I believe that this is a key insight here. I wonder, however, that perhaps we can even think of an even more general notion of 'goal-directed action' ...
Perhaps. But I still don't have enough reasons to say that 'the universe' is a false concept. Ironically, I believe that, despite the 'reductionist' r...
Ok, but then I question if there is a meaningful distinction between strong and weak emergence. Probably. I would say that we have a similar understan...
Interestingly, I think that the tautology that physical laws allow the arising of life in this world is perhaps more relevant than it seems. Assuming ...
Ok, I see. But this seems too convoluted for me. It would be much easier to say that the universe is simply fine-tuned in a way that it either necessi...
You're right, here, I was a bit overstating the case. But I would say that pressure is weakly emergent. It's perfectly understandable in terms of the ...
Einstein made the point especially clear in a 1948 letter he sent to Max Born (from the SEP article about Einstein's philosophy of science): Admittedl...
Notice, however, that humans built those things in a way that they would react in such a manner. A dog would probably attribute a completely different...
Ok, I read the article. So, I can respond now. Well, I probably dismissed the concept of 'strong emergent' in a flippant way. My bad. I believed that ...
Ok, I see. But, at the same time, if we deny that we should also explain why it seems to be the case. And, as in everything, we should take the more c...
Ok, thanks. Do you think that there is an active unitary consciousness there? If so, is it the same consciousness that has undergone some changes? I a...
Ok, but how do you explain the fact that scientific evidence seems to indicate just that? Well, perhaps it's a bit off topic, but I would say that wha...
Thanks for the reference, I'll read it. Anyway, I made my point about 'strong emergence' with reference to a reductionist paradigm - in fact, 'strong'...
Notice that I wasn't saying that biology is inconsistent with the known law of physics, but I admit that I was unclear. My point was that properties l...
I am not a physicalist myself but it's controversial to assume that an 'anesthetized person' has consciousness. Even more problematically, you also ab...
I think that it is undeniable that there was a time in the past without living being in the universe. At the same time, however, I don't think that th...
@"noAxioms", try to think about this in this way. Let's say you see a street signal. It certainly contains meaningful information to you. This maningf...
Ok. But, again, what is 'natural', though? Also, we do not have a complete understanding of 'natural laws', so it is difficult to determine what might...
What about the objection, though, that life and consciousness arose in the world many billions of time after the Big Bang? I believe that in some impo...
Interestingly, I have usually read that 'consciousness' is a specific kind of 'mind'. So, for instance, a bacterium has a very rudimentary 'mind' but ...
Thanks! I watched many of 'Closer to Truth' videos and I enjoyed a lot of those but somehow I missed that series. Anyway, my point is that unfortunate...
I agree. And the big question for a reductionist or emergentist model is how to explain the properties that are associated with life (and consciousnes...
No worries about the delay! Anyway, I wanted to point out that I did in my replies use the word 'observer' in different ways and it certainly can crea...
Good OP! I'll make some brief comments on your post. I more or less agree with most of it. I would even say that 'purpose' is the hallmark of living b...
Yes, I agree. Right! Also, that material data doesn't intrinsically have meaning. And that if one assumes that, in fact, forms are really a property o...
Ok. Methodological naturalism doens't imply a metaphysical commitment of any kind. But if one is agnostic about metaphysics, let's be agnostic. We pra...
The problem with 'idealism' is that there are different forms of it and under that names are included views that are incompatible with each others. If...
Ok. Yes, I would prefer that kind of materialism rather than others. But IMO such a materialism is hard to differentiate to either a panpsychism of so...
Well, in some ontological forms idealism, in a sense, no. If the whole reality is exclusively 'minds' + 'mental contents' then there is no 'brain' as ...
Ok, but the panpsychist postis that the 'mental' is a fundamental aspect of reality. So it's no surprise to me that the 'material' and the 'mental' sh...
The brain is also a material object. So saying that the brain works in a certain way doesn't explain why the material world has such a structure. In f...
Interesting. But note that in his model, the material world has a structure analogous to the intellect. Is this ok for a materialist? I guess that at ...
I believe that some would say that even if the world isn't intelligible it would still make sense to 'talk about' it and builing models about it if th...
Actually, I'm not sure that it is even possible to a materialist to abandon the idea of intelligibility. Certainly, it has been downplayed. So, I am p...
Well, it's not that simple. Even in the most strict forms of ontological idealism, the scenario you have to imagine is something like a shared dream, ...
Geat OP, I'll however comment only on mathematics. I think that the use of mathematics in physics actually undermines the materialist project. It is b...
Does this mean that the content of our knowledge are images of 'things' which are nevertheless intrinsic properties of things? If that is the case, 'd...
Ok, thanks! But both the formulations IMO are valid inside Kantianism and related epistemologies. In a sense, the 'representation' is the manifestatio...
Ok. To me this confirms that you endorse a skeptical form of 'realism', i.e. you accept the existence of an independent reality but you are agnostic a...
Sorry for the late reply. Unfortunately, I am quite busy right now, so I don't think that I'll be able to continue the conversation for a while. I jus...
Well, as it happens often in philosophy terminology can be confusing. If by 'realism' one means that our models do have necessarily correspondence wit...
To summarize the position one IMO can also say: there is an external reality but how it appears to us is shaped by the intellectual and sensible facul...
Good! Ok. Anti-realism about models perhaps, but it seems to me that you are pretty certain that there is an external, independent reality. Interestin...
Agreed. I have a tendency to use 'might', 'may' far too often even in casual conversations. So, yes, sometimes even if I am sure about something I use...
And I'm suggesting that even the ontological idealist actually believes in an external world. It's just a very counterintuitive picture of that world ...
Thanks for the post. Not sure if I understood the whole of it (some parts are beyond my grasp...), but I hope to have understand the gist of what you ...
I am not sure about this. I believe that 'our' empirical worlds are similar. They might have the same structure owing to the fact that, as humans, we ...
OK. I see your point. But IMO, you are conflating the belief with an 'external world' in generale and a 'physical world' in particular. I would say th...
I agree, we are talking about each other. But IMO this is because we start from different principles. To you it's 'granted' that physical phenomena ha...
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