far as the regulation went. In fact, the nanoscale internals of a cell are incredibly organised by pumps, switches, tracks, transporters, and every kind of mechanical device.

A great example are the motor proteins – the kinesin, myosin and dynein families of molecules. These are proteins that literally have a pair of legs which they can use to walk along various kinds of structural filaments – microtubules and actin fibres – while dragging a bag of some cellular product somewhere else in a cell. So stuff doesn’t float to where it needs to go. There is a transport network of lines criss-crossing a cell with these little guys dragging loads.

It is pretty fantastic and quite unexpected. You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell.

A third key point: So at the nanoscale, there is this convergence of energy levels that makes it possible for regulation by information to be added at “no cost”. Basically, the chemistry of a cell is permanently at its equilibrium point between breaking up and making up. All the molecular structures – like the actin filaments, the vesicle membranes, the motor proteins – are as likely to be falling apart as they are to reform. So just the smallest nudge from some source of information, a memory as encoded in DNA in particular, is enough to promote either activity. The metaphorical waft of a butterfly wing can tip the balance in the desired direction.

This is the remarkable reason why the human body operates on an energy input of about 100 watts – what it takes to run a light bulb. By being able to harness the nanoscale using a vanishingly light touch, it costs almost next to nothing to run our bodies and minds. The power density of our nano-machinery is such that a teaspoon full would produce 130 horsepower. In other words, the actual macro-scale machinery we make is quite grotesquely inefficient by comparison. All effort for small result because cars and food mixers work far away from the zone of poised criticality – the realm of fundamental biological substance where the dynamics of material processes and the regulation of informational constraints can interact on a common scale of being.

The metaphysical implications: The problem with most metaphysical discussions of reality is that they rely on “commonsense” notions about the nature of substance. Reality is composed of “stuff with properties”. The form or organisation of that stuff is accidental. What matters is the enduring underlying material which has a character that can be logically predicated or enumerated. Sure there is a bit of emergence going on – the liquidity of H2O molecules in contrast to gaseousness or crystallinity of … well, water at other temperatures. But essentially, we are meant to look through organisational differences to see the true material stuff, the atomistic foundations.

But here we have a phase of substance, a realm of material being, where all the actual many different kinds of energetic interaction are zeroed to have the same effective strength. A strong identity (as quantum or classical, geometric or bulk) has been lost. Stuff is equally balanced in all its directions. It is as much organised by its collective structure as its localised electromagnetic attractions. Effectively, it is at its biological or semiotic Planck scale. And I say semiotic because regulation by symbols also costs nothing much at this scale of material being. This is where such an effect – a downward control – can be first clearly exerted. A tiny bit of machinery can harness a vast amount of material action with incredible efficiency.

It is another emergent phase of matter – one where the transition to classicality can be regulated and exploited by the classical physics of machines. The world the quantum creates turns out to contain autopoietic possibility. There is this new kind of stuff with semiosis embedded in its very fabric as an emergent potential.

So contra conventional notions of stuff – which are based on matter gone cold, hard and dead – this shows us a view of substance where it is clear that the two sources of substantial actuality are the interaction between material action and formal organisation. You have a poised state where a substance is expressing both these directions in its character – both have the same scale. And this nanoscale stuff is also just as much symbol as matter. It is readily mechanisable at effectively zero cost. It is not a big deal for there to be semiotic organisation of “its world”.

As I say, it is only over the last decade that biophysics has had the tools to probe this realm and so the metaphysical import of the discovery is frontier stuff.

And indeed, there is a very similar research-led revolution of understanding going on in neuroscience where you can now probe the collective behaviour of cultures of neurons. The zone of interaction between material processes and informational regulation can be directly analysed, answering the crucial questions about how “minds interact with bodies”. And again, it is about the nanoscale of biological organisation and the unsuspected “processing power” that becomes available at the “edge of chaos” when biological stuff is poised at criticality.

Graph of the convergence zone: Phillips, R., & Quake, S. (2006). The Biological Frontier of Physics Physics Today 59

phillips-quake-2.jpg

Quoting apokrisis

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised. — Wayfarer
Well biosemiosis has now turned all this from metaphysical speculation into firm science. What is woven into the initial conditions of the physical world is the incipient inevitability of its Second Law entropic drive running into a form of systemhood that can exploit its own loophole.

Reply to Wayfarer's "incipient drive" (nascent power) sounds like another way to describe my own notion of EnFormAction (the power to transform : Energy + Form + Causation). And the "entropic drive" of your nascent science of "biosemiosis"*1 (Decoding Life Signs)*2 may also be relevant to the topic of this thread.

However, identifying the Cosmic Encoder of the program (language) for Life & Mind remains an open question for both science and philosophy. All three proposals are currently "metaphysical speculations" with the potential to coalesce into a new science integrating biology, psychology & cosmology. When we learn to speak the language of Nature, maybe we will come to "know the mind of God"*3.

The Initial Conditions of the Big Bang necessarily included Causal Power (energy) and Limiting Laws (program for directing energy). But the pre-bang source of those necessities is elided (omitted) from most scientific accounts of the origin of our universe. So hypothetical speculations on "what existed before the Bang?" include such unscientific non-empirical notions as eternal/infinite Gods, eternal Inflation, everlasting Multiverses, or unbounded sets of Many Worlds.

Physical science, though, begins after the Planck time-gap of the Big-Bang-beginning itself. At which time the metaphysical Laws of Thermodynamics were already in effect. And everything after that puzzling "low entropy" initial condition is defined as Entropic, where the Energy of the Bang coasts downhill toward a hypothetical Big-Freeze-ending, characterized by the total disorganization of "Cosmic heat death".

Yet somehow --- after a few billion years of deadly entropy --- Order, Organization and Organic-life emerged, despite the "absolute" Second Law of Thermodynamics. Apparently, that Incipient Drive*4, woven into the fabric of matter-energy, was programmed to produce the "manifest forms" that we experience as perceived Reality. But who or what was the programmer of biological & psychological codes that have manifested in animated & intentional matter?

My Information-based concept of EnFormAction, or Enformy (negentropy) may be another term for the hypothetical incipient drive that produced the orderly systems of Life, which communicate and reproduce via the physical & metaphysical processes of Biosemiosis (DNA + code). But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence? That may be the implicit & annoying "un-scientific" un-proveable Ontological question that provokes the antipathy displayed by some biological entities in their replies to this thread. For the record, my answer is "I don't know". :nerd:


*1. Biosemiosis is the process by which all living organisms interpret and communicate through signs,
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiosis
Note --- Signs & Symbols are patterns of matter (e.g. on-off, black-white) that convey useful information within a system. But only sentient entities are aware of the meaning of that information.

*2. Organic Information :
Life is a complex phenomenon characterized by a set of universal biological traits, including cellular organization, metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and heredity. It is a process that involves organized biological matter with the capacity for self-sustaining processes and evolution. Information, particularly in the form of DNA, plays a crucial role by providing instructions for building and regulating the components of an organism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=life+information
Note --- Biological Codes are patterns of matter (DNA) that can be interpreted by RNA for information necessary to build & regulate structural & biological functions.

*3. Mind of God :
The phrase "know the mind of God" is often used by physicists like Stephen Hawking to describe the ultimate goal of science : to find a unified, complete, and simple theory that explains all the laws of the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=physicist+to+know+the+mind+of+god
Note --- For the purposes of this thread, Inceptive Cosmos is the source of all energy (cause) and laws (codes) that eventually created a path to Life & Mind.

*4. Active Information :
Quantum physicist David Peat worked with, and was influenced by both Bohm and Roger Penrose, who also postulated some unorthodox theories of physics and metaphysics. I borrowed the name of his article¹ for this blog post. There, he noted that “Towards the end of the 1980s David Bohm introduced the notion of Active Information into his Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory”. To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

Quoting Gnomon

Physical science, though, begins after the Planck time-gap of the Big-Bang-beginning itself. At which time the metaphysical Laws of Thermodynamics were already in effect.

Don't forget that the Planck scale was as hot as it was small. As full of quantum momentum uncertainty as it was quantum positional certainty. As energy density curved as it was spatiotemporally flat.

So the Planck scale was the scale at which a unit 1 symmetry was broken. Counterfactuality was itself the thing that was born as now there could be the positive difference of a Cosmos that was doubling itself in one direction, and halving itself in the other. Doubling its spatiotemporal extent and therefore halving is thermal content.

Entropy could be generated as now there was a broken symmetry growing in a reciprocally driven fashion. The cooling was slowing the expansion. But the expansion was still inertially being driven by that initial energy density.

So if you want to talk about an incipient drive or nascent power, you have to remember that the Big Bang was as maximally hot as it was maximally small. And all it then does is grow in a dichotomous or reciprocal fashion where it flies off towards its Heat Death – the inverse state of becoming as large as it is cold.

The Big Bang – as an application of thermodynanics – is doing the very clever self-creating thing of digging its own heat sink. It is throwing its newborn self into its own self-dug grave.

Quoting Gnomon

But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence?

Pfft. That is mysticism and not serious metaphysics.

Let's get back to Nature as Anaximander, Heraclitus, Aristotle and others were trying to figure it out. With some considerable success.

Reply to Gnomon You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

My specific reply to you was written in more analytical terms - about how and why consciousness (or mind) has come to being seen as so inexplicable and hard to accomodate in the scientific picture (also subject of another OP I've just published.)

I'll repeat what I see as the key passage:

Quoting Wayfarer

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epoch?, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method.

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology. Basically it's a return to the Socratic maxim of 'know thyself'.

Quoting Wayfarer

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology.

Which is in a nutshell Peirce’s great achievement. He went back to phenomenology to discover its epistemic structure - its natural logic. And that became the ground for semiotics as the resulting ontological adventure.

Reply to apokrisis Sure, agree. But then, the philosophy encyclopedias all register him as an 'objective idealist', something which seems at odds with your naturalist leanings, doesn't it? That phenomenological element, which you correctly say is essential to enactivism, was also a major theme of The Embodied MInd, which was arguably one of the key texts of that school.

I've been reading some of Peirce's writing, which I find quite laborious, but generally congenial to the kind of idealism I advocate.

Reply to Wayfarer Sure. But then there is mind-like in substantial terms and mind-like in structuralist terms.

It is the second that I find to be of value in Peirce’s work. It is his writing on the science of logic, as he called it, that I lean on. The earlier scholastic realism of the essential logical structure of nature - the irreducible triad of a self-organising system, or semiosis - that he laid out before he got into the confusions of his objective idealism as developed in his series of Monist articles.

As you will know, the Monist was about Peirce’s only income at a time of extreme financial hardship. And the Monist was founded by a wealthy industrialist for the stated purpose: “The Journal is devoted to the work of conciliating Religion with Science" through the framework of monism.”

As AI says….

The journal's monism was a unique "religion of science" that conceived of the ultimate "oneness" as "God, the universe, nature, the source, or other names".

The journal was influenced by the German Monist League, founded by Ernst Haeckel, which was explicitly a "Religion of Science" that revered "divinized Mother Nature".

Peirce had a friend who introduced him to editor Paul Carus, which led to him publishing at least 14 articles in The Monist, including his major metaphysical series in the early 1890s.

So yes, Peirce definitely had his theistic leanings. He was already inclined towards arriving at his objective idealism. But also he needed the dosh and was writing for a specific audience.

But you will read the Peirce congenial to your views and I will continue on with the “mind-like structure” that biosemioitics could understand and develop in a way that nicely fits the facts of life and mind science.

Quoting apokrisis

Do I hear the furious stamping fury of the world's tiniest jackboots?

Absolutely. I want to nail you to a wall until you answer my questions. You have similarly become frustrated with me when I have refused to answer yours until you answer mine, ad nauseum. In civil society, this impulse to interrogate is generally considered somewhat anti-social. Someone even wrote about it and amusingly characterised it as the 'philosopher attack'. An excerpt:

Quoting Alan Cook

My sister nearly threw the phone at me, in tears, and left the room. My philosopher, on the other hand, was in an absolutely superb mood.

What just happened? My sister was the unfortunate survivor of a philosopher-attack.

But in philosophical circles, I suggest, there is a converse ethic. Avoiding rigorous (but polite) interrogation is what is anti-social. Less philosophy happens when people don't answer questions. I suggest a polite and productive way to proceed is in batches of questions. First one party has a go, and then the other.

Quoting Wayfarer

?Gnomon
You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

Yes. I found your "speculative element" to be compatible with my own hypothesizing. Your "cosmic rationale" of incipient drive for Life, and Reply to apokrisis's biosemiology speculation of entropic drive, seem to be similar to my own semi-scientific* philosophical rationale of EnFormAction as a natural evolutionary tendency toward Life & Mind. Since a Tendency (inclination toward an end) can't be seen in a telescope, none of these conjectures has hard scientific evidence. But soft rational inference may provide sufficient reasons for viewing Life & Mind as intentional (willful?) instead of an accidental "fluke".

Several prominent philosophers & scientists have proposed similar cosmic DRIVEs with less scientific backup : Schopenhauer's cosmic WILL*1, Bergson's ELAN VITAL*2, and Spinoza's CONATUS*3. So, your speculative rationale has a long history. But only in recent years has physical science pointed in the same direction, by combining Quantum Fields with Information Causation*4.

I don't know if physical Science will ever accept the logical implications of these speculations, but metaphysical Philosophy should be able to see evidence of Intention in Evolution*5. Of course, Teleology is heresy for Materialists, but may be unavoidable for Idealists . . . . and fodder for further debate. :cool:

* based on current sciences of Quantum Physics & Information Theory

*1. Schopenhauer’s Will as Intention :
EnFormAction is similar to Schop's Cosmic Will, except that it is characterized as Intentional instead of Accidental, and Purposeful instead of Aimless.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page19.html

*2. Elan Vital :
The concept of élan vital is also similar to Baruch Spinoza's concept of conatus*3 as well as Arthur Schopenhauer's concept of the will-to-live and the Sanskrit ?yus or "life principle".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_vital

*3. Conatus :
is a Latin term for an effort, striving, or impulse, but it is most famously used in philosophy, particularly by Spinoza, to mean the innate drive of all things to persevere in their own existence and to enhance themselves. This concept applies to everything from the physical will to live in an organism to the metaphysical tendency of a thing to exist as its true nature
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=conatus+meaning

*4. Active Information :
Quantum physicist David Peat . . . . To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

*5. Holism and Creative Evolution :
Change is typically imagined as a cause & effect Mechanism, but Bergson seems to view Darwinian evolution as a kind of Teleology or Entelechy.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page25.html

Quoting bert1

You have similarly become frustrated with me when I have refused to answer yours until you answer mine, ad nauseum.

If you had a counter argument, you would make it. You don’t. So we get the lame excuses. And your obsession with me continues. :up:

Quoting Wayfarer

... a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

Yet (any) "cosmic rationale" itself is merely a "fluke of" [the gaps]. There's no getting away from (some kind of) a fundamental "fluke" – I prefer one that is scientific, however, rather than merely mythic / mystical.

Quoting Gnomon

Teleology is [s]heresy for[/s] [irrelevant to] Materialists [antisupernaturalists], but may be unavoidable for Idealists

This is because "materialists" do not mistake – equate – their maps with the territory whereas "idealists" tend to do so (i.e. ontologize, or reify, ideas/ideals).

The fact that the first two posts were ridicule sucks. There's no defense for that on a forum like this.

I like the brain-as-receiver model. I can't find myself going for it but it certainly feels much more reasonable that just "it comes from thinking" which tells me nothing. Thinking itself seems a conscious act, so its tautological in some sense too.

That said, I can't find a good reason to think its true.

Quoting AmadeusD

I like the brain-as-receiver model.

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

Quoting apokrisis

I like the brain-as-receiver model.
— AmadeusD

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

:smirk:

Quoting apokrisis

But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence? — Gnomon
Pfft. That is mysticism and not serious metaphysics.

The question may be Idealistic, but not Mystical. I'm sorry you don't see the key distinction between practical Mysticism (submission) and rational Meta-physics*1 (understanding). Mystics*2 tend to think of their beliefs & behaviors as a pragmatic practice of appeasing the invisible powers-that-be. But philosophers typically think of their beyond-physics musings as attempts to gain control over the immaterial laws & principles of Nature*3. Modern Science is the practical application of empirical knowledge, but Metaphysical Theories explore the remaining pockets of ignorance, especially the mysterious minds of sentient observers : the "Hard Problem".

If there were no human scientists & philosophers, the universe would not have "laws", just consistent physical behaviors (things fall down, but why?). Hence, the inquiring human mind infers from those orderly processes that physical activity is not random or chaotic*3. Instead, there is a limiting Logic to physical processes that reminded some of the early scientists of the Rule of Law that distinguished rational civilized human societies from instinctual dog-eat-dog barbarian & animal societies. Mysticism is the rule of Taboo, while Metaphysics is the rule of Reason.

The Logical Efficacy of human Science depends on the Logical Structure of Nature. The human mind can read that Logic as meaningful Information*4. But, in view of the Second Law of Entropy, a reasonable question is what-or-who enformed the orderly & evolving structure of the world? How did the mathematical Singularity gain the power & order to develop from no-thing to every-thing? The Big Bang was not a destructive explosion, but a constructive creation : from Math to Matter.

Physics is the science of concrete Things --- moved & transformed by abstract forces --- while Meta-physics is the science of abstract Forms (ideas ; essences ; causes). Scientism is a mystical belief system in which inert Matter takes the place of active Gods. Immanentism supports matter-based beliefs by drawing a line of taboo between a priori (before Bang) and a posteriori (after Bang).

A "hard" Atheist might be content to believe that the logical order of the natural system "just is" --- circular reasoning --- without asking philosophical "why" or "how" questions. Such as : the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics"*5. Some of the early Greek philosophers even considered the Geometry of Nature as "sacred", while others were more pragmatic and down-to-earth*5. Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent? Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a sudden inexplicable beginning? :chin:


*1. Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
a. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
b. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was later labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
c. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: “Ideal” as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal “forms” (concepts) were prior-to the Real “substance” (matter).
d. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.
e. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

*2. Mysticism vs Metaphysics :
Metaphysics uses rational, philosophical inquiry to understand reality's fundamental nature, while mysticism relies on direct, personal, and often spiritual experience to achieve a higher understanding.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=difference+between+metaphysics+and+mysticism

*3. Natural Law vs Chaos :
If the world just happens to be rationally ordered by natural laws, why couldn't it just happen not to be the following day?
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1aio8d/what_compels_the_universe_to_follow_natural_laws/
Note --- "Laws of nature" are universal, consistent, and factual statements that describe observed patterns in the natural world, such as gravity or thermodynamics.

*4. Logic as Information :
Logic can be understood as the study of information, examining how information is encoded, manipulated, and inferred.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=logic+as+information

*5. Math is Metaphysical :
Mathematical metaphysics is the philosophical position that reality is fundamentally a mathematical structure and that existence is equivalent to being a mathematical object.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mathematics+metaphysics
Note --- Mathematical "objects" are actually abstract ideas in the mind of a subjective thinker.

Quoting apokrisis

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

That reason for concern may be why I remain skeptical of the brain-as-receiver postulation. Schizophrenia was interpreted by the ancients as demon possession. If so, then a demon-god might be the transmitter. Or a god with a few screws loose. :wink:

Quoting Gnomon

Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent? Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a sudden inexplicable beginning?

Well if you paid more attention to the key Planckscale fact that I mentioned - such as how the Big Bang was both the smallest smallness and the hottest hotness ever - then you might start to see that as the beginning of an explication.

But carry on with your mystic idealism. :up:

Quoting Gnomon

Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent?

Ockham the Barber says "Yes".

Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a [s]sudden inexplicable beginning[/s] [planck radius]?

Of course.

Reply to apokrisis :smirk:

Quoting 180 Proof

Of course.

And why do you too ignore the Planck energy density that came with the radius? And then also the Heat Death that inverts the deal so the Big Bang becomes some maximally large radius with a maximally cold temperature or less possible energy density?

If you have an alternative explanation for the initial conditions of the Big Bang, now would be a good time to start crossing out and hieroglyphing your preferred theory.

Quoting apokrisis

And why do you too ignore the Planck energy density that came with the radius?

Why do you ask?

Quoting 180 Proof

Why do you ask?

Because that was the point I was making.

Quoting apokrisis

Well if you paid more attention to the key Planckscale fact that I mentioned - such as how the Big Bang was both the smallest smallness and the hottest hotness ever - then you might start to see that as the beginning of an explication.

"Planckscale" is not a fact, and not actual, but imaginary & Ideal & hypothetical. Since I'm not a physicist, "planck scale facts" do not compute for me. The "explication"*1 below is a series of analogies to things we can experience & measure, in order to explain a mathematical concept that is impossible to experience or measure. Can you get closer to a meaningful real-world explication?

Planck's Scale is not an actual measurement, but a theoretical limit to measurement. It's like saying Zero plus Infinitesimal. Does that mean anything to you? Can you really imagine an imaginary world where the "laws of physics" do not apply? Is the Planck Scale radius --- encompassing infinite potential for Causation (energy) --- empirical Science or theoretical (mathematical) Philosophy?*3 It's not useful for any real-world applications, but only for philosophical conjectures*4.

For all practical purposes, you might just as well say that the near-infinite universe we now experience originated from nothing --- no atoms or quarks --- but near-infinite Energy. That immeasurable, almost unimaginable, quantity of world-creating Causal Power is literally super-natural. And it is analogous to what I call, philosophically, Infinite Potential*5. :smile:



*1. Visualizing the Planck Length :
An imaginary radius smaller than anything you have ever seen or imagined
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=planck+scale+smallest+and+hottest#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:dc709fba,vid:bjVfL8uNkUk,st:57

*2. Planck Scale :
The Planck scale is a fundamental set of units where the current laws of physics break down, and both quantum mechanics and general relativity are needed to describe phenomena.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+is+planck+scale

*3. Math isn't Real :
The statement "math isn't real" is a philosophical debate, but it generally means that while the concepts of math are abstract human inventions, they are an incredibly useful tool for describing and modeling the real, physical world. Things like perfect circles or infinite numbers don't exist in reality, but they are useful concepts for understanding it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=math+is+not+real

*4. Planck's mathematical God :
Max Planck believed that science and religion both require a belief in God, but that each approaches this belief differently. For religion, God is the foundation and the starting point, while for science, God is the ultimate goal or the "crown" at the end of all reasoning. He saw no fundamental opposition between them, viewing them as complementary forces that both battle against skepticism and superstition.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=planck+god
Note --- Substitute "planckscale" in place of God, and you have a scientific "foundation and starting point" for our evolving Cosmos.

*5. A.N. Whitehead's beginning of an explication of the beginning of evolution :
However, if you think of the evolutionary Process as a computer Program, an appropriate metaphor might represent the system designer as a Programmer. “Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of God and the mind includes the idea of a timeless mind that contains pure potentialities and a mind that is empathic with the world”. {Google AI Overview}
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page46.html

Quoting Gnomon

Planck's Scale is not an actual measurement, but a theoretical limit to measurement.

It’s defined by the three constants, c,G,h. And there is a reason why Newtonian physics has been evolving towards a theory of quantum gravity by successively adding these constants.

Quoting Gnomon

For all practical purposes, you might just as well say that the near-infinite universe we now experience originated from nothing --- no atoms or quarks --- but near-infinite Energy. That immeasurable, almost unimaginable, quantity of world-creating Causal Power is literally super-natural. And it is analogous to what I call, philosophically, Infinite Potential*

My point is that the Planckscale is defined by this trio of fundamental ratios. They describe a first symmetry breaking in terms of a first spacetime extent with its matching energy density or momentum uncertainty content. Quantum uncertainty says that in a spacetime point of limiting size, there is a matching energy density or raw heat.

And all our physical theories embody this basic fact of existence. They require it to work as a system of differential equations.

So right there is something exactly the opposite of your handwaving. We have a triad of constants that are in a pure symmetry breaking relation. A unit 1 story as they are all the fundamental units and may as well be set to 1 as “measured values”.

If you want to get metaphysical, it starts with seeing that the “infinite” in fact has this finitude. Existence starts with neither nothing, nor everything, but with this unit 1 scale that is a symmetry breaking. A fundamental ratio between spacetime described under general relativity and energy density described under quantum field theory.

Our ideas about how this could be the case have to take to take a back seat to the fact it is the case. What becomes handwaving and speculative is ignoring what is now built into the very structure of our best physical theory.

To put it simply, Okun’s cube tells us that the Universe has the basic structure of being a relativistic spacetime container with a matching quantum energy density content. This is the broken symmetry. And that is then the new starting point for speculation about how to make sense of the situation.

If you are not addressing that fundamental fact - that when spacetime got started, it came full to the brim with an energy density content - then you just aren’t in the game.

Quoting apokrisis

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

That is perhaps the worst poisoning of the well i've seen in a long time. Well done. It's also a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of two separate concepts:

Schizophrenics are under the impression their thoughts and feelings are imported from an external consciousness.

The brain-as-receiver model says nothing about any of that, and instead, posits that thearising of consciousness at all is akin to a television receiving signals for any image whatever. Its reasonable, albeit totally fringe and unsupported.

But your response was childish and dumb.

Quoting AmadeusD

It's also a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of two separate concepts:

Nope. I was making the point that a hallmark of “consciousness” is that it is embodied and agential. And we know how that is so from having studied the neurobiology - the architecture of brains.

Schizophrenia appears to arise from a fundamental breakdown in the timing and integration of neural activity. The sense of authorship for intents and actions, and also the ability to filter sensation in normal attentional fashion, goes awry as there is not the proper traffic in “efference copy” information. In simple terms, the frontal motor areas may initiate actions, and the sensory half of the cortex doesn’t get its copy of the commands in time to cancel them out of the state of sensory experience it then produces.

This is why symptoms like thought insertion and thought broadcasting arise. The precise compensation of an “implicit timing” connection breaks down. Normally we can tell whether we are moving the world or the world is moving us as in the first case, our sensory areas knows in advance to subtract the predictable action from its interpretive response. In the second case, the self-generated action catches the sensory areas by surprise. It feels like an alien hand is now in control. Sensations are thrusting at us. Thoughts and ideas are being imposed.

So we know how the brain generates consciousness by solving all these timing issues. How it has an architecture that deals with the fact it takes time just to pass along the message of what motor action we have planned so our sensory processing can already take that into account. An integrated sense of a self in its world can then arise out of a tricky neurobiological interaction. And schizophrenia is the kind of disorder that really brings this fact home.

And then we have this other nonsense about the brain being an antenna tuned into a cosmic psychic frequency. A sloppy and lazy analogy that we are meant to allow for the sake of argument. A hypothesis that completely wastes our time when we should instead be marvelling at the biological intricacy of the neural engineering that so easily seems to sustain the “normal” mind.

Being embodied and agential seems so effortless that yes, maybe it could be just a broadcast picked up off the airwaves.

But then nope. The neurobiology to get the job done is what we should reserve our amazement for.

Quoting AmadeusD

The brain-as-receiver model says nothing about any of that, and instead, posits that the arising of consciousness at all is akin to a television receiving signals for any image whatever. Its reasonable, albeit totally fringe and unsupported.

Another interpretation of the "Cosmos Created Mind" is Kastrup's Analytical Idealism*1. Reply to Wayfarer discussed this alternative in his thread*2. I'm not sure I fully understand K's "reasonable" and diligently documented update of ancient Idealism. Also, in order to maintain a philosophical line of reasoning, and to avoid getting into Religion vs Scientism diatribes, I prefer to use less dogmatic & divisive terms than "God". But Kastrup is bolder, and more self-assured than I am.

I wouldn't expect empirical support for a theoretical philosophical conjecture, that postulates a Cosmic Mind of which our little limited logic-parsers are fragments. But what do you think of his Mind as "foundation of Reality" and Idealism as "ultimate Realism" theory? I must admit that it bears some general similarity to my own Holism/Information/Causation hypothesis*3, which follows the chain of evidence back to the precipice of space-time, and merely points a philosophical finger toward the abyss of ignorance beyond. :chin:


*1. Bernardo Kastrup's Cosmic Mind :
he posits that the brain is not a receiver or filter of consciousness, but rather an image or representation of a universal consciousness that has undergone a dissociative process. In this model, physical reality, including the brain, is an external manifestation or "outside image" of internal mental processes
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=In+Bernardo+Kastrup%27s+view%2C+the+brain+is+not+a+receiver+of+consciousness%2C+but+rather+an+image+of+a+mind%27s+dissociative+process.+

*2. In Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism, the "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality. He uses the concept of dissociation, a mental process where a larger mind fragments into smaller, individual minds, to explain how individual consciousnesses like ours arise from this single cosmic mind. This "God's mind" is not impersonal but is, in this view, the ultimate reality, and the world we experience is an externalization of this mind.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1012470

*3. Creative Mind and Cosmic Order :
The traditional opposing philosophical positions on the Mind vs Matter controversy are Idealism & Realism. But Pinter offers a sort of middle position that is similar in some ways to my own worldview of Enformationism.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page10.html

Quoting Gnomon

The "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality.

- "undivided" but fragments.

- consciousness is a process and is thus not simple; it has system parts of thinking, planning, implementations, memory… Higher being may evolve in the future; the past is the wrong direction to look for it.

- Brahman myth again.

- Look up quantum field q-number table descriptions to approach the ultimate reality.

- Woo.

Quoting apokrisis

So right there is something exactly the opposite of your handwaving. We have a triad of constants that are in a pure symmetry breaking relation. A unit 1 story as they are all the fundamental units and may as well be set to 1 as “measured values”.

Sorry. But your notion of a "triad of constants"*1 that add-up to 1, sounds like "handwaving" to me. Not because it's wrong, but because it's over my head, as a layman. Besides, those "fine-tuned" constants*2 are interpreted by some scientists as evidence of an Anthropic Principle*3. Do you agree with that interpretation of pre-set or programmed initial conditions? Do you have a better explanation for the pre-bang existence of mathematical settings that are logically necessary for the emergence of animated matter? :smile:


*1. The triad of constants related in a pure symmetry breaking relation refers to the speed of light (\(c\)), Planck's constant (\(\hbar \)), and the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field (\(v\))
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=triad+of+constants+that+are+in+a+pure+symmetry+breaking+relation.
Note --- The "vacuum expectation value" is theoretical, not measurable. Do you view unsubstantiated theories as "handwaving"?

*2 Constants in science are fixed numerical values that describe physical quantities and are the same everywhere in the universe. They are either fundamental, like the speed of light (\(c\)), or used in experiments as "control variables" that are kept constant to ensure accurate results.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=constants+in+science
Note --- The Anthropic Principle seems to view your "triad of constants" as "control variables" to guide evolution toward the emergence of intelligent apes.

*3. The anthropic principle is the idea that the universe's fundamental constants have values that are necessary for the existence of life, which is why they appear "fine-tuned" for our existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=anthropic+principle+constants

Quoting PoeticUniverse

The "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality. — Gnomon
- "undivided" but fragments.

"Undivided-yet-fragmented" may sound like nonsense, unless you are familiar with Kastrup's analogy of psychological Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder)*1. But I would interpret his description of the Cosmic-yet-local mind of God more favorably --- as rational philosophy instead of spooky "woo" --- by using terms like : Holistic, yet composed of Holons*2.

For example, scientists treat Atoms as fundamental units of reality, yet they seem to consist of even more elementary elements such as protons, which are imagined to consist of invisible Quarks*3 : a nested hierarchy of systems within systems. I've never seen a quark, but I accept the hypothesis as a logical inference from "indirect experimental evidence". Does that whole-part notion make any sense to you? Sounds poetic to me. :nerd:

HOLISTIC HIERARCHY
[i]In structure's dance, a grand design,
Where systems within systems intertwine,
A nested view, a deep descent,
Through layers linked, omnipotent.

From simple cell to complex state,
A chain of being, small to great.
The root-bound earth, the tree above,
Each part connected, bound by love.

The universe, a cosmic whole,
Within it galaxies find their goal.
Each galaxy, a star-lit sea,
With solar systems, you and me.

The atom holds the proton's hum,
The quark, the part from which all's come.
A fractal pattern, ever true,
Reflecting order, old and new.

No level stands in solitude,
But fits within its multitude.
A box inside a larger frame,
Hierarchy is the constant game.

So see the order, clear and bright,
From deep below to soaring height,
The nested world, a wonder vast,
In structures built that ever last.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=poem+on+nested+hierarchy


*1.Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) :
A condition where a person experiences two or more distinct personality states or identities, which may have different names, memories, and ways of interacting with the world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=psychological+dissociation

*2. "Holistic holons" refers to the concept that reality is made of nested hierarchies of "holons," which are entities that are simultaneously both a whole and a part of a larger whole. This concept, introduced by Arthur Koestler, attempts to reconcile the part-whole dichotomy by viewing every entity as both autonomous in itself and a component of a greater system. A cell, for example, is a holon because it is a whole with its own internal structure and is also a part of an organ, which is part of an organism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=holistic+holons

*3. While quarks have not been directly observed, their existence is supported by a wealth of indirect experimental evidence, making them a foundational concept in modern physics, not a fabrication.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quarks+not+real

Quoting apokrisis

So we know how the brain generates consciousness by solving all these timing issues.

That's a somewhat different theory from all your previous ones. Are brains necessary for consciousness then? Is solving all these timing issues sufficient for consciousness?

Quoting Gnomon

I'm not sure I fully understand K's "reasonable" and diligently documented update of ancient Idealism. Also, in order to maintain a philosophical line of reasoning, and to avoid getting into Religion vs Scientism diatribes, I prefer to use less dogmatic & divisive terms than "God". But Kastrup is bolder, and more self-assured than I am.

'Idealism' is not ancient. The term first came into use with Liebniz, Berkeley and Kant. In hindsight, it is possible to describe some elements of Platonism as idealist, but it is not a term that was used in Plato's day.

As for Kastrup, I think he's worth reading, or listening to. He's an articulate defender of idealism.

Quoting Wayfarer

'Idealism' is not ancient.

:roll:

https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase_mobile?openform&fp=wcp23&id=wcp23_2018_0002_0001_0025_0035

Reply to 180 Proof I know that the Upanisads (for example) were described as 'idealist philosphy' by a German scholar, Paul Deussen. But the term 'idealism' only entered the philosophical lexicon with Leibniz, Kant and Spinoza. Once the term was introduced with its associated ideas, then precursors to it could be seen in Greek and Indian philosophy. But at the time, they didn't use that terminology and they didn't have the same categorical distinctions between mind, matter and idea, that modern idealism contains. "Idealism” in its systematic sense — the thesis that reality is in some way dependent on mind or spirit — only becomes a defined philosophical position in early modern Europe, with Leibniz’s monadology, Spinoza’s substance monism, and especially Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Once that vocabulary existed, scholars like Deussen and later Radhakrishnan could look back and identify idealist currents in Plato, Plotinus, and the Upani?ads. But those traditions themselves never used the conceptual apparatus of Idee, Bewusstsein, or Geist — their metaphysical language was quite different.

The abstract noun “idealism” appears in French as idéalisme by the late 17th century and in English around the mid-18th century. The Oxford English Dictionary records its first philosophical use in 1702, referring to “the theory that external objects are known only as ideas.”

So, yes, there are ancient pre-cursors to idealism, but idealist philosophy really only appears in the early modern era. This is further discussed in the thread Idealism in Context (of which yours was the first comment.)

Quoting Wayfarer

'Idealism' is not ancient. The term first came into use with Liebniz, Berkeley and Kant. In hindsight, it is possible to describe some elements of Platonism as idealist, but it is not a term that was used in Plato's day.

I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not ancient. But I was referring to the general belief that A> Reality is fundamentally Mental*1, or B> that the Human mind's model of reality is as close to true reality as we are likely to know*2.

Was your own Mind Created World talking about ancient A or modern B, which is a more recent update of Platonism based on modern science & philosophy, or some combination of the two, which is my BothAnd position? Either way, I'd still lump it under the broad heading of Idealism. Wouldn't you agree? Or do you prefer a less black & white distinction between Mind & Matter? :smile:


*1. Idealism originated in philosopher Plato, who is considered the father of the philosophy. It has roots in Classical antiquity and has evolved through various periods, including the 18th-century German Idealism movement, but its foundation was laid by Plato's idea that "the world of ideas" is the most real and perfect form of reality
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=where+did+idealism+originate

*2. while idealism holds that reality is fundamentally mental or a product of consciousness. Realism emphasizes the importance of empirical observation and the tangible, physical world for knowledge. In contrast, idealism prioritizes ideas, thought, and mental constructs as the basis for reality and knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=idealism+vs+realism+philosophy

Quoting Gnomon

I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not ancient. But I was referring to the general belief that A> Reality is fundamentally Mental*1, or B> that the Human mind's model of reality is as close to true reality as we are likely to know*2.

These are very difficult distinctions. But the point of my other thread, Idealism in Context, was that the human sense of their relationship with the nature of being has fundamentally changed over the course of history. (This is an Hegelian theme). The ancients did not have the sense we do that the world comprised material objects being driven by physical causation. Because of their religious sense, the Cosmos was seen as in some sense purposeful or as alive, in a way that is very hard for us to grasp. The way I put it in the other thread was:

Quoting Wayfarer

The earlier philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, maintained that true knowledge arises from a real union between knower and known. As Aristotle put it, “the soul (psuch?) is, in a way, all things,” meaning that the intellect becomes what it knows by receiving the form of the known object. Aquinas elaborated this with the principle that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.” In this view, to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is. (Here one may discern an echo of that inward unity — a kind of at-one-ness between subject and object — that contemplative traditions across cultures have long sought, not through discursive analysis but through direct insight).

So here, at the risk of sounding trite, the theme is the at-one-ness of being and knowing. Not as an intellectual construct or as the idea in the subject's mind corresponding to the object in the external world but as a way of being-in-the-world. That innate sense we possess of subjective awareness in a realm of objects had not yet taken hold. (I suppose, in some ways, this can be related to Julian Jayne's 'bicameral mind' or to R M Bucke's 'cosmic consciousness'. )

It is often said that Aquinas is a realist - which is true, but he was a scholastic or Aristotelian realist, which means something completely different to what we mean by 'realist'. For Thomism, with God as Being, reality is inherently participatory, in a way that it can't be for us. It is ecstatic realism, if you like. But as the belief took hold that the Cosmos was not an expression of the divine Intellect, then physical reality was accorded the kind of inherent reality that scholastic philosophy would never grant it. This is the origin of the 'Cartesian division' and the pervasive sense of 'otherness' that characterises the modern mind. (See this blog post on Radical Orthodoxy).

So Berkeley's idealism was a reaction against the whole idea of matter as a mind-independent substance - something which wouldn't have occurred as neccessary in earlier philosophy, as material form was always seen in combination with the intelligible idea which was immaterial as a matter of definition (but emphatically not an 'immaterial thing'! :brow: )

This is why expressions such as “cosmic mind” are inherently misleading when taken to denote some objective existent, as if it were on par with scientific concepts like fields or forces. In classical thought, the divine intellect was not conceived as an object within the universe but as the very ground of intelligibility — the condition under which being and knowing are possible at all. To interpret it as a thing among things is already to have shifted into a different ontological register. Whenever such expressions are used, we risk reifying what was never meant to be reified — trying to understand the source of intelligibility from within the subject–object framework that depends upon it.

Quoting Gnomon

Do you agree with that interpretation of pre-set or programmed initial conditions?

I’m arguing not for pre-set material conditions but for Platonic strength structural necessity. The argument is that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organisation.

Anything could perhaps be possible. But to become actually something, there is only the one kind of logical arrangement it could fall into.

The Planck constants of cGh - the speed of light, strength of gravity and unit of quantum uncertainty - are not about some specific material quantity. They are about the basic thing of a triadic structure of relations. The kind of self-organising or self-causing systems understood in particular by philosophers like Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce.

So if physics tells us that the Universe divides into the maths that describes its relativistic container and its quantum content, then right there we have the three things of the G that scales the relativist container, the h that scales its quantum content, and then the c that scales the integration of that which has been thus divided. The interaction between the tiniest scrap of coherent dimensionality and the way it is thus full of the hottest content – a situation which makes it inevitable that it would double and half its way to the opposite end of the spectrum that it itself has just opened up. The space will expand to some maximum extent in terms of how much drive is coming from a hot content itself cooling eventually into dilute insignificance.

You are thinking of initial conditions as a state of pre-existent material being. But I am thinking of them as a state of immanent logical structure. A very different metaphysics.

In this light, the Planck constants are logical constants rather than material quantities. It is the same as have 0 as the additive identity, and 1 as the multiplicative identity in arithmetic.

Give me a zero and I can break its symmetry by adding or subtracting.

The zero exists as that which is neither +1 nor -1, but already a start in those counterfactual directions.

More relevantly, given the growth of the Cosmos is geometric, one-ness then "exists" as that which anchors multiplication and division. It is the symmetry that gets broken by going off in those two opposed and complementary directions.

So the Planck scale encodes a "one-ness" as the symmetry that is revealed to "exist" because it did transparently get broken. It got broken by this doubling~halving story of a flexi-container with a diluting hot content.

And when we get deeper into the theory, we can see that this is the oneness of the Riemann sphere. A unit 1 geometry based on marry a real number translational symmetry with a complex number rotational symmetry.

The Riemann sphere has its foot in both the relativistic and quantum camp in that regard. But now we really are getting into the technicalities.

The point is think structural principles rather than material facts. The Big Bang has to have an explanation that goes beyond the contingencies of material being. It has to have the logical truth of a structural account.

Quoting bert1

That's a somewhat different theory from all your previous ones. Are brains necessary for consciousness then? Is solving all these timing issues sufficient for consciousness?

Is it really? Or are you just – as usual – always questioning and never listening?

Quoting apokrisis

I’m arguing not for pre-set material conditions but for Platonic strength structural necessity. The argument is that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organisation.

Again, I had to Google your abstruse terminology to break it down into more commonsense concepts that an untrained amateur philosopher can relate to. For example, I can imagine "symmetry-breaking" as an event characterized by change from static balance (nothing changes) to dynamic dis-equlibrium (directional change occurs). But then, if you add "spontaneous" to the mix, it describes an event that occurs suddenly & without warning, like a Cosmos-Creating Big Bang with no pre-history. Hence, inexplicable and not accessible to Reason. It must be taken on Faith.

The only way I can make sense of such enigmatic language is to compare it to something I am already familiar with. For example, Plato's notion of Cosmos from Chaos, in which Cosmos is imagined as timeless nothingness, but with simple un-actualized Potential (Ideality) for transforming into complex organized Reality. Perfect symmetry is static balance, and Reality is dynamic dis-equilibrium (things change). Perhaps Chaos is the realm of perfect-eternal-unactualized Forms, from which emergent-space-time-real Things emerge.

Consequently, the precise mathematical initial conditions of the Big Bang were "set" by accident instead of by intention. Hence, there was no Intentional Mind (God), only the infinite Potential of random Chaos (Fate) to explain how our living & thinking world came to exist. Is that what you are saying? :meh:



*1. Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking :
The statement that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organization has significant support in both physics and philosophy, where the move from a perfectly symmetric potential state to an [i]asymmetric, ordered state is often seen as essential for the emergence of phenomena and complexity.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=reality+can+only+exist+with+a+certain+dichotomous+or+symmetry-breaking+organisation.

*2. Spontaneous vs Accidental :
Spontaneous events are unplanned and happen out of a natural, often sudden, impulse, while accidental events are unintentional or unintended
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spontaneous+vs+accidental

*3. Platonic strength structural necessity :
In a Platonic sense, "strength" would be an eternal and unchanging "Form" that exists in a non-physical realm, independent of any particular physical structure. Any real-world, physical structure only partakes in this ideal Form to a limited and imperfect extent.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Platonic+strength+structural+necessity
.

Quoting Gnomon

Plato's notion of Cosmos from Chaos, in which Cosmos is imagined as timeless nothingness, but with simple un-actualized

The Timaeus sort of gets it. The basic idea is that rather imagining the Cosmos as either a sudden creation event or as an eternal existence, it arises as an evolving structure where form is being imposed on a chaos. It all starts from a confused everythingness - so confused in its expression that it amounts to a nothing. It lacks any orderly structure. And then that structure starts to appear.

With Plato, the structure is already final and familiar as it comes from some transcendent realm of the good and the ideal. The sun, the stars, the planets. The cats, the dogs, the mice. These ideas exist as the eternal shapes of things, and these shapes are like cookie cutters to be impressed on matter as like some universal dough.

But my structuralism is more like Anaximander’s Apeiron and Heraclitus's Unity of opposites. The structure is logical and evolutionary. Counterfactual and dialectical. The symmetry-breaking of a dichotomy. And so everything starts by identifying that first act of dichotomisation that could start to organise a world.

Anaximander's Apeiron sounds like a primal stuff, but it was more like the most primal state of unformed and unbounded potentiality. And the first symmetry-breaking that started to organise it into a definite state of somethingness was this raw possibility starting to separate in two counterfactual directions. Just as a random fluctuation, some part of the Apeiron could start to grow a little warmer. But with counterfactual logic, that meant it had to leave some adjacent part of the Apeiron a little cooler.

You get two for the price of one with this kind of logical symmetry-breaking. Both the something and its other thing. What starts to emerge in co-arising fashion is the larger significant thing of a widening state of contrast. The heat can keep getting hotter, and the cool keep getting cooler. And before long, this is triggering other symmetry-breaking change.

The cool naturally is damper. And the hot is naturally dryer. So now we have also the appearance of wetness as the increasing absence of the dry, and the dry as the increasing absence of the wet. With everything becoming increasingly divided like this, you get the four elements emerging. The warming and drying zone turns into the still a little bit cool and damp thing that is the air. Shedding its lingering cool and damp in this fashion, it thus gets really hot and really dry so turns into fire. The lightest element which therefore rises even beyond the light air to fill the heavens with its flames.

In counterfactual fashion, the cold and the damp goes in its shared counter-direction to congeal into first water and then earth. Being heavy – subject to gravity rather than levity – it all falls towards a common centre where it composes the Earth with its land and ocean.

So this is the metaphysics. A hierarchy of symmetry breaking. One kind of change builds on the others. Each change is a dichotomous splitting. And then as all these changes pile up on each other, we start to get a complexly developed world. The Earth as a clod of dirt and with its puddles of water. The sun and stars as fiery points of heat and light that have risen up as far as they can go. Being divided allows also for a mixing of the elements while also preventing their collapse back into the undifferentiated potential of the Apeiron that begat them.

And you should be able to see how the Big Bang has the same symmetry-breaking metaphysics.

In the beginning there was just some generalised notion of a potential. Logically there has to be at least the possibility of such a state of raw possibility because – well here we are. And then it was broken by being divided against itself.

Your favourite dichotomy is information~entropy. Order versus chaos. Form vs matter. Rules vs actions. So if you imagine that as the broken symmetry that had to develop out of some initial symmetry, how does that story go? If information is a difference that makes a difference, and entropy is a difference that doesn't, then what is the step that comes before that distinction arises? What is it for there to be just an Apeiron of difference where differences neither clearly yet count as making a difference, but also not clearly failing to count as a difference.

If you can account for that state – as perhaps a state of radical logical vagueness, Peirce's definition of that to which the PNC fails to apply – then you are starting to think about reality coming into existence not out of nothing, nor even out of an everythingness exactly, but something even less than that. The less than nothing which is a vagueness, an Apeiron, a state that has neither matter nor form as yet as that is what still needs to co-arise as a primal symmetry breaking.

So getting back to the Big Bang, I pointed out to how it is a tale of dichotomous symmetry breakings. Somehow relativity gives us the dynamical container – the spacetime ready to grow. And quantum theory gives us our dynamical content – the energy density or momentum uncertainty that will grow the container, but in doing so, begin to cool itself in reciprocal fashion.

Each direction is set up so that the symmetry breaking is not all done in a split second. It is a symmetry breaking that takes until the end of time to complete itself. The doubling~halving can just roll on forever as the Big Bang grows larger and cools down more. We are now down to just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. But it will take about eight billion years to chop that number in half to 1.35 degrees K.

So the Universe is in some ways almost completely symmetry broken. A really long way from its starting point of 10^32 Kelvin. And yet also still relentless growing and cooling. It can't arrive at its Heat Death until it gets right down to 10^-30 Kelvin, presuming we can believe that dark energy sets this final limit on cosmic growing and cooling.

Anaximander imagined the world starting out of the self-organising separation of the warm and the cool. That rather presumed the existence of space and time as the stage where this rather material event could have happened. But still, it was the right logical idea. Symmetry-breaking as a developmental process feeding on itself. A division that continues until it reaches its own end. A division that also grows complexity in the process as new divisions can arise out of the old divisions and add all the material variety that we see. Starting with the four elements.

The Big Bang is based on cGh physics. A triad of constants. Or the set of basic relations that defines the basic symmetry being broken – the way G stands opposed to h as the measures of what is the cooling relativistic container, and what is its hot quantum contents. And c is the measure of the rate at which everything is being moved apart while also remaining in causal connection. The rate at which this mixture of dimensionality and energy density is thermalising.

The Big Bang is also the tale of all the topological phase transitions that rapidly complexify the initial symmetry breaking. First you get radiation. That cools and spreads enough to condense into a fine dust of gravitating matter. The dust clumps into balls that under pressure catches fire – becomes stars powered by fusion. That results in the production of heavy elements which get released in supernova collapses. Clumping of heavy elements makes planets. Eventually it is all going to get swept into blackholes and radiated away as the coldest and longest wavelength radiation possible.

So the same metaphysical picture. A symmetry breaking of the kind that can feed off itself and so persist until its time is at an end. A symmetry breaking that also is self-complexifying for a long time, but then eventually re-simplifies to its simplest end state. Anaximander's cosmology also reasoned that what arose would also collapse back into the great vagueness whence it came.

Another Greek metaphysical dichotomy or unity of opposites. Heraclitus's harmony and strife. Aristotle's growth and corruption. Order can grow, but then it can also decay. Information can arise out of entropy, but it can also return to entropy. Signal looms out of the noise, and can then get lost back in the noise again.

It is all about a way of seeing reality as a developmental process. The symmetry breaking that creates some seed of distinction. A primal contrast that is already growing as it is logically a reaction against itself. To go in one direction is not to be going in the other direction. And now there the thing of that other direction going in its own counter-direction. This logical starting point can keep going off in its two opposed directions forever, and even start complexifying to become full of such dichotomous symmetry-breakings. But it also can eventually exhaust itself. The Big Bang can become so spaced out and cooled down that it just runs out of puff.

So the symmetry-breaking that I have in mind is the dichotomisation that takes forever to reach its own natural end. The contrast that both grows and dilutes. It grows as it is driving itself apart in opposed directions. But that drive is also being sapped at a matching rate.

The result is a powerlaw curve. A doubling~halving trajectory that begins with a hot bang and ends with the coldest and emptiest whimper.

Reply to apokrisis Ever a drunk in recovery/reflection, I'll drink to your fact-based, autopoietic story. :up:

Reply to apokrisis I am interested in this topic, including a biosemiotic approach to the emergence of consciousness. I can't elicit replies from you about it, which is very frustrating, but what you do and don't want to engage with is obviously up to you. I wonder if you would be willing to recommend a paper or two specifically on this topic, focusing as much as possible on the move from unconscious processes, to those involving meaning, the development of a self-other distinction, developing models, making predictions, or however the argument goes, until we get to the necessary and sufficient conditions for experience. You have given some idea of this, but by no means in enough detail for me to be able to get the argument clear in my head. I have read Pattee's "Cell Phenomenology: The first phenomenon" which was very interesting. Are you aware of any other papers on this? I could ask AI, and I may yet, but I'm hoping it will be easy for you to point me in the direction of a paper or two. If you don't want to that's OK. It's not my preferred method of learning - I prefer a live specimen to examine, but we can't always get what we want.

Quoting apokrisis

The Timaeus sort of gets it. The basic idea is that rather imagining the Cosmos as either a sudden creation event or as an eternal existence, it arises as an evolving structure where form is being imposed on a chaos. It all starts from a confused everythingness - so confused in its expression that it amounts to a nothing. It lacks any orderly structure. And then that structure starts to appear.

Timaeus*1 observed that, in the real world, "nothing happens/changes without a cause". So he seems to assume that even the ever-changing Real world must have had an Ideal origin : a hypothetical god/urge/impulse with creative powers. That seems to be the presumption behind most of the world's religions. Except that the God is typically envisioned more like perfect order & absolute power, instead of "confused everythingness".

Most religious/philosophical worldviews have also postulated a logically-necessary First Cause from which space-time was born. Yet, in order to avoid getting into religious debates about which god, I tend to use the abstract-generic term "First Cause", or simply "Causation", without specifying any attributes, such as structure or personality. And First Cause or Prime Mover usually implies a transcendent source of causation.

Unfortunately, my trolling nemesis on this forum is an immanentist*2, who denies any beginning to space-time. Hence, there is no First Cause, or Demiurge or Apeiron*3. So the Real World is an "evolving structure" that has existed forever, cycling but never beginning or ending. Does that sound like a reasonable alternative to the current scientific evidence that space-time suddenly exploded from a mathematical point into a complex cosmos? Does forever causation make the Hard Problem of human consciousness irrelevant?

Heraclitus' Unity of Opposites*4 sounds more like a logical truism than an explanation of our evolving universe. Yet again, it seems to imply that Consciousness exists eternally in opposition to Unconsciousness, whatever that means. And one traditional name for that immortal Mind is "God" or "Brahma", serving as the whole of which our mortal minds are holons.

The topic of this thread --- Cosmos Created Mind --- could be construed as "form being imposed on chaos". Hence, Mind is a natural emergent biological process that originated in the sudden transformation of potential Chaos into actual Cosmos and subsequent evolution. Does that make sense compared to the other theories of Ontology and Epistemology? :nerd:



*1. Timaeus suggests that since nothing "becomes or changes" without cause, then the cause of the universe must be a demiurge or a god, . . . .
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=timaeus

*2. Immanentism : Spinoza's concept of an immanent God is that God is inseparable from nature and exists within the universe, rather than as a transcendent, external creator. For Spinoza, "God or Nature" is the single, all-encompassing substance, and everything in existence, including humans, is a modification or expression of this divine substance. This means God is the active force in the world, not a being that stands outside of it, making the world and God identical and interconnected.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spinoza+immanent+god
Note --- According to physical science, the "active force" in the real world is Energy. Which causes all change, via impulse & inertia, but does not explain such immaterial processes as Life & Mind.

*3. Apeiron : Anaximander's apeiron is the concept of a boundless, indefinite, and eternal "first principle" from which all things originate and to which they return.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=anaximander+apeiron

*4. Unity of Opposites : Heraclitus's "unity of opposites" is the concept that seemingly contradictory forces are interconnected, mutually dependent, and part of a single, unified whole. This dynamic equilibrium is essential for the cosmos, as tension and strife between opposites like day and night, or hot and cold, create harmony and are the engine of change. According to this view, opposites define each other; a shadow needs light to exist, and a thing becomes warm by first being cold.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Heraclitus%27s+Unity+of+opposites.+

Quoting Gnomon

So the Real World is an "evolving structure" that has existed forever, cycling but never beginning or ending.

This story makes more sense – is more consistent with quantum cosmological evidence (as well as e.g. Spinoza's, Epicurus' & Laozi's spectulations) – than any of the other cosmogenic alternatives.

Does that sound like a reasonable alternative to the current scientific evidence that [s]space-time[/s] [false vacuum collapse] suddenly exploded [s]from a mathematical point[/s] into a complex [spacetime]?

It's not an "alternative"; (metaphorical) BBT might be just (our) observation-limit of the most recent phase-transition (i.e. symmetry-breaking event 13.81 billion years ago) in the "cycling" "evolving structure" of the universe.

Does forever causation make the Hard Problem of human consciousness irrelevant?

Well, that's a pseudo-problem at most (i.e. faux-epistemological fodder for woo-of-the-gaps idealists), so it's not even "irrelevant". :yawn:

Quoting apokrisis

The result is a powerlaw curve. A doubling~halving trajectory that begins with a hot bang and ends with the coldest and emptiest whimper

Great post!

Quoting Wayfarer

This is why expressions such as “cosmic mind” are inherently misleading when taken to denote some objective existent, as if it were on par with scientific concepts like fields or forces.

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects. To avoid misleading, when I use the Quantum Field or Universal Gravity as analogies to the Cosmic Mind notion, I try to make clear that these "forces" are not "objective" and observable, but rationally inferrable from observed processes.

For example, Gravity, like all forces, is not a material thing, but a causal relationship between things*1. One theory even postulates that Gravity is negative Energy, i.e. Entropy*2. Yet again, those "forces" are measurable only in terms of inter-relationships, not directly. And relationships are mental, not material.

A recent blog post discussed the notion of Active Information, and noted that "Ironically, the primary methods of highly effective Quantum Physics are based, not on Matter, but Mathematics : Quantum Field Theory (QFT)*3. :smile:



*1. Cosmic energy is the highest form of all kind of life force that is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient- which exists in the earth cosmos, between the galaxies, and in the space. It is this energy that animates life and maintains balance in the entire universe.
https://siddhacosmic.org/profile/
Note --- This interpretation of Vacuum Energy is not my theory, but merely an example of various Cosmic Field/Mind/God theories drawn from scientific models. And it seems similar to the Non-local Consciousness concept in Dan Brown's novel. I'm merely exploring that non-mainstream cosmology in this thread, because it seems implicit in some forms of Idealism.

*2. Entropic gravity is a theory proposing that gravity is not a fundamental force but an emergent, macroscopic force driven by disorder and the tendency of the universe towards greater entropy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=gravity+is+entropy

*3. Quantum Fields :
“QFT taken seriously in its metaphysical implications seems to give a picture of the world which is at variance with central classical conceptions of particles and fields, and even with some features of Quantum Mechanics.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/
Active Information blog post : https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

Quoting 180 Proof

This story makes more sense – is more consistent with quantum cosmological evidence (as well as e.g. Spinoza's, Epicurus' & Laozi's spectulations) – than any other cosmogenic alternatives.

Cyclic cosmology does seem to fit with the current science. But isn't that because time has yet to be brought properly within its models? Quantum physics still assumes the existence of a Newtonian notion of time and that remains to be fixed.

So eternalism becomes just an assumption baked into the theory, not something the theory explains or provides reasons for. And then a cyclic universe is a way to fill that eternity with something we can be more sure about – a Big Bang/Heat Death story of at least one Cosmos that self-organised itself into existence, but then also appears to permit the externalist to argue for an infinity of such cycles of birth and destruction.

However once we dig into cosmology, there is concrete evidence of how time itself must have an evolutionary development.

A big case in point is how the Universe starts out as a relativistic soup of radiation - a world ruled by c - but then with the Higgs phase transition, suddenly turns into a realm of co-moving matter dust. Particles gain the mass terms that now mean they all travel at some speed between “rest” and c. And so time is changed in the qualitative sense that mass lags the global rate of thermalisation and decoherence.

The radiation fireball decouples to become the cosmic microwave background, racing away - doubling and halving - at its rapid rate with its one speed. And a matter dust is left behind as a swirling gravitational cloud of particles moving at a sub-c rate and thus experiencing this new thing of now trailing along in the wake of the CMB. All sorts of different speeds or rates of change and interaction have become possible. The very nature of time has been transformed - even though this more complex temporality is what we see as our simplest possible Newtonian notion of time.

So time is scaled by c under special relativity. And it gains inner complexity by that speed limit being broken by mass allowing particles to drag behind the general rate of change to now have their own individual experiences of how time is passing from their own inertial or comoving frame.

Then another way time gets complexified is by it being broken superluminally. If the metric expansion is decoupled from the energy density dilution - as it is supposedly during inflation, or again at the Heat Death when dark energy eventually freezes the cosmic event horizon at a fixed distance - then again this is a phase transition from the simple SR light cone point of view.

You start with the simplicity of a Cosmos that just evolves at c. But then that can be broken by both the emergence of a super luminal structure and a sub-c rest mass or comoving level of temporal structure.

So my point is that what we know about the Big Bang should act as a constraint on our metaphysical claims. And we know the Universe was a doubling-halving symmetry breaking from at least is first billionth of a second. We can see it had a decoupling when the radiation dominated part split off and raced away, leaving a comoving dust diddling about at all speeds between 0 and c. We can surmise the appearance also of a superluminal aspect to temporality as both inflation and dark energy have good arguments behind them.

There is a lot to show the way our reality works. And it is a story of emergence rather than eternity. Of self-finitude and its topological complexification rather than infinity and a lack of meaningful physical development.

Both eternalism and emergence could be jammed together. And that is what cyclic cosmologies try to achieve. But my view is that is metaphysically confused. A ruse to stave off having to give a fully consistent account.

Our Big Bang cosmos has emergence stamped all over it. I have already argued here about how that can work. How the Planck triad of constants emerge in “unit 1” fashion, with space and time being baked into that in the way the Riemann sphere can describe. The sphere that Hawking employed in arguing time emerges in the fashion that when you stand at the North Pole, there is no further north you can stand. If you move at all, you are now rotating back southwards in mirror fashion.

Sure, some big names like Penrose and Bojowald are pushing cyclic cosmology. There is no reason not to have a go at other explanations.

But also, the Big Bang tells its own story. We have clear evidence of the nature of temporality evolving. Time seems irreducibly complex as we should know just by it having the universal speed limit of c baked into its Planckian initial conditions. And then by the fact this “unit 1” rate of change - this rate of events, rate of decoherence, rate of causality - is itself swiftly broken into both sub-c and superluminal sub-realms of spacetime.

Complexification is inevitable once the Universe makes its first symmetry breaking that defines “eternity” as a clock that is ticking in a period doubling fashion. Starting as hot as it is small and then doubling and halving in a forever-ised fashion.

Newtonian time is a clock that ticks out the same beat all the time. There is nothing thus to distinguish a beginning from an end. A second is always a second.

But the Big Bang ticks out a period doubling rhythm. It starts out dropping off a cliff in terms how fast it seems to be expanding and cooling. But 14 billion years on, the tick that once lasted a mere 10^-43 seconds as its first beat now takes a rather leisurely 8 billion years to achieve the same degree of thermalising change.

Time has slowed almost to a stop from that emergent perspective. And it will continue to slow and thus eventually become the moment lasting “forever”.

Quoting Gnomon

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects.

Science has moved beyond the simplistic everyday notion of “matter” is what you should be saying.

They know that this notion is simplistic folk physics.

Reply to PoeticUniverse :up:

Quoting bert1

I have read Pattee's "Cell Phenomenology: The first phenomenon" which was very interesting.

And how did this change your opinions? What more focused questions will you be bringing to your interrogation of the “live specimens” that you have locked up in your padded cellar?

Reply to apokrisis Do you know of any other papers on this topic I can read?

Reply to bert1 Yes.

Reply to apokrisis It didn't change my mind much, mainly because of what seemed to be his definition of the phenomenal. Some of the questions I would ask i have already asked you in this thread. Questions about definitions, necessary and sufficient conditions, and the precise relationship between structural and functional concepts and phenomenal concepts. Also elaborations on concepts that are unfamiliar to me.

Please will you make a recommendation or two?

Quoting Gnomon

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects. To avoid misleading, when I use the Quantum Field or Universal Gravity as analogies to the Cosmic Mind notion, I try to make clear that these "forces" are not "objective" and observable, but rationally inferrable from observed processes.

Right - so what you're saying is that 'cosmic mind' is analogous to the 'noumenal'. Agree they might be rationally inferred, but as such cannot be empirically validated.

Quoting apokrisis

So my point is that what we know about the Big Bang should act as a constraint on our metaphysical claims.

Do you think that the 'multiverse speculation' (that there are potentially infinitely many 'other' universes) can be or ought to be similarly constrained?

Quoting Wayfarer

Do you think that the 'multiverse speculation' (that there are potentially infinitely many 'other' universes) can be or ought to be similarly constrained?

Absolutely. If anyone is extrapolating some aspect of reality to infinity, it has to be wrong. Just because dichotomies are what rule metaphysical logic. The infinite is impossible if symmetry-breaking is by definition the finitude of arising within complementary limits.

Reply to apokrisis Agree. I think an awful lot of specious reasoning is associated with multiverse ideas. (Not that it isn't fertile ground for science fication.)

Quoting Wayfarer

Right - so what you're saying is that 'cosmic mind' is analogous to the 'noumenal'. Agree they might be rationally inferred, but as such cannot be empirically validated.

Yes. If noumenal Mind could be empirically validated, we wouldn't be discussing it on a philosophy forum. But, since the 20th century, scientific validation has become more Mathematical (rational) than Empirical (sensory), more inferential than observational. For example, the scientific theory of an ethereal Quantum Field*2*3 as the fundamental essence of reality has led some thinkers to equate it with a Cosmic Mind*4. The theoretical "points" that define the field are mathematical entities that do not occupy space or exhibit mass. Hence, the foundation (substance??) of our material world is postulated to be immaterial*3 : more like a mental definition than a material object*5.

Since it is contrary to my current understanding, in order to make sense of the Brain-as-receiver-of-cosmic-signals notion featured in Dan Brown's fiction (OP), I've been motivated to venture into such speculative (fictional?) Physics/Philosophy. But I'd still like to see some empirical evidence (pro or con) that the human brain could conceivably be a passive receptacle for meaning, instead of an active generator of ideas. Until then, I'll continue to assume that my thoughts are my own. And that the Cosmos is not an eternal deity (Spinoza), but a temporary physical/mental system born of uncertain parentage. :smile:



*1. Noumenal Science :
The statement "quantum is noumenal" is not a standard scientific or philosophical claim, but a specific idea within certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and philosophy. It suggests that the reality that physics describes (the "phenomenal") is different from the true, underlying reality (the "noumenal"), which is the case in Emmanuel Kant's philosophy. Some physicists propose that "noumenal" descriptions of quantum systems, which are local and complete, are what quantum mechanics is truly about, rather than the observer-dependent phenomena we observe. 
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+is+noumenal

*2. In Universal Quantum Field theory (QFT),the universe's fundamental building blocks are not particles, but universal quantum fields*3 that permeate all of space and time. Particles like electrons and photons are considered to be excitations or "ripples" in these underlying fields. This framework views fields as the fundamental entities and is the basis for particle physics.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=universal+quantum+field+fundamental
Note --- Most particles, except Photons & Gravitons, possess measurable rest mass. But quantum Fields are supposed to be composed of statistical relationships between dimensionless points.

*3. A universal massless quantum field is a theoretical concept that posits a field permeating the universe with zero mass, with implications for topics like dark energy and dark matter.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=universal+quantum+field+massless

*4. Quantum Field = Cosmic Mind :
The "quantum field - cosmic mind" is a concept from speculative physics and philosophy that suggests the quantum field is a fundamental, universal consciousness connecting all things, including individuals. This idea, which overlaps with spiritual and mystic traditions, posits that our minds are not isolated but are expressions of this larger, non-local field, leading to the conclusion that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe itself, not just an emergent property of the brain. It's important to note that this is not a universally accepted scientific theory, but rather a group of hypotheses and philosophical interpretations.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+field+cosmic+mind
Note --- I prefer to say that Information (energy), not Consciousness (mind), is the essence of physical & mental reality.

*5. What is Matter? "
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter

Reply to Gnomon :eyes: :rofl:

Quoting apokrisis

Nope. I was making the point that a hallmark of “consciousness” is that it is embodied and agential.

You didn't make it well.

Quoting apokrisis

It feels like an alien hand is now in control. Sensations are thrusting at us. Thoughts and ideas are being imposed.

Which is specifically not what the receiver theory entails, or imagines. It jettisons this entirely to even get moving. Given this context, I understand what you've said and why. But then it's simply ignorance of what's posited in this theory (and again, I've already acknowledged its weak and we have no good reason to take it on).

Quoting apokrisis

And then we have this other nonsense about the brain being an antenna tuned into a cosmic psychic frequency.

This is a strawman like no other. Turns out, I was right in my charge.

Quoting apokrisis

Being embodied and agential seems so effortless that yes, maybe it could be just a broadcast picked up off the airwaves.

But then nope. The neurobiology to get the job done is what we should reserve our amazement for.

This says nothing. It says that maybe the receiver theory is correct (in some way). And then just says no, lets be in awe of something else.

Everything you said can be true, and the basis of consciousness can still be a signal from without. I don't care to go further.

Quoting Gnomon

I wouldn't expect empirical support for a theoretical philosophical conjecture, that postulates a Cosmic Mind of which our little limited logic-parsers are fragments. But what do you think of his Mind as "foundation of Reality" and Idealism as "ultimate Realism" theory?

I've watched about 14 hours of Kastrup. He strikes me as someone I would consistently love to talk to, and would consistently laugh at through the course of our conversations. He has a great mind, imo, and some good ideas. But there are some extremely fundamentally concerning issues with his theories.

If 'mind' is the foundation of reality, he still has a massive job getting the sensation of the physical in. And he's never adequately done that, in my watching. I think the bold is interesting, and exactly hte reason responses like akroposis' up there is unwarranted. We couldn't seek empirical evidence, and we can't rest on incomplete descriptions via biology. Its is/ought all over again and I prefer to just entertain all comers while resisting magical thinking.

Quoting AmadeusD

Everything you said can be true, and the basis of consciousness can still be a signal from without. I don't care to go further.

You are being histrionic. This is a simple case of humans using their latest technology to explain the mind. The marvel of radio broadcast - the BBC world service as a message bounced off the ionosphere - offers a striking analogy. And more than a few people have built their own pet theories of mind around it. More than a few scientists indeed.

Quoting Gnomon

In Universal Quantum Field theory (QFT),the universe's fundamental building blocks are not particles, but universal quantum fields*3 that permeate all of space and time. Particles like electrons and photons are considered to be excitations or "ripples" in these underlying fields. This framework views fields as the fundamental entities and is the basis for particle physics.

[i]here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.
[/I]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKCP5k1RTmM&t=13s

Reply to PoeticUniverse :up: :up:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.

I would disagree. What emerges as fundamental are the invariances. The constraints of symmetry and then the degrees of freedom that result.

And the relativity vs quantum issue is about how the real number constraints captured in special relativity as it’s Poincare group structure, then turn out to have their gauge complex number symmetries as the local degrees of freedom.

So SR wants to constrain a 4D metric to a collection of spacetime points. But those points then gain the possibility of having an intrinsic spin structure. The realm of QFT organised particles or excitations arise as being that which the global Poincare invariance can’t suppress and now a further internalised level of symmetry and its breaking.

Everyone comes at relativity and QFT seeking to make one the master of the other. But a systems view says that never works. What works is complementarity. Relativity and QFT must somehow be a unity of opposites. Each is what constructs the other as that which it is.

So SR embodies the SO(3) spin invariance of a spacetime point. But that is also what makes possible the SU(2) gauge freedom that produces chiral particles with intrinsic spin organisation. The points of spacetime can turn out to have an internal fibre bundle structure where they become a thermalising network trafficking in the broken symmetry of their “twists”.

The metric can grow and its points can cool. It is that relation which is the fundamental reason why there can be anything at all.

So the big question is can gravity be assimilated to QFT as gravitons. And Lineweaver for example makes a good case for how gravitational dof are not really quantum but emergent at the level of the particle vectorisation that takes place at the reheating moment when inflation ends.

Vectorisation begins the Standard Model era by producing QFT particles doing their thermalising thing. The next step is the particles picking up a significant mass term with the Higgs symmetry breaking. And so you now have a sub-c story of vectors and spinors that are individuated. The points of spacetime have developed an inner spin structure that carries some momentum and position state that is individually distinctive and so now is mixing as a statistical ensemble - a thermal gas, that soon enough condenses into a matter dust.

So we arrive at massive particles as gravitational degrees of freedom - the matter dust wanting to clump into cosmic structure. But also a matter dust - a dust of protons and electrons - also organised under U(1) electromagnetic charge.

We can see right there how the complementarity principle is so fundamental it is organising everything at the start and still organising it at the end.

We have gravity as the mass of a Poincare-constrained real number point. And we have EM as the energy of a QFT complex number structured charge polarity. Two kinds of local dof. And the cosmic web is the comoving pattern of planets, stars, galaxies and filaments that results as electric charge largely neutralises itself as atomic structure, allowing the relatively weakness of gravity to show through as the complementary organiser of what exists. The extrinsic spin story of the turbulent and swirling heavens, dissipating angular momentum on the way to collapsing into black holes where it can.

This is the paradigm shift. Expecting a dichotomous logic whenever things get fundamental. Nature exists as a dynamical balance. And Nature may evolve in terms of its topological organisation - turn from a relativistic plasma to a comoving matter dust. But the same general principle of arriving at a mutual balance must always apply.

Which is why we shouldn’t try to dissolve one side of anything into what seems its other side. Both gravitational dof and electric charge dof rise to the surface in time as the Cosmos is thermally shaken down into its simplest possible invariant states. And one is the distillation of Poincare invariance, the other of gauge invariance.

You have massive and electrically neutral atoms doing their gravitating and radiating dance in an empty void. Or at least effectively empty as the quantum vacuum is now as cold in its energy density content as it is flat in its SR extent.

Quoting apokrisis

What emerges as fundamental are the invariances. The constraints of symmetry and then the degrees of freedom that result.

:chin:

Quoting AmadeusD

If 'mind' is the foundation of reality, he still has a massive job getting the sensation of the physical in.

Good point! Deriving Physical sensations from Metaphysical fundamentals, seems to be the inverse of the usual philosophical Hard Problem : Mental ideas from Physical substrate ; Ideality from Reality. That's why I put my money on the recent evidence of an Energy/Information interrelationship. Everything in the universe boils down to creative (change-causing) Energy. And tracks back to a logically necessary First Cause.

What we call Energy is not a material object but a causal process. And that process has evolved complex forms of matter such as the human brain*1. But so far, no clear explanation for why complexity of physical interconnections (wiring) could produce metaphysical Meaning and immaterial imagery.

Information is a pattern of dichotomies & oppositions --- black/white, one/many, certainty/uncertainty, etc. Such dual relationships are perceived as comparative ratios : mathematical values that can be written as strings of numbers. For example : the ratio of 3 to 7 is 0.428571428 ; which is not the way we perceive, but how we calculate, rationally.

The Energy/Information*2 relation is similar to the inverse Certainty/Uncertainty ratio of Quantum Physics. And Randomness vs Organization is also the focus of Complexity Science. But how do we convert those physical ratios and mathematical dichotomies into perceptual distinctions, and thence into mental experiences?

These comments may not make sense of the relation between Ideality & Reality (sense & sensation) until put into a larger context*3. Deriving Mind from Cosmos. :nerd:



*1. Yes, the human brain is widely considered to be the most complex object in the known universe due to its intricate network of approximately 86 billion neurons and over 100 trillion connections. This complexity allows for higher-level functions like consciousness, thought, and emotion, which are the basis of human experience, but also makes the brain extremely difficult to fully understand.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+the+human+brain+the+most+complex+thing

*2. The "mass-energy-information equivalence principle" suggests that information has a physical mass per bit.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+information+relation
Note --- Einstein equated causal Energy with measurable Mass and ultimately with tangible Matter. But when you add meaningful Information to the equation the result may be Conscious Mind. Hence, a possible path to a solution to the philosophical Hard Problem. It remains for physicists and information scientists to work-out the details.

*3. Active Information :
To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html
Note --- "Form" in this context can be both material Shape and mental Meaning.

Quoting apokrisis

You are being histrionic.

I am being exactly the opposite. I've explicitly said everything you're pointing out can be true, and consciousness can still arise from an external signal.

There's nothing ... at all.. histrionic about this. In any way, whatsoever.

Humans have not explained the mind.

Quoting AmadeusD

Humans have not explained the mind.

And you have studied the relevant science or merely offer an opinion?

Reply to apokrisis I've both studied the relevant science (to the degree a non-scientist) and (more importantly, for this discussion) the metaphysical philosophy. There is no mechanism identified for the emergence of consciousness by either crew (well, i say identified - I should be saying pinned-down. Several have been posited). To the degree this is an opinion, sure. But it is derived from quite a bit of uncomfortable reading. My position has had to change, for instance, upon that reading. I was initially an 'it must be entirely physical and contained within the structures of hte brain, even if hidden' person.

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, I'm sure it would be quite easy to explain (and honestly, I'd love to know. It's quite annoying feeling logically obligated to entertain divine command lmao). Please do (there is absolutely no sarcasm here, whatsoever. I am under the impression I'm under, and if it's wrong please set me right).

I am really not trying to be antagonistic. I felt you were being that way..

Reply to AmadeusDIf you have some enthusiasm for the “brain as an antenna” hypothesis, have you pursued the literature on it?

It was going the rounds in the 1990s. I chatted to quite a few of those pushing versions of it. Like Karl Pribram, Susan Pockett. Johnjoe McFadden, Benjamin Libet, Stuart Hameroff, Jack Tuszynski and others.

There is the more plausible version of the story which involves EM fields or quantum coherence being somehow part of how neurons get organised and so do their job within the brain. And then the plainly crackpot idea of there being a mind field or plane of consciousness which brain biology “tunes” into and so “lights up with” that magically subjective phenomenonal state.

So conversations about just this kind of sideshow controversy have shaped my own opinions about where the correct mind science is at. And I feel the proper way to think about all this is to seek the right structuralist theory of life and mind in general. An explanation broad enough to include everything from biology to sociology.

We don’t need to explain “consciousness” as if it is some magically emergent non-material stuff produced by nervous systems.

We need to have a structural understanding of cognition at its most generic evolutionary level - the central “trick” that we would call semiosis or the modelling relation.

This paper was cited earlier in the thread. And Pattee was about the single most rigorous thinker I encountered on the issue. But you have to plough through all the ways people get the issues confused before you can see why this kind of high level argument makes so much sense.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279737928_Cell_Phenomenology_The_First_Phenomenon

Quoting AmadeusD

If there were such a mechanism pinned down,

I defend biosemiosis as the mechanism behind life and mind.

Quoting AmadeusD

I was initially an 'it must be entirely physical and contained within the structures of hte brain, even if hidden' person.

And this is the mistake of searching for a particular causal explanation of consciousness rather than establishing first a general ground for such an account.

It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being.

Quoting apokrisis

We don’t need to explain “consciousness” as if it is some magically emergent non-material stuff produced by nervous systems.

This sounds like a straw man. It is a view, but not one that anyone I can think of holds.

apokrisis:It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being.

We need a lot more detail of course, but at first glance it is not clear what prevents this being accomplished by a zombie.

Quoting AmadeusD

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, I'm sure it would be quite easy to explain

One would have thought so.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.

Are these your words, or those of Vedral?

I'm vaguely familiar with Vlatko Vedral from his association with the Santa Fe Institute for the study of Complexity and Systems (Holism). Einstein forced us to accept that space & time are conventional concepts, not physical objects, that we use to convey notions of extension and change. But q-numbers and c-numbers are way over my little layman head. And, since I'm not a mathematician, I don't see them as beautiful or poetic.

So, if you don't mind, I'll continue to think of Space as a ocean that we can swim around in, and Time as-if a road that we can conceptually move forward & backward on. Even Einstein portrayed space-time as the fabled fabric of reality. And I suppose the theory of a universal quantum Field is an attempt to metaphorically express the philosophical notion of an interwoven warp & woof of abstract time & space. Besides, metaphors do exist, in some poetic sense, as ideas in human minds. But we shouldn't take those metaphysical analogies literally, as physical facts.

Such scientific figures of speech are merely updates on Plato's metaphors of Ideal Forms and Aristotle's theory of Reality in terms of Substance & Essence. Likewise, today some of us still imagine the real universe as-if it's a rational (enformed) Cosmos born of an negentropic Chaos*2. So, it's not too far-fetched to imagine our Real Cosmos as the metaphorical offspring of an Ideal (omnipotential) Source*3, beyond space-time, upon which our world depends for all necessities (matter & energy) of Life & Mind. :wink:


*1. Reality Is Not What It Seems : and there is no space or time. Instead, for Vedral, quantum numbers, also known as Q numbers, are the true essence of reality, and it's a much more beautiful and useful way to understand the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKCP5k1RTmM&t=13s

*2. Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

*3. " Omnipotential Chaos" describes the idea of the ultimate power of chaos, often found in mythological, fictional, or philosophical contexts, where chaos is not just disorder but a source of all possible potential.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=chaos+omnipotential
Note --- The Multiverse theory may be a 21st century version of Plato's Cosmos from Chaos myth.

Reply to bert1 When facts meet ignorance, opinions always win.

You are not exactly a guy for the details, even if you continually demand them. :grin:

Quoting apokrisis

You are not exactly a guy for the details, even if you continually demand them.

Regarding my own views, I don't have a great many details. There are large areas of uncertainty and doubt for me.

Quoting apokrisis

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, — AmadeusD
I defend biosemiosis as the mechanism behind life and mind.

Since I am only superficially familiar with the theory of Biosemiosis*1, can you briefly summarize the steps or stages in the evolutionary mechanism of A> Big Bang . . . . . X> Life . . . . Z> Mind? It seems to follow an evolutionary track similar to my own Enformationism thesis. But as far as I can see, neither can connect all the dots. For example, the transformation of Matter into Life, and Biology into Symbols, and Symbols into Consciousness. The only common factor that I see is Energy/Causation. :smile:

*1. Biosemiosis is the study of how life and meaning are interconnected, arguing that meaning-making (semiosis) is an inherent and fundamental feature of all life, not just humans. Biosemiotics connects the biological world to the mental by exploring how organisms use signs to interpret and interact with their environment, suggesting that the mind is not a separate entity but emerges from these complex biological and social relationships. This field considers communication and meaning-making at all levels, from cellular to social, and offers insights into the origins of life and consciousness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiosis+life+mind
Note --- Meaning, Symbols, Signs are forms of generic Information, which is ultimately related to causal Energy.

Quoting apokrisis

It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being

This may come across antagonistic - but it is unintended: I think you're looking at leaves and missing the trees they sprout from.

I respect that you take there be a, more or less, full answer to the problem of consciousness but to me, none of what you've put forward (which I highly appreciate) even attempts to answer it. I actually thikn what you're talking about is highly important, and you're dealing with it well. It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem. I don't take hand-waving very well..

Quoting bert1

This sounds like a straw man. It is a view, but not one that anyone I can think of holds.

It is an incredibly strawman, but its one people like Dennett tended to embrace, conceptually. I think its just a stand-in for "I dunno *shrug* lets look at something else".

Consciousness is a discreet sensation. We need it explained (well, no. We want it explained). We currently have no explanation for its emergence, or origin. All we have are postulates - none of which have held thus far.

Quoting AmadeusD

I actually thikn what you're talking about is highly important, and you're dealing with it well. It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem.

It might be repurposed as a theory of identity (or what makes a system an agent in some sense) rather than a theory of consciousness, perhaps.

I had a similar thought with Tononi's IIT model of consciousness. It might work better as a theory of individuation: the more information a system integrates, the richer its experience, and the more it has a sense of identity, perhaps.

Reply to bert1 That works for me, in an extremely cursory way. I'm not doing technical reading right now lol. Seems reasonable to integration is what's interesting to explain, but emergence is going to be the actual breakthrough.

That said, serious people (as apokrosis notes) do consider that consciousness is not its 'own thing' to be explained. I guess that makes no sense to me and smacks of how I described it above. I just could be dead wrong.

Quoting AmadeusD

It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem. I don't take hand-waving very well..

Well I was in the audience when Chalmers first raised his hard problem argument. I had lunch with him after to see if he was actually serious and had much email debate with him in the year after that.

But of course, your unexamined opinions must prevail here too.

Be reassured, you seem marvellous at the hand-waving. A duck to water. :up:

Quoting apokrisis

“brain as an antenna” hypothesis . . . . It was going the rounds in the 1990s. I chatted to quite a few of those pushing versions of it. Like Karl Pribram, Susan Pockett. Johnjoe McFadden, Benjamin Libet, Stuart Hameroff, Jack Tuszynski and others.

I Googled McFadden*1, since I had heard of him, to see how he would explain "how the brain becomes aware". He seems confident that this philosophical & scientific "mystery" has been solved. But, like so many other postulated solutions, his explanation is a tautology, not a mechanism : "consciousness is experience". Yet, Biosemiology basically defines Consciousness as "meaning-making" by manipulating symbols*2b.

From what little I know of Biosemiotics*2a, it seems functionally similar to my own information-based theorizing. And I think it may be on the right track. But I'm not sure it has connected the dots of a physical mechanism of Mind. Instead, the ellipsis of the tautology may be filled-in with metaphysical "hand-waving", as my theory is often criticized. But I don't claim to have solved the Hard Problem. I'm merely proposing a different kind of mechanism. Which is similar to A.N. Whitehead's Process Philosophy*3.

Unfortunately, for a Materialistic forum, his Process fills the gaps in the evolutionary mechanism with an immaterial "Force", which I equate with mundane Energy & Causation (relations, not things). Both of which have been historically interpreted as Spiritual Forces*4. In order to forestall accusations of promoting woo, I try to avoid using spiritualist terminology. But it's not easy, because Modern Science, since Quantum theory, has been struggling with similar spooky concepts : entanglement, superposition, action-at-a-distance, non-locality, contextuality, relativity, and the observer effect. And gaps in Quantum non-Mechanics*5 are often filled with hand-waving notions. So, what's an amateur philosopher to do, when trying to resolve the "mystery" of Mind? :chin:


*1. "Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Surrey, said: "How brain matter becomes aware and manages to think is a mystery that has been pondered by philosophers, theologians, mystics and ordinary people for millennia. I believe this mystery has now been solved, and that consciousness is the experience of nerves plugging into the brain's self-generated electromagnetic field to drive what we call 'free will' and our voluntary actions."
https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/jet93h/johnjoe_mcfadden_genetic_scientist_claims_to_have/

*2a. Biosemiotics explains consciousness as a meaning-making and interpretation process inherent to all living systems, moving beyond a purely brain-centric view. It proposes that consciousness is an emergent property of a non-human organism's unique "sense-making" interface with its environment, shaped by its biology and communication at a cellular level. Rather than a fixed, individual phenomenon, consciousness is seen as decentralized and formed through the dynamic interplay and interpretation of signs from the organism and its environment.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiology+explain+consciousness
*2b. From a biosemiotic perspective, consciousness is a natural, biological phenomenon rooted in the meaning-making, communication, and interpretation processes of all living systems, not just humans.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiology+consciousness+is

*3. A.N. Whitehead's process philosophy posits that reality is fundamentally a dynamic, creative process rather than a collection of static substances. It views the universe as a constantly evolving "becoming" and emphasizes concepts like actual entities (the fundamental building blocks of reality) and prehensions (the way these entities interact and relate to each other). This philosophy integrates scientific findings with moral and spiritual intuitions, offering a view of reality as a vast, interdependent web of processes and relationships.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=A.N.+Whitehead%27s+Process+Philosophy

*4. Yes, "energy" is considered a spiritual concept in many traditions, where it's viewed as a vital, invisible force that animates all living things and connects the physical, mental, and spiritual self. Spiritual energy is different from scientific energy; it's often described as a life force (like prana or chi) that can be influenced by thoughts and emotions and is believed to be affected by practices like meditation and mindfulness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+energy+spiritual
Note --- Bergson's Elan Vital is a causal process, not a material substance. Causing Change, not "throwing Chi".

*5. Quantum mechanics is often described as strange or "weird" compared to classical mechanics because its principles, like superposition (existing in multiple states at once) and wave-particle duality (acting as both a wave and a particle), are counter-intuitive at a macroscopic level.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+not+mechanical

Throwing Chi looks good in anime, but not in realite

Quoting apokrisis

But of course, your unexamined opinions must prevail here too.

Be reassured, you seem marvellous at the hand-waving. A duck to water. :up:

I'm am completely unsure why you're being antagonistic. The idea that my opinions are "unexamined" after this exchange is risible.

Why not just actually have a decent exchange, rather than descending into ad hominem? I gave you your flowers. I don't take kindly to impolite, antagonistic interlocutors either.

Quoting Gnomon

"consciousness is [the] experience of".

Yes, that certainly seems blatantly question-begging. I don't know if the context helps at all.

EDIT: I haven't read the whole McFadden article, but the opener in the abstract isn't question-begging:

Quoting McFadden

"Abstract: In the April 2002 edition of JCS I outlined the conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory, claiming that consciousness is that component of the brain’s electromagnetic field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its informational content to the outside world. In this paper I demonstrate that the theory is robust to criticisms"

I also think consciousness is field-like, as he says in the opening sentence of the main article. That might be an interesting read.

Quoting apokrisis

…the plainly crackpot idea of there being a mind field or plane of consciousness which brain biology “tunes” into and so “lights up with” that magically subjective phenomenonal state.

What if the whole of evolutionary history is that process? That the emergence of life just is the manifestation of the subjective? And furthermore, that the reason this won’t be considered scientific, is because this field is something you’re never outside of, and so cannot objectify.

Doesn’t this dovetail with Peirce’s ‘feeling’ as fundamental? Matter as effete mind? The embodiment of Firstness?

Reply to Wayfarer That;'s definitely hte approach taken by philosophers who have taken psychedelics. That says whatever it says for different people, but for my part, it shows that there are ineffable experiences. These cannot be 'scienced'. Consciousness, being hte basis of all experience, is a prime candidate for never getting past the shrug response.

Reply to bert1 Quoting McFadden

"Abstract: In the April 2002 edition of JCS I outlined the conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory, claiming that consciousness is that component of the brain’s electromagnetic field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its informational content to the outside world. In this paper I demonstrate that the theory is robust to criticisms"

Yes. That sounds like a superficially plausible theory. But Materialists will ask, "where's the physical evidence" of an Information Field, and of "downloading" by the brain? Invisible Electromagnetic fields can seem spooky, hence they are imagined by ghost-hunters to be the substance of spirits : ectoplasm. The readings of their electronic instruments are indeed evidence of electromagnetism, but to interpret that static as the presence of a human soul may not be solid enough to convince a skeptic. Who may interpret the signals as the presence of an electrical mechanism, such as a cell phone, power-line or refrigerator . . . . and of belief prior to evidence.

So for me, the jury is still out on the CEMI Mind Field hypothesis. :chin:


*1. The CEMI (Conscious Electromagnetic Information) theory of consciousness, proposed by Johnjoe McFadden, posits that consciousness is an electromagnetic field generated by the brain's neurons. This theory suggests that neuronal firing creates an electromagnetic field which integrates information from the brain's digital processes, with consciousness arising as a part of this field that can influence subsequent neural activity. According to the theory, non-conscious actions are processed solely within the neuronal network, while conscious, voluntary actions are driven by neurons that receive input from this electromagnetic field.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=cemi+theory+of+consciousness
Note --- Animal brains are known to be electro-chemical organisms. But the Hard Question remains : how do those sparks & spurts transform from measurable Physical events into meaningful metaphysical Mental ideas & feelings. How does a flow of electrons integrate information? What integrating power connects a row of isolated dots into a continuous line? What are the steps & stages of transformation?

PS___ The clue I'm working on is the lab-measured relationship between physical Energy and mental Information?

Reply to GnomonAll of this still operates entirely within the materialist frame. It searches for an objective correlate—some measurable physical proxy—that can be mapped onto the intentional, semantic, and affective dimensions of experience. McFadden’s “cemi field” belongs to the familiar genre of quasi-scientific proposals that promise to locate consciousness in some previously overlooked physical substrate. But despite adopting new language (“information field,” “downloading,” “integration”), it remains materialist in essence: the hope is that adding one more physical principle will bridge the explanatory gap.

But ask the obvious question: even if such a field were discovered, would it bring us one step closer to the meaning of "know thyself"? The point is that we already have intimate acquaintance with consciousness—not as an object among objects, but as the observer, to whom anything appears as an object in the first place. No amount of empirical elaboration on electromagnetic dynamics touches this first-person dimension. It only charts more correlations.

So I think Mcfadden's confidence in 'solving' the hard problem is misplaced. Problems are things for which solutions are possible; mysteries are circumstances of which we are a part (McGinn?). In that sense the hard problem is not a puzzle awaiting a clever physical hypothesis. It is the modern reappearance of an older insight: that the subject cannot be catalogued as one more item in the world, any more than walking far enough will take you to the horizon.

Quoting Wayfarer

All of this still operates entirely within the materialist frame. It searches for an objective correlate—some measurable physical proxy—that can be mapped onto the intentional, semantic, and affective dimensions of experience.

I suspect that this Ontological & Epistemological dichotomy has plagued philosophers from the time of Plato & Aristotle : Hyle (matter) vs Morph (form). Which is why I focus on the modern understanding of Information (energy + form), as a possible way to bridge the gap in the map. :worry:

Science answers mysteries by using the scientific method to investigate unexplained phenomena, from the ancient mystery of Earth's regular seismic pulse to the modern enigma of dark matter. When faced with the unknown, scientists formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze data to develop theories, though some phenomena, like the conditions before the Big Bang, may remain outside of current scientific reach.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=science+answer+to+mysteries
Note --- The mystery of the Hard Problem is not about Phenomena, but Noumena. Yet that Physical/Spiritual distinction is denied by Materialists.

Kant argued that we can only know the phenomenal world, the world as it appears to us through our senses and cognitive faculties. We cannot directly experience noumena, but they are the underlying reality that causes our perceptions of phenomena.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kant+noumena
Note --- Noumena are not Percieved by physical senses, but Conceived by mental imagination.
Perceive : to become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses.
Conceive : to form an idea or imagine it in your mind.


Quoting Wayfarer

Problems are things for which solutions are possible; mysteries are circumstances of which we are a part (McGinn?)

Thanks for that reference. I suspect that the success of the empirical method, in over-turning time-honored beliefs, has given modern scientists confidence that it can solve any problem or mystery. But McGinn observes that, for philosophical "mysteries", the experiencing Observer is part of the Problem of learning how & why we experience the real concrete world in terms of abstract ideas. :cool:

[i]Problems are challenges to our current knowledge that we can realistically expect to solve through scientific inquiry or logical deduction. They are external to our being and can be overcome.
Mysteries are aspects of reality that are inherently beyond the scope of human cognitive abilities, not just temporarily unsolved. According to McGinn's view, we are inextricably part of the mystery itself (as conscious beings trying to understand consciousness), which is why we can never achieve a complete, objective solution in the same way we solve a "problem"[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=+Problems+are+things+for+which+solutions+are+possible%3B+mysteries+are+circumstances+of+which+we+are+a+part+%28McGinn%3F%29.

Reply to Gnomon I should add a caveat about McGinn. His “mysterian” view is useful in one narrow sense: he at least takes the reality of consciousness seriously, and he recognises that the standard physicalist story hasn’t solved anything. In that respect he’s a welcome counterweight to the eliminativist impulse.

But I think his explanation for the “mystery” goes astray. He says we can’t understand consciousness because humans lack the right conceptual equipment — as if a special metaphysical faculty were required to see how brain processes give rise to experience.

The difficulty is simpler, and much less exotic: the scientific conception of “nature” that we inherited from Galileo and Descartes deliberately brackets out subjective experience in order to describe the world in purely quantitative, third-person terms. So when we later try to fit consciousness back into that picture, it naturally appears inexplicable. (This has also been subject of the discussion in the First v Third Person thread.)

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one. The framework within which he's considering the problem has already excluded what it is we’re trying to understand. So I think McGinn identifies the symptom correctly — the intractability — but not the underlying cause. 'Knowing your own mind' is still eminently feasible but maybe it doesn't mean what a lot of people would like it to mean.

Ref: https://www.newdualism.org/papers/C.McGinn/McGinn_1989_Mind-body-problem_M.pdf

Quoting Wayfarer

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one.

Very good

Quoting Wayfarer

[C]onsciousness ... appears inexplicable.

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one.

:up: :up:

Finally, you agree with us eliminativists and physicalists that, in effect, "consciousness" is not what it "appears" to be (e.g. a homuncular / user illusion).

Reply to 180 Proof I have never posited consciousness as a 'thinking thing' or as an homuncular entity. And an illusion is something that only a mind can entertain. Although I suppose I can't do anything about selective readings.

Quoting Wayfarer

So when we later try to fit consciousness back into that picture, it naturally appears inexplicable. . . . . The framework within which he's considering the problem has already excluded what it is we’re trying to understand.

I wasn't familiar with the minority philosophical position, that a Theory of Mind should be eliminated*1 from consideration of the human role in reality. I suppose that it's an attempt to remove the "bathwater" of imaginary gods & ghosts --- along with the "baby" of self-knowledge --- from folk philosophy, as unreal & immaterial. Such purging would result in elimination of Philosophy forums, which waste time & words on literal non-sensation.

But that lacuna would leave the world populated only by lumps of animated matter, some of whom walk bi-pedally and support large brains atop a vertical spine, and who create Cultures*2 that go beyond the providence, and instincts, of physical Nature. But, on a Philosophy forum, shouldn't we include the products of Philosophy (ideas, intelligence) in our analysis? That subjective inward focus would leave time & space for the objective stuff of Science to the experts on physics & chemistry websites. :nerd:


*1. Eliminativism is the view that some things, particularly mental states like beliefs and desires, do not exist and are part of a flawed, "folk" theory that a more advanced science (like neuroscience) will replace. It argues that these concepts are so fundamentally incorrect that they are not just reducible to physical processes but must be eliminated entirely, much like how concepts from older theories were discarded. For example, an eliminative materialist would argue that we don't have beliefs or desires, but rather that our current understanding of them is a pre-scientific theory that will be replaced by a more accurate description of brain activity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=eliminativism

*2. The statement "culture is metaphysical" suggests that culture is not a simple, tangible thing, but a complex system of shared meanings, beliefs, and values that are fundamental to our understanding of reality and human existence. It implies that culture provides the underlying "metaphysics"—the basic principles that shape our worldview—for a society. This view posits that culture isn't just a product of social interaction, but a reality in itself, with its own properties, which can be analyzed philosophically.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=culture+is+metaphysical

Reply to Gnomon I've been a Dennett antagonist ever since before joining this Forum. I thought the title of his book Consciousness Explained was ridiculously pompous (and indeed, it was widely parodied as 'Consciousness Ignored'. Galen Strawson satirically suggested that Dennett should be sued for deceptive trade practice. Been over it too many times.

Quoting Wayfarer

And an illusion is something that only a mind can entertain.

What about mindless facial recognition software that misrecognizes faces? Illusion =/= misrecognition, no?

Reply to 180 Proof It’s an artifact as such an extension of human capabilities.

Reply to Wayfarer It's not a "mind" and yet capable of illusions (just as LLMs can hallucinate).

Reply to 180 Proof The data recorded by such devices can’t be an illusion until it is interpreted by a user. Otherwise it’s just pixels.

LLMs are different, as the operations they perform are orders of magnitude more complex than image capture. Regardless, their ‘hallucinations’ are possible concatenations of words and phrases. Ask any of the LLMs whether they are sentient beings, and they will always respond in the negative.

Reply to 180 Proof For the record, I will never accept eliminativism because it denies the very thing that makes knowing, questioning, arguing, or explaining possible in the first place. Consciousness is not an optional theoretical posit—it is the ground of the awareness within which every fact, every argument, and every experience appears. To “eliminate” it is to eliminate the condition of appearance itself. Whatever difficulties consciousness poses for physicalist explanation, denying its reality is not a solution but a performative contradiction: the eliminativist must rely on the very phenomenon he claims does not exist in order to assert that it does not exist. For me, the given reality of experience is more fundamental than any theory, and no philosophical outlook that begins by denying the existence of its own ground can ever be persuasive. That is my last word on it.

Reply to Wayfarer

You’d think that would be ‘nuff said.

Reply to Mww You'd think!

Reply to Wayfarer

“….This** can never become popular and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for finespun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths.…”
(** this being, or reducible to, critical thinking)

Quoting Wayfarer

I've been a Dennett antagonist ever since before joining this Forum. I thought the title of his book Consciousness Explained was ridiculously pompous (and indeed, it was widely parodied as 'Consciousness Ignored'.

Ironically, even some (supposedly) pragmatic scientists are entertaining (seemingly) spiritual explanations for consciousness*1. Such modern theories are more Mathematical (mental) than Material (substantial)*2. Meanwhile, the concept of "higher dimensions"*3 has been adopted by some religious thinkers as a more sciency-sounding term for what the ancients imagined as an out-of-reach celestial "spiritual" realm.

Personally, I have no experience of dimensions beyond those of mundane space-time. Even "moments of creativity or deep thought" feel ordinary to me. And I don't know how we might "measure" them, other than how we measure Time, in increments of environmental cycles relative to physiological rhythms. And yet, String Theorists seem to take un-measureable multiple dimensions for granted, because the mental math can easily go beyond what counts for the material senses.

Strangely, Math is supposed to be a form of Logic, but has discovered numerical values that are beyond Reason : Irrational & Transcendental. Is it a sign that Mind is not physical, but Meta-Physical? We can imagine future Utopias and Paradises, but never actually reach their golden gates. Even so, are ideas & ideals, that have no manifestation in matter, somehow more real than mundane reality? Or simply a way for humans to strain against the restraints of physical laws?

Anyway, it seems that Consciousness, unbounded by physical limitations, remains a mystery in search of a logical, tangible, explanation. Religious interpretations may meekly accept Spirituality as beyond Reason. But epistemological Philosophers tend to hold-out for a rational understanding, instead of incomprehensible and extra-sensory blind faith. Don't promise me a tantalizing heavenly hereafter, make it real, here, now! :halo:


*1. Spiritual Consciousness :
Physicist Michael Pravica has proposed a controversial theory that human consciousness could originate from higher dimensions beyond our physical reality. This theory, rooted in the concept of hyperdimensionality, suggests that during moments of creativity or deep thought, consciousness may transcend the brain to connect with these unseen realms. While this idea is speculative and not widely accepted, it opens up the possibility that consciousness is not purely a product of the brain and could potentially exist beyond the physical world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Human+Consciousness+Comes+From+a+Higher+Dimension%2C+Scientist+Claims%E2%80%94Meaning+It+Could+Transcend+the+Physical+World
Note --- Is this scientist explaining Consciousness by imagining invisible & dubious parallel realities?

*2. Higher dimensions are a concept in mathematics and physics that represent directions beyond the three spatial dimensions (length, width, and height) and one time dimension we experience. These additional dimensions can be thought of as more "degrees of freedom" for movement, or as mathematical and theoretical spaces used to describe phenomena. While some theories, like string theory, propose the existence of up to 10 or 11 dimensions, these extra dimensions may be curled up or "compactified" at extremely small scales, making them undetectable.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=higher+dimensions
Note --- Do we actually experience Four Dimensions, or do we merely accept it conventionally?

*3. In a spiritual context, a higher dimension can refer to states of consciousness beyond our everyday, three-dimensional physical experience, characterized by greater awareness, love, and unity. It can also describe a more transcendent, eternal, or "unseen" reality that is beyond linear time and separation. These concepts are often tied to spiritual growth, moving from a focus on the ego and material world to a more enlightened, purposeful existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=higher+dimension+meaning+spiritual
Note --- Is this higher realm populated by spirits & gods, or merely by ideal Platonic Forms, whatever that is?

Quoting Wayfarer

I should add a caveat about McGinn. His “mysterian” view is useful in one narrow sense: he at least takes the reality of consciousness seriously, and he recognises that the standard physicalist story hasn’t solved anything. In that respect he’s a welcome counterweight to the eliminativist impulse.

But I think his explanation for the “mystery” goes astray. He says we can’t understand consciousness because humans lack the right conceptual equipment — as if a special metaphysical faculty were required to see how brain processes give rise to experience.

The problem with Mysterian*1 philosophy is that it gives-up on the ancient philosophical quest : to explore the Hard Questions that are not subject to objective answers. Such speculative exploration*2 can be proven wrong though, when observations contradict the conjectures. Today, we might say that dragon warnings about Mars, are "not even wrong". But there are plenty of other scary features of the red planet, that should give rocket-ship explorers pause : 2015 film, The Martian.

Personally, I think we do have "the right conceptual equipment" for seeking answers to the Hard Problem. Yet our "metaphysical faculty" of Reason & Logic does not produce "Hard" evidence, in the sense of physics & chemistry & neurology. Instead, it's our ability to imagine things that possess no material structure, but only logical structure : patterns & relationships. That's why I continue to explore the relation of Causation to Consciousness. I don't think Consciousness is fundamental, but Causation, and its cousin Information, may be essential to the evolving world.

Awareness of things & events inside and outside the body is not some magical substance, but a temporal process*3 : change over time. It transforms sensory data into mental ideas & feelings. That's why I think our metaphysical faculty is more like causal Energy than inert Matter. Recent scientific studies have noted the fundamental relationship between Physical Energy and Metaphysical Mind*4. Further rational & empirical research may eventually dispel the "Mystery", by identifying the causal steps & phase changes between physical Causation & metaphysical Transformation. :nerd:


*1. Mysterianism is the philosophy that some questions, particularly the hard problem of consciousness, are fundamentally unsolvable by humans due to the inherent limitations of our cognitive abilities. This perspective, most famously associated with Colin McGinn, argues that while consciousness is a natural phenomenon and not supernatural, our brains are not equipped to understand how the physical matter of the brain creates subjective experience. It is not the same as saying we don't know the answer yet, but that we can never know the answer.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mysterianism+philosophy
Note --- Mysterianism may be a modern form of Spirituality and Taboo, in that it imagines non-overlapping magisteria like Heaven & Earth.

*2. Here Be Dragons : The phrase was thought to be a literal warning from mapmakers to mariners that they should proceed with caution because the area was uncharted and potentially hazardous.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=maps+used+to+say+there+be+dragons+here

*3. A conscious process is a mental operation that a person is aware of and often in control of, involving explicit awareness of thoughts, memories, feelings, and sensations. These are the processes that form a person's subjective experience of being aware of themselves and their surroundings, such as planning or recalling a memory, and are distinct from unconscious processes that occur automatically.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=consciusness+process
Note --- A Process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. A.N. Whitehead's process philosophy conjectures that reality is fundamentally a dynamic and creative "becoming" rather than a collection of static "things". The Evolutionary Process seems teleological : directed by intention, not accident. Of course, the Intender may remain a mystery until . . . .

*4. Energy is a form of Information :
No, information and energy are not the same thing, but they are fundamentally linked, and information can be converted into energy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=information+is+energy

Quoting Mww

You’d think that would be ‘nuff said.

The problem is that the idea of physicalist inconsistency is a strawman given that eliminativists do not seek to eliminate or discount the fact of being conscious (consciousness) but instead believe that it is an entirely neural, that is physical, process, and that the kind of default imagining of what consciousness is, based on the "seeming" of introspection and rationalist conceptualization, is an illusion.

Now, of course they may be wrong, and there seems to be no way to test that hypothesis, as there is no way to test the idea that consciousness is somehow (although the somehow remains obscure) non-physical.

The point I would contend is the idea on either side of the debate that their conclusions are "slam dunk". That idea only shows dogmatism, closed-mindedness.

Reply to Janus

Useful truths making just as little impression as those useful truths brought against……..

Thing is, consciousness is already strictly a metaphysical conception, hence necessarily non-physical, from which follows that to ascribe to it the possibility of being an integral brain state in accordance with eliminativism, is contradictory, and upon having attributing to it a theoretical brain-state correlate in accordance with materialism, to then attempt to measure the brain state hypothesized by that correlate, is impossible.

Whatever the material correlate to metaphysical consciousness may be, it isn’t consciousness. And whatever metaphysical conception consciousness may be, it isn’t material.
—————-

Put a guy in a chair, hook him up to some device, tell him to think of something……can you even imagine what kind of machine will immediately display the ‘57 DeSoto the guy picked as his thought? No doubt his own brain can bring up the image, so the constructed device would most likely be something like the brain, in order to display what the brain produced. But we don’t know how the brain presents material correlates, so constructing a device the operation of which is unknown to us insofar as its performance is congruent to the brain’s, is manifestly unintelligible.

Even if that were possible, and say there actually was such a device, guy gets up from the chair, might even be awe-struck….but still can’t properly express why he hates the taste of Lima beans, gets back in the chair, gets hooked up, and the device display should by all accounts remain empty, for the human cannot think anything aesthetically, but only subjectively feel some relevant condition qualitatively satisfied by one of them. The subjective condition in the form of mere feeling, is as much a resident of his consciousness as the bean, yet only one of them can be displayed on a device recording brain states related to human thoughts in particular or thinking in general.

Do you really think, that upon being proven by one of the hard sciences, that all metaphysical entities are in fact demonstrable brain states, you will cease speaking from the first-person perspective? If science proves there’s no such thing as “I”, will you therefrom stop saying, e.g., “I think ‘mericans got their heads up their collective asses when it comes to football!!!”

Even if it is the case the metaphysical entity represented by “I” is in fact a brain state, but there is no awareness of brain state activity as such in human consciousness, then it must be logically true that brain state itself is a metaphysical entity, from which follows necessarily that any display on a constructed external physical measuring device, is also a metaphysical entity, insofar as the intuition of its appearance to the senses merely represents a coexistent representation. The human intellectual system, whatever its named speculative constituency, prohibits any other interpretation of the objectivity outside itself.

Humans think natural law, but humans do not think in terms of natural law. The brain, because it is a natural object, must therefore be thought to operate in terms of natural law in order for a human to understand the possibility of it….and he immediately defeats his own purpose in using one to explain the other.

Your point is nonetheless well-taken.

Quoting Janus

The point I would contend is the idea on either side of the debate that their conclusions are "slam dunk". That idea only shows dogmatism, closed-mindedness.

Good point! Accusations of "dogmatism" and "closed-mindedness" have traditionally been directed toward people of Faith. So, it's ironic that posters on a philosophy forum would display those characteristics in dialogs that can't be proven or dis-proven empirically. For example, Eliminativism requires a closed mind, and Immanentism seems to be based on the dogma of Materialism. Are those "slam dunk" positions signs of faith in the belief system of Scientism? :wink:

Quoting Mww

Thing is, consciousness is already strictly a metaphysical conception, hence necessarily non-physical,

That would be so only on certain question-begging presuppositions.

Reply to Gnomon The point is that neither idealism nor physicalism are, contrary to what their opponents like to suggest, self-refuting. Actually idealism is not usually criticized for being self-refuting, but rather for being explanatorily impotent, implausible or even incoherent in that the only forms of idealism which can serve to explain our everyday experience rely, in order to give an account of how shared experience could be possible, on ideas like God or universal mind or collective mind' ideas which themselves are not able to be satisfactorily conceptually explicated or related to everyday human experience.

Reply to Janus Reply to Gnomon Reply to Mww I stil maintain that an effective (if not 'slam dunk') argument against physicalism is from classical philosophy: that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true. Or, as Lloyd Gerson put it, you could not think if materialism were true.

Quoting Lloyd Gerson, Platonism v Naturalism

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Interpretation - De Anima III.4–5. Here, Aristotle argues that thinking cannot be the act of a bodily organ because the intellect receives forms “without matter,” i.e., as universals; it grasps the idea of the object, which is an intellectual, not a sensory, act. Whereas a bodily organ always perceives specific material thing. But the intellect must be capable of receiving any form whatever, which requires that it be “unmixed” with the body (429a15–b22).

In the act of thinking, the intellect is identified with the form it thinks. Since the form considered as intelligible is not a particular, and no brain-state can be anything other than a particular, the thinking intellect cannot be identical with any material structure. This is why Aristotle says that intellect is “separate,” “impassive,” and “unmixed.”

Gerson is simply stating this classical Aristotelian point: if materialism is true—that all mental acts are particular physical states—then universal thought would be impossible, and without it, you could not think. But universal thought occurs. Therefore materialism cannot give an adequate account of thought.

Edward Feser amplifies the point:

Quoting Edward Feser

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser makes the same point in contemporary terms: a mental image of a triangle will always be of one specific triangle (isosceles, oriented, coloured, etc.), whereas the concept of triangularity is perfectly determinate, universal, and shareable among many minds. Because the object of intellection is universal, and because thought consists in the mind’s identity with that universal form, no physical state—necessarily a particular—can be identical to an act of understanding.

And from Bertrand Russell:

Quoting Betrand Russell, The World of Universals

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ... In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.

Of course, the nominalist objection will be that there is no universal 'triangle', only particular triangles, which we can see resemble each other. But that objection fails because it can't explain what it appeals to. A mental image or sensory perception is always specific: coloured, sized, oriented, isosceles or scalene, etc. But the concept of triangularity is exact, universal, and common to all minds. No image captures this, and no neural configuration can be identical with something that applies to indefinitely many images. Moreover, nominalism presupposes the very universals it denies: similarity, classification, identity of meaning, and the laws of logic are themselves universals. Without universals, no two thinkers could ever mean the same thing, no inference could be valid beyond the moment, and mathematics would be impossible. This is why the Aristotelian argument stands: the universal content of thought cannot be reduced to any particular material state, and a materialist–nominalist account cannot explain the phenomenon it tries to deny, as any explanation will implicitly rely on the very universal categories of thought which nominalism insists are unreal.

Reply to Gnomon This is the sense in which the mind “constructs” or “creates” the cosmos: not as an external agent shaping an independent material realm, but as the ongoing process of perception, interpretation, and conceptual synthesis that yields our experience of a coherent, ordered world — which is precisely what kosmos meant. The Buddha’s teaching that “within this fathom-long body, with its perception and intellect, is the cosmos, its origin, its cessation, and the path to its cessation” (AN 4.45) is making the same point: the world-as-lived, the meaningful, structured world of experience, is constituted through the operations of cognition. This is not solipsism, nor the denial of an external world, but an insistence that the world we inhabit is inseparable from the activity of consciousness that renders it intelligible. And that, of course, is the bridge to both phenomenology and enactive cognition.

.Quoting Mww

Whatever the material correlate to metaphysical consciousness may be, it isn’t consciousness. And whatever metaphysical conception consciousness may be, it isn’t material.

The philosophy of consciousness has always circled around a central mystery. But empirical science was supposed to dispel those ancient enigmas with indisputable "hard" evidence. For example, Newtonian physics provided mundane explanations for celestial pattern puzzles that had entranced imaginative naked-eye sky-gazers for millennia. The evidence was direct observation, aided by vision-enhancing technology, and vetted by mathematical logic.

Suddenly, certainty about star-gods! But then, Quantum physics came along and muddied Newton's math with Uncertainty. An article in Oct/Nov 2025 issue of Philosophy Now magazine discusses the ramifications of that scientific set-back to an era when science & superstition were often indistinguishable.

Quantum Physics and Indian Philosophy, by Kumar & Varshney, looks at reality from both perspectives, and sees the same now & then parallels that spawned Fitjof Capra's 1975 book, The Tao of Physics. An important lesson from such unorthodox approaches to Science is that the broader context is important : Holism. After millennia of searching for the fundamental Atom of Reality, physicists were appalled to find that the notion of a hard bottom to the material world was an illusion : Maya.

So scientists turned their attention from bits of matter, to bits of information, and to unbounded timeless universal Fields of Potential*1 . Only to find that ancient cow worshipers got there before them : "Ultimate reality (Brahman) is infinite, eternal, and beyond time, space, or change, has no shape or qualities, and is the source of everything."*2 Where does Consciousness fit into Newton's model of space & time, or to Einstein's remodel of space-time? Does the big C exist in time, and occupy space?

The PN article also notes the "tendency toward romanticization --- when for instance it's claimed that ancient Indian sages anticipated quantum ideas"*2. Likewise, those who speculate on threads like this may be accused of a propensity for Spiritualization. :smile:


*1. Cosmic Field of Potential :
Physicists and cosmologists call this divine source the Unified Field. In a profound sense, Brahman (the Vedantic concept) and the Unified Field of physics appear to be synonymous.
https://www.hinduhumanrights.info/quantum-physics-and-vedic-unified-consciousness/

*2. Quantum Physics & Indian Philosophy :
both disciplines challenge the classical notion of an objective, observer-independent reality, and elevate the role of the observer.
Philosophy Now magazine

Quoting Wayfarer

that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true.

I see no reason to believe that. Perhaps you are working with a redundant model of material as 'mindless substance'. If material in all its forms were nothing but mindless substance, then of course it would follow by mere definition that conscious material is impossible. But that is specifically the "question-begging presumption" I was referring to.

Quoting Janus

I see no reason to believe that.

Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell? Or is it just 'what you reckon'?

Quoting Janus

?Gnomon
The point is that neither idealism nor physicalism are, contrary to what their opponents like to suggest, self-refuting. Actually idealism is not usually criticized for being self-refuting, but rather for being explanatorily impotent, implausible or even incoherent in that the only forms of idealism which can serve to explain our everyday experience rely, in order to give an account of how shared experience could be possible, on ideas like God or universal mind or collective mind' ideas which themselves are not able to be satisfactorily conceptually explicated or related to everyday human experience.

Yes. The difference between modern Philosophy and modern Science lies in their explanatory means & methods : the exploring mind of the Natural Philosopher can go beyond the space-time bounds of the material world, and the self-imposed limits of Scientism. But, when conjectures become dogma and speculations become scripture, an open-mind line has been crossed. Besides, even "space-time" and "fabric of reality" are ideal, not real. :wink:

Note 1 --- Idealism and related philosophies, may be impotent to explain immaterial ideas in material terms. Yet religious beliefs have the power to explain "shared experiences" in terms of feelings. And philosophical conjectures are judged, not on material evidence, or scientific orthodoxy, but on Logical Potency.

Note 2 --- Another poster, who will remain unnamed, rejects Ideal Philosophical theories (e.g. Brahman, Forms, First Cause, Plenum, Mind) in favor of "Real" Scientific terms (e.g. Gravity Fields, Virtual Particles, Vacuum Energy, Neural Network). Even the notion of Aether has been resurrected to label such invisible intangible non-things as Dark Matter & Dark Energy. None of which has any concrete material evidence, only abstract immaterial theories about patterns & relations, not objects*1. Do you think exclusion of philosphical terminology is appropriate on a philosophy forum?


*1. In science, "field" and "virtual" are abstract or mathematical concepts used to describe physical phenomena and interactions, the nature of which blurs traditional lines between "material" and "immaterial"
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=virtual+particles

Quoting Gnomon

... "Ultimate reality (Brahman) is infinite, eternal, and beyond time, space, or change, has no shape or qualities, and is the source of everything" ...

... this speculation is indistinguishable from ancient (Vedic, Greek) atomists' void¹ or quantum vacuum of contemporary fundamental physics (wherein "classical swirling-swerving atoms" are far more precisely described as virtual particles (i.e. planck events)) :wink:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/ [1]

Quoting Wayfarer

Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell?

Sure, mate, eezy peezy – (In addition to what @Janus says) their primary assumption, in effect, conflates, or equates, abstract (map-making) and concrete (territory) which is a reification fallacy (e.g. "Platonic Forms") and renders their arguments invalid. :clap:

Reply to 180 Proof :rofl:

Reply to Wayfarer You're welcome.

Reply to 180 Proof The “map vs. territory” distinction isn’t what’s at issue.
The argument from Aristotle through Russell is about the conditions of intelligibility that make any map–territory distinction possible in the first place — universals, logical form, meaning. These aren’t maps; but they’re not parts of the physical territory either. They’re what both map and territory presuppose. If you want to challenge that, you need to address the argument, not just repeat slogans.

Reply to Wayfarer Consider this article concerning findings on (in my words) 'the materiality of thinking' presented by a distinguished MIT researcher at a recent neuroscience conference:

https://picower.mit.edu/news/brain-waves-analog-organization-cortex-enables-cognition-and-consciousness-mit-professor

Reply to 180 Proof Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking is — because the very act of interpreting neural data requires the conceptual structures (universals, logical form, mathematical norms) that the brain-waves theory is supposed to explain. You cannot use “if… then…” reasoning to argue that reasoning is nothing but brain waves, because the argument presupposes the very universality that oscillations cannot provide. You can't see those mental operations 'from the outside', so to speak, as you're already drawing on them to conduct the research that the findings rely on. 'The eye cannot see itself'.

Quoting Wayfarer

Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking is —

– and neither can idealism, subjectivism, spiritualism nor any other woo.

Reply to 180 Proof C’mon 180. Bertrand Russell and Lloyd Gerson. Middle-of-the-road classical philosophy.

Quoting Wayfarer

This is the sense in which the mind “constructs” or “creates” the cosmos: not as an external agent shaping an independent material realm, but as the ongoing process of perception, interpretation, and conceptual synthesis that yields our experience of a coherent, ordered world — which is precisely what kosmos meant.

Yes. I use the term Universe in reference to the expanding evolving ball of matter & energy that somehow formed a safe haven for us living beings. But the term Cosmos is a more philosophical concept that emphasizes the laws that organized an explosion of Matter into the evolution of Mind.

Philosophically, the Cosmos is not a material object, but a human-mind-constructed concept about the material world we inhabit, and which we find to be mostly understandable by applied Reason (science) : a well-ordered whole system. And as Plato illustrated, philosophers can't just take it for granted, but insist on asking "why?" and "whence?".

Taken together, those curious questions seem to infer & imply a non-human-non-local Mind that designed the process and the system. But this thread asks the question : is that Cosmic Mind currently beaming ideas into our heads, in a mysterious manner that allows us to naively believe that we are thinking for ourselves. I can accept the notion of hands-off creator-programmer-observer, but not one who deceives its creatures, and uses them as mechanical robots. :worry:

Quoting Wayfarer

... the world-as-lived, the meaningful, structured world of experience, is constituted through the operations of cognition [ ... ] the world we inhabit is inseparable from [enables-constrains] the [s]activity of consciousness[/s] [discursive practices] that renders it [s]intelligible[/s] [explicable / computational].

I.e. ecological-embodied metacognition ...

Quoting Gnomon

I can accept [without a shred of evidence] the notion of hands-off creator-programmer-observer [that doesn't explain anything] ...

:roll:

Quoting Wayfarer

This is not solipsism, nor the denial of an external world, but an insistence that the world we inhabit is inseparable from the activity of consciousness that renders it intelligible. And that, of course, is the bridge to both phenomenology and enactive cognition.

If you mean this literally, it's absurd because it assumes the actual, external world depends on (human?) consciousness. If you believe that, I doubt you could provide a reasonable justification for that belief.

It would not be absurd to say the world as we perceive and understand it is inseparable from our consciousness. Although it's trivial.

It seems to me that the limits you assume to our abilities to understand the external world makes your position self-defeating: it implies that our knowlwdge of the world is too limited to judge that it's too limited.

Quoting 180 Proof

I.e. ecological-embodied metacognition ...

It is ecological-embodied metacognition. But in enactivism, it is more than 'discursive practices' i.e. verbal behaviours. It goes 'all the way down' into pre-verbal and primitive cognition - the organism 'brings forth' the environment as much as vice versa. And the aim is not to explain but to navigate and to thrive.

For instance, from Varela-Thompson-Rosch, Embodied Mind:

“The enactive approach does not seek to reduce mind to the mechanisms of biology but rather to show the continuity of mind and life as forms of autonomous, sense-making activity.”'

and

“Objectivism commits a category mistake: it treats the world disclosed through our embodied coping as if it were an observer-independent reality ‘out there’.”

They also refer to Buddhist philosophy in this respect:

"Mind and world arise together in mutual specification.”
“There is no mind without world and no world without mind.”

Also from Merleau Ponty: 'The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects.'

Quoting Relativist

If you mean this literally, it's absurd because it assumes the actual, external world depends on (human?) consciousness.

You’re interpreting a transcendental argument as if it were a metaphysical claim. I’m not saying that mountains, stars, or dinosaurs depended on human consciousness to exist. That really would be absurd.

My point is that the actual world is never given “as it is in itself,” but only as disclosed through the structures of perception, embodiment, and understanding that are the conditions for any intelligible world at all.

This is not denying an external reality. It denies that we can meaningfully speak of a “mind-independent world” in the strong sense— i.e., a world that would exist in the way we understand it to exist even in the absence of any standpoint, any cognitive frame, any lived perspective.

That stronger claim is the hidden metaphysics of naturalism.

What naturalism calls “observer-independent states of affairs” isn’t a discovery about the world; it’s an idealization, a projection that abstracts away precisely the conditions that make any disclosure of a world possible.

Philosophy can inquire into what lies beyond the limits of objectivity in a way science cannot.

Quoting Wayfarer

... not denying an external reality.

Good.

It denies that we can meaningfully speak of a “mind-independent world” in the strong sense— i.e., a world that would exist in the way we understand it to exist even in the absence of any standpoint, any cognitive frame, any lived perspective.

So explain what objective difference this subjective distinction makes.

Philosophy can inquire into what lies beyond the limits of objectivity in a way science cannot.

What does "limits of objectivity" mean? Of course "science cannot" investigate non-phenomena (e.g. metaphysical fiats).

Quoting Wayfarer

My point is that the actual world is never given “as it is in itself,” but only as disclosed through the structures of perception, embodiment, and understanding that are the conditions for any intelligible world at all.

But acknowlegement of the fact that we are dependent on our cognitive structure leads to no additional insights about the world: it's impossible to escape our inherent perspective.

More importantly, it doesn't imply that our human-centric understandings are false. In fact, if we don't accept the truth of our human-centric understandings, then we have no means of advancing knowledge about the world.

Quoting Wayfarer

Philosophy can inquire into what lies beyond the limits of objectivity in a way science cannot.

Philosophy is still being done by humans, so the same limitations apply: you aren't going to get closer to understanding the world "as it is" this way.

More importantly: science produces justified beliefs about the world. What justified beliefs can be produced by these philosophical inquiries? It appears to me to do no more than generate possibilities.

Quoting Relativist

But acknowlegement of the fact that we are dependent on our cognitive structure leads to no additional insights about the world: it's impossible to escape our inherent perspective.

If you want a scientific context for the point I’m making, consider the most famous scientific dispute of the 20th century - the Einstein-Bohr debate.

The reason Einstein objected to the Copenhagen scientist's interpreration of quantum physics was because it challenged his assumption that physics describes a world “as it is in itself,” independent of observation. He said "I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance", and "I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."

But Bohr (and Heisenberg, and Pauli) were not fringe thinkers, and they explicitly argued that physical quantities have no definite value prior to measurement, that the observing apparatus is inseparable from the observed phenomenon, and that descriptions of nature are constrained by the conditions of observation. That, in other words, that at the most fundamental level of reality, we're not seeing what is truly there when unobserved, and that furthermore, we may not even be able to say what it is (which was Bohr's view.)

And quantum experiments have continuously reinforced that point. Most recently, the 2022 Nobel Prize confirmed the empirical consequences of Bell’s theorem — precisely the kind of nonclassical correlations that Einstein derided as “spooky action at a distance.”

So when you say that my view implies “we can’t get the world as it is,” or that recognising our cognitive structure gives “no additional insight,” that’s simply out of step with the scientific history. The 20th century forced physics itself to confront the limits of the classical, observer-independent picture of the world. You can disagree with Copenhagen, but you can’t say the issue isn’t philosophically significant — physicists have spent decades wrestling with it (and it is still the predominant attitude).

Quoting Relativist

More importantly: science produces justified beliefs about the world. What justified beliefs can be produced by these philosophical inquiries? It appears to me to do no more than generate possibilities.

Science doesn’t “produce beliefs.” It produces models that organise and validate observations within a conceptual framework. But it does not — and cannot — investigate the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible. That is where philosophical analysis is indispensable. Not everything about human existence, or about the structure of experience, is amenable to empirical methods — and ignoring that doesn’t make the questions go away.

Law without Law, John Wheeler: The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of the experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation. In contrast, Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it gives us. In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word "phenomenon". In today's words, Bohr's point - and the central point of quantum theory - can be put into a simple sentence: "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon".

It’s also worth noting the growing debate—both in physics and in philosophy of physics—about whether time and space themselves exist independently of measurement. Einstein always insisted they must: spacetime, for him, was the objective arena within which events unfold, regardless of whether anyone observes them. But in their famous 1922 debate, the philosopher Henri Bergson challenged this directly. Bergson argued that the very meaning of time depends on duration, and duration is something only a conscious observer can bring. Without the lived sense of temporal flow, “time” collapses into abstract coordinate labels on a graph.

This tension hasn’t gone away. Contemporary discussions about emergent spacetime, relational quantum mechanics, and the observer-dependence of temporal order show that Bergson’s challenge still resonates. The issue isn’t whether clocks tick; it’s whether clock-time exhausts what time is.

Clock Time contra Lived Time (Aeon);https://aeon.co/essays/who-really-won-when-bergson-and-einstein-debated-time:To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do.

Quoting Wayfarer

whether time and space themselves exist independently of measurement

Just to make clear, it isn’t space and time that is measured, so by this I understand you to mean measurement in general. I’m maybe over-thinking it.

Quoting Wayfarer

So when you say that my view implies “we can’t get the world as it is,” or that recognising our cognitive structure gives “no additional insight,” that’s simply out of step with the scientific history.

It was you who said:
Quoting Wayfarer

My point is that the actual world is never given “as it is in itself,” but only as disclosed through the structures of perception, embodiment, and understanding that are the conditions for any intelligible world at all.

And you seem somewhat dismissive of science, and yet you're now suggesting that science can indeed give us some insight into "the world as it is".

My position is that science is our best means of learning information about the world as it is, because the alternative (philosophical speculation untethered to empirical data) cannot produce justified beliefs.

My view on the role of our sensory/cognitive framework is that it's not really an impediment (as you seem to suggest) but the explanations (of the world as it is) developed by science will necessarily be expressed in human terms, and that's not the least problematic -understanding by humans is necessarily going to be in human terms.

By contrast, you have been dismissive even of Ontic Structural Realism- which makes the modest claim that successful science provides some true information about reality.

So when you say that my view implies “we can’t get the world as it is,” or that recognising our cognitive structure gives “no additional insight,” that’s simply out of step with the scientific history. The 20th century forced physics itself to confront the limits of the classical, observer-independent picture of the world. You can disagree with Copenhagen, but you can’t say the issue isn’t philosophically significant — physicists have spent decades wrestling with it (and it is still the predominant attitude).

SCIENCE identified an aspect of reality that is counter-intuitive, based on measurements - not on detached philosophizing. It was able to do this DESPITE the limitations of our sensory-cognitive structure and perspective that you focus on. There is no viable alternative. Aristotle could have philosophized for thousands of years, and he would never have developed the insight that empirical science has given us.

There is, of course "philosophizing" in science, but it is philosophizing on explanations for empirical data, a means of generating testable hypotheses. The various interpretations of QM aren't testable hypotheses, and does establish a limit to what we can justifiably know about the world- but it's a boundary that's been reached through science, not by untethered philosophizing.

Quoting Wayfarer

Science doesn’t “produce beliefs.” It produces models that organise and validate observations within a conceptual framework...

Science does produce beliefs: scientific facts that are grasped and accepted by an individual are beliefs that the person holds. These resulting beliefs are better justified than philosophical speculations that produce a myriad of mutually exclusive possibilities:

But it does not — and cannot — investigate the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible. That is where philosophical analysis is indispensable. Not everything about human existence, or about the structure of experience, is amenable to empirical methods — and ignoring that doesn’t make the questions go away.

Identify something you believe about "the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible", and provide your justification for believing it.

Reply to Relativist :100: :up:

Reply to Relativist Excellent argument. But it will be ignored. :grin:

Quoting Relativist

because the alternative (philosophical speculation untethered to empirical data) cannot produce justified beliefs.

Is this also true of mathematics?

Reply to Relativist
:up: :up:

Reply to AmadeusD
Maybe not but probably not that relevant to the disagreement.

Quoting AmadeusD

because the alternative (philosophical speculation untethered to empirical data) cannot produce justified beliefs.
— Relativist

Is this also true of mathematics?

Not to pure mathematics. I'm discussing the justified beliefs we can derive about the actual world. Beliefs derived from science have a good justification, whereas beliefs derived from metaphysical speculation seem (to me) unjustified, or only weakly justified. We see lots of philosophical theories tossed around, but I'm not seeing much of a defense of them- other than it being possibly true.

Quoting apokrisis

?Relativist Excellent argument. But it will be ignored.

I had the same thought and had written (but not posted) the following:

Quoting Relativist

But it does not — and cannot — investigate the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible. That is where philosophical analysis is indispensable. Not everything about human existence, or about the structure of experience, is amenable to empirical methods — and ignoring that doesn’t make the questions go away.
—Wayfarer

Identify something you believe about "the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible", and provide your justification for believing it.

I wouldn't expect a response to this. (Although now that I've brought it up as well...)

Reply to Relativist You’re still treating the point I’m making as if it were an empirical claim about the contents of the world — something that could be justified the way a scientific hypothesis is. You invariably defer to the authority of science. But mine isn’t “untethered philosophising”: it’s philosophy. And I’m not dismissive of science; I’m pointing out that this is a philosophy forum, not physics.org (where, incidentally, philosophical questions about physics are often deleted by moderators). Yet whenever a philosophical question is raised here, you immediately transpose it into a scientific register and then fault it for not producing scientific evidence. That simply begs the question

Quoting Relativist

Science does produce beliefs: scientific facts that are grasped and accepted by an individual are beliefs that the person holds.

Scientific facts are not matters of belief. If you know something to be factually true, then belief is superfluous. “Belief” becomes relevant only where we are dealing with matters that science cannot settle: questions of meaning, interpretation, value, and conceptual understanding. That is precisely why, even in the most rigorously empirical of sciences — quantum physics — there are enduring and unresolved controversies over how to understand the theory. Everyone agrees on the equations and the experimental results; what is disputed is their meaning. If your view were correct, these interpretive disagreements could be resolved simply by “consulting the science.” But they can’t be — because the science gives us the data and the mathematical formalism, not the framework for interpreting what the data mean.

Quoting Relativist

These resulting beliefs are better justified than philosophical speculations that produce a myriad of mutually exclusive, possibilities:

Such as? Tell me what is "speculative" about this kind of observation:

Edward Feser:Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Nothing in this argument is speculative. It is critical. These points are pre-scientific in the strict sense: they concern the capacities presupposed by scientific reasoning itself. To grasp that a geometrical construction is valid, or to reason inferentially from data to theory, you must already possess the conceptual capacities the argument is describing. Scientific method does not generate those capacities, and cannot analyse them into "neural firings" without presupposing exactly what it seeks to explain.

As Kant put it, empirical reasoning is only possible because the mind already brings certain forms and concepts to bear on experience.

The point of this example — and the others I’ve given — is simple:

Concepts are real, but not material.
They can only be grasped by a rational intelligence.
They do not exist as physical particulars or “states of affairs” in the world.
Yet science would be impossible without them.

This is the level at which philosophy operates.

Reply to apokrisis
Reply to wonderer1

Quoting Mww

Just to make clear, it isn’t space and time that is measured, so by this I understand you to mean measurement in general. I’m maybe over-thinking it.

But don’t rulers measure space, and clocks time?

Reply to Wayfarer

With the trove of usual antagonists in line, you take time for me. How cool is that?

But….no, they don’t. And I think you already knew what I would say.

Quoting Wayfarer

Concepts are real, but not material.

Only to the extent "concepts" are instantiable in the material (contra Plato et al) are they "real" and useful for living (i.e. phronesis), otherwise non-instantiable concepts (aka "pure reason") are, at best, idle fictions.

Reply to 180 Proof Saying they are “immanent” does not reduce them to material particulars. Aristotle’s forms are not products of material processes; they are the preconditions for there being any particular thing at all. They are real as structures of intelligibility, not as material objects. The reality of triangles is not dependent on there being physical triangles — just as the reality of numbers, ratios, limits, and functions is not conditional on physical instantiation. Almost the entirety of pure mathematics would otherwise collapse into “idle fiction,” which is a reductio of your position, not mine.

Quoting Mww

And I think you already knew what I would say.

I still don't quite get it. My thoughts on it are that time and space are meaningless without there being a perspective. And perspective can only be provided by an observer. I think that goes back to the Transcendental Aesthetic.

Quoting Wayfarer

Saying they are “immanent”

:roll: Instantiated, I wrote, not "immanent". Anyway, Wayf, your quarrel regarding the ontology of abstractions (e.g. concepts) begins with Kant(ians) ...

Reply to Wayfarer
I confess I don't understand the point of the exegesis on triangulation. I'm uncertain just what an imperfect triangle might be. My guess, however, is that it isn't a triangle. In which case a "perfect" triangle is, simply, a triangle. It should be unsurprising that when we think about a triangle, we think about a triangle. It's difficult to ascribe much significance to this fact. But it seems some do and I wonder why.

We know how "triangle" is defined. We've seen triangles. I'm reasonably certain I didn't know what a triangle was until I saw one and was told it was called a triangle. On what basis, then, do we maintain that a triangle is a form or concept our minds "bring" to experience (assuming for the sake of argument our minds are separate from experience)?

Quoting Wayfarer

My thoughts on it are that time and space are meaningless without there being a perspective. And perspective can only be provided by an observer.

Sure, I agree with that. But rulers measure relative distance (not space) and clocks measure relative duration (not time). This is not all that can be said of space and time, but it is, with respect to rulers and clocks. And I rather think it is the “relative” that concerns perspective/observer.

Guess I was over-thinking it. Sorry.

Quoting Ciceronianus

I confess I don't understand the point of the exegesis on triangulation. I'm uncertain just what an imperfect triangle might be. My guess, however, is that it isn't a triangle. In which case a "perfect" triangle is, simply, a triangle. It should be unsurprising that when we think about a triangle, we think about a triangle. It's difficult to ascribe much significance to this fact. But it seems some do and I wonder why?

You’re able to grasp the concept of a triangle — “a flat plane bounded by three intersecting straight lines” — because you possess a rational intelligence capable of understanding what the word means. That capacity is fundamental to language and to rational thought itself.

It’s easy to take this for granted because you and I both possess it: the ability to apprehend abstract, intelligible forms. The triangle is merely a simple example. The same point applies to any number of concepts, principles, and relations that H. sapiens can grasp thanks to its fantastically elaborated forebrain.

Why does this matter? Because without universals, you can’t explain how any rule-governed thought is possible. You can’t explain how different people can understand the same concept, or why a mathematical truth holds regardless of who considers it, or how we recognise something as falling under a shared description. And, crucially, you can’t explain how we move from particular things to general claims — which is what every argument requires.

(And if that sounds like neural reductionism, it isn’t. You won’t find any of these forms or principles in neural data. The brain enables the grasp of concepts, but the concepts themselves aren’t hiding in the folds of the cortex. The way I think of it is that h.sapiens evolved to the point of being able to grasp universals, which affords them – us – with a capacity to grasp universal truths. I think this capacity is usually either assumed, explained away, or ignored. See Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism, Parts II - III.)

Reply to Mww :ok:

Reply to Relativist Quoting apokrisis

Excellent argument. But it will be ignored. :grin:

It is an excellent argument and it will be ignored?when confirmation bias is that strong it becomes impenetrable.

As the adage, apparently misattributed to Mark Twain has it: "Never argue with stupid people?they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience".

Quoting Janus

it will be ignored

It was, in fact, addressed, point by point - but there's no use explaining that to someone who is not prepared to reckon with it. Hence Twain's adage, very suitable in the context.

Quoting wonderer1

Identify something you believe about "the preconditions that make observation, measurement, and intelligibility possible", and provide your justification for believing it.
— Relativist

I wouldn't expect a response to this.

And the response was - in case it went past you - that the precondition is the capacity to grasp rational concepts, which is not something that needs to be explained in scientific terms, but without which there could be no scientific understanding.

Curious that it was said that I would likely ignore relativist's challenges, but then when I answer them, the response is ignored. Who is ignoring what, exactly?

Reply to Gnomon I have no problem with philosophical speculation. It operates in science in the form of abductive reasoning. The point is that it should be underwritten by science, if we are speculating about the nature of things. For ethics and aesthetics it might be a different matter?science may not have much to tell us in those domains.

How things such as matter, mind or consciousness intuitively seem (the province of phenomenology) which is determined by reflection on experience, tells us only about how we, prior to any scientific investigation, might imagine that these things are. That may have its own value in understanding the evolution of human understanding, but it tells us nothing about how the world things really are.

So I was responding to the dogmatic assertion that "linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true". I reject that as dogma because it assumes that the material world is purely a "billiard ball" world of mindless atoms in the void..

Quoting Relativist

I'm discussing the justified beliefs we can derive about the actual world. Beliefs derived from science have a good justification, whereas beliefs derived from metaphysical speculation seem (to me) unjustified, or only weakly justified. We see lots of philosophical theories tossed around, but I'm not seeing much of a defense of them- other than it being possibly true.

The bolded appears to rely on the italicised. That appears quite problematic to me, and likely what Wayfarer is getting at, i think. But you are patently correct, prima facie.

Quoting AmadeusD

The bolded appears to rely on the italicised. That appears quite problematic to me, and likely what Wayfarer is getting at, i think. But you are patently correct, prima facie.

Why is it problematic that metaphysical speculations should be based on something other than merely the imagination, scriptural authority, the supposed authority of the ancients or mystical experiences and reports?

Reply to Janus What? I have literally no clue what you're talking about. I'll try to just clarify what I was saying in hopes that's made-sense-of.

What I am pointing out is that the bolded in that quote relies explicitly on the metaphysical/philosophical theories underlying the scientific method, reportage standards (like peer-review and all the problems that go with it including replication issues) and empirical observation-as-infallible thinking. Again, prima facie, its patently correct that measuring the rainfall and explaining clouds on that basis is a better-justified method for forming beliefs about the clouds than inferring that there's an angry man pissing from the sky.

I am simply saying this is not without shaky foundations. We do not start with observation. We start with ourselves and can only carry out observations we're going to later take as gospel (excuse the religious language) on the basis that we believe our perceptual, recall and output systems are, at least practically speaking, not fallible in any major ways. These are things science cannot give us an answer to. Wayf seems to be much more intently, and explicitly exploring that problem.

This doesn't seem to even be outside the realm of scientific: our perceptual system is not direct observation, and neither are our experiments because we are not the data. We interpret it. Our science tells us this. Oh, but that's recursive... so... yeah. We're kind of stuck conceptually and "do our best". Hence, prima facie, correct.

An interesting thing to note is that when I argue for Indirect Realism, i am given arguments about how science can't prove our perception is indirect if we are IRists(this comes in response to the next claim i am about to make..).
But that is exactly what science tells us about our perceptual system - so either my above notions are correct and IR can hold despite this failure of science to answer a fundamental issue, or we can trust the science anyway and accept Indirect realism on that basis.
Not the only options, but in criticisms laid on me for the IR position, this comes up. Bit of a stalemate.

Quoting AmadeusD

I am simply saying this is not without shaky foundations. We do not start with observation. We start with ourselves and can only carry out observations on the basis that we think our perceptual, recall and output systems are, at least practically speaking, not fallible in any major ways. These are things science cannot give us an answer to.

Science doesn't presuppose that our observations are infallible?hence the importance of peer review. All we have to work with are our perceptual and recall systems. I'm not sure what you meant by "output" systems.

Anyway science is fallibilistic through and through, and our fallible perceptions and memories are all we have to work with. You might say this is problematic if you demand certainty, but otherwise it is just the human condition, and I don't think the fallibility of science is as great as the fallibility (in the sense of being subject to illusion) of scriptural authority, mystical experience and the rest..

Anyway it looks I misunderstood you to be saying that science is not a better foundation from which to speculate metaphysically than imagination and the other things I mentioned.

Reply to Janus Fair response all round, thank you.

Quoting Janus

I'm not sure what you meant by "output" systems.

How we convey scientific information. This could be how technical writing works, how semantics work in relation to experiments and their results, or it could mean how we teach different levels of student (tropey: in your last year of high school it is common to be told "we've taught you wrong for years for practical reasons. Now you're going to learn the real stuff". All have pitfalls, obstacles to accuracy etc.. etc.. etc..

Quoting Janus

I don't think the fallibility of science is as great as the fallibility (in the sense of being subject to illusion) of scriptural authority, mystical experience and the rest..

I agree here, but I think plenty of philosophical thinking about non-scientific matters can produce robust beliefs. "X is good" can be extremely well justified philosophically. The break-down is going to be roughly in the same place as with science: human perception. On observational matters, I can't even get my abstract argument off the ground :sweat:

Quoting Janus

that science is not a better foundation from which to speculate metaphysically than imagination and the other things I mentioned

This is a bit of a goal-post move imo. I'm unsure that science is the best way to formulate beliefs about non-empirical matters. I'm unsure how it would have a leg up. It tends not to wade into those waters.

Reply to AmadeusD

Positivism is a philosophical approach that argues all genuine knowledge is based on scientific observation and sensory experience. It rejects metaphysical speculation, religious faith, and other forms of "knowing", asserting that truth is found only
in verifiable, empirical facts.

A lot of people hold to a basically positivist attitude although they’ll generally deny it if it’s called. out

Quoting AmadeusD

This is a bit of a goal-post move imo. I'm unsure that science is the best way to formulate beliefs about non-empirical matters. I'm unsure how it would have a leg up. It tends not to wade into those waters.

As I said I don't believe science is always the best source to rely on in formulating beliefs about non-empirical matters such as ethics and aesthetics. I think we do have real non-science-based understandings of the human condition in general. Such understanding is exemplified in literature, novels and poetry, for example. I don't take issue with interpretations of mystical and religious experiences, provided they are acknowledged to be subjective interpretations. If religious interpretations are not acknowledged to be subjective then the road to fundamentalism opens up. And I would say the same about political ideologies.

Demonstrable truth is only to be found in logic and mathematics and to a lesser extent in science. I think people often conflate the observational and theoretical dimensions of science. We never can confirm with certainty that scientific theories are true, but observations can be confirmed by peer review. Scientific facts consist in what has been confirmed to be reliably observed. There are many scientific facts which we have no hope of observing ourselves, but I think it right to trust that the peer review process has determined which observations can be relied upon to be correct. That said, nothing about human knowledge is infallible.

Quoting Wayfarer

Scientific facts are not matters of belief. If you know something to be factually true, then belief is superfluous.

Then you don't understand what a belief is. In the strictest sense of the term, "knowledge" is true, adequately justified belief ("adequate" = sufficient to not be merely accidentally true). It's debatable whether or not scientific facts constitute "knowledge" in the strict sense, which is why I'm merely asking for a belief + its justification - something to raise it above mere possibility (I don't insist on knowledge).

Quoting Wayfarer

You’re still treating the point I’m making as if it were an empirical claim about the contents of the world — something that could be justified the way a scientific hypothesis is.

Then you misunderstand. I was simply asking what positive claims you can make about the structure and/or contents of the world other than scientific facts, and how you can justify the claim. You do make one in your reply, specifically about universals. I'll get to this shortly.

Quoting Wayfarer

You invariably defer to the authority of science. But mine isn’t “untethered philosophising”: it’s philosophy.

What I've said about science is that it produces justified beliefs about the world. Indeed, scientific "facts" are justified based on empiricism and abductive reasoning. It's interesting that you seem to treat scientific facts as something more than "beliefs". Although this suggests you misunderstand the term, "belief", it also implies that you indeed have a high regard for the understanding of the world that we have developed through science.

But I must stress that I have not made the claim of scientism, that science alone can produce justified beliefs about the world. I grant that there are aspects of the world that can be understood, and justifiably believed, independently of science. But this seems limited to fundamental concepts like universals, not to fuller metaphysical theories, not a comprehensive metaphysical theory, or even a theory of mind. Here's where you've only given me possibilities and negative facts, not justified beliefs.

Wayfarer:Relativist: "Science can't establish which interpretation of QM is correct, but neither can philosphizing. What I object to is trying to justify belief in some metaphysical claim on the basis that it fits one particular interpretation. These resulting beliefs are better justified than philosophical speculations that produce a myriad of mutually exclusive, possibilities"


Such as?

Such as the myriad of possibilities which derive from the negative fact that reductive physicalism has an explanatory gap associated with consciousness.

Quoting Wayfarer

Nothing in [Feser's] argument is speculative. It is critical

He is making a case for the reality of universals - justifying believing these exist. That's reasonable. It's also consistent with physicalism. It's a basic aspect of reality that we largely agree about. I'm looking for justification for claims you make that we disagree about.

Quoting Wayfarer

Everyone agrees on the equations and the experimental results [of QM]; what is disputed is their meaning. If your view were correct, these interpretive disagreements could be resolved simply by “consulting the science.”

Wrong again. I have never suggested that science can answer all questions. I also addressed this point explicitly in my last post when I said: "The various interpretations of QM aren't testable hypotheses, and does establish a limit to what we can justifiably know about the world- but it's a boundary that's been reached through science, not by untethered philosophizing."

Quoting Wayfarer

Concepts are real, but not material.
They can only be grasped by a rational intelligence.
They do not exist as physical particulars or “states of affairs” in the world.
Yet science would be impossible without them.

So what? You still accept scientific facts as true. You haven't suggested making any alteration, nor specific addition, to the set of (science based) beliefs about the world as a consequence of this insight. Instead, you just restate the same thing, about the role of our sensory/cognitive framework in developing these true, physical facts about the world. Other than being an interesting factoid that is folly to ignore, you haven't inferred any additional insights from it - not insights that can constitute justified beliefs. My impression is that you infer from this that reductive physicalism is false (a hasty judgement, IMO), but I haven't seen you defend some alternative.

Quoting Relativist

You haven't suggested making any alteration, nor specific addition, to the set of (science based) beliefs about the world as a consequence of this insight. Instead, you just restate the same thing, about the role of our sensory/cognitive framework in developing these true, physical facts about the world. Other than being an interesting factoid that is folly to ignore, you haven't inferred any additional insights from it - not insights that can constitute justified beliefs

Yes, I distinguish between factual knowledge and beliefs (justified or otherwise). No, I am not “opposed to science,” nor do I neglect the findings of science. What I am critical of is the appeal to science as the authoritative basis for philosophical justification.

My point about universals is simply that they are real but not physical; as Russell put it, they are not thoughts, but “when known they appear as thoughts.” Their reality is intelligible rather than phenomenal — they can be grasped by a rational mind, but they do not exist as physical particulars or states of affairs.

And recognising the role of the observing mind in the construction of knowledge is not a “factoid.” It is a philosophical insight. It does not produce new empirical claims — it clarifies the conditions that make empirical knowledge possible in the first place. It this seems a commonplace now, it is only because of the contributions of philosophers, such as Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi (and of course Immanuel Kant.) The whole subject of the relation of mind and world, is itself not a scientific one, as it cannot be sufficiently defined so as to constitute a scientific question.

Reply to Wayfarer That's a weird one - I don't see a tension between accepting that metaphysical discussion and lets call it 'moral' discussion can come to 'truths' and science giving us truth 'about' such and such.

I would simply say these non-empirical 'truths' are not concrete, empirical truths (as would be suggested by the two categories diverging at 'science'). Its not possibly to scientifically determine that I am thinking X. But you can be fairly certain of it in the right circumstances by conceptual analysis.

Quoting Relativist

In the strictest sense of the term, "knowledge" is true, adequately justified belief ("adequate" = sufficient to not be merely accidentally true).

This is very much problematic and has been up in the air for a while now. partially because there is no 'strictest sense' of the word knowledge which could be applied consistently.

Reply to Janus I agree with essentially everything here, but I would put a wedge somewhere to put some distance between reliability and the scientific method - not because its rwong, but because its carried out, interpreted and put out by humans. Humans aren't very good at doing things properly.

Quoting AmadeusD

Humans aren't very good at doing things properly.

I agree with you about that. We are fucking up spectacularly when it comes to managing the ecosystem and most of us don't seem to be able to understand that only fools would treat it as an "externality", and yet that is precisely what most economists do.

The so-called hard sciences are the closest thing we have to an investigation that is impartial and open-minded (at least in principle). If scientific method is unreliable, how much more so are those practices, such as religion, which are not based on impartiality at all?

Quoting Janus

If scientific method is unreliable, how much more so are those practices, such as religion, which are not based on impartiality at all?

:fire:

You wonder how they tie their shoes, really, those religious types.

Reply to Wayfarer
Thank you. But I don't see how the fact we possess intelligence indicates that our minds "bring" the form or concept of a triangle, or anything else for that matter, to experience. It merely indicates that we (minds and all) are able to interact with the rest of the world in a way other organisms cannot.

Thanks also for the reference to Maritain. I'm not a fan of Catholic apologists, though.

Quoting Relativist

He (Feser) is making a case for the reality of universals - justifying believing these exist. That's reasonable. It's also consistent with physicalism.

Not according to Edward Feser, it isn't. The universals that he has in mind —geometricity, equality, necessity, logical relations—are not physical, and cannot be described in physical terms. For A-T (Aristotelian-Thomism):

• Universals are forms (ideas, principles), and are real but not material
• They are instantiated by particulars, but cannot be reduced to them.
• Their mode of being is intelligible, not physical
• They are grasped by the intellect, not the senses
• They are the basis for the intelligibility of physical things (by conferring identity)

You may be referring to “universals” in Armstrong’s naturalistic sense, but they are not universals in the Aristotelian (or real!) sense. According to Armstrong:

• Universals are physical properties instantiated in the world
• (colour, mass, charge, spin, fragility, etc.)
• They are wholly located in spacetime
• (not abstract, not non-physical)
• They are identical with physical properties that recur in multiple places
• They are “universals” only in the sense of being repeatable physical features

Armstrong rejects:

• Platonic universals (too abstract)
• Aristotelian forms (too metaphysical)
• Fregean abstracta (non naturalistic)

Armstrong is not a realist about universals in the classical sense at all. He is a nominalist who has scaled up the notion of “repeatable physical properties” (not too far distant from Galileo's primary attributes) and called the result a universal. In effect, he is trying to universalise nominalism.

At issue, is the sense or mode of existence that universals (and other intelligibles) possess, as Betrand Russell also explains:

[hide="Reveal"]Quoting Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. This is, of course, denied by many philosophers, either for Berkeley's reasons or for Kant's. But we have already considered these reasons, and decided that they are inadequate. We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something. ...

We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being.

[/hide]

Note well his distinction 'subsists in' and 'exists'. It is of utmost importance.

Quoting Ciceronianus

Thank you. But I don't see how the fact we possess intelligence indicates that our minds "bring" the form or concept of a triangle, or anything else for that matter, to experience.

You're welcome. But, my dear sir, those elements which the mind brings to experience are precisely what Kant called the a priori conditions of cognition. They are not empirical additions; they are the very capacities that allow us to recognise and classify something as a triangle (or as a cause, an object, a quantity, and so on).

In other words, the mind does not 'inject' triangles into experience — it contributes the conceptual structure that makes “this thing” recognisable as a triangle in the first place, and thus communicable, definable, and held in common with others. It is essential to the mechanisms of meaning.

I also think it would be a slight on Maritain to dismiss him as a mere apologist. Not many on this forum seem to mention him, but his was a towering intellect, also notable for his commitment to Christian humanism, and generally identified with the religious left, in political terms. (And no, I'm not Catholic.)

Quoting Wayfarer

I distinguish between factual knowledge and beliefs

Knowledge of X entails belief of X.

Quoting Wayfarer

What I am critical of is the appeal to science as the authoritative basis for philosophical justification.

Who is defending THAT? I've simply suggested that to hold a rational belief X, that one needs (at minimum) something more than X is possible.

Quoting Wayfarer

And recognising the role of the observing mind in the construction of knowledge is not a “factoid.” It is a philosophical insight. It does not produce new empirical claims — it clarifies the conditions that make empirical knowledge possible in the first place

My question was not "what empirical claims does it lead to?" It was, "what justified beliefs does it lead to?"

If an insight leads to a dead-end, it doesn't seem to have practical significance, except for historical purposes.

Quoting Wayfarer

My point about universals is simply that they are real but not physical; as Russell put it, they are not thoughts, but “when known they appear as thoughts.” Their reality is intelligible rather than phenomenal — they can be grasped by a rational mind, but they do not exist as physical particulars or states of affairs.

We agree that (in some sense) universals exist. My view is that they exist immanently within objects- such as the 90 degree angle that exists between the walls of a room. This 90 degree relation between walls is a universal with no dependency on minds.

I seem to recall you agreeing with this immanent existence, but that you consider the (intra-mind) abstraction the universal. Perhaps you could clarify.

Quoting Relativist

It was, "what justified beliefs does it lead to?"

The justified belief that knowledge cannot be solely objective.

Quoting Relativist

If an insight leads to a dead-end,

Then it's not an insight. But the fact that someone doesn't recognise an insight doesn't mean it's a dead end.

Quoting Relativist

My view is that they exist immanently within objects- such as the 90 degree angle that exists between the walls of a room. This 90 degree relation between walls is a universal with no dependency on minds.

That is what the Russell passage above I posted is about - the relationship 'north of'. It doesn't exist in the same sense that Edinburgh and London exist, even though Edinburgh is north of London. ' There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something. ...'

This is important, don't brush it aside.The reason it's not noticed is because we rely on the mind's ability to discern these relationships, without which we wouldn't be able to form an idea of the world. So that's the sense in which the world is 'mind-dependent' - not going in or out of existence, depending on whether you yourself see it, but because the whole idea of existence depends on the mind's ability to grasp these intelligible relations (which is elaborated in The Mind Created World op). Which we don't see because (as Russell says) they don't exist, they're not 'out there somewhere'. If there's a single insight that empiricism cannot grasp, it is this one and dare I say the apparent inability to grasp it, is an illustrative example.

This is becoming repetitive. If I fail to respond further, it won't be because I'm ignoring anyone's posts, but because they may not be presenting anything that hasn't alreafy been addressed.

Reply to Wayfarer
I'm not sure what you mean by "empirical additions" but the capacities you refer to are, I'd suggest, the result of evolution--as you seemed to acknowledge in an earlier thread--and so are as much a result of our interaction with the rest of the world as are our thumbs (the evolution of which it seems played a role in the development of our intelligence).

So I'd say our capacities, like our thumbs, are the products of experience. They're derived from it. Which wouId suggest that the world created the mind instead of the mind creating the world, if we want to use such language. But I don't think we should treat them as separate in that sense.

Quoting Ciceronianus

I'm not sure what you mean by "empirical additions" but the capacities you refer to are, I'd suggest, the result of evolution--as you seemed to acknowledge in an earlier thread--and so are as much a result of our interaction with the rest of the world as are our thumbs (the evolution of which it seems played a role in the development of our intelligence).

Sure. I would never deny the facts of evolutionary theory, although I often question the significance that is attributed to it. I think if Plato had known what we now know he might have attributed his innate ideas to evolution instead of the soul having been re-born (and in fact Empedocles anticipated the idea of evolution, and even a form of natural selection.) But then, how different are the evolutionary and mythical accouts, really? H.sapiens evolved to the point of being language- and tool-using primates, capable of speech, philosophy, science and much more. As such, members of the species are born with innate capacities which other creatures lack, foremost among them language. To what extent can that be ascribed solely to evolution? Biologically, it can, but at some point, we escape the bonds, and bounds, of biological determination - we realise horizons of being that are not perceptible to other species. Hence the designation of humans as 'the rational animal' (a distinction which the current generation seems to have neglected.) By it, and through it, we are able to 'see' things which other animals cannot. Hence it was referred to in antiquity as 'the eye of reason'.

Quoting Ciceronianus

So I'd say our capacities, like our thumbs, are the products of experience.

It's the customary empiricist argument: look, we learn to count by being exposed to groups of things, and we pick up the idea.

Two points about that. Apes have thumbs, if not opposable thumbs, but no matter how much experience they have, they will not be able to master mathematical concepts (I'm not talking of shape recognition). Second, without the capacity to count, we couldn't recognise numbers in the first place, no matter what kind of experience we have. So I don't think Plato's belief in the innate capacity to reason is invalidated by the facts of evolution.

But I know that the customary sanguine acceptance of the facts of evolution will generally mitigate against mere philosophy.

Reply to Relativist

We see lots of philosophical theories tossed around, but I'm not seeing much of a defense of them- other than it being possibly true.

That [B] is[/B] philosophy, about the possibly true. If it’s verifiably true, that’s science. Philosophy is about coming up with ideas and explanations that [B]might[/B] play a sufficient role in an explanation for something not covered by, or amenable to scientific investigation.

It’s [B]possible[/B] that one explanation of existence is an intelligent source (as opposed to a physical source). I see no reason to reject this possibility out of hand, because it can’t be demonstrated. Because it plays a useful role in further philosophical enquiry. If the entirety of philosophical enquiry is to be bracketed out, because it has shaky empirical foundations, then again we are doing the bracketing out that Wayfarer keeps pointing out.

Let me give an example of what I mean. (This is a rather crude example and I am not equating people who rely on more scientifically based thinking as animals. I am drawing the analogy with animals because they are operating in the physical world without philosophy, they are incapable of philosophising about what they are doing)
Imagine that a colony of ants started doing science, it’s arguable that they have already done this in their small way. They could in theory continue, given favourable circumstances to achieve many of the scientific advances that we have. But they would not be doing any philosophical analysis of what they are doing, they would be doing it out of some kind of physical necessity, rather than curiosity, or philosophical enquiry. It would never occur to them that there is any meaning to be gained, or understood from it. They would be doing it only because it works and fulfills a necessary role in their development, their modus operandi. Indeed they wouldn’t be doing any thinking at all, it’s not necessary, they would be merely following a step by step activity, blind to it’s significance.

What I’m teasing out here is that human insight is a valuable tool and to limit it is to reduce its value. It would take the ants a lot longer with a lot more trial and error to achieve our level of development. But I see no reason why they would not be able to get there eventually in principle. Like a chimpanzee at a typewriter. Who would by sheer chance write Shakespeare, but not recognise it as any different to the other pages of random letters it is typing.

Quoting Punshhh

It’s possible that one explanation of existence is an intelligent source (as opposed to a physical source). I see no reason to reject this possibility out of hand, because it can’t be demonstrated. Because it plays a useful role in further philosophical enquiry. If the entirety of philosophical enquiry is to be bracketed out, because it has shaky empirical foundations, then again we are doing the bracketing out that Wayfarer keeps pointing out.

The problem I have with this is that there are infinitely many possibilities. There needs to be a reason to pluck one from the infinite set of possibilities and see where it leads. In practice, the reason may simply be that it's subjectively appealing. We're intellectually free to explore, and gain some amusement (intellectual stimulation), or driven by wishful thinking ("I don't want to die! So let's explore the possibility of an afterlife). But unless the track of enquiry leads to some objective justification to accept it, it's never more than amusement or wishful thinking.

I don't object to people amusing themselves, or thinking wishfully. I object only when they try to use these possibilities to supposedly undercut theories that ARE justifiable to accept. This is the issue that triggered my debate with Wayfarer (intermittent over a number of months and several threads). I argued that metaphysical materialism can be justifiably accepted as true. He responds by pointing to the explanatory gap, and he has raised some extreme counter possibilities (e.g. perhaps a thought is ontologically primitive). He doesn't merely say, "here's why I don't accept materialism" (which would be perfectly fine by me); he insists materialism is demonstrably false. And yet, he has not demonstrated it. I conclude that he can't, but won't admit it.

Relativist:I argued that metaphysical materialism can be justifiably accepted as true. [@Wayfarer] responds by pointing to the explanatory gap, and he has raised some extreme counter possibilities (e.g. perhaps a thought is ontologically primitive). [Wayfarer] doesn't merely say, "here's why I don't accept materialism" (which would be perfectly fine by me); he insists materialism is demonstrably false. And yet, he has not demonstrated it. I conclude that [Wayfarer] can't, but won't admit it.

:up: :up:

There needs to be a reason to pluck one from the infinite set of possibilities and see where it leads.

:100:

Reply to Relativist

The problem I have with this is that there are infinitely many possibilities. There needs to be a reason to pluck one from the infinite set of possibilities and see where it leads.

Well if one accepts this, it doesn’t lead anywhere, other than staring at yourself in the mirror (metaphysics ends up reflecting the nature of the world we find ourselves in). But I don’t accept that there are an infinite number of possibilities. Of the large number of possibilities which one could theoretically come up they can be arranged into two groups, those where there is a mental origin, or ones where there is a non mental, or physical, origin. These categories are derived from the two things we know for sure about our being, 1, that we are, have, a living mind and 2, there is a physical world that we find ourselves in. If you can provide an alternative to these two, I would like to know.

When it comes to philosophical enquiry into our existence, philosophy is mute, blind, it can’t answer the question.

He doesn't merely say, "here's why I don't accept materialism" (which would be perfectly fine by me); he insists materialism is demonstrably false

I’m not going to talk for Wayfarer, but the impression I had was that the philosophical interpretation of the physical world (including our scientific findings) is what he takes issue with. Namely that this interpretation oversteps the limits of what it can say about existence and being. There is a tendency to confine being to a physical process, described in biology, neuroscience etc, and some kind of rejection of alternative origins of existence, other than what is contemplated by astrophysicists. That it seems to disregard other philosophical fields in a number of ways(he has laid the detail of this extensively, so there is no point in me repeating it).

Quoting Janus

I have no problem with philosophical speculation. It operates in science in the form of abductive reasoning. The point is that it should be underwritten by science, if we are speculating about the nature of things. For ethics and aesthetics it might be a different matter?science may not have much to tell us in those domains.

How things such as matter, mind or consciousness intuitively seem (the province of phenomenology) which is determined by reflection on experience, tells us only about how we, prior to any scientific investigation, might imagine that these things are. That may have its own value in understanding the evolution of human understanding, but it tells us nothing about how the world things really are.

So I was responding to the dogmatic assertion that "linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true". I reject that as dogma because it assumes that the material world is purely a "billiard ball" world of mindless atoms in the void..

I agree that there are philosophical "domains" that go beyond the self-imposed limits of Objective Physical Science. And philosophers, back to Plato & Aristotle have argued about the value of "empty verbiage" (speculation) versus productive facts*1. Yet. what's the point of a Philosophy Forum, if it has no pragmatic results to show for the expenditure of hot air? If we had the power to communicate directly from mind to mind, there might be no need for "empty verbiage"*2. Instead, we would intuitively know how minds work to produce ideal opinions instead of material facts

I have always been interested in "hard" science", and I took basic college courses in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc. But I also took courses in the "soft" science of Psychology. Beyond their mapping of neural coordinates of consciousness though, modern psychology tells us nothing about how a blob of matter can produce sentience & awareness & opinions : how things Ideally are. Such imaginative speculations won't put food on the table, but they may help us deal with the varying tastes & preferences & opinions of those humans sitting around the table. When your child turns-up his nose at cranberry sauce, can you discuss the "facts" with him?

Is there any "value" in understanding how people think (ideally) about how the world really is? How would we gain understanding of Other Minds without "linguistic communication" : ideas expressed in sounds & written words? Humans seldom disagree on established Facts. But they have fought wars over subjective interpretations of so-called Facts*3. Does materialistic Science have any practical value in "how in the world things really are" : RealPolitik*4? In between wars, does ideal persuasion work better than material bombs? :smile:


*1. Philosophy has always had to defend itself against the charge that it is empty verbiage, unscientific speculation. Philosophers themselves are often the harshest and most astute critics of their own enterprise, and none was more coruscating than the Austrian thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/ludwig-wittgenstein-review-an-attack-on-the-abstract-8640e564

*2. The statement that "linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true" is a philosophical argument, not a settled fact, and is a subject of ongoing debate between materialist and anti-materialist (often dualist or idealist) viewpoints.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=linguistic+communication+would+be+impossible+if+materialism+were+true

*3. Wars are often fought not over objective facts themselves, but over subjective interpretations of events, ideologies, historical narratives, or perceptions of reality. This is a recurring theme throughout history and in modern conflicts.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=fought+wars+over+subjective+interpretations+of+so-called+Facts.

*4. Realpolitik is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following ideological, moral, or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism.
___Oxford Dictionary
Note --- Did Hitler's war-making end because of diplomatic ideologies, or due to overwhelming guns & bombs of the allies? But how did the leaders of allied nations convince their people that resisting aggression, with blood & guts, was the right thing to do? Perhaps, a combination of empty-but-emotional (ideal) verbiage, and increased production of the (material) machines of war.

PS___ Is Materialism true (factual) or a belief (doctrinal)?
Materialism : the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
___Oxford Dictionary

The theorem:
With only seven pages to check, I found none of your insistence that materialism is demonstrably false. Sometimes inappropriate in its application, manifestly appropriate in others, but never its all-encompassing fallaciousness.

The substance:
Quoting Wayfarer

I still maintain that an effective (….) argument against physicalism….

…..here I understand this to not be a denial of it, as you have been accused. To claim denial of physicalism presupposes an argument proving its impossibility, and for any worldview the proof of its impossibility is self-contradictory, hence any argument is unintelligible.

Quoting Wayfarer

…..you could not think if materialism were true.

…..patently obvious insofar no human ever thinks in purely materialistic terms.

Quoting Wayfarer

….not as an external agent shaping an independent material realm….

…..which presupposes it, the exact opposite of denying it. One can be quite rational in not denying a thing, without the need for affirming it.

Quoting Wayfarer

…..the world we inhabit is inseparable from the activity of consciousness….

….here I understand inseparable to mean in conjunction with. Anything inseparable presupposes that which it is inseparable from. Given that the world represents the manifold of all possible material things, those material things are necessarily presupposed if consciousness is claimed to be inseparable from them. One cannot deny that which he has already presupposed as necessary. From which follows denial of materialism as such, is self-contradictory given from its being the ground for the composition of the world of material things consciousness is said to be inseparable from.

Quoting Wayfarer

……linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true…

….if materialism were true with respect to linguistic communication, it would be necessary to find a word store, assemble an aggregate of words from the shelves….or jars, or buckets, whatever they were stored in….with the additional burden of picking just that perfect word expressing whatever’s being communicated, perfectly. Makes one wonder….in 1634, say, was there a word store with “Slinky” on its shelves? Or…(sigh)….in 400BC an aggregate of them sufficient to communicate the principle of simultaneity. I think not, but the people still linguistically communicated.
(I could have soooooo much fun with this, silly as it is)

The conclusion:
Quoting Wayfarer

….not prepared to reckon with it.

“….useful truths make just as little impression….”
—————-

And that argument that was great and ignored? Was questionably the first and certainly not the second.

Quoting Gnomon

I agree that there are philosophical "domains" that go beyond the self-imposed limits of Objective Physical Science.

I don't say they "go beyond" but just that they are different domains of inquiry.

Quoting Gnomon

Beyond their mapping of neural coordinates of consciousness though, modern psychology tells us nothing about how a blob of matter can produce sentience & awareness & opinions

The brain is not a "blob of matter" so your question is moot. You seem to be thinking in terms of some obsolete paradigm.

Reply to Mww Thank you for that careful analysis. The comment about 'being ignored' was in response to posts by several contributors who predicted that I would ignore one entry challenging one of my responses, which I did not, and which was repeated even after I had responded. (I try and respond to challenges although it's inevitable there's going to be some 'talking past one another' going on considering the subject matter.)

Quoting Mww

Given that the world represents the manifold of all possible material things, those material things are necessarily presupposed if consciousness is claimed to be inseparable from them. One cannot deny that which he has already presupposed as necessary. From which follows denial of materialism as such, is self-contradictory given from its being the ground for the composition of the world of material things consciousness is said to be inseparable from.

The 'inseperability of self and world' is an underlying theme that I have been exploring through various perspectives. The original intuition behind it was the sense that reality itself is not something we're outside of or apart from. This insight was a consequence of having been immersed in the study of the perennial philosophies and the 'unitive vision' that they refer to in their different ways. At the time I was reading the American Transcendentalists ("The act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson). This gave me an awareness that the sense we usually have of being separate egos in a material world is actually a culturally-conditioned state of being. (This will be generally stereotyped as being 'religious'.)

Quoting Mww

….if materialism were true with respect to linguistic communication,

Lloyd Gerson's point was made in respect of Aristotle. The section quoted was about Aristotle's hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism. According to Aristotelian philosophy, the form (idea, principle) of a particular thing is what the intellect knows, which makes it possible to say 'this particular is X'. The senses receive the material impression while the intellect receives the form. It is precisely that ability that underwrites reason, the faculty that differentiates humans from other animals. This is what Gerson was glossing when he said 'you could not think if materialism were true' - because rational thought relies on the abiility to grasp universal concepts and thereby understand what things are. (Aristotelianism has generally fallen out of favour in modern philosophy, although it still has plenty of defenders.)

Reply to Gnomon :up:

Quoting Wayfarer

Not according to Edward Feser, it isn't.

His FRAMING of universals isn't consistent with physicalism. The issue would be: what facts of the world are explainable with one's definition, and which one's aren't. A physicalist definition covers the facts adequately.

Quoting Wayfarer

Armstrong is not a realist about universals in the classical sense at all.

Irrelevant, if all facts are adequately accounted for.

You have made the false claim that I defer to science, but I see you deferring to ancient philosophy, as if that makes it somehow authoritative. You're free to embrace what they said, but you'll need do defend it - I won't accept an argument from authority.

Quoting Wayfarer

It was, "what justified beliefs does it lead to?"
— Relativist

The justified belief that knowledge cannot be solely objective

The law of noncontradiction is objective fact. Your assertion could apply to a posterior beliefs, and the logical consequence is that we have no a posteriori knowledge - because it's logically possible for it to be false. One can also arrive at that conclusion by considering Gettier problems. This is why I stress justified belief, rather than knowledge.

Quoting Wayfarer

If an insight leads to a dead-end,
— Relativist

Then it's not an insight. But the fact that someone doesn't recognise an insight doesn't mean it's a dead end.

Consider me guilty of not recognizing this alleged insight on my own, but also recognize that I'm asking you to point out what I'm overlooking. I get it, that it entails the fact that our perspectives are inescapably subjective, but I arrived at that conclusion on my own without this alleged insight. What you call a "mind-created world" I have called a "paradigm".

Quoting Wayfarer

the relationship 'north of'. It doesn't exist in the same sense that Edinburgh and London exist,

It's semantics, describing an actual physical relation in terms relative to a cartological convention. It is a fact that Edinburgh and London have a specific, spatial relation to each other that is ontological.

Quoting Wayfarer

the whole idea of existence depends on the mind's ability to grasp these intelligible relations

The IDEA of existence depends on our cognitive abilities, but given that we have this ability, it is reasonable (justified) to believe this idea represents an aspect of the world.


Quoting Wayfarer

This is important, don't brush it aside.The reason it's not noticed is because we rely on the mind's ability to discern these relationships, without which we wouldn't be able to form an idea of the world. So that's the sense in which the world is 'mind-dependent' - not going in or out of existence, depending on whether you yourself see it, but because the whole idea of existence depends on the mind's ability to grasp these intelligible relations (which is elaborated in The Mind Created World op). Which we don't see because (as Russell says) they don't exist, they're not 'out there somewhere'. If there's a single insight that empiricism cannot grasp, it is this one and dare I say the apparent inability to grasp it, is an illustrative example.

You should stop referring to the world as "mind-independent", because you know it isn't. You make it clear in that op that you're referring to the fact that it is our mental view of the world that is mind-dependent. When described correctly, it seems less profound: a product of the mind is mind-dependent.

But I think you're trying to argue that there's something magical about the fact that our minds can do what they do (where "magical"= not even possibly a consequence of material processes.) This is where your focus should be, and what you should try and make the case for. If you have a case to make, don't repeat Feser's approach of framing the issues in immaterial terms. Consider the mistake you made when you suggested that a thought might be a primitive: you hadn't considered that thoughts entail processes. IMO, the best physicalist accounts of all things mental are based on processes, not objects (and not static brain states). Concepts are not objects, they entail a sequence of thoughts and draw on memories. Consider a concept that can be described verbally: this act of description could be parallel to the mental processes involved when we formulate or utilize the concept. You don't seem to have considered this.

Quoting Relativist

I think you're trying to argue that there's something magical about the fact that our minds can do what they do (where "magical"= not even possibly a consequence of material processes.)

Not magical—just not the same kind of thing. My point is that the capacity to grasp reasons, recognise valid versus invalid inferences, and understand causal relations as relations is categorically different from the physical processes described by neuroscience. Physical causation can explain correlations and mechanisms, but it cannot be the normativity involved in reasoning.

That’s why I say neural states aren’t the “basis” of mental causation in the way you’re implying: whatever neural states enable reasoning, the content and validity of inferences aren’t reducible to their physical description. They belong to a different explanatory order.

Physicalism, naturalism, and materialism generally seek to naturalise cognition in terms of evolutionary theory and neuroscience. Which is OK as far as the science is concerned, but there's an implicit conviction, again. that science provides the court of adjutication for philosophy. What it actually does is change the terms in which philosophical questions should be asked and answered, so that they conform to what can be defended as scientifically respectable.

Furthermore even if human reason is not magical, it is extraordinarily uncanny. To think these 'featherless bipeds' descended from homonim species that evolved capturing prey on the savanahs over thousands of millenia are now able to weigh and measure the Universe.

Quoting Relativist

Consider a concept that can be described verbally: this act of description could be parallel to the mental processes involved when we formulate or utilize the concept. You don't seem to have considered this.

I have indeed considered it, and this is precisely where the argument from multiple realisability bites. Even if you can verbally describe a concept, the physical or neural realisation of that concept can vary enormously. This isn’t an incidental feature — it’s structurally unavoidable.

A single sentence can be expressed in English, Mandarin, Braille, Morse code, binary, or handwritten symbols, and the meaning is preserved across all of these radically different physical forms. That shows that meaning is not identical with any one physical instantiation.

Neuroscience faces the same issue. During the “Decade of the Brain,” researchers tried to identify specific, repeatable neural signatures for learning new concepts or words. What they found were broad regional activations but no consistent, fine-grained neural pattern that maps onto a specific meaning. That’s exactly what multiple realisability predicts: the same semantic content can be realised in indefinitely many different neural configurations.

So the fact that we can describe a concept verbally doesn’t help your claim — it actually illustrates why semantics and reasoning can’t be reduced to any one class of physical patterns. The level of explanation is simply different.

And this is precisely where the significance of universals shows up. Feser says 'A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.' Russell: 'if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them.'

The whole basis of language and abstraction is clearly reliant on these cognitive processes which are unique (at least in the way that humans are able to use them). So I'm arguing that trying to account for them in physical terms is categorically mistaken.

In short, physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former.

Quoting Punshhh

Of the large number of possibilities which one could theoretically come up they can be arranged into two groups, those where there is a mental origin, or ones where there is a non mental, or physical, origin. These categories are derived from the two things we know for sure about our being, 1, that we are, have, a living mind and 2, there is a physical world that we find ourselves in. If you can provide an alternative to these two, I would like to know.

And yet, some people seriously entertain solipsism and idealism - because they are not provably impossible. This is the sort of thing I'm complaining about. I'm fine with the focus you suggest.
Quoting Punshhh

When it comes to philosophical enquiry into our existence, philosophy is mute, blind, it can’t answer the question.

This tells me you are not a theist. Philosophically minded theists often think they can "prove" God's existence through philosophical analysis. Debating these issues is what drew me to learn a bit about philosophy.

Quoting Punshhh

I’m not going to talk for Wayfarer, but the impression I had was that the philosophical interpretation of the physical world (including our scientific findings) is what he takes issue with.

Actually, he accepts science. His focus seems to be philosophy of mind. He takes issue with materialist theory of mind. Issues SHOULD be taken with it, but I object to declaring materialism (in general) false on the basis of the explanatory gap, while meanwhile taking flights of fancy (mere possibilities) seriously.

This seems like a lot (and, I do not mean this disparagingly. I'd not have seen this until this ninth page) of back-and-forward to simply say

"Wayf doesn't accept that conscious activity can be reduced to neural correlates"

Nothing profound or wrong going on there. Maybe the gripe is with people who seem to think materialism is provable. That seems to me, demonstrably not the case (and perhaps, demonstrably not possible). But that doesn't actually make it untrue. Its awkward.

But I don't see anyone being unnecessarily defensive about it. Seems a run-of-the mill Phil of Mind disagreement.

Quoting Janus

I don't say they "go beyond" but just that they are different domains of inquiry.

So, you are saying they are parallel domains --- empirical vs speculative --- not one above another? That's OK. I was not implying any heavenly domain for philosophy, but merely that it is not bound by the necessity for material evidence. In that sense, philosophers are free to "go beyond" the physical limits of Science, in order to explore the metaphysical (immaterial) aspects of the Cosmos. :smile:


Quoting Janus

The brain is not a "blob of matter" so your question is moot. You seem to be thinking in terms of some obsolete paradigm.

Apparently you took my metaphorical figure-of-speech as a literal physical description of the brain. I am familiar with some cutting-edge theories of mind, that blur the borders between physics & metaphysics, and Idealism & Realism. But most still insist that Consciousness is inherent in Matter, not an add-on.

I agree, except that I reserve the term "Consciousness" for homo sapiens with big complex neural systems. It's a product of long evolution, and only the potential for C was inherent in the emerging world prior to about 300,000 years ago. Therefore, in lieu of conscious atoms, I focus on causal Energy, not inert Matter*1, as one form of the general power-to-transform that drives the process of Evolution. Gravity & Forces are other forms of EnFormAction. Hence, EFA, not dumb Matter, is the precursor of the process of subjective Awareness. Anyway, all discussions of Ideas & Opinions are Moot. But this forum is a Moot Court. :nerd:


*1. The statement that "matter is energy locked into form" is a popular, but oversimplified, way of describing a core concept from Einstein's theory of relativity. A more precise understanding is that matter and energy are two forms of the same fundamental thing, and can be converted into one another, as described by the famous equation \(E=mc^{2}\). This equation shows that mass (a measure of matter) is a form of concentrated energy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=matter+is+energy+locked+into+form
Note --- That fundamental "thing" is what my philosophical thesis calls EnFormAction. It's a portmanteau coinage, so you won't find that term in a textbook of Physics or Psychology. But it's all natural, no spooky spiritual intervention necessary.

Quoting Wayfarer

Thank you for that careful analysis.

Ehhhhh….I would never be so presumptuous to hint you needed support. Or even wanted any. It’s just that when they line up against a metaphysical paradigm, without comprehending its depth, or misunderstanding the implications of an otherwise simple proposition, or purely rational concept….

But yeah, on the other hand, if you can’t wrap that paradigm in weights and measures, it ain’t worth a piss hole in the snow, right? And yet, no science (for which weights and measures are mandatory) is ever done that isn’t first thought (for which there are no weights and measures at all).

Anyway….ever onward.

Reply to Mww I always value your contributions.

Quoting Wayfarer

there's an implicit conviction, again. that science provides the court of adjutication for philosophy.

You're reading that into it. Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins have said something along these lines, but they aren't philosophers. I have not asked for defenses on empirical (or scientific) grounds. I've asked for any kind of justification.

Quoting Wayfarer

the capacity to grasp reasons, recognise valid versus invalid inferences, and understand causal relations as relations is categorically different from the physical processes described by neuroscience.

Sure, it's categorically different - but this doesn't entail an immaterial ontological grounding. Process is categorically different from existents, but grounded in the physical. Quoting Wayfarer

Physicalism, naturalism, and materialism generally seek to naturalise cognition in terms of evolutionary theory and neuroscience.

You're conflating the philosophy with the science. Science indeed fails to account for all aspects of mind, but science is limited to what humans have figured out. Philosophical materialism/physicalism is broader - it's as free of the human limitations of scientific investigation as any metaphysical theory. It is limited only by what can be deemed material/physical.

Quoting Wayfarer

even if human reason is not magical, it is extraordinarily uncanny. To think these 'featherless bipeds' descended from homonim species that evolved capturing prey on the savanahs over thousands of millenia are now able to weigh and measure the Universe.

Sure, it's extraordinary (given our limited knowledge of the steps and the mechanisms), but this is insuffficient grounds to conclude there was anything unnatural involved. There's much we don't know, may never know. This doesn't mean we should emulate our ancient ancestors and assume supernatural forces are involved.

Quoting Wayfarer

I have indeed considered it, and this is precisely where the argument from multiple realisability bites. Even if you can verbally describe a concept, the physical or neural realisation of that concept can vary enormously. This isn’t an incidental feature — it’s structurally unavoidable.

A single sentence can be expressed in English, Mandarin, Braille, Morse code, binary, or handwritten symbols, and the meaning is preserved across all of these radically different physical forms. That shows that meaning is not identical with any one physical instantiation.

All languages are descended from a common, early langauge. But more significantly, they are all grounded in our common structure (sensory/cognitive/emotional/hormonal...). [I]Meaning[/i] entails some connection to our instinctual reactions to elements in the world and within ourselves. You and I both feel pain when we grab a hot pan. We cognitively relate the word "pain" to this sensation, so it's irrelevant that our respective neural connections aren't physically identical (i.e. the "meaning" is multiply realizeable).

Quoting Wayfarer

So the fact that we can describe a concept verbally doesn’t help your claim — it actually illustrates why semantics and reasoning can’t be reduced to any one class of physical patterns. The level of explanation is simply different.

Strawman. It's irrelevant that the relevant connections can be realized in multiple physical ways.
Quoting Wayfarer

And this is precisely where the significance of universals shows up. Feser says 'A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.'

Sure, mental objects are private. But we have nearly identical capacities to recognize patterns, and to apply words to these patterns, and thus to communicate with each other about them. Our respective mental images of the world have a lot in common because our neurological structures have a lot in common. Plus, the patterns are REAL! Humans have developed concepts and language to refer to them. This doesn't imply the mental objects have objective existence; it just means there are real patterns that we can name, describe, and learn to idealize.

Quoting Wayfarer

physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former.

Non sequitur. Peter Tse proposed a neurological model he calls "criterial causation", that would account for mental causation with multilple physical realizability. I discussed it in this post.

Tse's model may be wrong (it's not verified science), but it shows you're wrong to say "the latter can't be reduced to the former. It indeed can.

Quoting AmadeusD

"Wayf doesn't accept that conscious activity can be reduced to neural correlates"

Nothing profound or wrong going on there. Maybe the gripe is with people who seem to think materialism is provable. That seems to me, demonstrably not the case (and perhaps, demonstrably not possible). But that doesn't actually make it untrue. Its awkward.

I beg to differ. The position that "conscious activity cannot be reduced to neural correlates" is a strong claim- it implies impossibility. My position is that there's no basis to claim it's impossible ("not impossible" is a modest claim).

I would certainly not claim that "materialism is provable", but I believe I can provide a reasonable justification to believe in materialism. In brief: as a metaphysical theory, it is a Inference to Best Explanations for all available facts about the world. Every known phenomenon is consistent with it, and it most parsimoniously accounts for these facts. One could reject this, on the subjective grounds that we know too little to draw a conclusion, but I don't think there's a defeater.

Quoting Wayfarer

In short, physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former.

This distinction doesn't make sense because people use formal models of reasoning to understand what the brain does and then map aspects of that to physical architecture. So when it comes to computational neuroscience, these two things you say are irreconcilable are actually inextricably entwined.

Quoting Apustimelogist

This distinction doesn't make sense because people use formal models of reasoning to understand what the brain does and then map aspects of that to physical architectur

The point is that norms of reasoning and causal processes belong to different explanatory orders. Physical processes unfold according to causes; reasoning unfolds according to grounds—the logical relations that make an inference valid or invalid.

A neuroscientist can (and must) use modus ponens, reductio, probabilistic inference, and mathematical formalism to interpret data. But the validity of those inferences isn’t something that can be read off an fMRI scan. You can’t derive logical necessity from neural activation patterns.

So yes, of course cognitive scientists model reasoning, and of course they look for neural implementation of various inferential capacities. But that research presupposes the very norms it’s trying to naturalise. You can’t turn around and say the norms just are the neural activity that was used to investigate them. This is the vicious circularity that haunts neurological reductionism.

Reply to Relativist We're going in circles here. Bottom line: logic is not physical nor can be reduced to physical forces and categories, but I'm not going to press the point further. We've been arguing since Nov 5th 2024 - I remember the date, because it was the eve of the US Presidential Election, I see no purpose being served by continuing.

Quoting Wayfarer

But that research presupposes the very norms it’s trying to naturalise.

The point is that you can't separate them. Neuroscientists conceptualize and model brains in terms of statistical learning and inference. What you are saying is like claiming that physics is unsuccessful because you can't pull math out of 'physical stuff' by its bootstraps. But the physics to some extent is the maths, the maths is the description of the physics. Similarly, a complete neurobiological description of what brains do, how they do it and how people behave cannot be divorced from the math, or models of statistical learning and inference. They go hand-in-hand with the "naturalised" explanation. No one is trying to "derive logical necessity from neural activation patterns"; the caricature of naive reductionism you attack is not probably not very common at all.

Reply to Apustimelogist I agree that in practice you can’t do neuroscience without maths, models of inference, and all the conceptual tools scientists rely upon. But that’s a point about method, not about ontology (i.e. what are the constituents of the neural systems).

The distinction I’m making is simply this:

Causal processes refer to neural and biochemical reactions

Normative relations refer to what makes causal inferences valid.

They belong to different explanatory levels.

A neuroscientist can model the brain as performing Bayesian updating, but the validity of Bayesian reasoning isn’t something you find by examining neural tissue. The neural story explains how we are able to reason (at least to some extent, although the detail is elusive); the logical story explains whether the reasoning is correct. These are not competing explanations — they are explanations of different kinds.

It’s the same with physics and mathematics. Physics relies on mathematics completely, but the maths isn’t identical to the objects being described. A differential equation can describe a falling apple, but the apple isn’t made of equations. Using inferential models to study the brain doesn’t make inference itself a neural process any more than aircraft wings “do calculus” because their behaviour can be simulated mathematically on a computer. The model and the actual mechanism aren’t the same kind of thing.

So my point isn’t that neuroscience is “unsuccessful,” nor that anyone is trying to derive axiom-systems from fMRI scans. It’s just that the norms scientists rely on to build their models — validity, consistency, justification — don’t themselves show up as physical properties. They’re the standards that are used to interpret the physical data in the first place.

That’s all I mean by saying the two can be separated conceptually. “Irreducible” doesn’t mean “supernatural” — it just means that different kinds of explanation are in play. And it's not a 'caricature', rather, a valid distinction between two kinds or levels of discourse.

Reply to Relativist On further thought, as you often say that I'm engaging in speculation or unthethered philosophizing uninformed by science, could you point exactly to where I'm doing that?

Reply to Relativist

And yet, some people seriously entertain solipsism and idealism - because they are not provably impossible. This is the sort of thing I'm complaining about. I'm fine with the focus you suggest.

I wouldn’t group idealism in with solipsism. The later is illogical, whereas I can see a strong case for idealism. I think you should revise what you mean by provably impossible, there aren’t really any philosophies which are provably impossible.

This tells me you are not a theist. Philosophically minded theists often think they can "prove" God's existence through philosophical analysis.

I am, loosely a deist, a positive(theistic) leaning agnostic. For me mysticism is more important than theology. I am more interested in what we don’t know, than what we do know (something that can easily be accessed when required), that insight can be made through a realisation of what we don’t know. I realise that we can’t prove God’s existence, or to put it more strongly, if he/she were to appear before us, we could still not prove it, or demonstrate it.

Debating these issues is what drew me to learn a bit about philosophy.

I spent years debating with materialists and skeptics on the JREF forum before coming here. Lots of fun (and trolls).

Actually, he accepts science.

I should have been more precise, I should have written; (including the philosophical interpretation of our scientific findings) in brackets, rather than; (including our scientific findings).

but I object to declaring materialism (in general) false on the basis of the explanatory gap, while meanwhile taking flights of fancy (mere possibilities) seriously.

He’s not declaring materialism false, but rather its philosophical conclusions about the explanatory gap. They are not flights of fancy, it is genuine philosophy. As I say, I can see a case for idealism.

Reply to Punshhh Of course I accept science, you'd have to be a fool not to. What I don't accept is the attempt to subject philosophical questions to scientific criteria. Of course, that doesn't imply that one's philosphical principles can contravene those criteria, but that science can't be called on to provide the criteria by which philosophical principles should be assessed.

Here's an example of what I regard as an innappropriate appeal to science.



I think this is plainly wrong, as a matter of principle. Not because there is some mysterious thing called 'mind' which somehow always escapes scientific analysis, but because the mind is never an object of analysis in the same way that the objects of science are. It is, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, not something - but also not nothing. How this eludes so many people continues to surprise me.

Reply to Wayfarer

I think this is plainly wrong, as a matter of principle. Not because there is some mysterious thing called 'mind' which somehow always escapes scientific analysis, but because the mind is never an object of analysis in the same way that the objects of science are. How this eludes so many people continues to surprise me.

Yes, it is surprising. There seems to be a leap made wherein the mind is seen as the one remaining anomaly not fully explained by biology and is seen as something which will be fully explained soon enough. So why continue with this notion that it is somehow different. This amounts to a bracketing out process.

Quoting Wayfarer

t
We're going in circles here. Bottom line: logic is not physical nor can be reduced to physical forces and categories, but I'm not going to press the point further. We've been arguing since Nov 5th 2024 - I remember the date, because it was the eve of the US Presidential Election, I see no purpose being served by continuing.

You have established that you have no rational basis to claim physicalism is falsfied. All you've done is to to reify an abstraction ("logic") and assert that this reification cannot be reduced to "physical forces".

The APPLICATION of logic entails process. Computers operate by applying logic, and this demonstrates that APPLYING logic is consistent with physicalism.

As I previously discussed, the abstract concept "logic" is describable in language. That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept. When we use the word ("logic") we are drawing on the memory of those mental processes by which we mentally connected the word to the concept.

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims, and of course - you don't see it, and instead dismissively assert that we're going around in circles. We go in circles because your thinking about these issues is within the framework of your own internalized paradigm (your personal, subjective "mind-dependent world"). You are essentially attempting to falsify the physicalist paradigm on the basis that it's inconsistent with your own. You have not, and cannot, falsify physicalism this way. And in case you forgot, this is the burden you gave yourself - that you could show physicalism cannot be true. I don't expect a reply, but I do suggest that you accept the fact that you cannot actually falsify it or at least that you cease asserting that you can. You don't need to falsify it to reject it. Both acceptance and rejection of a "theory of mind" paradigm entails subjective judgement, and since I understand this, I would never suggest one is irrational for disagreeing with my judgement.

Quoting Wayfarer

On further thought, as you often say that I'm engaging in speculation or unthethered philosophizing uninformed by science, could you point exactly to where I'm doing that?

I don't insist you depend on science, but rather that you develop and utilize hypotheses with some epistemic justification in mind. For example, if you were to suggest that a thought were an ontological primitive - you'd need consider how you would eventually justify the claim. One way to do that would be to work toward a more complete, coherent metaphysical theory that includes that hypothesis.

You're not doing that here. It's reasonable to point to the gaps in our scientific understanding of the physical processes involved with reasoning. Kudos for not using this as a basis for an argument from ignorance against physicalism, at least not in this post. I assume it's obvious to you that physicalism isn't falsified by gaps in our scientific knowledge.

Quoting Wayfarer

The model and the actual mechanism aren’t the same kind of thing.

Yes, and this point is not really powerful because when you try to make separate them out cleanly... you simply can't. Physics is meaningless without math. The position you are attacking doesn't recognize the distinction you're making. Someone who is a physicalist and appealing to explanatory reductionism to physics and similar things is appealing to these abstract mathematical tools as descriptions. You can't articulate anything about anything without them; people are going to acknowledge that what constitutes their intellectual paradigm is descriptions, tools and constructs that they use to model what they experience. Acknowledging that doesn't invalidate their position. Stripping naturalism of math or any other descriptive tool is meaningless, and the efficacy of naturalism or physicalism would be in terms of those very tools. They are part of the identity, the explanatory power, the meaning of reduction. You can't tease them apart.

The fact that we use constructed tools to describe things and the idea of foundationalism or pulling a paradigm up by its own bootstraps has no consequence on whether that paradigm is explanatorily effective; the paradigm just needs to be successful at predicting or modelling what we see, at least in principle. And the plausibility of this latter point leads to the chain of reasoning that physics describes the behavior of chemical systems which mediates the behavior of brains which mediates all our intelligent reasoning and logical behavior. We can describe this behavior in terms of the mathematics of inference just like we use various mathematical tools for describing things, and really there is no fundamental difference between the kind of math that describes how neurons or brains can perform certain tasks compared to math used in areas of physics, especially statistical physics, or other fields like economics.

We can have different levels of explanation using different tools, but they then also do something like supervene on each other in principle. I think in fairness, this "in principle" thing is an assumption when met with the incompleteness of science; but at the same time, there is no obviously convincing knock down argument against it especially considering that incompleteness doesn't mean completely uneffective. The only proper motivation against it imo is the irreducibility of experience but my take on that doesn't really threaten the "something like supervenience" concept I am talking about.

Quoting Relativist

All you've done is to to reify an abstraction ("logic") and assert that this reification cannot be reduced to "physical forces"

Quoting Apustimelogist

The position you are attacking doesn't recognize the distinction you're making.

It is based on your not recognising a fundamental distinction going back to David Hume. There is a fundamental philosophical distinction between physical causation and logical necessity. Physical causation is that in which every sequence in a causal chain can be described in physical terms - gravity, energy, combustion, reaction, and so on.

Logical necessity, on the other hand, describes the relationship between statements or propositions, not events in time. It is that in which the conclusion is guaranteed or required to be true if the premises are true, based solely on the rules of logic and the definitions of the terms used. It operates in the realm of thought and abstract structures, not physical interaction. The connection is necessary (non-contingent): it holds true in all possible worlds where the definitions and laws of logic remain consistent.

The philosophical implication is that while physical causes explain physical events and processes, logical necessity defines the rules for how we can reason and establishes unavoidable truths (like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event.

This is not a reification. To reify is to make a concrete thing out of an abstraction. It is not reifying logic to correctly identify it.

Quoting Relativist

That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept.

1. If language mirrors only the contingent physical process rather than the necessary logical content (the final, valid definition), the statement equates the psychological fact of concept acquisition with the logical structure of the concept itself.

2. To treat a brain state as having meaning (as representing a proposition) or logical order (as representing a valid step in an argument) is to already inject a non-physical, intentional, or normative element into the physical description to assign semantic content to to a physical state.

Edward Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism 1:Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.

Quoting Relativist

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims

Only in your own mind.

Quoting Wayfarer

The philosophical implication is that while physical causes explain physical events and processes, logical necessity defines the rules for how we can reason and establishes unavoidable truths (like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event.

Sure, but logic is semantics - it is not some aspect of the world. It applies to statements, not to things. Truths are statements that correspond to reality, These "defined rules for how we reason" consist of applying precise definitions to certain words.

Quoting Wayfarer

1. If language mirrors only the contingent physical process rather than the necessary logical content (the final, valid definition), the statement equates the psychological fact of concept acquisition with the logical structure of the concept itself.

It is not the case that language mirrors "only the contingent physical process". I said it mirrors the mental processes. The concept of "true" seems perfectly straightforward - a recognition that a statement corresponds to (say) what is perceived, vs a statement that does not.

Quoting Wayfarer

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims — Relativist
Only in your own mind.

Of course! But you haven't rebutted my counters in your responses. Mostly, your objections reflect either: a misunderstanding of physicalism (e.g. conflating with science), a lack of imagination (failing to figure out a physicalist account might address your issue), or an attempt to judge it from an incompatible framework (e.g.the way you treat abstractions). When I've addressed these, you do not respond directly, then you sometimes repeat the countered claim in different words. So that's why I feel I've countered your claims. Here's the latest example in which you seem to have overlooked or misunderstood what I was saying about "meaning":

Quoting Wayfarer

To treat a brain state as having meaning (as representing a proposition) or logical order (as representing a valid step in an argument) is to already inject a non-physical, intentional, or normative element into the physical description to assign semantic content to to a physical state.

A brain state does not have meaning. I never claimed it did. Here's what I said:

Quoting Relativist

Meaning entails some connection to our instinctual reactions to elements in the world and within ourselves. You and I both feel pain when we grab a hot pan. We cognitively relate the word "pain" to this sensation, so it's irrelevant that our respective neural connections aren't physically identical (i.e. the "meaning" is multiply realizable).

You might have asked for clarification or pushed back, but instead you made a claim that was nowhere close to what I'd said.

Quoting Relativist

Truths are statements that correspond to reality, These "defined rules for how we reason" consist of applying precise definitions to certain words. ....The concept of "true" seems perfectly straightforward - a recognition that a statement corresponds to (say) what is perceived, vs a statement that does not.

Please notice what you are glossing over or assuming in saying this. Philosophers have spent millenia puzzling about the relationships between mind, world and meaning, here you present it as if it is all straightforward, that all of this can simply be assumed. Which is naive realism in a nutshell.

"Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognizing it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object."

Kant, 1801. The Jasche Logic, in Lectures on Logic

"Although it seems ... obvious to say, "Truth is correspondence of thought (belief, proposition) to what is actually the case", such an assertion nevertheless involves a metaphysical assumption - that there is a fact, object, or state of affairs, independent of our knowledge to which our knowledge corresponds. "How, on your principles, could you know you have a true proposition?" ... or ... "How can you use your definition of truth, it being the correspondence between a judgment and its object, as a criterion of truth? How can you know when such correspondence actually holds?" I cannot step outside my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it."

Hospers, J.; An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, p116.

Quoting Relativist

Mostly, your objections reflect either: a misunderstanding of physicalism (e.g. conflating with science), a lack of imagination (failing to figure out a physicalist account might address your issue), or an attempt to judge it from an incompatible framework (e.g.the way you treat abstractions). When I've addressed these, you do not respond directly,

My argument is that physicalist philosophy of mind conflates physical causation with logical necessity. If you don't grasp that argument, you can't pose a counter.

Quoting Relativist

A brain state does not have meaning. I never claimed it did.

You said:

Quoting Relativist

That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept

Are these 'mental processes' physical in nature? If they are, they can be described in terms of brain states. If they're not, then they're not physical, and you're no longer defending physicalism.

As for your 'pain' example:

Quoting Relativist

You and I both feel pain when we grab a hot pan. We cognitively relate the word "pain" to this sensation, so it's irrelevant that our respective neural connections aren't physically identical (i.e. the "meaning" is multiply realizeable).

It is an extremely basic account which attempts to equate intentional language with physical stimulus and response. A dog will yelp if it stands on a hot coal, but a dog yelp is not a word. And regardless, it fails to come to grips with the point about 'multiple realisability', against which it was made.

Hillary Putnam’s original point about multiple realisability is that a mental state like pain can be realised in many different physical ways. Different types of creatures could all feel pain, even though their nervous systems might be nothing alike; and even within one person, the neural pattern associated with “pain” can vary enormously depending on context, learning, or injury (including even psychosomatic pain). So there is no single physical configuration that corresponds with pain. And because the same mental state can be realised by indefinitely many different physical structures, the mental state cannot be identical with a physical state. (Hilary Putnam, “Psychological Predicates” (1967))

This allegory can be extended. The fact that a single meaning can be encoded in any number of radically different physical forms shows that meaning is not identical with those forms. You can express the same thought as spoken sound waves, as ink marks on paper, as binary code, as Braille dots, or as neural activity — and despite the heterogeniety of the media and symbolic form, the meaning is preserved. If meaning were nothing but its physical instantiation, then changing the physical medium would change the meaning.

'Pain' is also utterly inadequate as an example, because it completely fails to come to terms with the intentional and semantic structure of language.

Quoting Wayfarer

Physical causation is that in which every sequence in a causal chain can be described in physical terms - gravity, energy, combustion, reaction, and so on.

Using abstract objects of math, just like how describing what neurons do uses abstract formal language of math that cannot be idenitified as objects fixed in space-and-time, but instead emergent abstractions nonetheless used to describe physical events at various levels of abstraction from particle physics to cosmology, chemistry, physiology, ecology, economics, social science, sports science.

Quoting Wayfarer

(like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event.

And is exactly the language usex to describe physical events.

Quoting Wayfarer

a mental state like pain can be realised in many different physical ways.

There is no point here unless you can give an example of where these things are not being realized by physical systems. This kind of thing isn't interesting because its a generic feature of complex systems. Like the physical description of waves is multiply realizable because analogous wave descriptions exist for many different media. Biological anatomy is multiply realizable because animals can do things like fly in many different ways. Im sure there are countless examples of emergent physical patterns realizable by different media. This is not interesting. What is interesting is the idea of stuff in this universe fundamentally instantiated in and realized by something that is not physical. Like mental substance.

Quoting Apustimelogist

There is no point here unless you can give an example of where these things are not being realized by physical systems.

Well, I could say pure mathematics. That’s the obvious case where what is grasped is not “realised” by a physical system in the way you mean. Nevertheless, we can be wrong about a mathematical result, so there is something to be wrong about. But the reason you don’t see the force of such examples is that materialism doesn’t allow you to see it. If you begin with the axiom that only what is physically instantiated can be real, then of course logical necessity will appear to you as just another contingent pattern — “the way things work,” nothing more.

So when you say the examples I’m giving are “not interesting,” that simply means you’re not seeing the point — and you’re not seeing it because the philosophical framework you’re committed to screens the distinction out in advance. A view that cannot recognise the difference between physical causation and logical necessity will always brush the issue aside, because it has no conceptual space for reason as anything other than physical. So of course anything that doesn’t fit into that particular Procrustean bed is dismissed as “not interesting" (speaking of "patterns"....)

This isn’t my invention. The distinction has deep roots in the history of philosophy. And speaking of pure maths, see for example this Aeon essay: The Patterns of Reality. It makes exactly the point I’m pressing: logical necessity isn’t a physical process. Physical causation is contingent; logical relations hold by necessity. The two belong to different orders — and treating one as the other is precisely the category mistake that materialism cannot see.

Philosophy is in large part learning to look at your spectacles rather than just through them. You’re reasoning about this right now, and reasoning is more than, or other than, a physical process. Of course you need a healthy brain to think logically, but the law of the excluded middle didn’t come into existence when brains evolved, and it doesn’t disappear when a brain dies. Logical necessity doesn’t depend on neural tissue — neural tissue depends on logic to be intelligible.

Quoting Wayfarer

Please notice what you are glossing over or assuming in saying this. Philosophers have spent millenia puzzling about the relationships between mind, world and meaning, here you present it as if it is all straightforward, that all of this can simply be assumed. Which is naive realism in a nutshell.

Your response expresses a judgement, but fails to specify what you think I failed to do. Your burden is to show that some aspect of mental processing cannot possibly be grounded in the physical. In this instance, you were suggesting that logical reasoning cannot be accounted for under physicalism. I was merely explaining why I think it can. If you think this inadequate, then explain what you think I've overlooked. If there's insufficient detail, I can explain a bit more deeply.

Quoting Wayfarer

My argument is that physicalist philosophy of mind conflates physical causation with logical necessity.

You didn't give an argument, you simply noted that physical causation and logical necessity are different, and that you apparently assume that a physical mind could only "reason" in a manner that is directly attributable to physical cause/effect. THAT is naive.

Computers can do logic. They don't do it the same way humans do, but it nevertheless proves that physical processes CAN do logic. One important distinction between humans and computers is that the statements that we apply logic to, have meaning to us. I outlined a physicalist account of meaning. I also noted that logic is nothing more than semantics, and that fact also pertains to meaning.

So what is it, exactly, that you think cannot possibly be accounted for physically?
Quoting Wayfarer

As for your 'pain' example...It is an extremely basic account which attempts to equate intentional language with physical stimulus and response. A dog will yelp if it stands on a hot coal, but a dog yelp is not a word. And regardless, it fails to come to grips with the point about 'multiple realisability', against which it was made.

What I was trying to get across is that meaning is grounded in our interactions with the world (and in our physical structure). In this case, the true meaning of pain is the unpleasant sensation. Attaching a word to it seems trivial to account for physically (relating memory of a sound sequence to a memory of a sensation).

I addressed multiple realizabilty by pointing you at another post I made that described criterial causation (a physical process) to account for mental causation. I suggest that mental causation is the key, because it entails functionalism: it is the function of a mental state that matters, not the physical manifestation of that functional state.

You have previously acknowledged that memories depend on the physical brain, as evidenced by memory loss due to disease and trauma to the brain. Surely you don't think that 2 people with a shared experience have their memories manifested identically in their respective brains. They wouldn't need to- they just need to provide the same functionality (e.g. recall of images, events, sounds...).

Quoting Wayfarer

because the same mental state can be realised by indefinitely many different physical structures, the mental state cannot be identical with a physical state

Non-sequitur. A mental state is a functional state; any physical structure that produces the same function can therefore produce that mental state.

Quoting Wayfarer

Pain' is also utterly inadequate as an example, because it completely fails to come to terms with the intentional and semantic structure of language.

Invariably, I address a specific issue you bring up, you fail to acknowledge that I addressed it, and bring up a related issue outside the scope of what I was addressing.

In this case, I was simply giving an example of how meaning is attached to experience, in this case: a sensory experience. In this particular case, pain is clearly linked to intentional behavior: it's an experience to be avoided.

Meaning and intentionality are generally considered the more challenging to account for. Semantic structure seems trivial, because it's simply something that is learned.

Reply to Apustimelogist Reply to Relativist
You are both describing a philosophical zombie, or a highly advanced AI robot. Neither are alive, or conscious.
Where in materialism is this gap addressed? (Other than reverting to the observation that materialism like science is only descriptive).

Reply to Wayfarer

There is one universe where all events and things we see occur in physical space-time. We can have descriptions, explanations of structure at various levels of abstraction about what we see, but they are all instantiated by and inferred by brains which are things in physical space-time. There is a distinction between what those things are about in terms of what we see out in the world, and how they are instantiated. Maths is not about brains, it is about abstract structure inferred in what we see in the world, the rules of math are about that abstract structure; that does not mean that how we use maths and the reason we are able to do math is not instantiated in brains. Logical necessity is not about neural tissue, it is part of abilities to talk about abstract structure we see in the world. But this does not mean that this ability and why it comes about, how it works, is not instantiated by, realized by neural tissue and physical stuff using descriptions which themselves invoke different levels of explanation and abstraction. In this way a physicalist can accomodate the "non-physical" nature of logic whilst maintaining a view where all events in the world are still essentially and fundamentally supervening, or something like that, on physical descriptions which themselves are articulated in exactly the same "non-physical" structures you are talking about.

Quoting Punshhh

You are both describing a philosophical zombie,

I've been discussing the role of feelings - the qualia that zombies lack. My position is that this is the only serious problem for physicalism, but also that it doesn't falsify it.

I'm aware of 2 ways feelings can be accounted for:
1) illusionism - this means feelings are not directly physical because they exist exclusively in the mind- a mental construction. It depends only on mental causation (which I've defended). It also accounts for the action of pain-relievers, which mask the pain by interfering the brain's construction of the sensation.

2) Feelings are due to some aspect of the world that has not been identified through science, and may never be. This is open-ended; it could be one or more properties or things.

Why should anyone consider these? Every theory of mind has some problem, such as the interaction problem of dualism. Physicalism is the theory that is most consistent with everything we do know through science about the mind-body relationship. More significantly: physicalism is consistent with everything else we know about the world - outside of minds.

Quoting Relativist

Every theory of mind has some problem,

Absolutely. It's a matter of picking the least problematic. Or not picking at all. I think some kind of panpsychic property dualism is the most sustainable, but that has plenty of problems as well. I think for some of us (by 'us' I mean the hard-problem mongers on the forum), the conceptual issues around emergence seem so hard, clear and intractable that they can be provisionally discarded in favour of exploring other options.

Quoting bert1

It's a matter of picking the least problematic. Or not picking at all.

:100:

Quoting Relativist

Physicalism is the [paradigm] that is most consistent with everything we do know through science about the mind-body relationship. More significantly: physicalism is consistent with everything else we know about the world - outside of minds.

:100:

Quoting Relativist

Your burden is to show that some aspect of mental processing cannot possibly be grounded in the physical. In this instance, you were suggesting that logical reasoning cannot be accounted for under physicalism. I was merely explaining why I think it can. If you think this inadequate, then explain what you think I've overlooked. If there's insufficient detail, I can explain a bit more deeply.

What you’re overlooking is the distinction between causal explanation and normative explanation.

Physicalism gives you causal accounts of how neurons fire, how circuits activate, how information gets processed. None of that touches the normative structure of logical reasoning—the “oughts” built into validity, soundness, and necessity.

A physical description can tell you why a system outputs a certain conclusion (because certain neurons fired, or certain physical states occurred), but it can’t tell you whether that conclusion is valid, follows, or is logically required. Those are not causal properties; they’re normative relations between propositions.

And the point is that the science of determining causal relations relies on normative judgements.

Quoting Relativist

I was simply giving an example of how meaning is attached to experience, in this case: a sensory experience. In this particular case, pain is clearly linked to intentional behavior: it's an experience to be avoided.

I understand that, but it is too simplistic an example to support the contention. The simple association of words with sensations hardly amounts to a model of language.

Quoting Apustimelogist

Maths is not about brains, it is about abstract structure inferred in what we see in the world, the rules of math are about that abstract structure; that does not mean that how we use maths and the reason we are able to do math is not instantiated in brains. Logical necessity is not about neural tissue, it is part of abilities to talk about abstract structure we see in the world. But this does not mean that this ability and why it comes about, how it works, is not instantiated by, realized by neural tissue and physical stuff using descriptions which themselves invoke different levels of explanation and abstraction.

An instantiation is an instance of something; a rule book is an instantiation of the rules which it describes. A chess game is an instantiation of the game of chess. But that doesn't entail that what is instantiated is material or physical, even if the pieces are. For that matter, chess can be played without any physical pieces (indeed I recall reading in a James Michener book that Arabs used to play mental chess crossing the desert on camels with no board, although I find that ability unfathomable even though I know how to play chess. Chess masters such as Magnus Carlson play simutaneous blindfold games, even more astonishing.)

What you're arguing is, look, we have ideas, we can grasp numbers and logical laws, but the brain is physical, these ideas are 'instantiated' in the physical brain - therefore ideas have a physical basis or cause or dependency. Even if we can't really grasp how neurological activities give rise to ideas because of the brain's complexity, you think this allows you to say that they're still physical in principle. This is 'neural reductionism'.

"Neural Reductionism is the philosophical position that mental states, processes, and events (such as thoughts, feelings, memories, and consciousness) can be fully explained by, or reduced to, physical neural states and processes in the brain. In its simplest form, it posits that the mind is the brain." (Web definition.)

Quoting Apustimelogist

We can have descriptions, explanations of structure at various levels of abstraction about what we see, but they are all instantiated by and inferred by brains which are things in physical space-time.

But the living brain is not a physical thing in space and time. Material objects fit that description - balls, bullets, pencils, computer screens, an endless category of things. And I agree that if you were a neuro-anatomist examining an extracted brain, or a neurosurgeon performing an operation on one, then you're legitimately treating a brain as an object in those contexts. But the brain in lived experience - your brain - is not an object. The brain-as-object is something posited from outside the field of experience. Consciousness never encounters its own brain. Rather it is a vital centre of the living, embodied subject of experience, embodied in a biological and cultural network of meaning and symbolic relationships. It in no way can be described in solely physical terms.

The reductionist view basically abstracts the brain as a physical object, tractable to neuroscience, because that is the way that neural reductionism has to see it. That is why it is 'reducing!' It wants to reduce the rich, multi-dimensional reality of lived experience to the equations of physics, which have provided so much mastery over the world of things. But in so doing, it has forgotten or lost the subject for whom it is meaningful.

Furthermore, there's a sound argument for the fact that space and time themselves are manufactured by the brain, as part of the means by which sensory data can be navigated by us. So to say the brain is 'in' space and time, is probably less accurate than to say that space and time are 'in' the brain.

Quoting Wayfarer

Physicalism gives you causal accounts of how neurons fire, how circuits activate, how information gets processed. None of that touches the normative structure of logical reasoning—the “oughts” built into validity, soundness, and necessity.

This is an outdated objection to physicalism. Here's the boilerplate response:

"Oughts", intentions, and beliefs are dispositions. Being disposed to do X, means that under suitable circumstances, the individual will do X. X can be a thought.

Logical reasoning is guided by dispositions (beliefs) about entailments, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc.

Quoting Wayfarer

I understand that, but it is too simplistic an example to support the contention. The simple association of words with sensations hardly amounts to a model of language.

Model of LANGUAGE?! Are you seriously suggesting that if I can't provide a bottom up account of the development or grasping of a language model, that this falsifies physicalism? That's ludicrous.

The fact that language can be interpreted by AI is sufficient to demonstrate that language is consistent with physicalism. Language doesn't mean anything to a machine- that's the one genuine difference, and that's why I focused on meaning. Incidentally, AI can engage in logical reasoning.

Instead of trying to falsify physicalism, you seem to be simply providing reasons why you are unconvinced. This comes off as arguments from incredulity.

As I told you, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I embrace physicalism because it's the best explanation for all facts (including, but not limited to, science facts). Any mental behavior that is consistent with an algorithmic approach is consistent with physicalism. As I've admitted, feelings are not algorithmic- they are the sole, legitimate issue. They still don't falsify physicalism, but it's a legitimate problem. However, all theories of mind have problems. Those problems tend to be glossed over, or given ad hoc explanations (when one abandons naturalism, one feels free to entertain any magic that is logically possible). But that cannot result in a theory that is MORE plausible than physicalism, on the basis of its one problem and its speculative solutions. You aren't even in position to justifiably disagree, because you don't embrace any particular theory of mind (much less, a metaphysical theory).

Quoting Relativist

The fact that language can be interpreted by AI is sufficient to demonstrate that language is consistent with physicalism.

Not according to AI https://claude.ai/share/d20fdc96-dfad-44a1-9ef5-cbef895a5819

For clarity’s sake do agree with this depiction of materialism by D M Armstrong?



Might help to understand what is meant by physicalism.

(pressed for time will come back later)

Quoting Relativist

Logical reasoning is guided by dispositions (beliefs) about entailments, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc

But being disposed to do or say something merely describes what someone ls likely to do. It doesn't describe what they ought to do. And it also reduces logic to psychology.

Quoting Relativist

This comes off as arguments from incredulity.

That definitely cuts both ways.

Quoting Relativist

As I've admitted, feelings are not algorithmic- they are the sole, legitimate issue

'This dam is a perfectly satisfactory, save for the hole in it.'

Comment on the Armstrong passage above. If you think it's right, what is right about it? If you think not, what is wrong with it?

Quoting Wayfarer

What you're arguing is, look, we have ideas, we can grasp numbers and logical laws, but the brain is physical, these ideas are 'instantiated' in the physical brain - therefore ideas have a physical basis or cause or dependency. Even if we can't really grasp how neurological activities give rise to ideas because of the brain's complexity, you think this allows you to say that they're still physical in principle. This is 'neural reductionism'.

All I care about is whether the following is true:

"but the brain is physical, these ideas are 'instantiated' in the physical brain - therefore ideas have a physical basis or cause or dependency. Even if we can't really grasp how neurological activities give rise to ideas because of the brain's complexity"

If you want to say that math is about abstract relations not strictly about specific objects with enduring identities in space and time, thats fine. But as long as the quote or something like it is reasonable, I don't need to appeal to anything else additional or mysterious to ground it. I have in principle my story of where that comes from and that uses or even thoughts abput math are grounded in physical events. The rules of math don't come from, would not be derivable from more fundamental physical processes themselves. They are consequences of those physical processes performing inference about the structure of a world an organism exists in.

If I am not saying that the rules of math can be derived from the physical processes that underwrite cognition, and I am not saying we even have the capacity to model a human doing math yet, then I think its not necessarily the kind of neural reductionism you talk. But what it is saying is that there is nothing else mysterious or magical or dualistic or platonic going on, nothing other than brains performing abstract inferences about structure in the world.

Quoting Wayfarer

Consciousness never encounters its own brain.

This doesn't seem much different from the fact that experientially I will never encounter or pick out an individual electron. That shouldn't stop me from saying they are there. Neither do I see any reason to say that the richness of my experiences are a kind of functional structure occurring within the vicinity of my brain.

Quoting Wayfarer

The reductionist view basically abstracts the brain as a physical object, tractable to neuroscience, because that is the way that neural reductionism has to see it. That is why it is 'reducing!' It wants to reduce the rich, multi-dimensional reality of lived experience to the equations of physics, which have provided so much mastery over the world of things. But in so doing, it has forgotten or lost the subject for whom it is meaningful.

Your view seems to think there is some weird mutual exclusivity here when there isn't. You can think of the world is physical and talk about the richness of your own experience, study phenomenology, talk about existentialism, meditate, take LSD, listen to the Doors.

Quoting Wayfarer

It in no way can be described in solely physical terms.

Yes, and I have no desire to describe the majority if things in terms if fundamental physics.

And I am starting to suspect that your view is about to become uninteresting. What i interesting is something like substance dualists, not the claim that we shouldn't describe everything in terms of fundamental physics. Its uninteresting because I think most people don't take that view, even people who think of the world as fundamentally physical.

Quoting Wayfarer

Furthermore, there's a sound argument for the fact that space and time themselves are manufactured by the brain, as part of the means by which sensory data can be navigated by us.

Space and time are inferred. If we were arbitrarily constructing space and time then there would be no reason that it should help us navigate sensory data Space and time are structure of the world we infer througj sensory data.

Quoting Apustimelogist

I think most people don't take that view, even people who think of the world as fundamentally physical.

What about the boxed quote above in support of materialist theory of mind. Do you think it is basically correct? Or if not what’s wrong with it?

And, you haven't countered the argument I put to you, only re-stated your conviction that 'whatever exists must be physical'.

Quoting Wayfarer

But being disposed to do or say something merely describes what someone ls likely to do. It doesn't describe what they ought to do.

Not merely "likely" - it's a certainty, given the right conditions. As I said, an "ought" is a belief/disposition. Believing that you ought to pay for your groceries (rather than steal them) will result in your paying for your groceries, unless other factors are present (eg you're hungry and destitute).

More generally, this directly relates to "free will". Physicalism entails compatibilism: any choice you make will be the product of deterministic forces, a set beliefs (dispositions) that are weighed by the mental machinery, and can only produce one specific result. In hindsight, it only SEEMS like a different could have been made. In actuality, no other choice could have been made, given the set of dispositions that existed when the choice was made. So the collective set of dispositions necessarily leads to whatever choice that is actually taken. Quoting Wayfarer

This comes off as arguments from incredulity.
— Relativist

That definitely cuts both ways.

No, not in the context of our discussion. I'm not trying to persuade you that physicalism is true. I was satisfied to agree to disagree, for reasons I had stated. But you refused to do that, and could not respect my position because you were confident you could demonstrate physicalism is false. My only task is to defend the reasonableness of my position. Your insult "disposed" me to continue the conversation, even after you stopped responding.
Quoting Wayfarer

This dam is a perfectly satisfactory, save for the hole in it.'

Comment on the Armstrong passage above. If you think it's right, what is right about it? If you think not, what is wrong with it?

I already did:

Quoting Relativist

However, all theories of mind have problems. Those problems tend to be glossed over, or given ad hoc explanations (when one abandons naturalism, one feels free to entertain any magic that is logically possible). But that cannot result in a theory that is MORE plausible than physicalism*, on the basis of its one problem and its speculative solutions. You aren't even in position to justifiably disagree, because you don't embrace any particular theory of mind (much less, a metaphysical theory).

*Perhaps you forgot: I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts. You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts.

Quoting Wayfarer

For clarity’s sake do agree with this depiction of materialism by D M Armstrong?



Might help to understand what is meant by physicalism.

I hadn't seem this post when I gave my prior reply.

I mostly agree with it, but have a problem with the terminology.

Regarding a definition, I recall that you quibbled with the definition of "physical". "Naturalism", as I defined it, dispenses with the semantics debate.

Quoting Relativist

I mostly agree with it

(Armstrong quote) Do you know why I would not agree? I’ll recap - because it treats ‘mind’ as being on par with ‘the objects of physics and chemistry’. Do you know why I fault that?


Quoting Relativist

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts.

Except for the nature of mind and the felt nature of experience, right? You’ve acknowledged that in various places as I understand it.

Quoting Relativist

You aren't even in position to justifiably disagree, because you don't embrace any particular theory of mind (much less, a metaphysical theory).

That is a virtue as far as I’m concerned.

Reply to Wayfarer Yes, I'm aware that you believe the mind is not physical, and therefore not on par with physics and chemistry. But the extent of what you told me you believe about mind is just this negative (supposed) fact: it's not physical. This means you answer no positive questions, account for no aspects of reality, so it's logically impossible for this singular negative fact to constitute a better explanation for reality (including, but not limited to, mind) than a comprehensive metaphysical theory.

I also do understand that you don't have much interest in a general metaphysical theory, and I'm fine with that. But you haven't grasped that this means you aren't positioned to judge my inferrence to best explanation. Instead, you seem to think that your objections to a physicalist account of mind are so objectively strong that no well-informed, rational person could fall for it.

Quoting Relativist

Yes, I'm aware that you believe the mind is not physical, and therefore not on par with physics and chemistry. But the extent of what you told me you believe about mind is just this negative (supposed) fact: it's not physical.

You keep telling me what I'm not grasping, so I'll return the favour. The reason that the mind is not an object like those of physics or chemistry is because it is what we are. Cogito ergo sum, as Descartes correctly observed, is the one indubitable fact of existence. The mind (observer, subject, consciousness) is the one utterly indbuitable fact of existence because it is that to whom all experience occurs. So, of course it's not in the frame, part of the picture, nor a 'mysterious entity' nor 'non-physical thing'. Now the entire phenomenological, idealist, Indian, and most contiental philosophy understands this in a way that Anglo physicalism cannot.

And for you, that's just an inconvenient detail, somethingt that doesn't fit with your otherwise 'best explanation for all the facts'. Whereas, to me, that invalidates the entire point of philosophy, as it excludes the very subject to whom philosophy is meaningful.

Martin Heidegger is a difficult philosopher and one who's books I have not read in full, But he does point to what he calls the 'forgetfulness of Being', saying that this is a deficiency or an absence at the centre of modern philosophy. And that this is not a matter of propostiional knowledge, but an fact about existence (therefore, 'existential'.)

Reply to Wayfarer Quoting Wayfarer

And, you haven't countered the argument I put to you

Which argument?

Quoting Wayfarer

What about the boxed quote above in support of materialist theory of mind. Do you think it is basically correct? Or if not what’s wrong with it?

Physics only predicts how things behave. Physics doesn't tell you about an "intrinsic" nature of things, and I dont think this is necessarily a barrier to a physicalist perspective. Given that, I dont think I should have any expectation that physics should tell me about what its like to feel something. The inexicability of qualia is not specifically anything to do with physics, it is inherently irreducible, inarticulable, and ive always thought that the brain itself and how it processes information will actually also give insights into why we cant articulate some things about the information we process and why we can articulate certain other things. This would be connected to the meta-problem of consciousness.

Quoting Apustimelogist

The inexicability of qualia is not specifically anything to do with physics

Need I point out that this is not the Physics Forum?

Reply to Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer

Need I point out that this is not the Physics Forum?

No idea what you're on about

Reply to Apustimelogist As always :wink:

Reply to Relativist

1) illusionism - this means feelings are not directly physical because they exist exclusively in the mind- a mental construction. It depends only on mental causation (which I've defended). It also accounts for the action of pain-relievers, which mask the pain by interfering the brain's construction of the sensation.

Sounds good, I do think it’s important to bring emotions into this, which involves the endocrine system of hormones and pheromones. So to put it simply, this is a way that the body, as distinct from the brain, is involved in being. Emotions can be triggered in the body ( this can cause a bit confusion because the brain is a physical organ, acting as a gland, independently of the mind), the body informs the being and mind through hormonal activity. Which often works through feelings, urges, emotional states. You only need to look at the oestrogen cycle to see how that occurs.
So yes, feelings exist in the mind, to an extent. But I would suggest also that the mind isn’t consciousness, that consciousness is due to cellular activity (which does include the cells in the brain). But there is something about the being which draws all the instantiations of consciousness (from the cells) into the coherent form of an organism. This multicellular organism somehow acts as a singular conscious being. Who is then enhanced by the computational activity of the mind, hosted by the brain. And that feelings can occur in this instantiation, or singular conscious being, in complex and subtle ways among the complex interactions between the body, the mind and the emotions, acted out within consciousness (as described).

2) Feelings are due to some aspect of the world that has not been identified through science, and may never be. This is open-ended; it could be one or more properties or things.

To an extent, but I see no reason that it may never be, we just haven’t invented the science yet. I come to this from the opposite end of the stick, I work within a complex ideological system of spirit, soul and mind distinct from the physical world, but which interacts with the physical via beings. Beings that are organisms present in the physical sphere. So bridge the gap between the two. There simply isn’t any science working here, there is very little literature and most of it is embedded in religious traditions. So all there is is some ideas worked out by people like me, Wayfarer and a number of others on the forum, and thinkers, or priests within the religious traditions who work with the ideology therein. A ragtag band, of misfits with no overarching scientific, or philosophical grounding (theology accepted). So I can understand the skepticism of people working with a more formal ideology.

Reply to Wayfarer

But the living brain is not a physical thing in space and time.

I think there is a difficulty in depicting the mind in this way. Because the brain is a physical organ. True when it is alive and consciousness it is much more than that, but that organ is present in spacetime.
I would suggest that the brain hosts the mind, so is distinct from the mind, in that the brain is an apparatus performing the biological functions required for a mind to have a presence and interact within a physical body. So it is more appropriate to describe the mind as not a physical thing in space and time.
I hold that there is a mind independent of space and time, but that it is present in the world through being hosted by the brain (and the body). That the nature, or personality of that mind is formed alongside the body in the womb and is the body and mind and is and is not part of the world, simultaneously.

So that we find ourselves with a science and philosophy (in the Western tradition), covering only half of the story, the issue. The other half (the mind etc) has barely been discovered, or recognised.

Reply to Punshhh I do see your point and there is a sense in which the brain is a physical organ which can be physically damaged, But in context the implication was that it is ‘just another physical thing’ which is what I’m calling into question. And I think you would find the physicalist would not allow that the mind and brain are conceptually seperable as that would imply dualism,

Reply to Wayfarer Yes, I see that. It’s so difficult to tease out these positions.

The dualism point, for me depends on where one draws the line. It might be dualism, or monism depending on where one considers the divide between the two to be. So I don’t think this can be resolved, and shouldn’t be used as a means to shut down possibilities.

Quoting Apustimelogist

Physics doesn't tell you about an "intrinsic" nature of things….

At least one thing must have an intrinsic nature, such that there is a “you” physics doesn’t inform.

If physics…..

Quoting Apustimelogist

…..only predicts how things behave.

….and insofar as there is an intrinsic nature of at least one thing physics doesn’t inform, it follows physics cannot predict the behavior of the same “you” it doesn’t inform.
—————-

The thing with an intrinsic nature for which physics can neither inform nor predict with apodeitic certainty, with universality and absolute necessity, re: according to law, resides in the human brain, from which “you” originates. In order to reconcile contradictory theses, parsimony mandates another substantially different explanatory system for that which physics cannot address. Or, the “you”, not included in the explanatory domain of physics, must remain ever uninformed and unpredictable, which would immediately jeopardize the brain’s very use of the term itself, insofar as it there wouldn’t even be a “you” without it.

Which gives raison d’etre to the idea of an intrinsic nature as such, in this case, “you” as it relates to physics and is contained in the brain: there is a veritable plethora of evidence justifying the human being’s general distaste for being uninformed, to the extent that the brain will construct an explanatory system which satisfies the want for it.

So, no, physics hasn’t the means to predict that the brain would invent metaphysics, and physics hasn’t yet informed the brain of its own intrinsic nature by which that invention occurred, and, that there is a “you” to which it belongs.

But it gets worse than that. Physics cannot be used to explain how the brain originates that supposed domain of explanation having no ground whatsoever in the method by which physics does anything at all according to law.

And the fun part? The brain doesn't do physics, it merely operates in accordance with the discipline called “physics”, which was (gasp) invented by the very same intrinsic nature of the brain for which it is not the sufficiently explanatory method.
—————-

Of course, the answer is….there isn’t any “you” in the first place. None of the inventions of the brain, from itself, to explain itself, are really real. Which only leads to the question, if there isn’t any of that invented stuff in concreto, why is it that the brain makes it seem like there is? Every fargin’ thing the brain does seems to belong to a “you” of some time and place, such that it is incomprehensible that it never did, yet there is a not single one of them anywhere to be put in a box, to be charged a ticket to gawk at.

Why not grant to metaphysics legitimacy as an explanatory device, for no other reason than physics isn’t enough? I mean….it’s been done, however subconsciously, long before humans figured out how to write about it.
————-

Rhetorically speaking….

Reply to Punshhh

You have to realize that Wayfarer's brand of anti-physicalism is very different from yours. You are positing that there is something like a mental stuff and a physical stuff that are inherently different.

It can be confusing talking to Wayfarer because often he speaks as if this is what he is also suggesting, but he isn't. All he really wants to say is that we should not explain everything with physical concepts, and emphasize that non-physical concepts are defined non-physically. But even a physicalist can and I think generally does engage with concepts this way and so what he is arguing for is not philosophically interesting.

When you do end up probing Wayfarer on what he actually thinks about deep fundamental ontology, he will not endorse the kind of radical beliefs you do. He stays agnostic on that kind of thing and just says things like "the world beyond our senses is not as it really seems" or "We cannot engage with the world without concepts we have created", but he is never going to commit to a kind of substance dualism even though he sometimes speaks like he does. And he says he is not going to contradict accepted scientific consensus. He rarely tries to make it explicit that he is not actually a substance dualist or Kastrupian idealist. All he wants is to not conflate non-physical and physical concepts, nothing more.

Quoting Wayfarer

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts.
— Relativist

Except for the nature of mind and the felt nature of experience, right? You’ve acknowledged that in various places as I understand it.

Then you misunderstood. I was open to an alternative that might be a better explanation for the "hard problem", but you didn't offer one. That's why I kept asking for more than the "negative fact" (not physicalism).

Try to understand this in terms of seeking an Inference to Best Explanation: that "negative fact" explained nothing. As I said then, it merely opened up infinitely many possibilities. But also, if anything is possible then it's also possible that there is an unknown natural solution - one that may even be inaccessible to scientific analysis. This is a dramatically smaller explanatory gap than leaving all possibilities open.

Some physicalists (including Armstrong) insist that all questions about the natural world will one day be discovered by science. I do not share that optimism. We may never determine the true ontology of the QM "measurement problem". String theory may be true, but it is empirically unverifiable. But there could easily be other aspects of reality that are beyond our capacity to explore. This rationalizes the assumption that the explanatory gap has a natural solution. I acknowledge this as a weakness, but it's minor compared to the alternatives.

Quoting Wayfarer

You aren't even in position to justifiably disagree, because you don't embrace any particular theory of mind (much less, a metaphysical theory).
— Relativist

That is a virtue as far as I’m concerned.

Withholding judgement is always a respectable position. But you should be consistent and also withhold judgement on physicalism: it's not provably false; it has a great deal of explanatory power, and it's consistent with what we do know about neurology and the natural world.

Although I make a judgement, I don't rule out the possibility I'm wrong. It's odd that you rule out the possibility I'm right.

Quoting Punshhh

I hold that there is a mind independent of space and time, but that it is present in the world through being hosted by the brain (and the body).

Why do you believe that? What's your justification? What you describe sounds like dualism - is that indeed your position? Are you familiar with the interaction problem?

Quoting Wayfarer

And I think you would find the physicalist would not allow that the mind and brain are conceptually seperable as that would imply dualism,

No, I think most physicalists can acknowledge the conceptual separability between mind and brain, as well as a whole bunch of other conceptual distinctions in the vicinity of the same topic.

The physicalist wants to claim that when you zoom-in on the world and un-mix the convoluted causal structures, then you will find that everything is grounded in more fundamental events or structures describable and predictable by physics, and you will find no additional stuff behaving according to different principles. This doesn't invalidate conceptual distinctions, it just recognizes the hierarchical structure of scientific theories and the fact that no other competing theories describing mental substances exist or even plausibly exist that have any testable consequence.

My brand of physicalism is silent on the exact "intrinsic" nature of the world because that concept doesn't really have any articulable, consequential meaning or implication for anything other than being a kind of placeholder in one's metaphysics - scientific theories are descriptions that predict the behavior of the world as we see it. But I don't think that we need an articulable characterization of the "intrinsic" nature of the world in order to reiterate what I say in my second paragraph. In some ways then, this brand of physicalism is more like a family of scientific hypotheses against the kind of hypotheses that substance dualists would present.

Notice that experience is exactly as inarticulable as notions of "intrinsic" stuff. There is then no inherent or at least articulable contradiction between the ineffability of consciousness and the kind of "intrinsic" nature of the world that the physicalist would scaffold their descriptions on. A panpsychist would use the inability of physics to characterize "intrinsic" natures of the world as a gap where one can consistently inject consciousness.

My view instead is that if the inarticulability about "intrinsic" nature of the world and inarticulability about experience are indistinguishable, this shouldn't lead us to say that the intrinsic nature of the world is consciousness or experience, rather it should lead us to say that when we talk about experience, we are actually talking about something that is fundamentally underspecified and we don't have any conceptual structure to say anything meaningful about it or say what it it is other than something like it reflects a kind of informational structure grounded in some more fundamental causal structures when you zoom-in. This doesn't necessarily make it different from any other structures in reality, and the ineffability of consciousness is not distinguishable from (in)articulating about "intrinsic" natures regarding any other structure.

Nonetheless, given that consciousness is fundamentally grounded on brains for which we have various tools to describe their behavior, there is scope to examine why it is that we can or cannot articulate about various aspects of information in the brain, which might be linked to things like munchausen's trilemma, self-referentiality, primitive or indecomposable concepts, constrains on what makes a good representation, coarse-graining, the conditoonal-independence regarding Markov blankets, and limits on the determinacy of sensory processing, the inherently enactivist albeit predictive nature of description (e.g. language-as-use). This would also be linked to our inability to easily reduce qualitative experience to physical explanations in the same way we can with other more abstracted spatial structures we can identify when we see things.

One may be able to say that there is something that it is like to be a kind of structure in reality but there are strong limits on what this sentence can possible mean about an "intrinsic" nature of reality, and there is no necessary conflict with the hierarchical structure of scientific theories (with structures described by physics occupying a certain position) and any possible limits they have in explanation (such as the reasons in the above paragraph).

Reply to Mww

The issue is that nothing tells you about or can articulate an "intrinsic" nature of things. Its not a specific issue of physics. Neither is it a specific issue of consciousness. In a p-zombie universe with no consciousness, physics doesn't tell you about the "intrinsic" nature of things anymore than it does in any other universe. Nonetheless, this p-zombie universe doesn't seem problematic for physicalism because articulable explanation seems to be exhausted by a hierarchical knowledge framework we have accumulated as humans where the physical sciences have a certain position in the hierarchy with regard to the description or more specifically the prediction of actual events that happen in the world.

Metaphysics is about articulable descriptions and when we get to the notion of "intrinsic" natures we can say very little that is not circular or very primitive and non-descript like "dualism is false". I think various kinds of positions on anti-physicalism kind of assume that descriptions and explanations come for free most of the time. But I don't think this is the case. All description and explanation occurs in some kind of context where there are limitations or constraints, ultimately shaped by how brains process and use information. If you no longer think explanations should come for free, I don't think you can be sure anymore that the ineffability of something like experience is [not] intrinsically linked to epistemic constraints as opposed to reflecting something fundamental about nature.

But then one has to also be mindful about what it means to say that explanations or descriptions or scientific theories are real within their own epistemic constraints. And there's no question for me that certain areas of knowledge will come with things like "strange-loops" which are fundamentally due to the limits on how information can be processed.

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Quoting Apustimelogist

The physicalist wants to claim that when you zoom-in on the world and un-mix the convoluted causal structures, then you will find that everything is grounded in more fundamental events or structures describable and predictable by physics, and you will find no additional stuff behaving according to different principles.

I well aware of physicalist claims, and that is a good description of it.

One of Charles Pinter's central arguments in Mind and the Cosmic Order is that science explains the world by decomposing it into simples—the smallest, causally interacting constituents: particles, fields, molecules, neurons. (This can be traced back to atoms and atomism, although the idea of a physical atom has since been displaced.) This method has delivered enormous explanatory power , but it also commits us to a very specific kind of explanation: one where wholes are derivative, and the only truly fundamental realities are the constituents and their interactions.

Charles Pinter highlights fundamental issue with this attitude. Organisms don’t perceive the world in terms of simples. The human and animal sensorium (the manifold of sensory impressions which constitute 'things' for animals and humans) works in terms of gestalts—unified, meaningful wholes: faces, trajectories, melodies, intentions, beings, and so on. These are not assembled bottom-up from atomic sensory “bits”; rather, they are the primary mode in which the world is disclosed to a subject. When we identify something, we identify a gestalt, not an assembly of simples. This is a basic fact of cognition.

A gestalt has properties that no list of constituent parts captures: unity, salience, meaning, intentional relevance. A melody is not found in the individual notes; a face is not found in the luminosity patches; a perceived threat is not found in isolated pixels or shapes. These features belong to the organization of the whole, not to the micro-level items. They, more than atomic simples, are the basic constituents of the 'life-world', the world of lived meaning. And Pinter demonstrates this is so, not just for humans, but even for insects.

The tension is this:

* Science’s ontology is formulated in terms of simples.

* Mind and perception operate in terms of gestalts.

(Hence you can see why I'm not appealing to 'non-physical substances'.)

A physicalist can say that gestalts somehow “emerge” from simples, but the challenge is to show how the features distinctive of gestalts—coherence, meaningfulness, aboutness—follow as a matter of explanation from the properties of the physical parts. Simply asserting neural correlates doesn’t do the philosophical work, because correlates explain when something occurs, not why its distinctive features exist at all.

The point is that the reductive strategy that works for chemistry or planetary motion is not obviously suited to phenomena whose defining characteristics are holistic, structured, and inherently perspectival. If explanation bottoms out in simples, yet consciousness and cognition are inherently gestalt-like, then either:

* the reductive framework is incomplete, or

* gestalts possess explanatory features not captured by simples, or

* a richer conception of nature is needed, in which organization, form, and perspective are not treated as secondary or derivative

This isn’t an argument against physics. It’s an argument that a scientific metaphysics based solely on simples faces a structural mismatch with the phenomena of mind, whose basic units are wholes rather than parts.

So while it may be true that 'we don't know the intrinsic nature of anything' that is far from the only problem with physicalism. As an explanatory paradigm, it methodically excludes the basis of meaning in cognition.

Quoting Apustimelogist

All description and explanation occurs in some kind of context where there are limitations or constraints, ultimately shaped by how brains process and use information.

Here, you're committing the 'mereological fallacy'. This is central to an infliuential book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neurosciences, Hacker and Bennett (philosopher and neuroscientist, respectively):

In Chap 3 of Part I - “The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience” - Bennett and Hacker set out a critical framework that is the pivot of the book. They argue that for some neuroscientists, the brain does all manner of things: it believes (Crick); interprets (Edelman); knows (Blakemore); poses questions to itself (Young); makes decisions (Damasio); contains symbols (Gregory) and represents information (Marr). Implicit in these assertions is a philosophical mistake, insofar as it unreasonably inflates the conception of the 'brain' by assigning to it powers and activities that are normally reserved for sentient beings. It is the degree to which these assertions depart from the norms of linguistic practice that sends up a red flag. The reason for objection is this: it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. These claims are not false; rather, they are devoid of sense.

Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being. Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter.

You see, I think your approach is undermined by this reductionism, the conviction that basic physical level is the only real one, to the extent that you can't even consider any alternative. You simply assume that philosophy must defer to physics, as if that can't even be in question.

Pinter, Charles C. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why This Insight Transforms Physics. Cham (Switzerland): Springer, 2020

Quoting Relativist

It's odd that you rule out the possibility I'm right.

It's not a personal issue. It is physicalism that I'm critical of, not you in particular. See response above.

I wasn’t expecting a response, and a well-spoken one at that. So…thanks.

I’ll address just this one item, the rest being uncontentious other than relevant particulars:

Quoting Apustimelogist

The issue is that nothing tells you about or can articulate an "intrinsic" nature of things.

I understand nature of things to mean real material things. Even so, I’m of the opinion metaphysics can articulate the intrinsic nature of me, whether or not the mere satisfaction I get from it reflects the truth.

I agree explanations don’t come for free, and I think the fundamental restriction is the human intellect itself. We are, after all is said and done, at the mercy of ourselves.

Reply to Relativist I don’t believe it, it’s just my preferred explanation*, I don’t hold beliefs. Yes, I am familiar with the interaction problem.
I don’t see it as dualism, although it conforms largely with what is understood as dualism. I see the problems around dualism as a human construct. So where one thinks of substance dualism, for example, I don’t see these as fundamentally different substances, just differing kinds of substance. I entertain both idealistic and materialist ideologies, both atheistic and religious. I don’t see all these divisions as problematic, but rather divisions we have created. That what people think about and talk about are narratives based on an incomplete understanding of our world, coloured by the [i]human condition[/I].That what we don’t know likely vastly outnumbers what we do know. That we really have no idea about existence, because our narratives are developed solely around what we do in the world we were born into. That the basis of the existence we experience is entirely unknown. This is evidenced in the dilemmas any attempt to determine, or understand what existence, or our existence in this world, we come up against.

Surely given the advances in scientific research and human intellect, we would have discovered, or understood existence by know. But we haven’t, maybe we are no further forward in this understanding than prehistoric people. Are we missing something?

Quoting Relativist

More generally, this directly relates to "free will". Physicalism entails compatibilism: any choice you make will be the product of deterministic forces, a set beliefs (dispositions) that are weighed by the mental machinery, and can only produce one specific result. In hindsight, it only SEEMS like a different could have been made. In actuality, no other choice could have been made, given the set of dispositions that existed when the choice was made. So the collective set of dispositions necessarily leads to whatever choice that is actually taken.

:100:

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts. You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts.

:up: :up:

Reply to Apustimelogist I’m not anti-physicalism, I just don’t see aspects of being in the same way. I won’t comment on what Wayfarer is saying about this, as I will almost certainly misrepresent him and confuse, or derail the discussion.

You seemed to answer my question about p zombies in your reply to Mww. What I’m saying about p zombies is that the physicalist account of the our world with conscious beings in is identical to what a p zombie universe would be like if described by a neutral observer. The p zombie would be processing information and internal mental states just as described by physicalism when physicalism is describing conscious beings. The only difference is that it would not be conscious. Absolutely everything else would be identical.

Quoting 180 Proof

You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts.

Well spotted, 180! And the only fact that the physicalist doesn't come to terms with, is the reality of her own existenz. But, I get it, people need something to hang on to.

There's nothing in what I say that is 'anti-science' or 'opposed to science'. The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems.

Quoting Janus

that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true. — Wayfarer
I see no reason to believe that. Perhaps you are working with a redundant model of material as 'mindless substance'. If material in all its forms were nothing but mindless substance, then of course it would follow by mere definition that conscious material is impossible. But that is specifically the "question-begging presumption" I was referring to.

Reply to Wayfarer may be simply implying --- based on absence of {empirical or theoretical} evidence to the contrary --- that massive space-occupying Matter*1 --- what we normally mean by the word --- does not have the "right stuff" [necessary qualities or capabilities or potential] to produce weightless spaceless shapeless Mental Phenomena such as verbal communication of ideas. Yet staunch (anti-spiritual) Materialists*2 insist that Matter must possess the potential for Mind. And I provisionally agree, but it's a "question-begging presumption" --- a philosophical hypothesis --- lacking step-by-step evidence or theory of how mundane lumpish matter became Mindful*3. Without an account of the steps & stages of that fortuitous emergence, it's a circular argument. So, the key question here is : what is the "right stuff" for evolving living & thinking Matter?

I too presume that Mind naturally evolved from non-conscious physical predecessors. But I've never seen any scientific evidence or theory that describe, step-by-step, how that transformation could have happened. Moreover, I don't accept that hypothetical-quark-composed Matter was the "fundamental" element of evolution. Instead, as Einstein concluded, time-causing Energy was the primal force behind space-time & evolution, that eventually shape-shifted into various change-causing agents (Gravity, Nuclear Forces, Thermal Energy, Electromagnetic Fields, etc). So, it seems obvious that whatever Causal Principle (possessing the right stuff) produced the Big Bang beginning and subsequent space-time evolution, could-and-did eventually cause Life & Mind processes to emerge. Unfortunately, details of the necessary critical intermediate stages (non-linear Phase Transitions*4) have not yet been documented.

So I'm guessing that the non-sentient precursor of Mental Processes (e.g. linguistic) was more likely the non-spatial, massless stuff of Causation : Energy in all its forms. E=MC^2 has no place for matter. Even Mass is a mathematical measurement of resistance to Force, and C is a mathematical constant, not a measurement of a material object. Therefore, I agree with both Wayfarer and his Materialist critics, but with a twist : massless, spaceless Energy is capable of transforming into both Matter and Mind. But Mind (consciousness) is not a "separate, non-physical entity"*2, it's an active meta-physical brain Process, with no mass or inertia. :nerd:


PS___ This is not a "redundant" model of Matter, but a novel cosmic perspective on the evolution of Mind. Do we want to debate whether Causation has the right-stuff to create linguistic (knowable) noumena within a world of material (observable events & properties) phenomena?


*1. What is Matter? :
In physics, matter is any substance that has mass and occupies space (volume). It is the physical material that makes up the universe and can be found in various states, or phases, such as solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. All matter is ultimately composed of elementary particles like quarks and leptons, which form protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn form atoms.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+is+matter+in+physics

*2. Materialism is a philosophical view that posits that physical matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states, can be explained by material interactions. In this view, the mind is not a separate, non-physical entity but rather a product of brain processes, and reality is governed by natural, physical laws. This can also refer to a value system that prioritizes material possessions, but in philosophy, it refers to the belief that the physical world is all that exists.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=materialism+philosophy

*3. Ideonomy: A Science of Ideas :
The foundational insight of ideonomy is that ideas are part of the natural world. Just as humans are part of the natural world, the thoughts and ideas generated by human minds are also natural phenomena. Accordingly, we should expect there to be underlying laws or patterns in ideas, the same way we observe laws that govern other natural phenomena. While most phenomena in our universe are examined through a scientific lens, ideas are often treated as magic. Ideonomy aims to remedy this.
https://gracekind.net/writing/ideonomy/intro/
Note --- This is not an actual physical science, but merely a recent instance of a long history of philosophical proposals to combine the tools of concrete Empiricism with those of abstract Reason, in order to put the observing Mind under the microscope, so to speak. For the near future, any "hard" evidence turned-up may be watered-down with imagination & interpretation, as usual with any novel views of reality, such as Quantum Theory.

*4. Phase transition : The process where a substance abruptly changes from one state of matter to another, like a solid turning into a liquid or a liquid into a gas.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=phase+transition
Note --- The "abrupt" change is also non-analytical, so intermediate steps --- the mechanism --- between states are unknown.

Reply to Gnomon That comment of Janus was in response to a gloss of the Platonist scholar Lloyd Gerson, which in turn was a gloss on Aristotle 'D'Anima' ('On the Soul'). It is a very specific argument, that it is the ability of intellect (nous) to grasp forms (universals) that makes communication possible, in that they provide us with a stock of general concepts, which materialism denies (as materialism is generally nominalist.)

Anyway, I'm offsite until 1 December I have some other writing to work on. Chat then.

Quoting Wayfarer

The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems.

"Problems" such as?

Quoting Gnomon

Mind (consciousness) is not a "separate, non-physical entity"

It would be a different kind of 'physical'. It had to have evolved, with life, for once there was no life and consciousness on Earth, and now there is.

Quoting Wayfarer

but it also commits us to a very specific kind of explanation: one where wholes are derivative, and the only truly fundamental realities are the constituents and their interactions.

Well, no because you can use any level of explanation you find convenient for the task or the part of reality you are interested in.

Quoting Wayfarer

When we identify something, we identify a gestalt, not an assembly of simples. This is a basic fact of cognition.

A gestalt has properties that no list of constituent parts captures: unity, salience, meaning, intentional relevance.

And this is just a certain level of explanation in the realm of psychology, where these concepts may have some utility whether on a formal or informal basis, or fundamentally inaccurate/accurate. But that doesn't invalidate the possibility or validity of explanations from the view of neurons as units of information-processing. That doesn't invalidate the fact that if these psychological constructs belong to an organism, then it also belongs to a biological structure made of cells and molecules and fundamental particles, the excitations of quantum fields. There is only one way you can make consistent the plurality of a person, an organism, a brain, a many-particle quantum system, existing within the same vicinity. With appropriate assumptions, we can just see all these characterizations as different ways of looking at the same system at different scales. But if different scales exist, it implies that descriptions on one scale under appropriate assumptions are due to appropriate coarse-graining of descriptions on a smaller scale. I don't see how you can get out of that, it doesn't really work the other way round.

Quoting Wayfarer

The point is that the reductive strategy that works for chemistry or planetary motion is not obviously suited to phenomena whose defining characteristics are holistic, structured, and inherently perspectival. If explanation bottoms out in simples, yet consciousness and cognition are inherently gestalt-like, then either:

The thing is that the only difficulty here in psychology is qualia. But there is no problem for anything else. People create computational models to explain perceptual phenomena, cognition, behavior all the time, and these models can be based around neuronal-type architectures. And maybe at some point computational models will also be able to give us insights into neural or information processing correlates of reports of our own experiences like "gestaltness". No you can't explain experiential qualities, but I see nothing stopping anyone in principle from giving causal explanations to our behaviors and reports associated with those experiences. And thats all really science wants to or needs to explain. What a psychological or neuroscience wants to produce is a working p-zombie, because that would give you everything you need to know about why behaviors happen, including meaning. Because to me, meanings can be nothing more than our behaviors and reaction and predictions concerning things we see in the world, similar to but more general than the idea of 'meaning is use'.

Quoting Wayfarer

Here, you're committing the 'mereological fallacy'. This is central to an infliuential book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neurosciences, Hacker and Bennett (philosopher and neuroscientist, respectively):

Quoting Wayfarer

You see, I think your approach is undermined by this reductionism, the conviction that basic physical level is the only real one, to the extent that you can't even consider any alternative. You simply assume that philosophy must defer to physics, as if that can't even be in question.

The problem is that you like to reify concepts to the extreme where they should not be mixed or made to touch. Whereas I think we are looking at the same world through a plurality of tools.and concepts at different scales which are different but nonetheless will overlap or inform about each other. And we should make use of tools and concepts when there is explanatory interest in doing so.

Someone can identify someone else as drunk in a completely in formal way with no scientific training or definitions, and the drunkenness is simply a property of what someone sees in someone else's behavior. That doesn't mean that the chemical structure of alcohol and how it affects a brain is not relevant to explaining what someone is seeing and characterizing in a different way under a different perspective. They are all windows onto the same world that are interlinking.

Similarly, I can talk about our explanations and descriptions being limuted by the brain because there is good empirical reason to think that is the case. If I were to inject a excitotoxic chemical into your right hippocampus that destroys your neural tissue, it will be associated with a dysfunction in your ability to think in certain ways even though "thinking" is quite an abstract, nebulous phrase that probably is easier understood in the daily conversations of people and their own experiences than from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.

I just don't understand this kind of pedantry which spits in the face of blatant facts about how biology relates to experiences. We should be using the full range if concepts and explanations to talk about the world so for instance we.can have experiences as one level of description on one hand related to our daily lives, but we can also talk about the very same systems, organisms, people in terms of brains or how brains affect experiences, behaviors, reports. It seems that I am actually advocating for the complete opposite of what you think I am - usign the full range of conceptual tools and explanations to alk about things. But that doesn't change facts that when you zoom-in onthe region of space in the vicinity of your body and head, you will find neurons, molecules, the validity of physical descriptions that can be causally connected to how we experience and see things.

Its very hard for me to see how one can argue that levels of explanation on a larger scale are somehow not less fundamental compared to descriptions on smaller scales where you zoom-in. I don't think it even makes logical sense. Like its fine to say that we have two different explanations on two different scales describing the same part of the universe, and these two explanations are just different, maybe incomplete, maybe difficult to link together - like say a mundane description of an economy or game of cricket or religious ceremony vs. a physical statistical mechanical description of the physical interactions in an entire city or in a game of cricket or a religious ceremony. But its difficult for me to look at these two descriptions on even terms. There is an asymmetry there somewhere between the more abstract descriptions on a larger scale vs. the smaller scale one.

I see omly one way to make descriptions at different scales consistent if they exist in the same universe. That doesn't mean we need to restrict ourselves to one fundamental level of explanation all the time.

Reply to Punshhh

In my brand of physicalism, I will agree with my own claim that I am experiencing something, just that to say that I am experiencing something doesn't add anything to the p-zombie account. But the subtlety is that my p-zombie account just is cataloging the way we describe the universe in our theories. The theories don't talk about intrinsic natures in the sense as described in Chalmers' book "The Conscious Mind" (pg. 153):

Reply to Mww
"physical theory only characterizes its basic entities relationally, in terms of their causal and other relations to other entities. Basic particles, for instance, are largely characterized in terms of their propensity to interact with other particles..Their mass and charge is specified, to.be sure, but all that a specification of mass ultimately comes to is a propensity to be accelerated in certain ways by forces, and so on. Each entity is characterized by its relation to other entities, and these entities are characterized by their relations to other entities, and so on forever (except, perhaps, for some entities that are characterized by their relation to an observer). The picture of the physical world that this yields is that of a giant causal flux, but the picture tells us nothing about what all this causation relates. Reference to the proton is fixed as the thing that causes interactions of a certain kind, that combines in certain ways with other.entities, and so on; but what is the thing that is doing the causing and combining? As Russell (1927) notes, this is a matter about which physical theory is silent."

At the same time there would be no duality between intrinsic stuff and physical stuff because the physics is just relational descriptions of events in the intrinsic stuff. You could add a separate consciousness stuff next to the intrinsic "physical stuff" and get dualism. The passage I quoted is in a section about panpsychism which would be the alternative where the intrinsic "physical stuff" is actually just consciousness. My view is that the last option would not really be meaningful. I have no coherent characterization of what conscious experience is or means in a similar way to how physics is silent on the intrinsic nature of things.

Quoting Wayfarer

There's nothing in what I say that is 'anti-science' or 'opposed to science'. The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems.

Do you regard Inference to Best Explanation as "scientific method"? That's all I've done.

Quoting Wayfarer

You see, I think your approach is undermined by this reductionism, the conviction that basic physical level is the only real one, to the extent that you can't even consider any alternative. You simply assume that philosophy must defer to physics, as if that can't even be in question.

I do not "defer to physics". Physics provides a set of facts. A metaphysical theory needs to be able to account for all facts, including (but not limited to) the facts physics presents to us.

Quoting Wayfarer

If explanation bottoms out in simples, yet consciousness and cognition are inherently gestalt-like, ...

Whoa! Did you actually make a positive claim? Do you indeed believe the mind is irreducible? Or is this one of those noncommital possibilities (you did say, "if"). What about everything other than mind? You said you accept science.

If you think the mind is irreducible, how does it come into existence?

Reply to Apustimelogist Yes, I can agree with that. It does still leave quite a large gap to be filled, though. Which is I suppose what this thread is about. The idea that physicalist accounts can go only so far and we should refrain from overstepping their explanatory power.

Quoting Apustimelogist

….physical theory only characterizes its basic entities relationally, in terms of their causal and other relations to other entities….

Theory characterizes (its objects) relationally, yes, the first and foremost relation being, such objects in conjunction with the human constructing the theory.

Ever notice, that Einstein’s (1931) stone-dropping/railroad platform gedankenexperiment requires a mediating observer not on the platform nor in the car? The immediate observer(s) in either place characterize the stone-drop relative to himself, the second-party mediator characterizes the drops relative to each other. Simultaneity of relativity cannot be observed by an immediate observer.

Objects may be theoretically characterized as relating to each other, re: a planet and its moons, but that relation must still be meaningful, which cannot be found in the mere relation itself, but requires an subsequent relation to a subject by which the first is adjudicated. On the other hand, for that relation of object to subject with no other intervention, it must be the case meaning is contained in the relation, as a possible deduction from it, which is commonly called judgement.

This then, may be the dividing line between the physical and the metaphysical. The former’s meaningfulness requires a series of relations and the judgements thereof, the latter’s meaningfulness is deductible from the relation alone, for which only a singular judgement is required.

Physicalism and toaster ovens/particle collides, not a problem;
Physicalism and human subjectivity, not a chance.

Quoting Wayfarer

The reason that the mind is not an object like those of physics or chemistry is because it is what we are. The mind (observer, subject, consciousness) is the one utterly indbuitable fact of existence because it is that to whom all experience occurs.

You assert the mind is not an object, and therefore "not in the frame". And yet, it is a fact that I exist, I am an observer, a subject, and I engage in mental activities. "The mind" is conceptually that aspect of myself that engages in mental activities. Reconcile this.
Quoting Wayfarer

Now the entire phenomenological, idealist, Indian, and most contiental philosophy understands this in a way that Anglo physicalism cannot.

And for you, that's just an inconvenient detail,

To claim these philosophical perspectives "understand this" implies you have identified some objective fact. You have stated no facts that need to be accounted for. You've discussed an alternative, incompatible paradigm that depends on vague concepts.

You say you accept science, but science is reductive. You need to explain how your vague concept of "the mind" fits into a universe that is otherwise completely physical. You also need to reconcile how the functions of this non-object "mind" are influenced by the physical (drugs, brain disease, trauma...), and how the mind can have causal efficacy with the physical aspects of the body.

Relativist:You also need to reconcile how the functions of this non-object "mind" are influenced by the physical (drugs, brain disease, trauma...), and how the mind can have causal efficacy with the physical aspects of the body.

Re: (woo-of-the-gaps) substance dualists such as @Wayfarer @bert1 @Gnomon et al.

Reply to 180 Proof Yes, it's a good challenge, and an insurmountable one to substance dualists. Fortunately there aren't any.

EDIT: I've been gestating a thread about causality and panpsychism, but am not ready to plop it out just yet. I hope you can bear the suspense.

Quoting bert1

I hope you can bear the suspense

:smirk:

Quoting Punshhh

The idea that physicalist accounts can go only so far and we should refrain from overstepping their explanatory power.

Reply to Mww

For me, nothing can fill that gap. No one will he able to give a characterization of the intrinsic stuff talked about in the Chalmers' quote of my previous post. And this is just the nature of how descriptions and explanations work in an information processing system like a brain, imo. There are inherent limitations such as described by the munchausen trilemma.

If what it is like to be something can be taken as a directly aquainted example of irreducible ontology, then it seems ontologies strongly emerge macroscopically.
An issue is that if all our conscious behavior can in principle be simulated and reproduced from models of functioning brains, this emergent ontology seems not only epiphenomenal but also disconnected from our own reports about our own experience which would be due to the brains - this seems incoherent.
For me, the most logical explanation is that any strong emergence is an illusion (and there is no scientific evidence for it anyway) and we actually have no intuitive, coherent sense of the fundamental "intrinsic" ontology of the universe, partly because of limits on how any intelligent system can work.
When I think about this stuff, it always invokes the imagery of the strange loop and munchausen trilemma that really be escaped from.
The closest kind of fundamental "intrinsic" ontology I would pick would actually probably be something like informational (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33286288/), but I don't even actually know what that actually really means; the generality of the concept is appealing, that is all.

Reply to Apustimelogist

For me, nothing can fill that gap. No one will he able to give a characterization of the intrinsic stuff talked about in the Chalmers' quote of my previous post. And this is just the nature of how descriptions and explanations work in an information processing system like a brain, imo. There are inherent limitations such as described by the munchausen trilemma.

Yes, agreed, which is why in religious and mystical practice this tendency is acknowledged and there is an effort to get past, or around it. Through the practice one learns to subjugate the intellectual mind and seek new ways of relating to the world and being. Having done this for many years, I like you, have an unfillable gap. A gap which isn’t empty, but is rather undefined, kept clean, so to speak.

If what it is like to be something can be taken as a directly aquainted example of irreducible ontology, then it seems ontologies strongly emerge macroscopically.

Yes, but we can’t go past “seems” here. This is an example of human thought coming up with what seems to make sense. We might be mistaken, or viewing the issue through some kind of prism (metaphorically).

An issue is that if all our conscious behavior can in principle be simulated and reproduced from models of functioning brains, this emergent ontology seems not only epiphenomenal but also disconnected from our own reports about our own experience which would be due to the brains - this seems incoherent.

Yes, it suggests that there is more to it, wherein the raw experience and the presence of being in that experience is always the primary objective in animal evolution and behaviour. Just how the body achieves this might be more complicated, or novel, than we might at first imagine.

We should remember in this that we are creatures, living entities and we still haven’t got to grips with what it means to be alive. What that entails and enables. For example, it might be necessary for an entity to be alive to become a being. So our hypothetical super advanced AI robot will never be a being until it is alive.

For me, the most logical explanation is that any strong emergence is an illusion (and there is no scientific evidence for it anyway) and we actually have no intuitive, coherent sense of the fundamental "intrinsic" ontology of the universe, partly because of limits on how any intelligent system can work.

Yes, but that is admittedly a partial view. We should remember that we only have a partial understanding of our world, how it is produced, sustained and why it is here and why we are here. We are really in the dark on all these questions.

When I think about this stuff, it always invokes the imagery of the strange loop and munchausen trilemma that really be escaped from.

I would suggest a bit of lateral thinking, as a tonic.

The closest kind of fundamental "intrinsic" ontology I would pick would actually probably be something like informational (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33286288/), but I don't even actually know what that actually really means; the generality of the concept is appealing, that is all.

Yes, that is interesting and monism is being tossed around a bit in there. I don’t see the appeal in going too deep into these analyses. The people doing it are trying to find out something new and this is how they do it. I do similar things in mystical practice, it’s deep complicated and usually doesn’t produce much in the way of results. But it’s also a way of trying to find out something new.

Quoting Apustimelogist

…..directly acquainted example of irreducible ontology, then it seems ontologies strongly emerge macroscopically. An issue is that if all our conscious behavior can in principle be simulated and reproduced from models of functioning brains, this emergent ontology seems not only epiphenomenal but also disconnected from our own reports about our own experience which would be due to the brains - this seems incoherent.

From the PubMed link….

“…. A key insight here is that structure emerges from influences that are not there, much like a sculpture emerges from the material removed….”

….which by all accounts would seem very much contrary to the principle of cause/effect, and removes the prohibition regarding uncaused effects, making “irreducible ontology” rather suspect.

And this, immediately preceding, for context…

“….The requisite absence of specific influences are precisely those described above; namely, internal states and external states only influence each other via the Markov blanket, while sensory states are not influenced by internal states…”

….while it may be true sensory states are not influenced by internal states, it must be that internal states are influenced by sensory states, which contradicts that internal and external states only influence each other, insofar as sensory states are themselves internal.

Even all that aside, there seems to be a fertile ground remaining for representationalism regarding the human cognitive system, which is all metaphysics needs for the development of a purely speculative theory prescribing a method to it.

And if that is the case, then the more parsimonious relief of the “incoherence” related to being “disconnected from our own reports about our own experience”, resides in the notion that “all our conscious behavior can in principle be simulated and reproduced from models of functioning brains”, is false.
—————-

Quoting Apustimelogist

When I think about this stuff, it always invokes the imagery of the strange loop and munchausen trilemma that really be escaped from.

I understand you probably meant can not be escaped from, and to that I would certainly agree. From the metaphysical view alone, it is circular to describe reason with reason, even while it is impossible to do otherwise, and, from the metaphysical view with respect to the physical view, the former only works with the invocation of abstract ideas, themselves the product of the “strange loop” of pure logic. “Strange loop” being a euphemism for necessarily extinguished infinite regress.
————-

Quoting Apustimelogist

idea that physicalist accounts can go only so far and we should refrain from overstepping their explanatory power.
— Punshhh

For me, nothing can fill that gap.

Why should there be a gap, when it is really a case of no contact? Physics over here looking right, metaphysics over there looking left. Inside the skull, outside the skull. Metaphysics describes how to think, physics is merely one of the myriad of things thought about.

Critical metaphysics generally doesn’t concern itself with the possibility of possibilities, which perfectly describes empirical knowledge of neural fundamental conditions, such as Penrose/Hameroff (1990) “O.O.R.”, and whatnot.

Hard physical science generally doesn’t concern itself with logical justification for, e.g., pure a priori synthetic cognitions.

Physics shouldn’t bother with consciousness; metaphysics shouldn’t bother with time dilation.

Better, methinks, to grant the ignorance implicit in both, than to force them to fight with each other because of it.