What do you make of theoretical physics, by and large an extension of math, math itself a very abstract (mental) subject/field?

I'm sure you're aware of it, but the existence of some "physical" objects like quarks and the God particle (the Higgs-Boson) were deduced from mathematical models of the particle world. That is to say, our minds seem to be in the know about objects and goings on at scales that are clearly not human (we normally can't see quarks or Higgs-Bosons). — Agent Smith

I'm skeptical of this view, but I don't know enough to give a very credible response.

On the larger point you made, I agree: each level of organization of matter & energy, as represented broadly in the sequence physics →→ chemistry →→ biology →→ psychology has its own unique, level-specific entities (particles in physics and chemistry, cells in biology, and minds in psychology) which operate under, yet again, tier-specific rules. The reductionist enterprise is a waste of time, something like that. — Agent Smith

Yes. Frustration from arguments with reductionists brought me to this subject in the first place.

Peirce developed the fully triadic view where actuality was sandwiched between top-down necessity (or constraint) and bottom-up possibility (or unconstrained potential). — apokrisis

Do you have a specific reference?

So the constraints don't arise out of already concrete material foundations. Constraints (or universals) only "exist" if they have proved to be of the right type to conjure a Cosmos into being out of raw possibility. That is, if they could produce the concrete material foundations needed to instantiate themselves as systems composed of those kinds of atoms/events/processes/etc.

Our cosmos has a dimensional structure, an evolutionary logic, a thermodynamic flow. We can go back to first principles and say that for anything to exist, it must be able to develop and persist. So there is already a selection for the global structure that works, that is rational, that can last long enough for us to be around to talk about it. — apokrisis

As I was reading this, I thought of something Hoffman wrote about in "Life's Ratchet." He was discussing how proteins became enzymes at random and then evolved powered by the pounding of fast moving molecules. The enzymes encouraged the formation of specific proteins. Some enzymes also developed, I guess you could say mutated, to include control mechanisms which allowed feedback loops to form. Then loops within loops within loops formed to become cell metabolism.

How does this fit into your military metaphor? You talk about constraints from above. How do the feedback loops constrain the chemistry? Are the products of the enzymes the soldiers? So chemicals evolve into structures that control how they behave.

If you just want technology, you only need to answer the questions concerning efficient and material causality. The questions about formal and final causality appear redundant - because you, as the human, are happy to contribute the design of the system and the purpose which it is intended to serve. — apokrisis

So, when you talk about design in this context, you are talking about the effects of this evolutionary process. I remember reading about controversies about Darwinian evolution. How can a mechanistic process "design" something. Saying "design by survival of the fittest" is a circular argument, because fitness is defined by what survives. That always struck me as a trivial thing to get stuck on.

Now this brings to mind other things you've written in past discussions - about semiotics and information. I'll have to go back and reread some of those. Are we talking about the same kind of thing?

Reductionists and holists mean different things when they talk about hierarchical order. — apokrisis

I thought about you when I was writing these posts. The subject reminded me of discussions we've had in the past. I'm glad you responded.

But a holist thinks dualistically in terms of upwards construction working in organic interaction with downwards constraint. So you have causality working both ways at once, synergistically, to produce the functioning whole. — apokrisis

When you talk about downward constraints, are you just talking about the normal rules of the more complex level of the hierarchy, e.g. are chemical interactions constrained by the rules of biology, or is it something else? Where did those constraints come from if not constructed from below?

(as hierarchy theorist, Stan Salthe, dubs it) — apokrisis

I went to his web page and I'm reading some of his articles.

A simple analogy. If you want an army, you must produce soldiers. You must take average humans with many degrees of freedom (all the random and unstable variety of 18 year olds) and mould them in a boot camp environment which strictly limits those freedoms to the behaviours found to be useful for "an army". You must simplify and standardise a draft of individuals so that they can fit together in a collective and interchangeable fashion that then acts in concert to express the mind and identity of a "military force". — apokrisis

This is a good analogy. It clarified things for me. I still don't get the mechanism that generates the constraints.

For example, it makes everything historically or developmentally emergent - the upward construction and the downward constraint. There is no fundamental atomistic grain - a collection of particles - that gets everything started. Instead, that grain is what gets produced by the top-down constraints. The higher order organisation stabilises its own ground of being in bootstrap fashion. It gives shape to the very stuff that composes it. — apokrisis

Looking at it this way makes the artificiality of the layered hierarchy clearer.

well said but we can go deeper than that. all of these fields are expressed through math. ultimately our descriptions of the brain and consciousness are just math. mind is math. then look at important findings in math like godel incompleteness amongst others all suggestions on limits to self reference. paradox is inherent in any (self)description of the mind. — Apustimelogist

Oops. My post was intended to be ironic. I reject a reductionist approach to understanding and I was trying to show the somewhat absurd consequences of taking it to an extreme.

Welcome to the forum.

I am disagree with him in terms that chemistry is more "complex" than social science. — javi2541997

As you go down the hierarchy from particle physics to psychology, complexity increases.

Why does it be hierarchical? I do not see why it is so necessary to put Chemistry above social sciences. Is this means that one is more important than the other? — javi2541997

The hierarchy is of scale and complexity, not importance. Anderson is very clear about that. That's really the whole point of his paper and this thread.

I am disagree when he states: Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. Why? I guess everything could be connected together, just a little bit. — javi2541997

Anderson is clear that there are connections between levels and about what those connections are. He says "...one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy according to the idea: The elementary entities of science [at one level] obey the laws of science... [at the previous level]."

In the other hand, where can we put philosophy itself in the levels? We can say, probably, that philosophy is above all the list, maybe? Because if we keep in mind the Greek classical thought we can be agree that critical thought, thus philosophy, has developed those hierarchical list — javi2541997

I think you're exactly right. That's what I meant when I said the hierarchy is a metaphysical entity. Philosophy isn't included in the hierarchy, it created it.

To continue…

The paper by J.W. Anderson I referenced in my previous post, “More is Different” has a different take on reductionism and the hierarchy of scientific scale than the one I discussed in my previous post.

The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a "constructionist" one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy according to the idea: The elementary entities of science [at one level] obey the laws of science [at the previous level].

• Elementary particle physics
• Solid state or many-body physics
• Chemistry
• Molecular biology
• Cell biology
• Physiology
• Psychology
• Social sciences

But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is “just applied Y.” At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.

As I indicated, I’m not really sure if Anderson’s view is a metaphysical or a scientific approach. Either way, I think it reinforces my understanding that each level on the hierarchy of scale provides information and understanding not provided at the other levels.

The limits of reason is a common theme. How one responds to that may differ. I don't think there is anything equivalent to enlightenment through surrender in Plato or Aristotle. — Fooloso4

For me, the question is whether the spiritual phenomena described in the two different philosophies represent the same, or similar, human experiences. I think they probably do.

Aporia is somehow supposed to (magically?) lead us directly to the doorstep of Epicurus (re: hedonism). How that's achieved is a mystery to me! Like I said, aporia is not exactly my idea of fun! — Agent Smith

This is what came to mind when I read your first post - I have found, personally, that a confusing situation resolves itself when you give up, surrender, to the uncertainty. Alan Watts has a book called "The Wisdom of Insecurity." That surrender of will is part of many spiritual traditions. Looking in from the outside, it's always seemed to me that Zen practice is set up to frustrate practitioners and that enlightenment is a final surrender.

Reasoning encounters a point beyond which it cannot go. A point at which we are confronted by our ignorance without a way to move past it to truth and knowledge. — Fooloso4

I wonder if you are talking about the same thing I am.

There is no question that the mind is physical...The evidence for a material mind isn't controversial. — Philosophim

There is no question that chemistry is just particle physics.
There is no question that cell biology is just chemistry.
There is no question that neurology is just cell biology.
There is no question that the mind is just neurology.

Therefore - There is no question that the mind is just particle physics.

Condemnation of the invasion does not require ignoring:

"This intellectual framing according to which events occurring in proximity to the Rhine and the Danube possess greater inherent importance than events near the Tigris or the Nile dates from the age of Western imperialism.
— Bacevich — Paine

I find Bacevich's contention that the Ukraine invasion is much less damaging and disruptive than the US's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan convincing.

When can we be said to know something, and how should we reliably construct and justify beliefs? — Cidat

To me, Justified True Belief, including the Gettier problems, shed no light on how people actually come to know things. What follows is something I wrote in a recent thread on pragmatic epistemology. It isn't a very popular view, but I thought I'd add it to the discussion.

For me, my experience as an environmental engineer lays the groundwork for how to see knowledge. You start with data - unprocessed observations, measurements, counts, photographs, and recordings. The data is then processed to be put in a more usable form, e.g. tabulation, graphing, and statistical analysis, what we call information. Information does not become knowledge until it has been further processed to be put in the context of a conceptual model of conditions of interest. Conceptual models are not true or false, they are accurate or inaccurate.

This is a simplified description of a more complex process, but I think it gets the point across. The process described is iterative. Development of a conceptual model raises new questions, which sends us back to the beginning of the process.

In a similar manner, Philosophers have developed a different vocabulary (thoughts, feelings, cognition, reason) for describing the Mind, from that of scientists analyzing the Brain (see image below). :yum: — Gnomon

I haven't had much luck getting my point across on this issue, so I plan to start a new thread soon to discuss a broader application of my understanding in this area, but focused on the scientific hierarchy.

I haven't been following this thread, but I read something I thought people might be interested in. It's an article by Andrew Bacevich, one of my favorite writers - a strongly antiwar conservative who says harsh things about America's foreign policy under all the recent presidents. He writes well and reasons well.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ukraine-invasion-nothing-compared-iraq-afghanistan/

there is no way to prove whether or not this could be the case. — Benj96

I fail to see what difference "Last Thursdayism" makes. — 180 Proof

I'm with 180 Proof. I there is no way to determine whether a proposition is true or false, even in principle, then it is meaningless. Another example is the existence of the multiverse associated with one interpretation of quantum mechanics. It may also be true of string theory, although I guess that is still an open question.

Good post. I can't judge if it's an accurate representation of Schopenhauer's positions, but it's clear and well-written. I've never been able to figure out what he was saying, but then again, I never tried too hard.

Welcome to the forum.

No, you'll notice I attempt to empirically describes things that are true, while you do nothing. Metaphysical claims are not falsifiable by science, but that does not mean that metaphysical claims that contradict science directly, as is often how you and your pals operate, are going to be permitted intellectually. — Garrett Travers

Your post didn't respond to what I wrote. My assertions are 1) Reductionism is a metaphysical position 2) You are a reductionist 3) Metaphysical positions are not verifiable by empirical means 4) You attempt to verify reductionism by empirical means in many of your arguments.

Materialism is a metaphysical position concerning ontology, and so it cannot be answered by empirical means in virtue of its very nature. So science cannot falsify or verify materialism: in fact, materialism is not a scientific hypothesis: it is a philosophical one.
— Kuro

A very astute point, my friend. — Garrett Travers

Reductionism, your favored approach to knowledge, is also a metaphysical position, but you attempt to justify it empirically all the time.

it's clear that micrsocopes were the X factor. — Agent Smith

I was following up on this and came across a discussion of Louis Pasteur's work, which took place at roughly the same time as Snow's. Pasteur did use microscopes extensively.

Materialism is a metaphysical position concerning ontology, and so it cannot be answered by empirical means in virtue of its very nature. So science cannot falsify or verify materialism: in fact, materialism is not a scientific hypothesis: it is a philosophical one.

This goes for idealism, dualism, et. cetera. None of these are the kind of theses that can truly interact with empirical investigation. — Kuro

You will find that many disagreements here on the forum center around the misunderstanding you describe. When you're talking ontology and epistemology, many becomes most. The fact that metaphysical positions have no truth value is something I've argued many times here without convincing anyone.

Welcome to the forum.

it's clear that micrsocopes were the X factor. — Agent Smith

I don't think it's clear at all. John Snow is known as the father of epidemiology. His main claim to fame is that he traced a cholera epidemic in London in 1854 to a specific contaminated well. His methods were observational - he mapped occurrences of cholera and determined they centered around the well. He solved the problem by removing the handle from the well. No microscopes involved.

Do you have specific information that shows a connection?

How are Enlightenment values not Romantic values? — Athena

Sorry, forgot to respond.

When I think of Enlightenment, I think of reason. When I think of Romanticism, I think of feelings and ideals. Maybe I've got that wrong.

We're talking about the same thing, but using different terminology. — Gnomon

No, unless when we're talking about what kind of pie to have, we want to talk about the hypanthium, endocarp, and mesocarp of the pome.

Brain function is just as illusory as mental function.
— T Clark

I'd be interested to know what you mean. I would take "brain function" to include for example patterns of neurons firing, and "mental function" to include for example me thinking now about what I'm going to write.

Neither of those is illusory. But perhaps you meant something different. — Daemon

I don't consider either brain function or mental function illusory. They are both useful ways of thinking and talking about human experience and behavior. Garrett Travers seems to believe that mental function is illusory. The point I was trying to make is that, if mental function is illusory, then brain function is too.

It's a question of level of organization. Saying that mental phenomena are fully explained by neurological phenomena is the old reductionist "nothing but" argument. Another example would be to say that biological phenomena are nothing but chemical phenomena. If you want to apply that standard comprehensively, then all phenomena are nothing but interactions between sub-atomic particles. At some level that's true, but it is not a very useful way of trying to understand the world.

You can feel free to convey that information and we'll have a look. — Garrett Travers

No thanx.

As I understand your point, you are drawing a distinction between a scientific model and a philosophical representation. — Gnomon

No, I'm talking about different levels of organization. When we talk about the nervous system, we talk about neurons and synapses. When we talk about the mind, we talk about thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. They're not the same thing whether we talk about them scientifically, philosophically, or just in an everyday manner.

No, if you read my post, you'll notice that my specific assertion was that brain functions are mental functions and psychological phenomena. There's no difference. — Garrett Travers

As I indicate, I disagree.

No, we shouldn't. We should be talking about the systems that produce these phenomena at the macroscopic level where they exist and abide by the laws of classical and relative mechanics. QM doesn't have a single place here in this conversation. And using quanta to derail discussions of science is not an approach that I'll be entertaining. — Garrett Travers

You've misunderstood my argument. Don't worry about it. I don't think we have anything else to discuss.

That's precisely what it would indicate. That doesn't mean that thoughts 'aren't' something else, technically speaking. But, what exactly is on offer to describe what we think thoughts 'are,' technically speaking? If we know the brain gives rise to them, and we know executive function includes memory retrieval, pattern-recognition, and conceptual abstractions from recurrent data feedback loops, then it stands to reason that what we 'think' are thoughts, conceptually, are actually just neural computations that are being recognized and stored in memory, patterns, and recurrent analysis. Which would be 100% consistent with all known data on the subject. What's your postulate? — Garrett Travers

By your standard, talking about neurological phenomena as an explanation for mental processes is just as futile than talking about psychological phenomena. To get to the real answer, technically speaking, we should be talking about quantum mechanics and particle physics. Brain function is just as illusory as mental function.

It would just look like what modern neuroscience tells us it does. Current research suggests, and I mean all of it suggests, that consciousness is produced via the operation of 80 billion neurons across all of the sophisticated structures of the human brain, with a particular emphasis on the operations of the dorsolateral prefrontal, orbitofrontal, and medial prefrontal cortices. This network conducts operations in symphony with the main-brain and emotional processessing networks, which generally have pathways to the rest of the brain, to produce metacognitive functions such as:

"the ability to anticipate the consequencesof behavior, self-awareness, the temporality of behavior (i.e., understanding andusing time concepts), controlling cognition (metacognition), working memory,abstraction, problem solving, and similar complex intellectual processes." — Garrett Travers

I don't disagree that the processes you describe, or some like them, are the source of mind. That's different than saying that they are mind. The processes that make up the source of life are chemical, but biology is not chemistry. When I talk about mind, I talk about thoughts, emotions, knowledge, imagination, perception.... Just because I can pinpoint the locations in the brain that light up when I do those things, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

This assumes that mind resides outside the neurons, like temperature resides outside particles. — EugeneW

Temperature is a property of a large group of particles. A parallel would be if mind is a property of a large group of neurons. I'm not sure what to say about that. Mind is not a property, it's an entity, a phenomenon. Can you expand?

Emergence is not a fundamental. Interaction is an epiphenomenon. — EugeneW

"Epiphenomenon" is not a word I've used. I looked up the definition, it has several related ones. This is the one that seems most relevant to this discussion - "A phenomenon which is secondary to another or others; a phenomenon which is a sort of by-product in no wise affecting other phenomena." Is that different from an emergent phenomenon? I'm not sure.

There is always a problem with discussions of consciousness. People don't define exactly what they mean. Two choices, 1) self-awareness or 2) experience, i.e. what things feel like. There are other possibilities. From what you've written, I think you mean #2. Is that correct.

Consciousness appears to be something we can only observe from the inside. It is private. It has to be private — lorenzo sleakes

I don't think this is true. I am observing your consciousness right now by reading what you have written. I'll let you observe mine - I am sitting in my living room. I see a brown reclining chair with leather cushions made in a pseudo-mission style. It's old, so the leather is cracked and discolored.

if consciousness is merely a by-product of physical processes then it cannot ever have any independent effect back to the physical world and therefore it cannot be detected or measured in any way. — lorenzo sleakes

I don't understand the logic of this.

No theory of a purely epiphenomenal mind can ever be tested. — lorenzo sleakes

As I've indicated, I don't think this is true.

Physicalism settled the matter definitively: diseases are caused by microbial invasion of the body. Evidence poured in from all the research labs in the world via microscopes. — Agent Smith

This is an oversimplification. Microscopes were invented in the early 1600s, but the germ theory of disease didn't become prevalent till the middle 1800s.

If I were a medical scientist back before microscopes were invented, I could have, with luck and imagination, hypothesized a purely physical explanation for diseases/illnesses thus: there exists disease/illness-causing agents that are too small for the eyes to see. In other words, before I actually discover the physical nature of sickness, I can construct a hypothesis of their physical nature. IE I have a picture of, I have an idea of, how illnesses could be physical. — Agent Smith

Scientists in ancient Greece and India hypothesized organisms or other factors too small to be seen as the source of diseases.

What would a physicalist explanation of mind look like? — Agent Smith

I think some clarification is needed. When people usually talk about this subject, they are talking about the experience of mind, or mind as experience. If, on the other hand, you are just talking about the mind as a mental process, I think the answer is pretty simple. Mind in that sense is an emergent property that arises from the interaction of the behaviors of neurons and other elements of the nervous system and other bodily systems.

Since I’m such a failure, why don’t you go start a successful thread so I can see what one looks like. — Joe Mello

Here's a link to one of my favorite threads in my time on the forum. Take a look and you'll be able to see how real, amateur, collegial philosophy is done.

Can this art work even be defaced? — Bitter Crank

So people who are satisfied with their lives say such things to others as you do here to us? — baker

Apparently.

You and ShowpanhourI called me a liar. Fekyez both.

Interesting. Thanks.

One can be a singing and writing painting counselor, visiting college in between running around from girl to girl, teach in the evenings, and build body in the weekends. While experiencing God. — EugeneW

I'm sure that's true, but I wonder if you can experience God while bragging about how wonderful you are and gloating about how much better you are than other people.

Yes, Joe. In the brief time we've known you, we've learned that you're quite a guy. Sorry, @Tom Storm, I couldn't stop myself.

I have a degree in Philosophy, and a Graduate Degree in Professional Writing. — Joe Mello

I spent five years in a Catholic Monastery — Joe Mello

After 7 years as a mystic letting God do the talking, and acquiring a scholastic education at the same time, belief became knowledge, and the mystery became truth. — Joe Mello

I was a counselor for 12 years, so I was a therapist for 12 years. — Joe Mello

But only a scholastically trained philosopher has become philosophically advanced in learning how to think. — Joe Mello

have the philosophical clarity to think profoundly and without personal prejudices in the third degree of abstraction. — Joe Mello

All I did was spend years learning to understand it, and years seeing how every new scientific discovery only supported it and never refuted it. — Joe Mello

I sacrificed years to come to a knowledge and love of God. — Joe Mello

this baptism is a special gift God gives to those of us he desires to be close to. And close to God is where I have been ever since. — Joe Mello

I have spent decades experiencing God — Joe Mello

a scholastically trained academic — Joe Mello

To be truly philosophically adept takes talent and an openness that are both extremely rare. — Joe Mello

A truly disciplined and talented intellect — Joe Mello

disciplined and talented — Joe Mello

a great lover — Joe Mello

an amazing person who has spent a lifetime becoming skilled in something. — Joe Mello

I have been a professional painter for over 40 years and painted my first house 55 years ago. This summer, I painted a cape by myself in 6 hours. My business is more than half commercial, and I painted a long hallway in Titleist last month surrounded by people, and I organized the whole thing like a ballet, so no one got in each other's way. So, I really can't learn much from other painters. Maybe something, but not much. — Joe Mello

an academic with a Philosophy degree — Joe Mello

Oh, and I'm a vocalist. Sang Zeppelin in the 70s with a rock band called Mordor, and Prince in the 80s with a funk band called Chill Factor. And I love singing Frank Sinatra and Teddy Pendergrass today. — Joe Mello

I have a Graduate degree in Professional Writing — Joe Mello

philosophically trained mind — Joe Mello

When I was 24, I was a painter with a high paying job, 5 girlfriends, a sports car, and a bodybuilder running 10 miles 3 times a week. — Joe Mello

great adventurers — Joe Mello

I spent a decade on Sam Harris’ atheist forum and had only one personal thread that I was allowed to go on. The Administrator kept closing it down and starting a new one with derogatory titles, like The Dump and The Jar. All these threads became the most popular by hundreds and hundreds of pages. Then he shut down the forum and moved it to the old forum where it all began, and didn’t invite me, despite me having the most popular thread on that forum too. And now only about a half dozen posters go there once in a great while. — Joe Mello

I do have a Graduate degree in English and taught high school, — Joe Mello

You've done a good job providing strong arguments against GT's position.

Note that this short thread is four years old. I don't remember it at all. I don't think I have anything to add.