The relationship between body and mind exists only at the level of description. There is no specific relationship between the two beyond a correlation. Identity theory makes the mistake of relating the two to each other one-to-one, but such an ontological reference does not exist. — Wolfgang

Could you say more about this? How do we know that there is no relationship between mind and body other than a correlation? There seems to be some pretty strong evidence for such a correlation, and it's fair to ask whether it's anything more than a correlation, but I'm confused as to why you think the issue has been settled.

I'm getting a lot out of the thread too, and I'm especially glad to see you pointing at the exchange between me and @Count Timothy von Icarus. I think this kind of "accidental disagreement" is extremely common, and not just on TPF. Sometimes, of course, people really do use terms differently and/or differ as to whether they refer to real things. But charitable interpretation stands a very good chance of straightening it out. I hate to see exchanges in which each person seems to want the other to be defending a dumb or inconsistent position. Count T is certainly not such a person, and I hope I'm not either.

"In fact, before I develop this any further, let me ask whether you think (2) is a fair elaboration of what you meant by "If it is not possible, then it is in some sense necessary."

- J

it seems accurate in the sense that something that has happened cannot possibly have not happened. It has already been actualized. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, glad I understood you.

So we're working here with a sense of "necessary" that means "impossible to change." As you point out, past events may not be the only things about which this can be said, but let's stick to that for now.

The first point which arises about this usage is that it seems to rely for its truth on certain beliefs about the physical world. I'm thinking of something like: "The causal 'flow of time' is unidirectional, toward what we call the future. Nothing can reverse this causality, and nothing can return to a previous moment in the flow and 're-cause' something in a different manner."

Do we know this to be true? I would say we do not -- we know so little about how time functions, physically -- but let's grant it. Is it, then, a necessary truth? This, notice, would be a necessary truth that guarantees a whole host of other necessary truths, but on quite different grounds. Do we need it to be a necessary truth? Could the (in 2025 allegedly necessary) truth that "Washington was born in 1732" depend for its necessity on a contingent truth that "Nothing can be uncaused or re-caused"? Well, why not?, we might reply. Why shouldn't a contingent truth ground a necessary truth? Isn't it the same case as the (contingent) truth that GW was born in 1732 causing the (now necessary) truth that "GW was born in 1732"?

But there's a flaw here. We're equivocating. We don't want to say that GW's birth in 1732 caused anything here other than the truth of a subsequent statement to that effect. Whereas, with a law about "causality and the flow of time," we do want to say that this law, whether necessary or contingent, literally causes events to become necessary subsequent to time T1 -- that is, when they in fact occur.

So, pausing again before I go on -- do you think this is a reasonable analysis of some of the issues involved in "necessity" statements involving the past? I know that some of this is modeled more precisely in Logicalese but I have my reasons for wanting to stay with English, as you'll see . . .

As naming a convention, sure. Not otherwise. In fact, that 'A' has been designated at various frequencies over the centuries. Kind of like the "standard meter." Relatedly, people with absolute pitch don't miraculously hear some out-there entity called 'A'. They're told the names of pitches as they hear them but, unlike the rest of us, they can recall and re-identify them.

However, notice that I spoke of a "designated range". Having a range of frequency which provide the criteria for any specific "pitch", adds another parameter. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I see where you're going with this. A sound engineer could say (quite correctly), "Well, we hear a range of frequencies between A430 and A450 as an 'A', so even though this range includes mostly pitches that are technically sharp or flat, for all practical purposes we can specify this range as 'A'; just about no one can hear the difference." Is that what you mean?

mis-post

This analogy is not about music or composition. It's about the fact that music comprises individual sounds which, by themselves, are not music. — Wayfarer

I know. I just thought the point about composition was interesting, sorry.

the organism is not just matter in motion but something that cares about its own persistence — Wayfarer

Yes! But . . . no! For me, a good example of how inadequate our current concepts are for thinking about these questions. A microbe "cares"? Absurd! we say. And yet it certainly behaves as if it does. Well, it must just be a machine then, that "acts as if." But it's alive, and a machine is not . . .

(I'm deploring the paucity of our philosophical talk in general here, not targeting you own [always interesting] thoughts in particular.)

The image that comes to my mind is of a toddler trying to arrange blocks to her satisfaction, while adults look on at this charming stab at set theory. Some day, if the species survives, we will be the adults, looking back on our kiddy selves and saying, "So cute! They thought they could understand what they called 'life' and 'consciousness' with terms like 'care', 'behave', 'causality' . . . adorable!"

The problem is that the machine would not be distinguishing that as a distinct and separate note, it would just be registering the time when the transmitted frequency passes the designated range. So it's an artificial and arbitrary creation of "a pitch". — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting. I'm tempted to respond, "Well, if 'a frequency passing into a designated range' is not a standard understanding of what pitch is . . . then what would you suggest?" This would be too glib, but I am curious what you have in mind that would not be "artificial and arbitrary." Or does any use of "pitch" have to be that way?

. . . the question of whether we sense distinct and discrete perceptions, impressions, or ideas, (as described by Hume), or whether we sense a continuity of changing information. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Music makes a good laboratory to examine some of our intuitions here, because (most?) acousticians accept the idea that the "movement of sound" is an illusion. We could just as well use film, I suppose, and talk about how individual frames do not move, but taken together create the illusion of a "moving picture."

. . . attempts to help Banno to resist the bad habit of equivocation — Metaphysician Undercover

Speaking of bad habits, I don't know why so many on this forum seem compelled toward personal disparagement. It is perfectly possible, and surely preferable, to respond post by post without deleterious characterization of others' alleged strengths and weaknesses.

Think of a melody. Each note has its own distinct individuality while blending with the other notes and silences that come before and after. As we listen, past notes linger in the present ones, and (especially if we’ve heard the song before) future notes may already seem to sound in the ones we’re hearing now. Music is not just a series of discrete notes. We experience it as something inherently durational. — Aeon.co

Nice. As you may know, this question of how we retain previous moments as we listen, and project future moments, is integral to a composer's skill. Can I reasonably expect a listener to remember that a song chorus has been played twice before, and recognize (at least part of) it the third time? Can I expect her, hearing it for the first time in the song, to project the likelihood of its repetition? The answers to these kinds of questions in turn depend on how a composer imagines their audience -- what cultural familiarities and listening skills are presupposed.

Terminology again . . . we do hear a series of tones, we just can't recognize them. A software program can.
— J

As I said, there is only a series of tones in conception, and when that conception is applied. That's what the software program does, applies the conception. We do not hear a series of tones, evidenced by what you say, we "can't recognize them". — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm fine, then, with adopting the other usage I suggested:

But if you'd rather reserve the term "hear" to mean "can distinguish acoustically," that's fine. Then we would say that I don't hear a series of tones when I hear a slide, I "process them auditorially" or some such, and when I do that, being human, I don't hear the discrete pitches — J

But I think you're questioning whether even the most sophisticated software can "hear the pitches." That is, you're wondering if "discrete pitches" is something a perceiver brings to the auditory stream, rather than locating or identifying them there. A fair question, but then there would be nothing special about this question as applied to music. It would be the huge, overhanging question of the extent to which our subjectivity creates the reality it seems to encounter.

2) A slide moves from D to E.
— J

The pitch moved from D to E. — Banno

But see above. The pitch changed. There is nothing called "pitch" that can move yet be self-identical. Unless we're OK with saying, e.g., "The logic of the argument deteriorated as he went along" and maintaining that "the logic" is an item that holds steady, and be said to deteriorate (compared to what standard?). Sure, there's something like "logic" in the world, but it isn't much like Achilles in terms of what we can say about it.

Are we gnashing over usage here? To some extent. I talk about pitches and melodies "moving" all the time; it's standard English. I just wanted us to reflect on how differently this idea of movement must be understood in such a context. And I firmly hold out for the position that, literally, acoustically, a pitch cannot move. In what (conceptual?) space is it moving? Why can't my software detect the movement?

@Banno Yes.

Did you not study calculus? — Banno

Actually, no! :grin: But I recognize why calculus would be relevant here. Thinking about it, I realize I may have been wrong in saying that pitches are theoretically divisible ad infinitum. There must come an interval too short for a sound wave to vibrate. So, unlike numbers in that regard.

Here's why I don't think "movement" is the right way to describe what a slide does:

1) Achilles moves from point D to point E.
2) A slide moves from D to E.

These look the same but are not. In 1), Achilles goes on a journey from D to E. We could call that "the journey of Achilles". In 2), "slide" is the name of the journey; it's the equivalent of "the journey of Achilles." Unlike with 1), we're not describing a situation in which some entity (call it Slide) stands ready to set off from D, does so, and then arrives at E. There is no guy called Slide doing this. "Slide" is what happens, just as "the journey of Achilles" is what happens. But in 1), there is a guy called Achilles that we can additionally talk about. I maintain there is no such comparable figure in 2). If you try to substitute "pitch" as the protagonist, the thing that moves, you run into the basic acoustical fact that if a pitch moved, it would no longer be the same pitch. We can again see the dissimilarity with Achilles -- he doesn't change every time he moves on his journey (at least with common ontological commitments). We hold him constant; but there is nothing to hold constant in 2).

Sound produces the illusion of movement -- it fools us into believing that something is going from D to E, where in fact there is only the going, which proceeds pitch by pitch.

Actually, we do not hear a series of tones, we here a slide, which is a sound of changing pitch, consisting of no distinct tones. That's the point of my discussion of Hume's misrepresentation of sense perception. Hume describes sensation as a succession of impressions, which is consistent with "a series of tones". But that's not what we actually sense, which is a continuity of change, a slide. It is only when we apply the conception of distinct tones, to the sound which is heard, that we conclude there is a series of tones. — Metaphysician Undercover

This fits nicely with what I was saying to @Banno. Terminology again . . . we do hear a series of tones, we just can't recognize them. A software program can. But if you'd rather reserve the term "hear" to mean "can distinguish acoustically," that's fine. Then we would say that I don't hear a series of tones when I hear a slide, I "process them auditorially" or some such, and when I do that, being human, I don't hear the discrete pitches. If a hundred people all speak at once, do I "hear what they're saying"? Depends how you want to divvy up the terminology. It doesn't really matter.

"But that's not what we actually sense, which is a continuity of change, a slide."

OK -- again, as long as we don't take the illusion of movement as real.

No, I'm familiar with how slide guitar works, and counterintuitive as it seems, when you slide from the D to the E, you really are producing a series of notes that can be discretely specified, though not, as I said, by the human ear. The "movement" is no less illusory than a standard non-slide move from D to E in which, because there are no intervening notes, we can hear the moment of the (only) pitch change. Now granted, there is a limit to pitch identification by any "ear," even the ultra-sophisticated software I might use in my studio. (I have a modest home recording studio, and used to make my living as a musician.) In that regard, it's Achilles and the Tortoise -- you can keep drilling down on microtones until you run out of bits, but wherever you stop, it's still a specific, determinate pitch that could, in theory, be further subdivided.

Is the slide or the portamento a physical entity? If not, then I am not sure what else it might be... Calling it a perception is wrong. — Banno

This is where it gets philosophically interesting. A slide from D to E is composed of nothing but physical stuff. But then lots of items that aren't physical as such are also composed of physical stuff. The familiar example of the football game . . . no ghostly material in use, yet it seems completely wrong to say that the game is a physical item, or least it does to me. I would argue roughly the same thing for musical "movement." No surprise, this gets us into terminology, because it comes down to whether "entity" is the right thing to call a slide. If you're not happy with "perception," how about calling it an "event"? The main thing I care about, in such talk, is that we don't picture a tone moving from T1 to T2 in the same way that a rabbit moves from P(lace)1 to P2. If asked, in the latter case, "What's moving?" we can point to the rabbit. The same question, in the former case, can't be answered at all. There's no entity or object that has the attribute "moves from D to E".

What you're interested in just seems outside of the scope of phenomenological analysis, so we'd need some other frame of reference. — Dawnstorm

That may well be right. I was alluding to that possibility when I speculated that "an account of brain development that will explain the emergence of our 'higher' capacities" might be incompatible with phenomenological method -- that the two approaches are mutually exclusive. To me, it remains an open question, but your point of view has a lot of merit.

As for Kant vs. Husserl, it's true that Husserl didn't feel the need to postulate any noumena. The reason I linked the two philosophers together in this context was that both seem to favor an account of subjective experience that lacks development; both noumena and the lifeworld are somehow "present to consciousness" (or deducible from it, if you prefer) whenever there is consciousness. This is questionable, I think.

Some further thoughts . . .

But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. — The Neural Binding Problem, Jerome S. Feldman

I don't think he's formulating it radically enough. Yes, this is part of the hard problem, but even more basic is the question, Why do we experience the world at all? Why aren't we robots, or philosophical zombies? If all we want is "a plausible functional story," what would be wrong with organisms that just react to stimuli without experience? What we want to say about this, of course, is that it's impossible -- the idea of an organism "just reacting" without any form of subjectivity is offensive somehow. Or maybe we want to say that the very concept of "reacting" presupposes experience. But none of this is obvious; we can't just declare this picture it to be impossible. If it is, we need to know why -- back to the hard problem.

We, therefore, in our experience and thoughtful activity, have moved from a perception to an articulated opinion or position; we have reached something that enters into logic and the space of reasons

(Sokolowski)

Once again I want to raise the question of infants and psychological development. Sokolowski clearly means, by "we", fully-functioning adult humans. Infants do not do what he describes. They don't have a recognizable "thoughtful activity," and they don't reach anything that enters logical or rational space. So what story must we tell about this? None of this standard phenomenological/Kantian picture can be said to obtain until a certain developmental point has been reached. James's "blooming buzzing confusion" has to give way to something like what Sokolowski is describing.

So why does it happen? And is there some way to transform what looks like a scientific question into a phenomenological one? That is, we want an account of brain development that will explain the emergence of our "higher" capacities. Yet at the same time we'd like a transcendental argument that shows why all this must characterize human being-in-the-world. Are the two desires mutually exclusive? Or the same thing, on some basic level?

More worrying, will a semi-naturalistic account of this development tend to reduce Sokolowski's "space of reasons" to a strictly functional concept? I'd like a way to understand rationality as both a biologically inevitable phenomenon and a doorway into knowledge that really does provide reasons and justifications. This is a tall order, and thus far unreached, as far as I know.

Sorry, didn't see you guys on this sub-thread. See my reply to @Banno, above.

I understand what you're saying, and of course "movement" is used to refer to all sorts of things that aren't physical entities. In speaking about music and tones, I'm talking about an illusion of a particular kind of movement that seems to be physical but isn't.

We can say, "The melody moves higher, then lower." This is true, if we allow "melody" as an item to be talked about (as we should) and if we allow the metaphor of "higher and lower frequencies" to be analogous to physical highs and lows. But a melody is not a physical object. While comprised of physical stuff, it is our way of perceiving successions of tones. No physical thing moves when a melody occurs. And the only reason this is interesting is that, as we listen, we could swear that we hear something moving. I don't know whether this is a baked-in mental construction, or whether we're taught to think this way from such a young age that it seems unavoidable. All I know is that, acoustically, pitches can't move. There is no "there" there to move.

Maybe listen to more slide? — Banno

Seriously, it's a good example. We watch the finger with the slide move up the guitar string. This is certainly "movement" if anything is. What do we hear? A series of tones that change pitch, at intervals that are in fact specifiable acoustically, but indistinguishable to the human ear. So we want to say that "the tone moves up." But it doesn't. Each tone changes in the direction of higher and higher frequencies. But there is no substratum that starts at A, then moves to Bb, then to B natural . . . etc.

Oh, and as for the "higher/lower" metaphor with frequencies: Frequencies are measured in hertz, and numbers are assigned based on cycles of vibrations per second. The more cycles, the larger the number. So this is the metaphor of, say, 1,000 being a "higher number" than 500. It's an absolutely standard and acceptable use of "higher" as long as we don't confuse it with physical height. Having more of something (hertz, in this case) doesn't render it physically higher.

Then yes, with this as the final chapter, I agree with what you say about Alex's redemption. Here's the interesting story about that chapter's history:

The 21st chapter was omitted from the editions published in the United States prior to 1986. In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that US audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost his taste for violence and resolves to turn his life around. At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed its editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the US version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex becoming his old, ultraviolent self again – an ending which the publisher insisted would be "more realistic" and appealing to a US audience. — A Clockwork Orange, Wikipedia

This same darker ending was the one used in Kubrick's film.

I've got the original British edition, which evidently organizes the chapters differently (and includes a final section omitted from most U.S. editions, I believe). Does your Chap 21 start the same way my Part 3, Chap 7 does?: "What's it going to be then, eh?" And does it end with: "Amen. And all that cal." ?

The ear is very complex, and it's parts are moving, so there are physical entities which are moving. It's just that description, that the tones are moving, which is inaccurate. In reality if there was a physical entity called the melody, it is an arrangement of parts, which can't really be moving because that would mess up the arrangement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that's it. Yet the illusion is extremely strong.

Well, the whole thing is a fantasy. Kind of a "what if?" story. But the novel helps us think about other forms of conditioning that are all too real. See Foucault.

Very thought-provoking, and I want more time to reflect on your ideas. But just quickly:

This points to a structural parallel between mind and life as different facets of the same underlying logos. — Wayfarer

This is a major reason why I suspect it will turn out that only living things can be conscious. Sorry, AI!
More to follow . . .

What could happen is that we could install extreme empathy chips in criminals so that the rest of us can then punish them for their crimes by triggering their empathy for others -- the empathy chip itself could be put to horrible uses. — Moliere

Yes. But even if the chip is only put to a "good" use, Burgess' novel asks, "What have we done to a human being if we remove the choice to be good -- freedom, in other words?"

An interesting example of the continuity problem occurs with sounds, as can be easily seen with music. We describe a melody as "moving from start to finish"; we say the pitches "go up" or "go down"; we say that a tune is "slow" or "fast". In fact nothing like this happens -- there is no physical entity doing any "moving". It is strictly a (delightful) acoustical illusion. But our senses -- irresistibly, it would seem -- analyze the sequence of sounds as movement.

Sorry for any misunderstanding. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No worries. I wish I too was a model of clarity!

"If it is not possible, then it is in some sense necessary."
— Count Timothy von Icarus

This proposal is a neat and simple way to bring out different alleged senses of "necessity." We look at event X; it is no longer merely "possible," since it has occurred, been actualized; therefore we're tempted to say that it must be necessary, since it has been removed from the realm of possibility.

But what exactly is the "necessary" part here? Compare two statements:

(1) "It is necessary that X occurred."

(2) "It is necessary that, since X occurred, it cannot un-occur, or not be the case."

Statement (1) is pretty clearly not what the proposal means. My cat is named Bunny, but it could have been otherwise.

Statement (2), though, does seem to express what we mean by the original proposal. Now that my cat is named Bunny, we can't rewrite the past so that she is named Methuselah. Her being named Bunny is "necessary" in that sense.

In fact, before I develop this any further, let me ask whether you think (2) is a fair elaboration of what you meant by "If it is not possible, then it is in some sense necessary."

And in defense of Christian social values, surely the idea that humans should be custodians of the environmental order can't be bad one. — Wayfarer

It's a very good one. But we'd have to say that either 1) institutional Christianity has paid little attention to it, or 2) institutional Christianity regards the wholesale slaughter and torture of billions of animals annually, along with the destruction of our planet's resources, as exemplifying being "custodians of the environmental order." That is taking Newspeak way too far, in my opinion.

In fairness, there are Christians, and Christian communities, who take seriously the idea of stewardship of the environment, but they are a small minority, and even they usually draw the line at saying that we don't have a God-given right to use animals for our own purposes.

I also very much value a further extension -- did the Greeks have a word for it? -- that would refer to love of Creation itself, and all the beings, not just humans.
— J

Didn't that come about to some extent with the Bible? God seeing the world as 'good'? — Wayfarer

Certainly you can find that in the Bible, but in general Christianity has tended to stop at "loving humans" and not considered what it might mean to actually love animals -- or the environment in general, as we are now seeing, to our dismay. Or maybe we should say: Far too much traditional Christian doctrine places humankind at the pinnacle of creation -- made in God's image, dontcha know -- and sees nothing inconsistent with preaching agapē while at the same time claiming the right to use other animals for our own purposes, no matter the pain this may cause. This is a terrible failing. And I speak as a Christian.

I recall the folk wisdom often quoted at wedding ceremonies, about the different kinds of love - eros, philia, agapē, storge and so on (there's eight). I think in English all of these tend to be congealed together under the heading of romantic attachment. Whereas the Buddhist 'karuna' or 'mudita' is perhaps closer to the Christian agapē, which 'pays no regard to persons'. — Wayfarer

This is good. I would amend it slightly to say that "love" in English also tends to be construed as family love (storge), not just eros. The "impersonality" of agapē can perhaps best be seen as the crucial step in the widening of the circle of compassion/connection. Romantic love for an individual, family love for your kin, loyalty to your tribe/community/nation -- these are increasingly more general, until finally we arrive at agapē, which loves without condition. I also very much value a further extension -- did the Greeks have a word for it? -- that would refer to love of Creation itself, and all the beings, not just humans.

we still need to ask: Relations among what? I don't think we can talk of "relations" that have no relata.
— J
In the context of this thread, intentional conscious acts (cognitives) could be considered as relata. What is important is that each of these relata can be decomposed into a bundle of interrelated mental activities. — Number2018

OK, let's try to plug that in to the quotes:

"Hegel shows that the condition for the truth of an immediate experience is that the things that appear to consciousness are perceived as objects whose identities are constituted by a forceful dynamic of negative and reciprocal relations among intentional conscious acts (cognitives)."

Does that really work? We're talking about what constitutes the identities of apparent "objects" -- why we perceive them that way. But now the quote seems to be saying that it's all within the intentional conscious acts themselves. Either I'm misunderstanding, or we haven't left any room for the "flow," the "things that appear to consciousness."

"The experienced identities and differences presuppose the dynamics of dialectical progression, which make these experiences meaningful. However, they are grounded in underlying forceful relations among intentional conscious acts (cognitives) that are not directly present in sensuous experience itself."

This seems to exhibit the same problem. The experienced identities and differences, which are required to make experience meaningful, are grounded strictly in relations among conscious acts. How could this answer the question about the role of "flow" in our constituting consciousness?

This just seems bizarre to me. A lie is true if enough people believe it and then becomes false when people discover it is false?

As misattribution is correct until it is corrected?

I don't recall Kripke ever advancing such a claim, but it would essentially amount to defaulting on truth being anything other than the dominant current opinion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course not. Our wires got crossed here. Your wrote:

You could consider "George Washington was the first President of the United States." Is it possible for this to become false? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I took you to mean, "Is it possible for this putatively true statement to be shown to be false?" and responded accordingly. I thought you were giving it as an example of a "physically necessary" truth.

I now see you must have meant, "Is it possible for this true statement to become false in the future?" which requires a totally different answer.

The rest of your response bears this out. We have no disagreement. True statements can't become false in this sense (barring some bizarre extremes we might imagine, which aren't to the point). If it is the case that I am sitting in a chair now, that statement, with appropriate tense modifications, stays true. A more interesting question is, Was it true before I sat in the chair? This is a version of the question that arises in philosophy of history: Is it true to say that the 1st president was born in 1732? Yes, we reply. Well, but was it true in 1732? Hair begins to be pulled out . . .

If it is not possible, then it is in some sense necessary. If you just look at frequency over possible worlds, where "possible worlds" gets loosely imagined as "whatever we can imagine" then it will be impossible to identify this sort of necessity though. But what then, are all facts about the past possibly subject to change in the future? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a different matter, and quite interesting. First, help me with the grammar. Is there a typo or a word missing in your final question, about change in the future? I can't quite parse it.

Is there a "possible world" where the sun didn't rise yesterday and we just think it did? Only for the radical skeptics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, yes. How would that make it impossible?

You want to say that, in our world, the sun rising tomorrow is physically necessary.

I never said that though. I said that if conditions are sufficient to bring about the sun's rising then it will necessarily rise, and that this can be explained in terms of physical necessity in that things necessarily act according to their nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wish you had said what you now say, as it would have avoided misunderstanding. What you did say was, in response to my asking if 'The sun must necessarily rise tomorrow' was on a par with 'The rock must necessarily break the window':

"The sun must necessarily rise tomorrow"?

Why not exactly? To be sure, there might conceivably be something that could stop the sun from rising. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which says nothing about sufficient conditions to bring about the sun's rising. This is no big deal, I'm sure you meant to be clear, as did I.

I wonder if you've ever read the novel "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, or perhaps seen the film. The story explores exactly what's wrong with the idea of conditioning people to be good (or empathetic).

Those all seem like physical necessity to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"The sun must necessarily rise tomorrow"?

Why not exactly? To be sure, there might conceivably be something that could stop the sun from rising. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But if something could stop the sun from rising -- or, in the case of the rock and window, prevent the rock from breaking the window -- why would we call the event "necessary"? You can of course stipulate that "necessity" can refer to something that is overwhelmingly likely, such as the sun rising tomorrow, but I can only reply that this isn't what discussions about necessity are usually about.

A large exo-planet could utterly destroy the Earth, leaving nothing for the sun to rise on I suppose. Perhaps similar cosmic-scale events could occur as well. But barring any of these, the sun will rise. To deny this would be to deny that the past determines the future, — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is what I meant by ceteris paribus conditions. Sure, if certain conditions hold steady, then certain results will occur. This is the same as saying that in some possible worlds the sun will rise, while in others it may not -- which is hardly "necessity". This has nothing to do with denying that the past determines the future; if some unlikely intervening event occurs, that will be the past in that possible world.

I think the best argument against this view of physical necessity is to ask: Where do you draw the line? Exactly how likely does a certain set of circumstances have to be before you're willing to declare the result "physically necessary"? Even phrasing it this way seems contrary to the idea of what "necessary" is supposed to mean, but let's grant it. You want to say that, in our world, the sun rising tomorrow is physically necessary. Suppose we get warning of a breach in spacetime -- has the likelihood decreased? Suppose the rapture occurs? Still "necessary"? You see what I mean: You have to make a judgment call on each of these possibilities, or else outright deny that they are possible, which you don't want to do, and rightly so. I would argue that this approach takes us much too far away from how "necessity" is used and understood.

The former case is necessary in the sense that the present appears to in some sense contain the future. Causes contain their effects in a way akin to how computational outputs are contained in the combination of input and function perhaps — Count Timothy von Icarus

"The former case" refers to "9 is necessarily greater than 7", yes? Are you positing "7" as being in the present, and "9" in the future? And that 7 thus causes 9? I must not be understanding your meaning here.

You could consider "George Washington was the first President of the United States." Is it possible for this to become false? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Certainly. As Kripke helps us understand, this could become false in two different ways. 1) We might discover that someone else briefly held that office, but this fact was suppressed for conspiratorial purposes. 2) We might discover that the man who first held the office was not the man we designate as "George Washington". It turns out that the real George Washington was murdered as a young man, and replaced with an impostor.

These are absolutely ridiculous suppositions. But something doesn't become necessary just because the possible counterexamples are ridiculous. Necessity is supposed to mean that there are no counter-examples -- that it is not possible for the truth to be other than it is.

Perhaps you don't accept that as a working definition of "necessity." But then I think the burden of argument is on you to make a case for why extremely likely events should be given the same name as absolutely necessary events.

This all gets very complicated, but the upshot is that what is immortal is not an individual ‘I am’ , but a pre-individual ego. This ‘absolute ego’ has more to do with the structure of the immortal flow of time than with the traditional notion of the soul. — Joshs

Again, this doctrine is remarkably like the traditional distinction between "soul" and "spirit" (psyche and pneuma). The one is individual, particular; the other is the "stuff" of which all living beings are made.

Hegel shows that the condition for the truth of an immediate experience is that the things that appear to consciousness are perceived as objects whose identities are constituted by a forceful dynamic of negative and reciprocal relations, — Number2018

The experienced identities and differences presuppose the dynamics of dialectical progression, which make these experiences meaningful. However, they are grounded in underlying forceful relations that are not directly present in sensuous experience itself. — Number2018

But we still need to ask: Relations among what? I don't think we can talk of "relations" that have no relata.

A flow is something that can only be known immanently
as the ontological condition of the things that flow. — Number2018

And there's the rub: what are "the things that flow"?

It is not the business of science to study the lived experience of subjects. That is the province of phenomenology, leaving aside the question of whether it delivers coherently and usefully on that. The epoche in phenomenology (bracketing the question of the existence of an external world) is the methodological counterpart to science's bracketing of questions about subjective experience. Those questions simply aren't relevant to the practice of the natural sciences. — Janus

This seems a little too conclusive to me, but it basically affirms what I was suggesting about separating the two senses of "consciousness." I just think we have to be careful about putting limits on what science can or can't do. There's a natural tendency to regard "science" as meaning "everything we know now, which is all there is to know." A moment's reflection shows how wrong this must be; why would we imagine we have reached the End of Science? Or that we have the conceptual equipment to declare what science must be? So I'm willing to keep an open mind on whether both 21st-century science and phenomenology may one day be shown as antiquated descriptions of a much deeper understanding of reality -- one which, in 25th-century (e.g.) terminology, is understood to be scientific.

It's a really great book [by Sokolowski] though and I might not be doing it justice in trying to stay brief. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I read his Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions -- first-rate essays.