Thanks to language I have actually closed the gap. If I didn't speak with other people and read things I doubt this would have been the case. — Hillary

So... you've solved the hard problem. This is good news. Please share your solution with us.

Your elaboration of gnarly issues pertaining to the subject/object question shows clear & thoroughgoing scholarship on your part. I find what you've written very instructive and I understand myself to be a beneficiary of insightful readings & ruminations by you. I'm grateful for the time & effort you've expended in the writing of this latest post.

David Chalmers' Hard Problem of Consciousness is sparking current & exciting work in consciousness studies, and maybe you have fashioned a berth for yourself therein.

Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. — Joshs

I see that one of the big problems in bridging the gap is language. Subjective facts tries to express some realities of the observing self i.e., the personal POV, but it is blatantly a literal oxymoron because if subjectivity is factual, then it's objective, thus a general public of observers can perceive it in consensus, but, as we know, you're using Subjective facts in contrast with Objective facts.

I'm beginning to see your position overall as a heavily QM-influenced conceptualization & understanding of the hard problem; I'm thinking it's center is entanglement at the human scale.

f you’re trying to distinguish between something you would want to call scientific method from your conception of the methods of inquiry typifying continental
philosophy, as that between experimental conjecture and received opinion, I would strongly suggest that no such distinction can be drawn. A philosophical account is no more or less tentative, and no more or less validated, than a scientific one. — Joshs

If a philosopher is not a Berkeley type idealist, s/he acknowledges the source of ideas being external, objective nature (holistically unified, or not), and thus probative investigation requires empirical journeys beyond the boundaries of the explorer's own mind.

If you want to counter by arguing no explorer can get completely beyond one's mental boundaries, then we're venturing into Idealism's skeptical POV on the empirical. Is that where you're coming from?

One god, in its most general sense, is precisely what is subjected to an authentically public scrutiny through experimental verification by countless
observers, because the shard [sic] commitment to a certain understanding of concepts like ‘observation’ and ‘experimental verification’ already presupposes a certain. metaphysics. In a certain historical era of science, this made God and scientific truth synonymous. — Joshs

Sounds like herein you place your faith in Kant's transcendental idealism, which has the mind's conceptualization limits & biases shaping our view of nature via a priori intuition.

Well, Kant's claims about space & time (the foci of this theory) being necessarily rendered to us by a priori intuition hinges upon discarded Newtonian physics. We now know, in the wake of Einstein, that space & time are out there, impacting our world quite beyond the boundaries of mind.

...time cannot be stopped, not even within a singularity
— ucarr

Here I disagree. If you throw a watch in a black hole, it doesn't stop indeed. It gets almosts instantly radiated away by Hawking radiation (the information, that is). — Hillary

Leonard Susskind won a debate with Hawking to the effect that 2nd law of thermodynamics is preserved through the singularity, and thus no info is permanently lost, which would include temporal info.

Thanks for the correction. So, as to the following quote,

Like Gödel showed us, every basic system of logic will generate true statements that can’t be justified within the generating system. — ucarr

I amend it to,

Like Gödel showed us, every basic system of logic will generate moot statements.

But it does not eliminate the idea of a single unified space-time totality — Joshs

No, it doesn't. However, idea & practical phenomenon are not always the same thing, which is the point of seeking experimental verification by literally countless observers. I don't know if The One god, being intangible, can ever be subjected to an authentically public scrutiny.

Scientific observations of nature bolstered by experimental evidence are riddled through and. through with metaphysical presuppositions. — Joshs

There's no doubt of this and, I say, also, metaphysical commitments are predicated upon would-be scientific observations of nature. And moreover, the interweave of observation-interpretation-evidence falls under the scrutiny of the science of consciousness studies no less than under the ruminations of phenomenology.

Special Relativity has nothing to teach phenomenology, whereas phenomenology points to a future of physics. — Joshs

I would amend this claim as follows,

Special Relativity has nothing to teach the received opinion component of phenomenology, whereas phenomenology points to a conjectured future of physics.

Not sure if this was a progression. This idea of a unified abstract omni monster god originates in Xenophanes who wasn't satisfied with the plurality of gods in his time. The idea fitted with the idea of a single abstract mathematical heaven introduced by Plato. The reality was knowable only approximately, in Plato's case by math. It fitted well with the trend of abstraction. But it became less personal (there it is, the impersonal absolute reality). Why can't heaven just be a material temporary version of heaven and life in it? Which in orinciple can make each form of life a god. I know it sounds ridiculous, but why, literally, shouldn't there be whale gods, monkey gods, virus gods even? I dreamt i saw a beautiful place in nature where all were working enthusiastically during the preambles to creation. Collectively they were looking for, the gods particle. Turned out they needed just two! Plus that damned 5D vacuum structure, which appeared in full color, pumping out two universes, in both sides of the wormhole, on the beating. To let a temporary version of heaven inflate periodically. Their reason? Boredom from the eternal life! — Hillary

You're onto something here! Keep on truckin'

You want "complex time"? Here's an example: T=t+ib(t). A ballistic missile defines a trajectory that has the following real part - the normal time in flight = t. For the imaginary part, suppose the missile were to hit an imaginary wall at normal time t and drop to the ground. The normal time it takes to drop to the ground is b(t). :cool: — jgill

:up:

Limit of what system? — jgill

By conceiving of the divine as unified , we simultaneously saw the human psyche as a autonomous and internally unified. It also gave us a view of the cosmos as a perfect unity. Why are you trying to say about us and the world by connecting us back to a plurality of deities rather than the One? — Joshs

I've quoted Joshs above as part of my reply to jgill's question at the top. More than a few philosophers want to comprehend "the cosmos as a perfect unity," want to be spiritually subsumed into The One of Platonism, want to resonate with the oscillations of universal Om.

Special Relativity replaces universal time with time dependent on reference frame & spatial position. I think we've got to spend more time navigating the local neighborhoods of existence before presuming to have a valid & practical comprehension of The One.

Metaphysicians can makes claims for the independence of their discipline, except when contradicted by scientific observations of nature bolstered by experimental evidence. Premature attempts to distill philosophy from science amounts to foolish class warfare. The two disciplines need each other.

Universe is the limit of system, my chief premise, has me claiming not even the material universe is a verifiable oneness, not to mention metaphysical speculations about oneness. I think Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem runs through the heart of a viable cosmology. Likewise, the essential reality of a sequence of unique & unrepeatable moments in time declared by Lee Smolin.

The human mind seeks patterns as foundations for its understandings. With respect to the cognitive importance of patterns, I think science is much younger than philosophy, which is to say, far less certain about the meaning (or existence) of "the cosmos as a perfect unity."



System, in general, makes an asymptotic approach to all-inclusive oneness, which is to say, our existence is always approaching but never arriving at oneness. And hallelujah to that! Since we all need something to live for, oneness, heaven & total harmony are the enemy.

The greatest question of all is, "What next?"

It's springtime. Fresh air!

I haven't seen such powerful example of an accelerated reference frame before! — Hillary

Thanks for weighing in, Hillary!

There is nothing socialist about states taking on private risk. The risk being taken on is that of corporations, without any concomitant control; ownership remains in private hands, and states taking on such risk simply means that corporate failure is ultimately underwritten by taxpayers. It is capitalism taken to the nth degree such that private enterprise parasitizes on public finances. — Streetlight

When a state underwrites private risk with taxpayer money, do we speak truthfully when we say that taxpayer money is queer venture capital via which the state participates in the market, except, however, the venture capitalists i.e., the taxpayer-investors, down the line, are excluded from profit participation in the event of private risk ultimately turning a profit?

Do we speak truthfully when we say that the state, in deciding to invest in private risk with public money, acts the role of a queer stockholder on behalf of a corporation, and thus the risk portion of the venture exemplifies a state-run business?

Do we speak truthfully when we say that the taxpayers, in raising the public money that underwrites corporate ventures, does the work of financing production for the market, but receives zero payment for its work?

Do we speak truthfully when we say that conventional underwriting of private ventures with public money as with, for example, the public underwriting of potentially lucrative research & development programs conducted at universities, exemplifies taxpayer-funded welfare for the corporations?

Do we speak truthfully when we say that public underwriting of private ventures exemplifies a queer conjunction of private_public enterprise i.e., a complex mixture of capitalism_socialism?

And the other thing states do, more and more - I think maybe among the most consequential and least talked about - is to take on private risk. That is, private business risk is 'offshored' to state, who bear the burden when capitalist markets fuck up. The political economist Daniela Gabor has a really, really excellent and easy to read paper [PDF] on this topic. From the abstract: "The state risk-proofs development assets for institutional investors by taking on its balance sheet: (i) demand risks attached to commodified (social) infrastructure assets, (ii) political risk attached to policies that would threaten profits, such as nationalization, higher minimum wages and climate regulation, (iii) climate risks that may become part of regulatory frameworks; (iv) bond and currency markets risks that complicate investors’ exit". This 'taking on investment risk' tracks with the increase of financialization: states can function as lenders of last resort and prop up 'too-big-to-fail' institutions without which everything goes tits-up. — Streetlight

Is there a kernel of truth in my thinking the state taking on private risk is least talked about (albeit most consequential) because it is a critical phase of the economic life of a mature capitalist state wherein it starts to move toward socialism strategically?

Moreover, have you seen this movement towards state-run economy attributes in other mature capitalist economies that are nearing market saturation (in the absence of wars of conquest), thus suggesting as capitalism matures, it's compelled to move away from free market purity towards a complex, mixed capitalist-socialist economy?

Note - the section in bold is excepted because it describes anti-socialistic moves.

What approach should morally upright social scientists & legislators take regarding the naturally occurring inequality of human individuals grouped together within a state?
— ucarr

None. The classism based on the inequality of human individuals is in place practically, even if not officially, and it prevails.

For example, theoretically, officially, we're all equal before the law. But practically, we're not. — baker

By saying "none," you're saying you condone the double-standard that, for the same crime, has the judge handing down a draconian sentence to a commoner and a slap on the wrist to a noble.

Your conformity to the status quo, once it's amplified by a smug polity, launches a potent recipe for revolt.

John Lennon sang about nobles keeping the masses doped on sex, drugs & religion. Are you also signed on with this stratagem?

Game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways take aim at the roiling dissatisfaction of the legions of working stiffs. Apparently you think they're effective.

Nathaniel West, like other writers before and since, characterizes Los Angeles as a desert fever dream unmoored from the Puritan stolidity that keeps the rest of the continent sound. At the movie premiere, the downtrodden, the locusts of the land, ignited by Homer Simpson's breakdown into psychotic rage, erupt into mad revolt against the class bondage that mummifies them.

The quick & the clever are forever herding the pliant populace into one or another scheme of usury until, periodically, a seismic eruption of social upheaval lays waste to the cultural order. The first cracks in the facade appear within the glib & gleaming complacency of the conservatives. No?

Will to power is not the desiring to possess power by a freely willing autonomous subject. The ‘subject’ is a fractured community of competing drives, and power flows through it rather than being possessed by it. Each of these drives within the psyche is its own will to power, and it is their tension that is the creative force of genius l. — Joshs

Will to power is in the service of the eternal return by being differential and multiple, transforming the arts, politics and the sciences through the constant clashes of the drives. The idea of a political class maintaining control is antithetical to the anarchic spirit of will to power. — Joshs

The above read like fast lanes to a nightmare of social instability, with frequent visits to thresholds of disintegration & collapse.

Perhaps Nietzsche's downfall in microcosm was personality disintegration due to an excess of Sturm und Drang.

Notion we need to challenge

1. Equality of people before the law and in possession of civil rights — Wittgenstein

What we need to advocate

2. To maximize cultural progress (enrichment) , the existence of a slave class is neccessary — Wittgenstein

3. The elite artists should fashion the taste of art in society... — Wittgenstein

In your OP, your responses to the above seem to position you as a supporter of this, as you say, "unpussified" reading of Nietzche. Then, however, you end your statement with,

Disclaimer : I disagree wholeheartedly ..... — Wittgenstein

So, maybe you're merely paraphrasing Nietzsche, not stating your interpretation of him.

Then maybe you weigh in on his pungent beliefs with a wholesale disavowal.

Hmm.

At present, I can't shake my sense you oscillate between embracing & reviling Nietzsche.

Anyhow, as pertains to my present point of interest,

Most people don't need a university education, the entry criterion to a elite university/institution/academy should be made sufficiently difficult that only those who are capable of producing work of genius gain entry into it. In fact, the education system itself should cater to the needs/training of geniuses at the expense of common people. When everyone is capable of getting a degree/certificate/qualification/title, you know education has been dumbed down — Wittgenstein

What approach should morally upright social scientists & legislators take regarding the naturally occurring inequality of human individuals grouped together within a state? (It seems we on the left have been rebutting Plato's Republic (somewhat ineffectually) for the past 2,400 years.)

Also, has Nietzsche written anything on the topic of strategically planned social stratification not previously written by Plato?

But my most favorite part is the misspelling of Strange in the thread title. It's like printing a whole bunch of twenty dollar bills on your computer at home, leaving the W out of Twenty. — god must be atheist

On point, god must be atheist! I could try to say "stange" is some of my bad French; would anybody buy that? Naw! Di-stinguer has an extra syllable, and the spelling is totally different.

Your feedback is encouraging & much appreciated.

Why must ultimate laws fail? — EugeneW

This question digs into some of my currently evolving thinking about ontic boundaries of material objects in the context of an origin story, one of the impossibles that philosophy is tasked with solving.

An ultimate law of physics (or, for that matter, of any scientific discipline) holds the status of First Cause. Re: First Cause, I lean towards Kant with the notion that such a thing is transcendently real, meaning it can't be pinned down to anything like a satisfying specificity, which is what human mind hungers for in its quest for an origin story.

Why must First Causes be transcendently real? Even with a First Cause, the element of context remains. Well, the context of a First Cause, being the "holding space" for said First Cause, must stand apart from it, thus negating First Cause status of First Cause.

If we say First Cause is its own context, we posit our thinking within the inner sanctum of paradox which, existentially speaking, is a transcendent object, so First Cause, though extant somewhere, escapes our firm grasp again! Well, this is the terrain of quantum uncertainty, is it not?

With the transcendent paradoxicality of QM, we get a probablistical handle on First Cause, but it's just an admission that something passable as First Cause is out there, somewhere, although there's no discreetly specifiable there there.

P.S. - Big Bang Theory appears to have this ontic boundary problem as described above. What's the context of an infinitesimal point? We're halted from saying "itself" because there is no dimensional expansion. Is the pre-Big Bang universe a transcendently paradoxical entity? Wow! Let's try to wrap our heads around that one. Impossible!

[Please don't analyze. If you explain what you intend to express, you will still not explain it (because you will have to explain the explanation) and kill your style.] — gikehef947

I'm thinking about this seriously, with intent to incorporate it into my methodology, when I have a better understanding.

Thanks for sharing. It feels like good advice, albeit an approach whose use should be made sparingly, lest one fall prey to obscurantist language games.

So he attacks that quest while he actually wants to see one at work? — EugeneW

Herein, my word choice of "attack" is unfortunate. In this context, "attack" means "line of attack," or "approach to the solving of a problem," not "attack" as in "find fault with," or "criticize."

While foiling the standard approach to the unifying theories, being pessimistic and not seriously about it, you can actually arrive at a unifying model. — EugeneW

This sounds like you maybe agree that pessimism-fatalism is a useful frame of mind for conducting philosophy.

Thank-you. :grin:

The gambler plays to win.
— ucarr
Onnthe contrary, gamblers, like lovers, play to lose – to keep the games going. The action is everything, that's the jones! :broken: — 180 Proof

So gambling is compulsive.

While losing, the philosopher learns to enjoy it
The philosopher lives beyond "winning and losing". Amor fati. :fire: — 180 Proof

Maybe Amor fati & the great NOW are sharing a handshake.

was Einstein a victim of his own intellectuality? — chiknsld

I'll venture to say he was unfortunately thrown into conflict with his own genius. The richness of Relativity extended far beyond Einstein's credence regarding what, in general, is possible within the physical universe and what, specifically, are some real implications of the theory.

One of the seemingly silliest goals ever set by a scientist, the quest for a unified field theory of everything...
— ucarr

Ah, silly you say? The quest for great knowledge is futile to some, but intellectuality, methodology, precise accuracy, these are the measures of science. — chiknsld

I apologize for the convolutions pointed out by Alkis Piskas. In the above quote, I'm trying to applaud Einstein's quest for ultimate laws. However, I'm trying to do it ironically by arguing that the serious quest for ultimate knowledge will be foiled, whereas the pessimistic quest for ultimate knowledge will sometimes yield gold nuggets, as with Einstein, even though he fought against his own productive, (unintended) overreaching in favor of perfection & victory.

How's that for indirection athwart of clarity?

Philosophers need to say something else. :heart: — Agent Smith

I try to be original, but oftentimes I find myself dealing in the currency of cliche nonetheless. :roll:

The philosopher is opposite the gambler.
— ucarr
What does that mean? Please be clear. — Alkis Piskas

As to my meaning above, whereas the gambler strives to beat the odds by slipping the laws of averages, the philosopher, per my thesis, strives to antagonize the odds via strategic overreaching. Even though we've all been terrorized by Alien, I nonetheless declare "nature loves a bold explorer." Make bold if you want Nature to cough up her deep secrets.

"The gambler doesn't enjoy losing. The philosopher learns to enjoy losing." — Alkis Piskas

You got me with this piercing criticism, and your couplet above is an excellent clarification of my mishegoss. Now, let me walk back my mea culpa half a step. My sentences are misaligned because sometimes interesting details are asymmetrical. Isn't asymmetry how the Big Bang got triggered?

That sounds childish. — Shwah

Regarding imprecise language, your use of "that" above refers to my entire OP, the last paragraph or some other part?

...I don't know a dualism which posits end game vs beginning game... — Shwah

I don't intend herein to set beginning game in opposition to end game. Instead, I'm trying to root my observations within the NOW, admitting however, that said NOW is elusive.

Within the perspective of life, which is the NOW, there is no beginning & no end. We the living, so far as we know life directly empirically, have always been alive & always will be alive. Of course we have thoughts about our birth & death, but these are just more life experiences.

I suppose I'm writing a POV that's away from duality and rather at eternalism as a purported bounded infinity.

I appreciate your encouragement re: my having an insight. Thank-you.

Logic is continuity, which is to say, interrelationship, rooted in inference. Would anyone have any notion of continuity & interrelationship between material things without firsthand experience of a spacially-extended, material world that affords empirical experience?

Pure math, and all other forms of signification, once uncoupled from empirical experience, become unintelligible.

Numbers, uncoupled from interrelated material objects, become random, unable to signify anything intelligible.

Abstract thought is non-specific WRT our material world; it is not uncoupled from our material world. — ucarr

Statement one above is my general statement creating context for the following three statements.

Statements two & three are a response to a debater's extreme position that numbers exist only within the human mind, without material presence within our material world.

Statement four is my acknowledgment of the connection between the abstract thought of the human mind & our material world.

Abstract thought is non-specific WRT our material world; it is not uncoupled from our material world.
— ucarr

I think the bolded statement is correct and important.

The first statement might admit some exceptions, but one must allow for the ineluctable ambiguity of the smoke signals we are trading here. (You mentioned 'Wet-gloom-shine' in the OP. I think he generalized his discovery about math to 'lung wrench' in general. But 'every talk has its stay.')
— ucarr

The above commentary upon the "abstract thought" statement is attributed to me, but I don't recognize the words as being mine. III, are they your words?

Also,

(You mentioned 'Wet-gloom-shine' in the OP. I think he generalized his discovery about math to 'lung wrench' in general. But 'every talk has its stay.') — ucarr

The above commentary re: 'Wet-gloom-shine' etc is not mine & does not appear in my OP.

If a thing has many uses within the real world, is that proof of its reality?
— ucarr

Does 'reality' have an exact, context-independent meaning? Is such a situation even possible? (And what exactly do I mean by 'possible'?) — lll

I proceed with the assumption you read the premise of my quoted line as being,

Reality has an exact, context-independent meaning.

Isn't the premise you ascribe to me a pretty good definition of Platonic Idealism?

Anyone who uses possible assumes an existence-accommodating context of some sort.

As for the degree of generality of an existence-accommodating context, I'm presently of the opinion that metaphysicians want to push that degree of generality towards infinity. So, yes. The metaphysician believes reality has an exact, context-independent meaning.

Doesn't the utilitarianism (and thus locality) folded into my quote protect it against Platonic Idealism?

It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. After all, there is no time, so how can we talk about a time before time existed? — Raymond Rider

Do you not feel challenged to imagine a state of being with time wholly absent? I've made your last question appear in bold letters because you're already talking about such a state with your question.

If the theist concedes your claim that God & time are coeternal, the issue of God's authorship of time becomes interesting. I say this because the scenario featuring God willing the existence of something that has always existed, as God has always existed, suggests a type of willful causation that is timeless, and, I must admit, until this writing, I've been narrow-mindedly assuming all causation & effect relationships are both temporal & linear.

Furthermore, the scenario featuring God timelessly willing the existence of time reads like a compound paradox, along the lines of "the timeless creation of time that already exists."

We can say that God has always willed that time existed in order to maintain God's ontological priority, as time would be contingent on God's will. — Raymond Rider

Let me know if my understanding of ontic is incomplete or false. I ask this question because, given a scenario wherein God & time have always existed, how can God's existence be prior to time's existence?

Let's look at your use of contingent in our context here: (contingent on/upon) - occurring or existing only if (certain circumstances) are the case; dependent on.

It seems to me coeternal existence precludes not only priority but also contingency.

I say this because with time being coeternal with God, there's an identity of priority equating the two, thus making it impossible say which of the two terms does the willing of the other and, moreover, thus making it impossible to say which of the two terms requires causal circumstances (i.e. the causal will of the other) to exist.

Perhaps you'll admit it's pretty hard for one thing to claim it created another & yet, when asked about the two births respectively, the claimant declares, "we both have always existed." It's hard to uncouple the creator/created relationship from linearity.

Also, consider the scenario with two eternals. If two things are extant, it's hard not to assume they exist somewhere. Now, given that the somewhere houses the two eternals, and the stipulation that some type of somewhereness is a necessary accommodation for existing things, the suggestion arises that the somewhere has priority WRT the two eternals, thus throwing the scenario back into the pit of eternal regress.

The other option is that somewhereness i.e., space, like time, is coeternal with God.

If there's a kernel of truth in my reasoning here, isn't it interesting how conferring eternal existence upon a thing seemingly places it upon level ground with God?

This brings us to the Trinity. God-Son-Holy Spirit, though individual, nonetheless are one. Well, if time is coeternal with God, then time is also coeternal with Son & Holy Spirit.

Does concession to time being coeternal with God entail transforming the Trinity into the Quaternity?

If a brain was absent then counting wouldn't even be possible. — Mark Nyquist

I remember the first time I saw a number raised to a negative power. "How does that work?" I wondered. "Take the square root of a negative number? But you said..." Who thought up imaginary numbers? "Say, they look like real numbers."

:up:

As you wish. I will stop. Excelsior.

Years ago someone put me on the right track when they pointed out that consciousness is not exactly a thing, even though language forces us to talk about it as if it is.

It's real & it has impact on things, how can it not be be a thing?

The fun of consciousness studies is trying to "grasp" something foggy, ghostlike.

It's power lies within its gravitational presence.

Do you distinguish between consciousness and its contents? — unenlightened

Not really... It is more likely that consciousness is itself emergent in whatever capacity it is so emergent. "He is what he is," so to speak. You are you, singularly, in whatever productive form that happens to emerge. What do you think about that? — Garrett Travers

In your response to unenlightened, I interpret what you say as,

1) consciousness is emergent whenever it's emergent
2) He is he
3) You are you

These three statements I characterize as math identity statements in the mode of,
A = A
These math identity statements are true statements, however, in the mode of monism (which you seem to be propounding here) they shed no light whatsoever upon the above question raised by unenlightened.

I'll give my response to enlightened's question in a moment, but first, let me ask you four questions (If they've already been asked, I apologize for the redundancy.)

1) WRT to consciousness, are you a reductive materialist?

2) Is it your conclusion that neuroscience, as a whole, correctly exemplifies reductive materialism WRT to consciousness?

3) Does neuroscience believe in mind/body (brain) dualism?

4) If so, what's the interface (per neuroscience) between mind & body?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding unenlightened's important question,

Is there a distinction between consciousness and its contents? (If this re-wording of unenlightened's question distorts his intentions, hopefully, said person will let me know.)

Consider a book of fiction of the type that features bound white pages printed with black ink.

Does the story reside there within the book? In other words, do the covers of the book contain the world of the story, with all of its various scenes filled with conscious humans surrounded by material objects of all manner of sizes, shapes, colors & sounds?

Thingliness - a material object that possesses obdurate boundaries that are discreet & local.

The physical book has indisputable thingliness.

The story that the physical book sources, however, does not.

The story of the book, although filled to the brim with human consciousness & a world of material things, does not really, in its actuality, seem to be sitting on a shelf in a library, bound between the covers of a physical book, does it?

One of the (current) mysteries of consciousness seems to be the self-to-self requirement for transmission of consciousness from one locality to another.

The world of the story seems to reside in the minds of the author & the reader and where, pray tell, is that?

The self-to-self transmission of consciousness between super-intelligent computers may come as soon as 2029. Even so, whether such transmission is via gray matter or via CPU's, the question remains, where is the consciousness?

Now, if consciousness is characterized as being only semi-discreet, non-local & in possession of boundaries as weak as the gravitational force, then the transmission of consciousness, via self-to-self,
endures presently as a mystery of non-local communication, the inspiring progress of neuroscience WRT consciousness sourcing via the physical brain notwithstanding.

Fellow travelers, when we talk about the mind of consciousness, as distinguished from the brain of consciousness, we must begin to talk about the gravitational attraction between two (or more) material bodies. This gravitational attraction, clearly, expresses a non-local phenomenon.

The hard problem of consciousness, as David Chalmers has famously written, entails the mystery of self-to-self, non-local communication.

The mind/body problem, seen through the lens of Chalmers, does not equal un-scientific spiritualism.

Important Answer - The interface between mind & body is the gravitational field.

In the first line below, I make a claim.

Being countable is part of the makeup, part of the being of material things. — ucarr

In the second line, without realizing it, you affirm the claim I make in the first line.

Could that something that makes them countable be their presence? — Sir2u

In the third line, I make the observation that your statement is an affirmation of my claim.

Here's where things get interesting because what you have written above is a full, unconditional affirmation of what I've been claiming from the start. — ucarr

In the fourth line below, you accuse me of moving the goal posts.

Could you just go back to the OP and point out exactly where you stated that... — Sir2u

In lines 5, 6, 7 I quote myself from the OP. Any reader can clearly see that my later statement, Being countable is part of the makeup, part of the being of material things. was made earlier, with slightly different wording, in the OP. To elaborate a bit further, when, in the OP, I talk about a material object's ability to hold a position as being essential to its physical attribute called number, I'm using different words to talk about the very thing, PRESENCE, which you affirm as the thing that makes material things countable.

Material Numbers – because a material object can hold a position, perhaps we can understand that any material object has a built-in property of number. — ucarr

This property of number of a material object, like its mass, is therefore understood to be one of its physical attributes. — ucarr

The number of a material object is then a kind of measure of the built-in positionality of a material object. — ucarr

There's no wiggle room here.

In my previous post, wherein I show, through your own statements, your belief in my central claim, the logic is sound.

In this post, I show, through my own statements, the fact I've never deviated from my OP.

The evidence supporting these two claims is here before the reader in black & white. Any reasonable person can evaluate the carefully worded statements and make their decision where the truth lies.

math has nothing to do with the universe. It is just the method of describing the properties. — Sir2u

If, as you say, "math has nothing to do with the universe," and, as you say, "It is just the method of describing the properties." then, by your own words, the properties described by math must belong to the material things and not to math. As you've said earlier, these material properties include length, width, height, weight, etc. So, math describes these physical properties of material things that are external to math.

Let's look at the two statements below.

First, I make a claim about material things,

Being countable is part of the makeup, part of the being of material things. — ucarr

then you elaborate what I assert with an additional detail.

Could that something that makes them countable be their presence? — Sir2u

Now, let's look again at what you said just before> math describes the properties of material things i.e., length, width, height, weight, etc. Let's remember you also said "math has nothing to do with the universe," and thus we conclude these properties are external to math.

Let us now assemble the physical properties of material things external to math. When we assemble length, width, height, weight, etc., what do we get?

We get PRESENCE. You know as well as I do that a material thing that possesses the properties just described has presence within the real world of material things.

Now, let's look again at your most important statement in this discussion,

Could that something that makes them countable be their presence? — Sir2u

I know you don't think math bestows upon material things the physical properties listed above because you've just said, "math has nothing to do with the universe. It is just the method of describing the properties."

So, if math doesn't bestow physical properties upon material things, and these physical properties add up to presence then, the presence of material things is likewise independent of math.

Therefore, given that presence is independent of math, and presence, by your own words, is that something that makes material things countable, then, by the transitive property, the countability of material things is also independent of math.

The logic here is airtight, is it not?

What judgment is there to be made? -- EugeneW

Consider, an approximation is such in relation to another thing it resembles, as a kind of isotope, or variant. As a thing in itself, it's just another thing, no less extant than the other thing it resembles.

Should we reverse engineer our thinking about the applied math models that seem to fit real things, like bridges? Is engineering a fiction that, by luck, happens to work, through no rational intent of engineering science?

Is acceleration due to gravity a fiction?

What's the pivotal evidence that all of the universe is non-mathematical, not just some of it?

Yes. My examples are supposed to show non-discrete, real boundaries, or unknown boundaries, yet to be mapped mathematically.

The fact that it can't be described exactly just means there isn't an exact structure. If the exact structure is the approximation then what is the exact structures? And what it approximates? There are many possible approximations. — EugeneW

Is someone rushing to judgment about boundary ontology?

Where's the argument, supported by evidence (Hadron Super-Collider), that the boundary ontology of, say, elementary particles, must be exact & discreet in order to be extant?

Action-at-a-distance of elementary particles raises questions about existing boundary ontology being simple, exact & discreet.

Likewise the event horizon of black holes>likewise the holographic theory of the universe.

Likewise dark matter.

Likewise the 2nd law of thermodynamics being preserved within black holes.