Couldn't imagine a more horrible kind of life, one driven solely by necessity.

Agree entirely - in fact I'd go further and say that I could not even imagine a human life at all, horrible or otherwise - as being one driven by necessity. Having said that, the fact that I cannot imagine X does not mean that X is false, of course.
Another long running theme in philosophy which bears on this discussion is the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate. We have a picture of the natural world as one which is subject to natural laws and in which each event has its place in a causal nexus. On that picture, every event that occurs is necessisitated by preceding events. Human beings are part of nature, arguably, so whatever things a human being does is just another event in this causal nexus, necessistated by the preceding events. There doesn't seem much room for freedom to get a look in there. The philosophical issue is whether one can accept that metaphysical stance and yet consistently maintain that human beings are ethical beings, and if one cannot consistently maintain both, which one should stand aside?

So "objective relations," as the ways in which particular things/properties interact with other things/properties, are constantly changing, through time T1, T2, T3, and so on.

You are missing the point. Just because the relata of a relation are constantly changing does not entail that the relation itself is constantly changing. Counting relata and counting relations are to count two different kinds of things.

But actually, there’s a straight line from your argument, to the premise of the OP - have another look at the first post, and see if you agree that there’s a connection. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, the basis of your original argument is that one and same piece of information can be born by numerically distinct material states/processes/events. So, whatever it is that we are counting when we are counting items of information cannot be those material states/processes/events. My argument is, in the nutshell provided by @jkg20, even if particular material things are bearers of truth, since numerically distinct material things can share one and the same feature of being true, whatever we are counting when we count the feature of truth cannot be those material things.
Your argument is a finer grained than mine - but the structure is essentially the same, I agree, and since information and truth are clearly related concepts, there probably is a closer link to be made between them. However, do either of our arguments prove (or can they be used to prove) that information is not material? They might prove that information is not to be identified with any specific material thing, but that's not quite the same thing as proving that information is not material itself. After all, I cannot identify mass with any specific material thing, since it is a feature shared by many (well, let's face it, all) material things, but mass is a material property. So, even if information cannot be identified with any specific material bearer, perhaps there could remain a sense in which it is material insofar as it is something that must be born by material things. I think in order to prove that information is definitively not material you would have to argue that information could exist in the absence of any material bearer, and that strikes me as a pretty tough thing to prove directly.

Thanks Wayfarer - I've never heard of Ed Feser, but I note he is being cautious when he says brain processes

seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. — Ed Feser

He's been doing philosophy for too long to be more strident I guess. Clearly he's plugging in to a line of thought we're both sympathetic with, but I think even he'd agree that he's not presenting anything else than a challenge for materialism to come up with some account of meaning. @numberjohnny5 has been trying to meet that challenge, at least I suppose that's what he or she has been trying to do, not only from a materialist perspective, but also a nominalist one. I hope what I've done is pinpoint a problem any such attempt will have with the bare notion of truth and falsity of thoughts. Non-particular, non-material things need to be introduced, but whether those things that need to be introduced have to be thoughts (either conceived directly as information or as information bearers) I don't know. Some extremely clever people (cleverer than I am anyway) have been materialistic nominalists up to a point (I'm thinking here of Quine) and they believed they could get by with just one type of non-material, non-particular thing in their ontology: sets (or classes).

OK, so do you believe that nominalistic materialism is true? If so, what is it that is true? Could it be merely an occurent state of your brain? Brain states, in and of themselves, are neither true nor false, they simply exist or fail to exist, and truth is not to be identified with the mere existence of a brain state and falsity with its simple non-existence, since some people have false beliefs, which are nevertheless themselves - under nominalistic materialism - just occurent brain states. So in order to account for truth or falsity of beliefs, materialistic nominalism has to make some kind of distinction between types of brain states. And there already we have our non-material things: types. Now, a materialistic nominalist might be tempted to say, "well, types of brain states are really nothing over and above collections of actual brain states" - but the problem (aside from the introduction of these things called "collections") is that any random assemblage of brain states is a collection of brain states, and insofar as truth is concerned the wheat needs to be sorted from the chaff. The simple idea that the true brain states are ones that correspond to reality, where reality is considered as just so many instances of other occurent material states just introduces another non-material thing: therelation of correspondence. But it might be worse than that for the nominalist, since one can have true beliefs about the past, and in those cases the other end of the correspondence relation non longer exists as an occurent material state, so a materialistic nominalist will either have to deny that there are any such things as true historical beliefs, or he or she will have to introduce material but non-existing states in order for the correspondence relation to hold.
So, the big question is how does a nominalistic materialis account for the distinction between truth and falsity without introducing non-material, non-particular things?

Thanks - I'm already learning and enjoying.

Well, I still think the arguments of Berkeley - which, as far as I can tell, are simply assumed to have been refuted these days by modern analytic "philosophers" - are pretty compelling reasons, or can at least be moulded into compelling reasons, for thinking that idealism is true, and if idealism is true neurology has to be understood instrumentally. Having said that, there are more recent arguments for Berkelean idealism. @jkg20 mentioned John Foster in another discussion thread. The structure of his main argument is that if realism is true, certain possibilities would obtain for our experience of the world which are not in fact intelligible possibilities - so basically a form of proof by contradiction (although you'd need to dive into some issues about types of possibility to get to the contradiction I think). He get's quite technical (some of what he writes looks like he's constructing a mathematical proof about geometrical space) which is perhaps why he never really made that much of an impact.

I suppose there is some interest/challenge for idealism, however, in the whole Ghilcrist ethos. If idealism is true then the world has certainly for the most part developed in such a way that neurological realism has taken root. There is perhaps some irony in the fact that a neurological realist is now trying to undermine the development of the conditions under which that realism thrives (something unenlightened points out I believe) but a challenge for idealism (and interestingly it was one Berkeley refused to accept) is to explain the hegemony of the assumption of realism. It is perhaps an area where some kind of Marxian analysis of historical development could be brought to bear (I know Marx is often taken to be an historical materialist but I think his ideas are largely neutral on the metaphysics of realism/idealism).

And if you want an analysis of why things like the financial crash that Ghilcrist mentions happen, you'll find more inciteful analysis in Karl Marx than some modish neurologist.

However you define and conceive the relationships between, for instance, brain and mind, mind and individual behaviour, and individual behaviour and social and cultural phenomena, the nature of our brains must be implicated in some way and possibly in quite important ways

A non-sequituur if I ever heard one. If you take an instrumentalist view of neurology, then the brain simply has no nature that could even possibly be implicated in those relationships. You already have to buy into some mind=brain ontology in order to find that line of thought convincing, and there are good reasons not to buy into that ontology which I imagine Ghilcrist doesn't even bother discussing in the 350,000 word book that they are discussing.

Sure. Behaviour involves the (autonomic and voluntary) motor movements (exhibition/inhibition of muscles via efferent pathways) as processed by nonconscious and conscious phenomena. Mentality refers just specifically to the conscious phenomena. There is a relationship between voluntary motor movements and mentality, of course, but they ain't the same. One major distinction is that motor movements occur in multiple sites in the body e.g. limbs, hands, feet etc., whereas mentality only occurs in the brain.

And I'm strictly a physicalist.

Perhaps I'm not sure what you mean by physicalist - it's an unclear label for a wide variety of views. Do you mean that mental things simply are physical things, we just don't know it yet? Or do you mean that mental things are caused by physical things, but are distinct kinds of things nevertheless? Or something else? I can only really get to grips with the rest of your response once this is cleared up.

OK, so let me ask you a question: why can't behaviour be mental? Just saying that it cannot be doesn't answer that question. There seems to be a dualistic metaphysics lying behind your position, and if that is the case, then that dualism needs to be brought out clearly and defended, not just stated.

You seem to be assuming that intentions lie behind the conventions rather than intentions actually being manifested in those conventions. You may be right, you may be wrong, but you would need to address the quasi-behaviourist line of thought that sees intentions as things actually displayed by objective conventional practices, not as things that lie concealed behind those practices and somehow giving rise to them.

Metaphysician Undercover has pinpointed one of the problems with your position - what you assume about conventions:

On the other hand, if a person is attempting to "understand" what the intention behind a piece of writing was/is, then they might assume the writer/speaker is using language conventions, and then assign language conventions to what the writer/speaker is expressing. In the latter case, though, because meaning is not a non-mental event/thing, there's not any objective (as in, non-mental) thing to try to match.

If your aim is to align with conventional practice, then those practices themselves provide the objective grounds for whether you succeed or not.

I think time is something that simply can't be ignored. It flows whether you acknowledge it or not and it's part of the definition of almost everything. For instance ''prove'' meant ''test'' in the good old days and that's the reason for much confusion over the adage ''the exception proves the rule''.

I see a point here, but I wonder if it is one that need worry the "LNC is timeless" advocates. There is a notion of a proof as an activity which involves a series of steps, taken one at atime. There is also a notion of a proof as a kind of logical object incorporating all its steps at once. A timeless notion of LNC would presumably commit one to the latter kind of realism about proofs. An anti-realism about proofs - i.e. one that insists on a proof-as-activity conception - might require a temporal conception of the LNC even within formal logic. So, perhaps LNC-as-timeless commits one to the existence of abstract objects (proofs).

Another thing. What do you make of the idea of an instant of time? Does it makes sense?

I'm not sure. I want to say "of course an instant in time makes sense as being some specific point in the temporal continuum" - and to prove that these things exist, I might show you a video of some event or another and then press pause and say - what is represented by that frozen frame is a specific instant in time. Having said that, it does not seem to make sense to view the continuum itself as being made up of such point instants, even if they do exist, since no matter how many such instances you have, since they do not last for any amount of time, you are not going to create a duration of time by adding them together (0+0=0). Could there be a way of taking an instant in time not as a thing itself, but rather as a way of thinking of a duration of time?

One thing to clear up is that formally (i.e. as a rule of logical inference) the LNC has nothing to say about time. It is simply a law that allows you to remove assumptions in an argument by drawing a formal contradiciton from that assumption (plus other assumptions/premises of your argument). One issue then becomes whether, under an interpretation of a formal system, one can have true contradictions, thus apparently rendering the formal rules inapplicable to that domain. Well, fairly early on in Arnold Bennet's novel "The Old Wives' Tale", Sophia's mother receives a visit from Sophia's schoolteacher, and the schoolteacher says something along the lines that she supposed Sophia's mother to be a little surpised by her visit, to which Sophia's mother responds:
"Well, I am and I'm not"
Is that a true contradiction? It seems to have the p & ~p form after all (not exactly, but it could be rephrased very simply to have that form, even if it would sound less natural : 'I am and it is not the case that I am', nobody (except philosophers) actually talks like that). Those who want to preserve the LNC under all interpretations will take the line that we need to make a distinction between what Sophia's mother says and what she implies by what she has said, and that ultimately the LNC will be concerned with the interpretation resulting from the implication (e.g Sophia implies: I am suprised in the sense that I did not expect a schoolteacher to visit me personally, rather than send a letter; I am not surprised in the sense that I knew that Sophia was having issues at school - here we no longer have p & ~p form). If that is going to be the technique to resolve all apparent violations of the LNC in an interpretation, then I think you are right that many many apparent violations will require us to assume that all statements are implicitly time-indexed. Now whether or not the time-index needs to be a specific instant of time, or could be a duration of time, I don't know - I need to see an argument saying that the notion of time-indexing a proposition commits one to specific instances rather than specific durations.

Do you agree, that the passing of time satisfies the conditions required of the place holder (realm C)? We do not need the realm C as a place holder if the passing of time is real and common to both A and B, allowing for causal relations.

If the idea is that realm C contains the necessary and sufficient conditions for causal occurences, the passing of time won't cut it. Time passing might be necessary for causation, but since we can imagine nothing happening over a period of time, it is not sufficient.

Yes, to elaborate, it implies that what a 'finite' locus of mind can only know as experiential phenomenal appearances, by definition, is a limitation imposed upon what would be the potentially infinite emanations of Mind-at-large. As if it is the trade-off, so to speak, for the sake of this relational experience.

I've nothing against speculative philosophy, as opposed to the dry analytic kind that jkg20 seems more focussed on, but there's some terminology in what you say that does cry out for clarification before someone like me could even begin to understand what you're talking about. I suppose for "finite locus of mind" you mean something like the traditional "subject of experience"? But what is this "Mind-at-large", you mention, and what are its emanations?

I don't see how "self-containment" is even relevant. I would think that if the descriptive terms used to describe the properties or attributes of the members of one realm are distinct from, and not reducible to the descriptive terms of the other, then the two are distinct.

Doesn't that miss jkg20's point? After all, the way you make this statement assumes you've already settled that there are two realms for different attributes to apply in. Jkg20, as far as I can tell, is posing some very abstract metaphysical questions (metametaphilosophical ?) concerning making the kind of divisions that some people are kind of helping themselves to.
One approach, and perhaps this was more like what you are getting at, is to say the dualism issue isn't about two distinct realms at all, but just about two distinct kinds of attributes that are possessed by things that are in one and only one realm. You kind of cede to monism in doing that at some level, but perhaps can keep some form of dualism going at the level of properties, although perhaps even there jkg20's abstract issues about realms and epiphenomenalism/principle of sufficient reason might crop up (in a recast form perhaps).

That said, I don't see any problem with saying that quantum processes might play certain roles in 'explaining consciousness'.

Now I'm confused. I thought your position was that the very term "consciousness" was drivel, by which I presume you meant "devoid of content". If it is devoid of content, there is nothing to explain, by QM or by anything else for that matter. Perhaps, though, you do not believe that the term is literally devoid of content.

Indeed, and there is a whole literature on the idea that one can use QM to explain consciousness (and by QM I mean QM interpreted non-idealistically). Which I presume you believe to be just as meaningless as trying to explain QM in terms of consciousness.

As far as I can tell, the heart of the dispute here is about the following statement:
A coherent interpretation of QM must require that the mathematical formalism quantify over actual or possible conscious observations.
Even if that were true - and I'm not suggesting for one moment that it is - one would not have established that idealism is true unless you had already established that QM is true. How, though, are you going to establish that QM is true unless you already have your coherent interpretation of it? Mathematical formalisms only get to be true or false under interpretations.
That might be why this particular discussion forum seems to be an exercise in tail-chasing.

That doesn't necessarily commit to what the nature of this or that substance is - and so may accord with, say, a Berkelyean idealism in many respects. But conceptually, the stuff comes first, the awareness of that stuff second.

Berkeley denied the existence of substance - so whatever account you have of it cannot possibly accord with Berkelean idealism. You might need to revisit what you believe to be the difference between idealisms and realisms (and notice that there are several versions of both).

I don't think Wafarer is misrepresenting the debate, but perhaps I'm being naive. The debate as far as Wayfarer is concerned is about explaining the collapse of the wave function, which sometimes goes by the name "the measurement problem". Also, "the observer is the apparatus" is not a scientific result, although it might be a scientific definition - the results are just data.

But I take your point that you cannot avoid the issue just by claiming that "observation" means "interaction".

The main motivation for coming up with alternative interpretations of the measurement problem is to avoid idealism and retain realism. Whether they are any more or less extravagant that idealistic interpretations, well that might be just a matter of taste.

So up until that moment, there is no 'actual particle' - it's not as if it's somewhere in some definite place that hasn't been determined yet. Up until the measurement is taken, it's not in any place - literally all there is, is a field of possibilities (which is what the so-called 'super-position' describes). Then at the instant the measurement is taken, one possibility becomes 100% and all the others become 0. That is what 'the collapse of the wave-function' describes...Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that. — Wayfarer

You are not wrong, but you are just giving one of a number of interpretations of what is going on. There are some interpretations of QM that explain the so-called wave function collapse whilst actually allowing for a real particle to exist all the time (it is supposed to be 'riding the wave').

There are some theorists working in the world of QM who do believe that experimentation can help decide which interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one. Then again there are some theorists in the world of QM who believe that theorists should just get on with making calculations and predictions using QM and not bothering with the metaphysics.

I'm not so sure that what you are calling "normal" usage is irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm no "cardboard cutout" of the later Wittgenstein - i.e. I don't believe that you can do metaphysics just by pointing out how we use words in ordinary language, but pointing out how those words are used is very definitely a useful metaphysical technique. Scientists can and do take terms from ordinary language and give them technical meanings, and there are no laws of grammar or metaphysics that forbid them from doing so. When this is done, however, either something is added to the original meaning, or something is taken away, or both. The issue is that it can become difficult (for scientists and philosophers alike) to keep track of which meaning is being used in which context, and all the more so when the issues are to do with interpretation of scientific results. If all a quantum scientist means by "observation" is simply "interaction" he or she would do much better to stick with the latter term than the former.

The QM interpretation issue can be put like this. Any quantum system is in a superposition of quantum states until such time as a specific kind of interaction occurs, at which point only one of those quantum states prevails. What accounts for this apparent "collapse" of the system to one definite state? As far as I am aware, von Neumann was the first to propose that such collapse can only occur in the presence of a conscious observer - his idea was then taken up by Heisenberg - I'm not sure about Bohr. It is idealist to the extent that a definite world, as opposed to a world in a superimposed flux, requires consciousness. However, it still allows for quantum superimposed states to exist independently of minds, just not the "classical" world we are all familiar with where things have definite locations and velocities and masses etc. One alternative to von Neumann's suggestion is the so-called "many-worlds" interpretation: every time such an apparent "collapse" occurs, there is in fact no collapse but instead a splitting of worlds, each one taking one of the previously superimposed states. Very quickly many worlds become too many for some people's tastes, since this splitting happens every time something definite occurs. It can also make personal identity over time a tricky notion to account for.
That is just one way of putting the metaphysical quandry that QM presents. But jkg20 brought out another insofar as answers to the question "what does the wave function represent" will have metaphysical consequences, and those who want to answer that question should not just help themselves to everyday notions of "observation", "measurement" and so on since those everyday notions are very definitely wrapped up with the idea of their being acts performed by conscious beings. One would be using the word "observer" in a most unusual way if one were to say that "lamps are observers", and to avoid misunderstanding it would be better not to use that word at all in that context.

Getting back to the point of the discussion you started, and concerning so-called unfocused anxiety, representationalism has three ways of dealing with it: deny it exists; accept it exists but deny it has no object; accept it exists and has no object, but claim that it lies outside the domain of representationalism. I've seen posts on here that seem to align themselves with the second or third option, but no denials. Is there really such a thing as unfocused anxiety?

Wow - just read that precis (thanks for the link): if Kant needed to get that complicated to try to refute Berkeley, that seems like some evidence that Berkeley was on the right track.

Agree with you entirely. Perhaps we should start up a separate discussion (if there isn't one already) on the principle of sufficient reason.

"Subjective idealism, which appears to be what you are proposing, is refutable on a number of levels." — jastopher

By subjective idealism do you mean the idealism of Berkeley? Who refuted it? I know Samuel Johnson thought he did so by kicking a stone, but he was just an overweight and overrated lexicographer.

Berekeley's argument for the existence of God seems apt here:
1) The relativity of perception proves that metaphysical idealism is true - the perceived world depends for its existence on being perceived.
2) The perceived world cannot depend on being perceived by any merely finite intellect.
3) Therefore, since the perceived world does exist, there must be an infinite intellect (aka God).

"..I hardly think scientists need metaphysicians to help them out". The article seems to suggest precisely the opposite. The idea seems to be that the principle of least action commits scientists to possibilia, scientists only treat of actuality, so metaphysicians must step in to sort it all out. I'm not saying the article is right about that by the way - but I do agree that scientists who think metaphysics should be buried are wrong.

Hello Cuthbert - small clarification, the article I cited is talking about the principle of least action, not the principle of sufficient reason. I can see why an intial singularity would be anathema to the principle of sufficient reason, but not the principle of least action.

Yes, you did cite Bretano, but citation and interpretation are two distinct things. Sometimes philosophers - and I'm presuming Bretano was a philosopher - say contradictory things even within a single work. My hestitation was merely a manifestation of a principle of charity that would allow Bretano some room to shift his position in the face of an apparent counterexample. Already in the three citations you've given there seems plenty to disagree with in Bretano, and anyone who begins a claim with "no one can deny that....." is usually providing a hostage to fortune. Also, jkg20's counterexample was not about drunkenness - unfocussed anxiety may result from a binge drinking session, but could have other causes. The point is that it is a mental phenomena which does not (at least seems not) to have an object, and that would be a counterexample to Bretano's principle that the identifying characteristic of mental phenomena are that they always have an object. I presume also it would be a counterexample to a purely representational account of the mind. Bretano in his "empirical psychologist" mode may try the David Hume approach and insist that such counterexamples are exceptional and can be ignored as insignificant, but that does not seem a very scientific approach: after all it was anomalies like the perihelion of Mercury that partly motivated physicists to look for ways other than Newton's to account for the gravitational "force", and look how that turned out.

The difference between an ontological claim and an ontological commitment is what, as far as you understand it? Is it that the former is always explicit, the latter not always so (i.e. might be implicit only in the use of such things as the principle of least action, as the web article suggests)?

If Bretano did claim that every mental phenomenon includes something as object, then isn't jkg20's unfocussed anxiety a counterexample? A general feeling of unease doesn't really have an object does it?