She spells it Чайковский. Czajkowski looks like the Polish version. — Jamal

My apologies to your wife.

Does anyone have any sci fi recommendations? I’m open to anything — an-salad

Here are some of my favorites. They’re all better than @Jamal’s suggestions. Also much more conventional.

To start, some books I read in younger days I'm still fond of:

• The "Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I was surprised to find it was written in 1941. A BIG IDEA book - the biggest. I reread it a few years ago and the writing stinks, but I still love it.
• "Tales from the White Hart"--short stories by Arthur C. Clark.
• "Starship Troopers"--I never liked Heinlein much--too macho/fascist--but I reread it a few years ago and really liked it. Much like the movie without the knowing smirk.
• "The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold. Good mind-blowing time travel book where the ramifications get more and more tangled when all the versions of the main character meet for a single permanent reunion.
• "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Mind-blowing changing reality with your mind. Clever and well written. Chilling.
• "The Iron Dream" by Norman Spinrad. A book within a book. Adolf Hitler's putsch fails so he escapes and comes to the US and becomes a science fiction writer. In the inner book--"Lord of the Swastika"--he puts all his crazed racial fantasies into words instead of death. Clever but sort of a one-joke routine.
• "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. I like military science fiction and this is my favorite. But it's not like any other I've read. Hard to describe. The humans and aliens keep trying to battle, but time dilation keeps screwing up the timing. Clever.

More or less recent books. Generally very well written.

• The "Ancillary Justice" trilogy by Anne Leckie. Probably my favorite science fiction books. Good space opera but also strong and sophisticated social commentary. Humane and thought-provoking.
• "Murderbot" series by Martha Wells. A clever and quirky genderless android. Again--humane and socially sophisticated. Often funny.
• "Someday All this Will be Yours," by Adrian Tchaikovsky (or Czajkowski as Jamal's wife might spell it.) Over the years I've gotten very tired of time travel books until this woke me back up again. Very clever.
• "The City and The City" by China Mieville. A crime novel taking place in two cities that somehow overlap each other in time or space or dimension or something. Sounds screwy but it works. For me, Mieville is the best writer around. My favorite is "Railsea," but it mixes a lot of fantasy in with the science. Actually, all his books do.
• "Blindsight," Peter Watts. Very philosophical. We argue about consciousness a lot here. This book gave a good visceral glance at what it might be like to be intelligent but completely un-self-aware.

And so many more.

Interesting well written OP I'm Australian so forgive my somewhat tangential response, but your OP does suggest some questions to me. — Tom Storm

You were right, it is interesting and well written. It’s also complete fucking bullshit. Self-serving lying bullshit. I started laughing when he started talking about “fusionist coalitions.” And then I had to stop reading when he said “Trump is, for the most part, a pretty normal politician.” I don’t hate President Trump and I don’t think he’s a Nazi. What I do think is that he’s a very bad president and bad hollow man.

Here is the OP’s big lie— since the late 60s and early 70s, the Republican party has a self-consciously and cynically set out to split American society along racial and social lines in order to gain political advantage. What we see now is the end product of that disgusting, intentional strategy.

That’s all I’ll have to say in this thread. I don’t think I could hold my lunch down to say anything else or to listen to any more of the lies. Of course OP has the right to say these things and what he’s written doesn’t violate any of the site guidelines as far as I know. Still, this discussion is a blight on the forum.

I would make a prediction, but, since I’m always wrong, I won’t.

they really don't have anywhere else to go in the short term. And the US will realise that they can't take on the world on their own after all, so my guess is they will find a way to make it work, at least for now. — ChatteringMonkey

You have more faith in rational self interest than I do. Even if NATO continues going forward for now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t already being dismantled as an effective force.

I don’t want to distract from the main subject of this thread, but does any of this really matter? Strikes me that the really big deal is Trump‘s dismantling of NATO, leaving Europe to face Russia alone, and making the world a much more dangerous place. Are there any consequences in Latin America that come anywhere close to that?

Oddly, enough, as a (panen)theist, I actually agree that 'things' arise thanks to a rational mind that is able to distinguish, classify 'things' etc. However 'we' are not responsible for that differentiation.
Also, if 'our' minds are responsible for differentiation, how could we arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated (?) world? — boundless

I don't think what the Taoists call "the 10,000 things," i.e. the multiplicity of the world, arise only from rational thought. Our minds are doing a lot we are not fully aware of. I am strongly drawn to the idea we are all subject to human nature--both ours as human beings and our own as individuals. Taoists call this "Te." As I understand it, our human nature includes a structured mind that limits and directs us to a particular relationship with, particular knowledge of, the world, including a particular division of the Unity, whatever you call it, into the vast universe of things we find ourselves in.

If that's right, or at least plausible, I don't understand why we still can't "arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated world."

This is very similar to Ven Nagarjuna's views (however, Nagarjuna would perhaps disagree that what remains after 'erasing' objectiification is the 'Tao'*): — boundless

Interesting. I had never heard of Nagarjuna. So, what is left after objectification? The Tao is also known as non-being and is often not considered a thing at all.

The philosophy I am most drawn to isTaoism, but I have been surprised to find how common ideas such as this are found in many different philosophies—both eastern and western.

A thought-provoking OP. Here are some of the thoughts it provoked.

the world comes into existence only with the "first eye that opens." — Wayfarer

You and I are both familiar with this way of thinking about the world, reality. Lao Tzu wrote:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting name.

Nameless, the origin of heaven and earth;
Named, the mother of ten thousand things.
Non-being, to name the origin of heaven and earth;
Being, to name the mother of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu - Excerpt from Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching. Ellen Marie Chen translation

For Lao Tzu it is naming--something human consciousness does--that brings the world into existence. It arises up out of non-being and into being.

The "pre-history" objection baldly states that there was a time before any observers existed, and that this fact alone is sufficient to show that mind cannot be fundamental. But what is taken for granted in this conjecture, without any real argument, is that temporal succession itself - "earlier", "later", "before", "after", and "duration" - is real independently of perspective. — Wayfarer

If we accept what Schopenhauer and Lao Tzu were saying, doesn't the inconsistency you've identified disappear? If consciousness is needed for all of reality to exist, doesn't the "pre-history objection" become irrelevant without us ever having to bring time into the matter at all?

A lot of open doors being kicked in and unremarkable conclusions being drawn. None of them particularly offensive, but from a team of 12 experts I would expect more - especially given the annual funding Brookings receives. — Tzeentch

I don’t disagree, but I appreciate that it was the only article I could find that didn’t just focus on the wild mismatch between the Venezuelan and US militaries.

An interesting Brookings institution evaluation of the US operations in Venezuela. I generally trust the Brookings Institution more than a lot of other voices and the evaluation includes individual analysis from 12 commentators with very different attitudes.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/making-sense-of-the-us-military-operation-in-venezuela/

The OP doesn't want to discuss this topic further, so I am out from this thread. Thank you. — Corvus

Although I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

The OP doesn't want to discuss this topic further, so I am out from this thread. Thank you. — Corvus

No. I said I don’t want to discuss it further now. I didn’t say I minded if someone else does.

I don't see a point starting a new OP for it. It would be redundant and there wouldn't be much new material in it. — Corvus

I am not interested in participating in a discussion on this at the moment.

Sure, so I thought we could discuss on the meaningfulness of "absolute presuppositions" in critical way. The content of the absolute presuppositions seem very much metaphysical in nature anyway. — Corvus

As I indicated, I don’t think this is the correct threat for that discussion. If you want to start a new one, I will participate.

Knowledge sounds too subjective and loose. Science is a rigorous subject which pursues verified truth on reality and universe. My knowledge on Astronomy is rudimentary. I wouldn't say it has much to do with Science. — Corvus

Are you saying astronomy isn’t science? We’ve had discussion here before about what’s included in science and what isn’t. They’re never very fruitful.

You haven't answered my main question to you yet. — Corvus

That’s true. This thread is about identifying the absolute presuppositions of pre-1905 modern science, not justifying the value of metaphysics. If you want to start a new thread on that, I will participate.

Science and Metaphysics are the subjects which pursue truth. — Corvus

I don’t see it that way. Science looks for knowledge—not the same as truth. And as Collingwood wrote:

Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.

I still don't see an argument that supports a conclusion that any particular metaphysics or presupposition is needed in order to do science. — Janus

Clearly, I disagree, although many people feel is you do.

Now, I generally question the veracity of '[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy'. So, in so doing, am I engaging in pseudo-metaphysics? I'm pretty sure that's how Banno would see it. — Wayfarer

I don’t think so. If you were asking whether or not, it’s true, perhaps. But you don’t have to do that in order to reject it. You can just say it doesn’t work. It’s not the right approach to take here.

Beyond that, I don’t think Collingwood was taking a position on what absolute presuppositions were the best in particular situations.

His point about metaphysics is that it is not primarily concerned with being qua being, in the traditional sense. Rather, each school of physical science operates against a background of absolute presuppositions that shape what counts as an admissible question or explanation within that science. ' — Wayfarer

Yes, I think that’s right. I’m gonna put this from Collingwood in again. I’m pretty sure I posted it earlier in this thread. It really clarified things for me. I think it shows that an absolute preposition is nothing exotic or mystical. It’s something straightforward that we deal with every day.

[quote="T Clark;1032677"Ithem--"[An absolute presupposition] is a thing we take for granted in [our thinking]. We don't question it. We don't try to verify it. It isn't a thing anybody has discovered, like microbes or the circulation of the blood. It is a thing we just take for granted." [/quote]

@Corvus
I've been rethinking this exchange between us. I think I jumped on it to quickly.

I feel that Metaphysics must investigate the presuppositions for their truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable, and then present them to Scientific inquiries as the preliminary foundation for their embarking the researches and experiments and coming to establishing Scientific laws and principles, and further hypothesis on the subject of their inquiries.
— Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from Collingwood’s and mine. Or at least my understanding of Collingwood’s understanding.

For that reason, Metaphysics is the central and critical part of Science. Science must not accept what is listed as "absolute presuppositions" without critical analysis and investigation into them before finding out on their truth and validities.
— Corvus

This is not how I see it. — T Clark

Yes, investigating absolute presuppositions is a worthwhile exercise. That's what we are doing here in this thread and what happens all the time on the forum. @Wayfarer is a strong voice for a non-physicalist approach. I tend to be somewhere in the middle, seeing the value of both physicalist and non-physicalist approaches. There are many others here I would call committed physicalists.

The difference for me is that the standard that gets applied is not "truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable", it's usefulness--The fruitfulness of the work that is performed under it's banner.

There is only a contradiction because you don’t accept the possibility that mental processes can be understood in terms of physical, chemical, biological, and neurological processes.
— T Clark

I’m not denying that acts of reasoning are reliably correlated with physical, biological, and neurological processes. I’m denying that logical relations themselves—validity, necessity, entailment—can be reduced to physical causation. — Wayfarer

I didn’t mean what I said as criticism and I don’t discuss my relationship with my children in neurological terms. The message I get from Collingwood is that you choose your metaphysical and epistemological tools based on the specific work you’re trying to complete. I can be a physicalist when I want to do cognitive science and an idealist when I want to go out to lunch with my kids.

The point is, it's a glaring contradiction:

[1] We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.
[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy.
[3] These substances behave in accordance with scientific principles, laws.
[4] Scientific laws are mathematical in nature.

If reality is wholly physical, why is it necessarily and lawfully answerable to non-physical mathematical reasoning, and why does that reasoning carry binding normative force? — Wayfarer

There is only a contradiction because you don’t accept the possibility that mental processes can be understood in terms of physical, chemical, biological, and neurological processes. You and I agree that reductionist physicalist explanations for many phenomena are limiting and misleading. You just take it significantly further than I do.

He'd then be like someone who insists on moving the bishop along a column instead of a diagonal. Yes, he can do that, but it's not what we set out to do. — Banno

I like this metaphor.

A good explanation. It's a bit like setting up the domain of discourse to only include the physical, and sticking to that rule. What we ought keep in mind is that setting up the domain of discourse is making a choice as to what we include and exclude. — Banno

Agreed. Beyond that, just because you and I might agree that absolute presuppositions are not true or false, most people probably think they are. If that happens, their understanding of how the world works could be rigid and biased.

Corvus
...Collingwood is not saying these presuppositions are true, but that they underpin the method that was, historically, adopted. Further, if we instead of treating them as metaphysical truths treat them as methodological prescriptions, their truth is irrelevant. — Banno

This discussion has been great for me. There’s a bunch of things that have been bubbling around on the back burner that got brought out in the open. That has been really helpful.

The absolute presuppositions listed in the OP are all metaphysical statements deeply contentious in nature, nothing to do with or provable by Science itself. — Corvus

Agreed—none of them are provable. But keep in mind that neither Burtt nor I claim the absolute presuppositions in the list are correct or the best ones to use. We only say they are the ones that have been used by physicists between about 1600 and 1905.

You need to explain, how the contentious metaphysical statements can be claimed as "absolute presuppositions" in science, and what benefits they would bring into science. — Corvus

I’ll say this again— for Collingwood metaphysics is the study of the absolute presuppositions that people actually used for particular purposes. What Burtt put in his book is something similar. It’s not what should be, it’s what he, a renowned, historian and philosopher of science, determined to be the case. If you want to disagree with him, that’s fine. I found his ideas interesting and convincing.

This point is not about understanding Collingwood's or your understanding of Collingwood. It is about a general rational inquiry on the issue. — Corvus

Let’s be clear. I wrote the OP. In it, I laid out my intended point for this discussion. If you want something different, have at it, but don’t tell me what I need to do.

But if we instead chose to look only for explanations in terms of pysical substance, then there's no need for such a demonstration. — Banno

Yes. Commitment to an ontology limits the kinds of questions we can ask.

And we can keep in mind that this is a methodological choice, so that if it happens that we come across something that does not appear to be physical substance, we can either reject the chosen method or we can look for further explanation. — Banno

This is the issue I’m struggling with. Is there a difference between a methodological and an ontological absolute presupposition. My intuition is telling me no, but I don’t think I have good arguments for that yet.

How does Collingwood get being "logically efficacious" without truth functions? Ans so, how can something that is neither truth nor false be logically efficacious? — Banno

I’ll take a swing at this, although I am on a bit of thin ice. If I am a physicalist, if I believe that all there is in the world is physical substances, that will guide me to look for answers in the physical world and to, perhaps, ignore subjective phenomena. We have found that approach to be pretty effective over the last few hundred years although we have also sometimes worried about its shortcomings.

Collingwood seems to be telling us how things were understood, not how they ought be understood. — Banno

Exactly.

There's an obvious and it seems to me insurmountable difficulty in saying that these presuppositions are neither true nor false. The result is that we cannot use them in our arguments.

So if Wayfarer or someone comes along and says that there is also in the universe a spirit of some sort, it will do no good to retort with "The universe consists entirely of physical substance" unless we add that it is true. — Banno

So let’s look at it from the other direction. Collingwood and I say an absolute presupposition doesn’t have to be true, it has to be logically efficacious. But it goes further than that. Anything that can be demonstrated empirically can’t be an absolute presupposition. For example, how do you go about demonstrating the universe is made up of only physical substances—matter and energy. Describe the experiment you would use. Do you think @Wayfarer would agree.

there is nothing intrinsic to the scientific method that other disciplines cannot also employ. — Tom Storm

Agreed. When I say “science” I think of searching for knowledge following rigorous standards— more rigorous than most of our everyday thinking. Science is important, so its rigor is important. There are certainly other things where such rigor is required, but that doesn’t mean science isn’t something special.

We sometimes fetishize science, which can lead to scientistic worldviews: the belief that only science can deliver truth to human beings. This is a foundational presupposition of old-school physicalists. — Tom Storm

Sure, but I’ll say it again. Just because some guys have screwed up and sold a highfalutin version, that doesn’t mean science isn’t something special.

I feel that Metaphysics must investigate the presuppositions for their truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable, and then present them to Scientific inquiries as the preliminary foundation for their embarking the researches and experiments and coming to establishing Scientific laws and principles, and further hypothesis on the subject of their inquiries. — Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from Collingwood’s and mine. Or at least my understanding of Collingwood’s understanding.

For that reason, Metaphysics is the central and critical part of Science. Science must not accept what is listed as "absolute presuppositions" without critical analysis and investigation into them before finding out on their truth and validities. — Corvus

This is not how I see it.

the only way that we are able to understand such-and-such is if the universe were so-and-so; therefore the universe must be so-and-so. — Banno

Well put.

Which of the presuppositions are ontological, others are methodological? Can we even make such a distinction? — Banno

Good point. This is something I’ve wrestled with. I used to say epistemology should be considered part of metaphysics. I mostly stopped saying that because it just caused fruitless arguments, which isn’t to say it doesn’t still make sense to me.

We don't know for sure that "[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy" is true. Should we make such an unjustified presumption? — Banno

Collingwood and I say yes, although saying it’s unjustified might not make sense considering an absolute presupposition is neither true nor false. It just has what Collingwood causes “logical efficacy.” It helps us get stuff done.

There's potential to mistake methodological injunctions for ontological presumptions. We might at least be clear as to which is which. But might we not also do science if we followed these methodological rules: — Banno

As I noted just previously, I don’t have a final answer for this. I’m still working on it. What are your thoughts?

Then we would not be making presumptions as to how things are, but choosing what sort of explanations we prefer. But this treats them as voluntary, whereas Collingwood treats them as ineluctable within an epoch. — Banno

That’s not how I understand what Collingwood said. This is from his essay on metaphysics:

Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.

Collingwood doesn’t want to specify what absolute presuppositions people in a particular period have to apply. He wants to figure out which ones they actually did use.

So, one “presupposition” underlying all science – still today - is that it is a way to accumulate knowledge – that science is a process, conducted according to the rigor of the scientific method –
— Questioner

Sure but interestingly there are different views on the scientific method. — Tom Storm

That’s not a presupposition, it’s a definition.

Susan Haack (a philsophy of science and epistemology stalwart) takes the position that there is no single, special “Scientific Method” that sharply distinguishes science from other forms of inquiry. In her paper Six Signs of Scientism Haack writes there is "no mode of inference or procedure of inquiry used by all and only scientists, and explaining the successes of the sciences." Essentially science shares its approaches to reasoning with everyday inquiry. — Tom Storm

I think that’s right, but it misses the point. In order to say you’re following the scientific method, you have to follow procedures that are rigorous, formal, documented, validated, and replicated. Could those same standards be applied to non-scientific thinking? Of course. Science isn’t the only way to know things or the only good way to know things, but when it’s done right, it is a good way to know things. Isn’t that good enough?

I think I agree with Colingwood on his concept of Metaphysics. Then there emerges questions. Is Metaphysics a part of Science? Or Is Science a part of Metaphysics? Or Metaphysics is Science? Or Science is Metaphysics? — Corvus

To oversimplify—metaphysics is the owner’s manual for science.

That is interesting. What is my understanding of Metaphysics? And what is yours? — Corvus

That's a very long story which I have discussed in many threads in the past. I don't want to go into it in detail here, but here's a brief summary from a previous thread:

R.G. Collingwood wrote that metaphysics is the study of absolute presuppositions. Absolute presuppositions are the unspoken, perhaps unconscious, assumptions that underpin how we understand reality. Collingwood wrote that absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, — T Clark

If Science is based on the presuppositions which can be either true or false, then it is unable to provide useful knowledge. It then relegates to superstition or guess work, hence it needs help of Metaphysics? - hence the reason Kant wrote CPR. — Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from mine.

It was not clear if the OP was looking for “presuppositions” that only applied to pre-1900 physics — Questioner

I explicitly stated that was the case in the OP and elsewhere

Differences of degree within these qualitative wholes are quantitative. — Joshs

Here’s what Burtt has to say about primary and secondary characteristics.

Galileo, like Kepler, was inevitably led to the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities…Galileo makes the clear distinction between that in the world which is absolute, objective, immutable, and mathematical; and that which is relative, subjective, fluctuating, and sensible. The former is the realm of knowledge, divine and human; the latter is the realm of opinion and illusion.

The Copernican astronomy and the achievements of the two new sciences must break us of the natural assumption that sensed objects are the real or mathematical objects. They betray certain qualities, which, handled by mathematical rules, lead us to a knowledge of the true object, and these are the real or primary qualities, such as number, figure, magnitude, position, and motion, which cannot by any exertion of our powers be separated from bodies— qualities which also can be wholly expressed mathematically. The reality of the universe is geometrical; the only ultimate characteristics of nature are those in terms of which certain mathematical knowledge becomes possible.

All other qualities, and these are often far more prominent to the senses, are secondary, subordinate effects of the primary. Of the utmost moment was Galileo’s further assertion that these secondary qualities are subjective.

I tried to help — Questioner

Your comments haven’t been helpful or responsive.

Scientific inquiry presupposes a mind-independent, law-governed reality and the reliability of our cognitive and instrumental access to it, assumptions that science itself cannot justify without circularity. — Tom Storm

Yes. And nicely put.

You disagree with the generally accepted use of the words "phase" and 'form" in science? — Questioner

I disagree that it matters in this discussion.

It describes the state of physics knowledge in 1900. — Questioner

What does it have to do with the issues on the table? What does it change in the discussion going on? What does it add?

Metaphysics is not a science. — Questioner

Agreed.