if you agree that a cause of a thing is not the thing itself, then you agree yours was an irrelevant point since the claim is that a thing like cancer is objectively evil in itself. — Kenosha Kid

This makes no sense. Cancer is a physical evil because it, itself, is a privation of health.

If we are designed to rely on carcinogenic substances to live, thus assuring eventual deterioration of health, then there is no meaningful perfection of human life that is deprived by this deterioration. — Kenosha Kid

First, we're not designed to live on carcinogens. If we were, they wouldn't harm us. Second, the very fact that you call it a "deterioration," means that it is a lesser state. i.e. one in which some perfection is no longer present.

That's not evil, — Kenosha Kid

It is not a moral, but a physical evil.

it's just irrational, immature, arrogant, egotistical railing against our own nature's. — Kenosha Kid

It is neither immature nor ranting to call things by their proper names. You are confusing accurate reporting with an emotional reaction.

The act itself is not its own cause. — Kenosha Kid

I never implied that it was.

Again, this is not a description of the thing, but of the impact of the thing on the sufferer. — Kenosha Kid

So? The evil is still a privation -- the lack of a perfection in a human being.

were we to die of nothing else, we would die of cancer due to the small carcinogenic properties of the very oxygen essential to our life. — Kenosha Kid

I did not say that it was evil because it might kill us, but because it interferes with our physiology.

Describing such things as evils is precisely the adolescent temper tantrum I mentioned, — Kenosha Kid

I am not having an emotional outburst, but presenting a reasoned analysis. So, please refrain from demeaning mischaracterizations.

nothing more than an inability to accept facts that don't happen to suit us. — Kenosha Kid

This is also incorrect. I, and most other people, accept the fact that bad things happen. I do not wish to continue if you are going to engage in further ad hominem attacks.

A "privation of some perfection" is, again, poetry. If, for instance, you were to take pleasure in the pain of someone you did not cause, no one and no thing is literally being deprived. — Kenosha Kid

No, it is neither "poetry" nor a metaphor. It is a literal claim. If you took pleasure in harm to others, you would lack the disposition to empathize proper to a social animal, which humans are. So, you would be a defective human being.

Cancer in and of itself is a mindless and inevitable consequence of terrestrial biology. It was not created with purpose, does not proceed with purpose, and knows nothing of harm. It is only with respect to someone it impacts that it takes on the quality of evil and only in a poetic sense. — Kenosha Kid

No thing is evil in abstraction, for existence is a perfection, and so intrinsically good; however, cancer does not exist in abstraction, but only in organisms. In an organism it interferes with physiological processes, depriving the organism of its health. This privation is not poetic, but literal.

It is our arrogance and bias that says we do not deserve it, should not have it, are being deprived. 'It is unfair because it effects *me*.' — Kenosha Kid

I am not saying cancer is a physical evil because people don't like it or have an adverse psychological reaction to it, but because it deprives their bodies of their proper function.

I find it intensely egomaniacal to believe that anything that harms one is evil, like a teenager throwing a tantrum because they do not get what they want, when they want, and hang the consequences. — Kenosha Kid

If I confined the application of the term "evil" to things that harmed only myself, I might be ego-driven. Clearly, I am not doing that. I'm saying that any privation, anything not properly formed, any lack of proper perfection, is an instance of evil -- not necessarily moral evil, but ontological evil.

Evil is not defined as a privation of anything. It is defined in terms of immorality or wickedness. — Kenosha Kid

When we look at examples of evil, we always see a privation of some perfection -- of good health, of justice, of compassion, of rights, etc. So, while you may use words as you wish, I prefer to analyze examples to understand what terms mean.

When we say cancer is an evil, it is poetic. It is not literally evil. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, it is literally evil -- a privation of good health. Evil is not a thing, but the absence of a good that should be present.

Human acts are good or evil in the same way -- they advance our self-realization or inhibit it. Physical and moral evils are both privations of good -- of the full realization of whatever it is we are discussing. Some goods and evils are moral because they are due to free will, but that does not change the basic character of good as a realized perfection and evil as the absence of an appropriate perfection.

There are physical evils, e.g. cancer and birth defects. Tires can be bad, and so can meat. None of these bad things have any moral character. They aren't immoral. they're just bad.

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What value you think pointing out that a tyre can be bad to the argument that it is moral actors who have moral qualities is beyond me. — Kenosha Kid

I made no such claim. We were not discussing subjective moral character, but whether good and evil can be objective. If you do something that makes the world more defective, like polluting the air or poisoning the water, that is objectively bad, regardless of your intentions; however, if you intended to do good, you are not culpable for the evil you caused.

Thank you for your measured response. I think it is absolutely certain that there is an uncaused cause which has all the philosophical attributes of God. So, I don't think you have reviewed the case for theism adequately. I would be happy to discuss it with you privately, or in a new thread.

Maybe God's omniscience works like any other argument one has with a theist: — Pro Hominem

Yes, like instead of responding to what the theist actually says, the atheist spins a demeaning fantasy.

o far so good but the cause, if there is one, arising from God's foreknowledge can act before a person makes decisions. — TheMadFool

First, the identity is that "the builder building the house" names the identically same event as "the house being built by the builder." The only difference is how we are thinking about that event. In the first case we are focusing on the causal aspect (the builder building) and in the second, on the effect being actualized (the house being built). Still, this mental separation does not reflect any real separation or separability, because there is only one event, not two as in accidental causality (time sequence by rule). In other words, the reality of building is identically the reality of being built.

Second, God is not in time, but sees the entire space-time manifold at once -- just as we can see the whole of a map at once. So, there is no before and after in God. In other words, from God's perspective, His knowledge is not before what is known, but concurrent with it.

Third, knowing does not cause what is known. Even if we create something, we can only know it as it is from its actual existence. Given that free will decisions, if they exist, are not immanent in the prior state of the cosmos, the only way to know them is to see what is actually decided. So, the idea that knowing causes the reality known is fundamentally confused.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, foreknowledge of any kind, god's or a time traveler's, should have causal power of some nature to force people to make decisions according to what was foreseen. — TheMadFool

We need to reflect on the actualization of potential -- which is what causes do. Before we know X, we have the potential to know X, and X has the potential to be known. When we turn our awareness (aka the agent intellect) to X. we actualize both of these potentials -- we actually know X and X is actually known. We could not actualize X's potential to be known (X's intelligibility) if X did not exist to have that potential. So, there is no way knowing X can make it exist.

There are non-deterministic methods available for foreseeing the future — TheMadFool

That is not what I am saying, nor do I agree. While we humans speak of God's foreknowledge, it is only "fore" to us, not God. To God it is concurrent knowledge, for God simply is. He does not know what I will choose by knowing the state of the cosmos before my choice and predicting what i will decide, but by knowing what i actually choose at the space-time coordinates of my actual choice.

The good or evil of subjects is a moral category. The good of things and acts is a metaphysical concept. There is no moral value to a good tire or a bad tire, play or specimen. They are good or bad because they can accomplish their functions well or poorly.

It is immoral, however, to pass off a bad tire as a good tire, because now we have brought in an intentional element -- the intent to cheat or deceive. So, there is a relation between metaphysical goodness (how well a goal is implemented) and moral goodness. Most clearly, it is moral to will the advance the good of human self-realization, and immoral to will to oppose it -- for example by not providing what a child needs to flourish.

In your example, intrinsically, pushing is neither good nor bad, but whether it was intentional or not, the risk of being in traffic is objectively evil. So, the evil of the situation does not depend on one's intention. Rather, it is the culpability of the agent that depends on the intention. Maybe the goal is to save the child from an even worse danger, or maybe there is an intent to harm.

You are confused. I am not saying that good or bad acts have a moral dimension independently of the intent of the agent, just that they are objectively good or bad.

Acts can be objectively good and evil — Dfpolis

Any theory that assumes that the act itself has moral character will inevitably generate absurd moral statements. It doesn't take long to think of examples. — Kenosha Kid

Morality reflects the agent's intentionality, not directly the good or evil (privation of good) of acts. A choice is moral if the agent intends to do good and avoid evil. The good of acts is an ontological, not a moral, property. It does not depend on the act's relation to the agent effecting it.

I would be glad to discuss your counterexamples.

If God knows X does Y because X freely chooses to do Y, this is re-phrasing the principle of identity. This says nothing about what causes Y -- simple that X does Y. — Dfpolis

I probably didn't understand what you mean here but if one imputes a cause to Y then, we're presupposing determinism is true and that's begging the question. — TheMadFool

As Aristotle observes in the Posterior Analytics ii, 12, 95a14-24, there are two kinds of efficient causality, which have subsequently been called "essential" and "accidental." Hume and Kant didn't learn the fundamentals before starting, and so didn't know this. They thought that all causality involved time-sequence by rule. That is accidental causality. For Kant, this implied determinism and gave rise to one of the supposed "antinomies" motivating his transcendental confusion.

As Hume pointed out (and had long been known), there is no intrinsic necessity to accidental causality or time sequence by rule. It is an empirical generalization, like thinking that all crows are black on the basis of the few crows we've seen. As a generalization, there is no justification for applying it outside of its empirical basis, viz. Newtonian phenomena. So, there is no reason to think that it applies to acts of will.

Even in insensate nature, time-sequence by rule is not deterministic. If I plant a grain of wheat (a causal event) I can rationally expect a wheat plant to grow (the correlative effect), but still this does not happen infallibly. So accidental causes do not, and cannot, fully determine effects. Since the causal event is temporally prior to its intended effect, there is always the possibility of intervention in the intervening interval.

Essential causality, which is what I had in mind in my comment, is quite different. While accidental causality involves two separate events, essential causality involves only one. So, there is no possibility of an intervening event. While accidental causality lacks necessity because it is based on empirical generalization, essential causality is absolutely necessary because it is based on the principle of identity.

Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. We separate this event mentally into a cause (the builder building) and an effect (the house being built), but in fact it is one, inseparable event. There is no building without something being built and there is no being built without something building. So the builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder.

What makes a cause essential is that it actualizes a potential. What is potential is not yet operational and so it cannot operate to actualize itself. Thus, the actualization of every potency requires the operation of a prior operational (actualized) cause.

This is the kind of causality by which free agents actualize their commitment to one of the possibilities open to them. So, God, in knowing that an agent chooses to actualize possibility P1 instead of P2, does not determine the agent's choice of P1. The free agent does.

When God knows X will do Y, it means that, on pain of God losing his omniscience otherwise, X must/will do Y when the time comes. — TheMadFool

Time is the measure of change according to before and after. Since God is perfect, He can neither gain nor lose attributes, and so is immutable. Since there is no change in God, there can be no time to measure it. Thus, whatever God knows, He knows from a timeless perspective -- seeing the space-time manifold as a whole, rather than sequentially, as we do.

That God knows the cosmos in this way does not mean that the cosmos does not exhibit the temporal dynamics we experience. It just means that God sees it all at once. Part of what He sees is free agents actualizing their potentials. Indeed, He could not see us choosing our courses of action if we did not choose our courses of action.

You said that there's an equivocation fallacy in there somewhere. Can you point out where exactly? — TheMadFool

The question is: what possibility does "can't" deny. In the first instance, it is the possibility of God knowing in error. So, whatever God knows, it knows truly. In the second, it denies the possibility of us choosing freely. This is not the same as the first possibility, as how ever we choose, God can know it truly.

The background error here is the assumption that God knows by prediction, rather than by immediate Presence. If God predicted what we will choose, then there would be some reality prior to our choice that would infallibly determine our choice. But, if God knows what we choose, not by predicting it, but by being present to it, then there need be no prior determining factors.

Yours is the question St. Augustine pondered in The City of God. He wrote of people choosing to be citizens if the City of God (those who are committed to the common good) or the worldly city (committed to selfishness). This is often expressed in theological terms, but the issue is pragmatic, not other-worldly. Augustine identified God with Love, saying that God is not loving, but identically Love. So, the City of God is not a religious sect, but all of those committed to love.

The same division was considered by the famous Victorian ethicist, Henry Sidgwick, who was unable to find any pragmatic basis for choosing to be either selfish or unselfish. Aquinas sees the choice as the fundamental option of moral life -- the essential act of free will, from which most of our life choices follow.

So, I would say that the fact that this division exists, and is not predetermined by human nature, is a consequence of, and evidence for, free will.

Allowing this degree of context-dependence in a moral objective framework strikes me as a covert admission that morality is not objective, that if a particular judgment can depend on the actor, it must necessarily depend also on the judge who seeks to understand it. — Kenosha Kid

While I agree with most of what you say, I think this conclusion is unjustified. Acts can be objectively good and evil, even though we can't know the situation exhaustively. In other words, we need to consider two distinct, but related factors: the objective act, and the culpability of its agent(s). Objectively, acts further or inhibit the realization of our human potential (aka sel-realization) and that is the basis of traditional natural law ethics. Nevertheless, even the most informed and best intentioned human, can't know the situation exhaustively. The best rule-based ethics seeks to mitigate culpability by providing a framework that usually yields good results. Still, ethical rules are not infallible, and the better one understand the objective situation, the better one's moral judgements can be -- and the greater our culpability if we choose evil.

If will is reason, then subject to reason. If will not-reason, then how is it free? — tim wood

Will is not reason, but will and reason are interrelated. Reason knows, and will commits in light of what is known.

Knowing does not compel commitment. That is how will can be free.

Committing does not imply effective implementation. So, no failure of implementation can be evidence against free will.

I fail to understand your analogy.

Buridan's ass addresses a case of zero measure (exact balance on a knife edge) and is not a model of free will, which does not involve a balance of forces because motivations are not quantifiable, and so are not analogous to quantifiable forces.

2. If God is omniscient then X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do (premise) — TheMadFool

If God knows X does Y because X freely chooses to do Y, this is re-phrasing the principle of identity. This says nothing about what causes Y -- simple that X does Y.

If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then X doesn't have free will (premise) — TheMadFool

This is an equivocation. In 2, "can't" denies the possibility of God erring about what is real. In 3, it denies the possibility of X choosing freely, which has nothing to do with whether God knows the truth of how X acts. If X chooses freely and God knows it, there is no problem.

Are you asking me? I mostly posted my own reflections.

On Plantinga, you can Google "evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN)". I agree with the part I cited, but not the whole argument.

While I agree that at best the fine-tuning argument only shows that a powerful mind created the universe, and not an omniscient mind, your four step argument is based on an equivocation, and so has an undistributed middle. In your argument "could" means both "has the power to" and "may will to."

Here is where the equivocation occurs:

2. If the universe could not have existed, then God could have failed to achieve His purposes. — Jjnan1

In the first "could" the possibility might be due to lack of will rather than lack of power. In the second, you assume that God has willed a purpose, which might not be true based on the premise.

basic natural selection says that species only want to ensure the well-being of the species — dan0mac

This is anthropomorphizing a physical process. "Species" are abstractions. While species concepts have a foundation in reality, they do not exist in nature, and so can have no desires of any kind. So, natural selection can say nothing about what the human species wants. It only says how variant offspring are selected based on survivability by the laws of nature.

In fact, since the theory of evolution is based on physical principles, can have nothing to say about human intentionality. As Plantinga argues, it does not matter to evolution whether we have true or false thoughts, as long as what we do increases our chance for survival. Further, I have shown previously that intentional operations (such as knowing, desiring and willing) can't be reduced to physical operations. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4732/intentional-vs-material-reality-and-the-hard-problem So, whether we are selfish or loving cannot be determined solely on the basis of physical considerations such as those justifying evolution.

What is possible can best be resolved by reflecting on what is actual. People actually do love, not merely in the sense of eros, but in that of agape. We make the good of the beloved our good, and harm to them harm to us. Humans actually die to save others. The members of the FDNY rushed to the Twin Towers even before the alarm sounded. Soldiers throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Men and women gave up their lifeboat seats as the band played "Nearer My God to Thee" and the Titanic filled with icy water.

We can't answer your question by appealing to physical considerations, because they tell us nothing about human commitments. Still, if we're open to reality, there is no doubt that some choose love over selfishness, and others call them "suckers" and "losers."

You can have context-independence, or you can have observer-dependence. I don't think both is logical. — Kenosha Kid

Every act of knowing is both subjective and objective. There is no knowing without both a knowing subject, and a known object. So, the idea of purely objective knowledge is an oxymoron. Precinding from Omniscience, before it is encountered by a subject, the object cannot be known, only intelligible -- only able to be known -- and so potential rather than actual with respect to human knowledge. When it is encountered, the subject attends to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. That is abstraction. In no instance is human knowledge exhaustive and "objective." It is always relational, partial and subjective as well as objective..

When we judge moral acts, we must take them out of context to some degree. Our brains simply lack the capacity to represent everything that might be relevant. So, we are forced to deal with abstractions, treating what seems most relevant to us -- not the situation in its full complexity. That is why Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics that we most not expect the same degree of exactness in all sciences.

So, if you want to discuss human judgements about human acts, you must consider the limitations of human knowledge.

I think that there are objectively good and evil acts, but that does not mean that "there is some moral evaluation of that event in that context that it is correct for everyone to make, i.e. that the correct moral evaluation doesn't change depending on who is making it."

The reason is simple: people vary in knowledge and analytic capability. So, the objective good or evil of an act has nothing to do with how a particular individual should evaluate it. Thus, there is a difference between the objective goodness of an act and a person's subjective culpability.

Acts are good to the extent that they realize our individual human potential, i.e., to the extent that they make us more fully actualized human beings. As human potentials vary, so does their realization.

As I take the logical ladders down this well, I end up at the deeper question: "Is capital truth(or Truth) something that the human mind can realise".
I think it is not, that is to say, we will never be able to prove anything is 100% True whilst we are using 'relatively blunt' tools like 'eyes', 'mathematics' and 'reason'. — minuS

We can prove things by abstracting from, rather than generalizing upon, experiential data. In the Hume-Mill model of induction, if all we see is black crows we are justified in saying "all crows are black." Of course this is not strictly proven. What Hume-Mill induction does is add to the data the assumption that other cases will be like those we have experienced. In the Aristotelian-Thomist model of induction, we abstract from what we know -- leaving behind notes of comprehension we are not concerned about. So, in learning arithmetic a child learns that 2 pennies plus 3 pennies is 5 pennies, and 2 oranges plus 3 oranges is 5 oranges, and then comes to see that the conclusion is implicit in counting, and so, no matter what is counted (abstracting from what is counted), 2+3=5.

So, as long as we base our conclusions on premises justified by abstraction rather that generalization, we can prove things. There are two difficulties here. First, natural science seeks conclusions which can't be justified by abstraction. Newton's great insight, that the same laws that apply on earth apply throughout the cosmos is an essential generalization, and it can't be justified by abstraction. Second, once we start abstracting, we tend to forget that we are dealing with abstractions, not with reality in its full contextual complexity. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead called this "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

We can illustrate this fallacy by considering an electron. If we consider the abstraction of an electron in isolation, there is no way we can know that it will repel other negatively charge particles. We can only discover this by observing its interactions with such particles -- by considering it, not in abstraction, but in context.

The same reasoning applies to the thesis that biology can be reduced to physics. It cannot be for the simple reason that in doing physics we abstract away all the contextual data that biologists study. In physics, we do not care in what context an electron occurs -- e.g. whether it is in a eukaryote or a prokaryote. So, physics lacks data relevant to this essential biological distinction -- and, if it has no data on some biological fact, it surely cannot be an adequate basis for deducing that fact. So, reductionist commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness as part of their stock-in-trade.

However it is possible, if the 'practitioners in the field' hold to false premises, or are working from incomplete knowledge, it is possible to prove something that is not true. — FreeEmotion

Exactly. The hypothetico-deductive method cannot prove anything to be true, although falsification can prove a hypothesis false. What it can do is show that our hypothesis is adequate to the facts we know (confirmation) and so a rational basis for moving forward. Often, that is all we need. If you are building a bridge, then the fact that Newtonian physics is adequate to our needs suffices. If we are constructing a "theory of everything" (or at least 6% of everything), it is not. So, what we rationally accept as true depends on the issues we are dealing with.

We must begin by noting that to believe a fact is to be committed to its truth -- not to know it as something we have experienced for ourselves. Since there are many factors that lead one to commit, we should not be surprised that some people commit to beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. If you want to smoke more than you want to have a long and healthy life, you will tend not be convinced that smoking is bad by evidence that shows that non-smokers tend to be healthier and live longer -- no matter how strong it is.

The same applies to scientific hypotheses. Before the discovery of spreading from the mid-Atlantic ridge in the 1960s, most geologists thought Wegener's hypothesis of continental drift, for which he presented overwhelming evidence in his book, was "obviously" absurd. (What force could move something as big as a continent?) Why were they not open to the evidence? Because they had been taught differently, committed to what they had been taught, and staked their reputations on it. So, to accept the new theory would be to show that they had erred -- that they were not infallible and that accepted science is not always right. There are many other examples, among them Copernicus' heliocentric theory and Pasteur's crazy idea that germs cause anthrax.

Evidence is only useful if your audience has an open mind -- which means having the humility admit that you may have been wrong.

Two different signals are involved in the process of sensation.
Light (one type of signal) changes retinal states. Photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina transform light signals into neural signals. — Galuchat

The signals in the brain indicate that the state of our rods and cone has changed.

Neural signals and visual perception are related by correlation, not causation. — Galuchat

So, in your view, no dynamics links neural signals and visual perception??

So, do neural codes signify conscious content? — Galuchat

No, and that is my point. We do not first become aware (or ever become aware) of our neural state and then interpret what that state means. For an (instrumental) sign to work we need to be aware of what the sign is, and then decide what it means. There is no such process here. So calling neural pulses "signs" only increases confusion.

OK, this suggests mental states contingently arise. Nevertheless, the mental states do not arise without the physical input. — Relativist

That is the usual case. However, you may wish to read W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) to have more data to reflect upon.

Sensory perception ceases when there's a physical defect. This is strong evidence that the physical processes are in the causal chain even if there are immaterial dependencies as well (like attentiveness). — Relativist

I agree that consciousness is usually awareness of neurally encoded data. I think I said that in my OP. That does not mean that neurally encoded data is sufficient, only that it is normally necessary.

Laws of nature apply to physical-physical causation. Mental-physical and physical-mental is unique. — Relativist

Are you sure? I have argued (elsewhere) that the laws of nature are essentially intentional. Like human committed intentions, they effect ends. My arriving at the store is immanent in my initial state and decision to go to the store. The final state of a physical system is immanent in its initial state and the laws of nature. They meet Brentano's criterion for intenionality of pointing beyond themselves by pointing to later states.

How does the physically encoded data get into an immaterial mind? — Relativist

The immaterial aspect of the mind (the power to choose and attend, aka aware) has no specific "place;" however, experience tells us it generally attends to data processed by and encoded in the brain -- and we have a reasonable idea of how data gets there.

It seems to me the only plausible explanation is that the physical processes cause immaterial mental states. — Relativist

They inform the mental states, but to inform is not to be an efficient cause. Plans may inform a process, but they do not cause the process.

Who is interpreting the signs in your DNA? — Zelebg

Normally, no one. DNA does not work by being a sign, but mechanically. Hence, it needs no interpretation or interpreter. It is a "program" in an analogous way compared to a computer program, which is to say equivocally so. (Or do you think of God as a programmer?) When it is a "sign" of a structure, the interpreter is a molecular geneticist.

Did you see "Hugo"? The atomaton in it had a program that caused it to draw. No interpretation was required. So the program did not act as a sign, except in relation to a human programmer or interpreter.

And what do you call a process constrained by a set of instructions, such as processes in your body, your cells and organs, if not a program? — Zelebg

We use words analogously to cover new needs. As a result various uses need not mean the same thing, and what they name need not work in the same way. Normal instructions and rules are signs which must be interpreted by a mind before they can be implemented. There is no such set of instructions in human physiology. Rather, there are laws of nature that act on initial physical states to produce later physical states without need of interpretation. So we must be careful not to be fooled when the same words are used with differ meanings in different cases.

I am, however, glad that you see that the laws of nature are works of Mind.

I do not assume that "electro-chemical signals produce the related mental states." — Dfpolis

I suggest that we can deduce this is the case. — Relativist

Please do so.

surely you must agree that sensory perception originates in physical processes, and ultimately mental states arise. — Relativist

I agree that neural processes are physical. Whether or not mental states arise from them depends on whether or not we attend to them. The act of attending to them is an act of awareness (aka the agent intellect).

This implies there is a causal chain from the physical to the mental. — Relativist

No, it shows that the agent intellect can transform physically encoded data to concepts (mental intentions).

at the fundamental level, physical-mental causation has to be taking place. — Relativist

Why?

It seems unavoidable if the mind is non-physical. — Relativist

Immaterial does not mean physically impotent. The laws of nature are not made of matter; nonetheless, they effect physical transformations.

I do not assume the mind is immaterial. I deduce — Dfpolis

... Challenging it would entail a different discussion. — Relativist

We had that discussion earlier, when I showed that and why intentional realities are not reducible to material realities.

Programs are intentions. — Zelebg

No, programs implement the intentions of their programmers. They themselves are signs requiring human interpreters to actually signify.

I said "it’s most accurate and pragmatic to call it “virtual reality”, a sort of simulation". — Zelebg

Aside from the fact that this claim is wholly unsupported by data, there is no reason to suppose simulating physical (simulation) operations can generate intentional operations.

As I said, the pain signal (in effect) reaches a transducer which produces the mental state of localized pain. Does this much sound plausible? If so, what is your specific issue? — Relativist

My issue is that the same signals indicate I am seeing an apple as indicate I am seeing (my retinal state is being modified by) and apple. So how do we use the signal to know that there is an apple as opposed to the state of my retina has changed?

If the mind is immaterial, as you assume — Relativist

I do not assume the mind is immaterial. I deduce from the data of experience that it has both physical and intentional operations.

the issue seems to he: how do physical, electro-chemical signals produce the related mental states — Relativist

I do not assume that "electro-chemical signals produce the related mental states." Following Aristotle, I see this as the work of the agent intellect, which acts in the intentional, not the physical, theater of operations.

Intentions, and other mental states, feelings and qualities, are not immaterial, they are virtual. — Zelebg

I have no idea what this means. "Virtual" usually means "potential." Clearly, my actual intentions are not longer potential.

To exist is to be (made of) something rather than nothing. — Zelebg

This is begging the question. Clearly, anything that can act in any way exists, and, as I have pointed out, many intentions act to effect motions. Others act to motivate truth claims.

Can you give examples of what you are talking about? — Zelebg

See the OP. The same signals indicating I am seeing an apple also indicate that my retinal state has change.

When a pain receptor is fired, the mind experiences it as the quale "pain". That is the nature of the mental experience. — Relativist

Yes, it does. How does this allow us to distinguish data on the sensor state from data on the sensed?

Thanks for your interest.

Just to make one thing clear. There is no such thing as “immaterial” or “non-physical”, it’s a self-contradiction. — Zelebg

Would you care to show the contradiction? Please define "material" and "existence" and then show that existence entails material. I ask this because on the usual understandings these terms do not mean the same thing.

Obviously, being immaterial does men not made of any kind of matter, but there is no logical reason why something not made of matter can't act, and so exist. For example, my intention to go to the store acts to motivate my motion toward the store. Your argument simply begs the question by assuming, a priori, that everything must be "made of something."

You might find my discussion "Intentional vs. Material Reality and the Hard Problem" of interest. In it, I show why intentional existence cannot be reduced to physical existence.

From a 3rd person perspective, neural states represent mental content in the form of electromagnetic and chemical signals, just like virtual reality of a simulated content is represented inside the computer in the form of signals between the logic gates and other circuits. — Zelebg

Of course, but what I am discussing is the first person perspective -- how it is that we know the difference between body states and object states.

so it’s too optimistic to expect we could yet explain the ghost in the machine. — Zelebg

I am not suggesting a ghost in a machine. Rather, unified human have both physical and intentional operations, and neither is reducible to the other -- just as we cannot reduce the sphericity of ball to the rubber it is made of.

Meaning comes from the grounding inherent in a decoder / interpreter system, also called personality, identity, ego, self... — Zelebg

While I agree, this does not solve the problem I am raising.

I suggest that it's a consequence of the neural connections being different. — Relativist

Different how? To take your example, how do I distinguish a signal indicating the existence of a condition causing pain from a signal that says only that a pain receptor is firing? Since they are one and the same signal, I do not see how I can.

Do you mean rather, how does this allow us to distinguish body states from the states of other objects? — Galuchat

Yes, that is what I said.

I think that mind is an integrated set of organism events which produce an individual's automatic and controlled acts, so; an open sub-system of (at least certain) organisms (e.g., those having a central nervous system). But, the ontology of mind is off-topic. — Galuchat

It seems to me that subjectivity (being a knowing and willing subject) is essential to the experience of mind. Functionalism does not cut it.

Signals are not only transmitted from environment to body to mind, but also from mind to body to environment. The capacity for motor coordination differentiates object (other) and self in the mind of a sentient being. — Galuchat

I agree, but how does this allow us to distinguish body states from external states?

A visual image is something distinct from the object seen, it's a functionally accurate representation of the object. — Relativist

While I tend to agree with this, it does not explain how we distinguish the object from the subject -- which is the problem I have.

It seems as if a concept is a mental object, but when employed in a thought, it may more accurate to describe it as a particular reaction, or memory of a reaction: process and feeling, rather than object. — Relativist

I think I agree. I would say that the concept apple, while often conceived of as a "thing" is simply the act of thinking of apples.

Thanks for commenting.

it doesn' seem possible to ground these concepts in something physical. — Relativist

I agree. As I argued last year, I do not think that intentional (mental) realities can be reduced to physical realities.

That doesn't prove mind is grounded in the nonphysical, it may just be an inapplicable paradigm. — Relativist

"Physical" means now the reality it calls to mind now. Its meaning may change over time (and has), but the present paradigms are based on our conceptual space as it now exists. Changing paradigms involves redefining our conceptual space, and a consequent redefinition of terms such as "physical" and "natural."

Consciousness is that which mediates between stimulus and response. — Relativist

This seems very behaviorist in conception and inadequate to the data of human mental experience.