I have seen no indication that this is a false distinction besides you just insisting that it is — Philosophim

I wrote an entire paper on knowledge and identity here if you're interested. — Philosophim

The earlier philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, maintained that true knowledge arises from a real union between knower and known. As Aristotle put it, “the soul (psuchē) is, in a way, all things,” meaning that the intellect becomes what it knows by receiving the form of the known object. Aquinas elaborated this with the principle that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.” In this view, to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is. (Here one may discern an echo of that inward unity — a kind of at-one-ness between subject and object — that contemplative traditions across cultures have also sought, not through discursive thought but through direct insight.) Such noetic insight, unlike sensory knowledge, disengages the form of the particular from its individuating material conditions, allowing the intellect to apprehend it in its universality. This process — abstraction— is not merely a mental filtering but a form of participatory knowing: the intellect is conformed to the particular, and that conformity gives rise to true insight. Thus, knowledge is not an external mapping of the world but an assimilation, a union that bridges the gap between subject and object through shared intelligibility.

By contrast, the word objective, in its modern philosophical usage — “not dependent on the mind for existence” — entered the English lexicon only in the early 17th century, during the formative period of modern science, marked by the shift away from the philosophy of the medievals. This marks a profound shift in the way existence itself was understood. As noted, for medieval and pre-modern philosophy, the real is the intelligible, and to know what is real is to participate in a cosmos imbued with meaning, value, and purpose. But in the new, scientific outlook, to be real increasingly meant to be mind-independent — and knowledge of it was understood to be describable in purely quantitative, mechanical terms, independently of any observer. The implicit result is that reality–as–such is something we are apart from, outside of, separate to. — Idealism in Context

You're going to have to explain to me how the physical variations of the song being played at different locations resolve to 100% equality and not simularity. Without explaining that, your point is simply false. — Philosophim

I am by pointing to the brain, which is matter and energy, being the source. Can you demonstrate a counter that allows meaning to exist apart from a brain? — Philosophim

A perfect translation is almost impossible — Philosophim

many words we use to point to real things are no more than a sign post. "This" is 'that'. What is that? Well 'that' is over there. Again, very useful for general sign pointing and broad ideas. A big part of philosophy is dissecting these generic words down and pariing them down to the core specifics that unify the multiple objects the generic word will lump together. — Philosophim

So if a fairly competent physicist doesn't know what a couple of important physical properties are - properties that we know certainly exist because of the effects they have on things, effects that we have measured with incredible precision - then I'm not going to worry that we can't do more for a non-physical property. — Patterner

You create a definition of a song that follows a general pattern of tone and melody. A copyright, is literally the right to copy a work. A copy, like a twin, is a unique but similar emulation of something else. A 'song' is a category of different similar physical expressions of melody. — Philosophim

The meaning of a sentence is not the squiggles used to represent letters on a piece of paper or a screen. It is not the sounds these squiggles might prompt you to utter. It is not even the buzz of neuronal events that take place in your brain as you read them. What a sentence means, and what it refers to, lack the properties that something typically needs in order to make a difference in the world. The information conveyed by this sentence has no mass, no momentum, no electric charge, no solidity, and no clear extension in the space within you, around you, or anywhere. — Deacon, Terrence W. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (Function). Kindle Edition.

where's the clear definition of 'non-physical'? Is it just concepts? Definitions the human brain constructs? — Philosophim

But we know from neuroscience that this is all an action of the brain — Philosophim

David Eagleman :
". . . . what we call normal perception does not really differ from hallucinations, except that the latter are not anchored by external input. . . . . . Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it."

That's a big exception for rational thinkers. But does the notion that humans "actively construct" their worldview resonate at all with your concept of a Mind-Created World? — Gnomon

What does "bougie" mean? — Ludwig V

No, by fact it is not the same Wayfarer. Same being identical. Are a pair of twins the same? Similar, but not identical. Again, lumping things into a category is not the same as saying that all the things in that category are identical in reality. I can define sheep, but there is no one sheep that is identical to any other sheep. — Philosophim

there is no one sheep that is identical to any other sheep. — Philosophim

I'm merely asking for a clear definition of something non-physical — Philosophim

No, the melody is not the same. It is similar, which is a very distinct difference. If I play the song in two different places at the same time, they are not the same. The physical composition of the instrument, the physical composition and actions of the player, and the very air and accoustics the song travels two are different. We summarize them as 'the same song' for convenience and summary in communication. But when we break it down and need to look at it in detail, our summary is not representative of some 'form' that exists outside of physical reality. — Philosophim

I am very open to the existence of something non-physical. I am open to a God existing. A magical unicorn. I am not being sarcastic or intending to insult. I LOVE thinking of wonderful things. — Philosophim

Don't forget about property dualism. :grin: Matter has a non-physical property. — Patterner

Its when you start to think they (mental processes) exist apart from physical processes as some independent entities that you run into trouble. — Philosophim

Are informational objects causally related in the same sense that physical objects are? If so, how. I not how so? — I like sushi

And Kant concluded that Ultimate Reality (noumenon) is fundamentally unknowable to humans. He seems to be implying that philosophers are just ordinary humans, who have made it their business to guess (speculate) about non-phenomenal noumena. — Gnomon

I get quite confused about whether the aim is to end mental activity or give up one's attachment to it and in it. Both of these are hard to distinguish from ceasing to live. As to the epoche, it is clearly a cousin or something. You see, presented with this relationship, my first thought is to clarify the differences, and there are plenty of those.

You probably want to say "Shut up and meditate". — Ludwig V

I can understand "emptiness" as meaning something like the idea that things and events do not, in some sense, have the significance or importance or weight that common sense attributes to them. That would enable one to abandon desire. (That would be a parallel to the stance that Western scientists and phenomenologists attempt.) But the difficulty with that is that it makes compassion hard to understand. — Ludwig V

Of course its physical. Let take music for example. The physical notes I write on a page. The physical intstrument I play it with. The physical ears that hear it. Are you claiming that if we got rid of all of these physical things that the information of music would be floating out in space somewhere? — Philosophim

I clearly told you I don't associate with the physicalist position. — Philosophim

If I were watching a computer play (chess against) another, which part is physical? — Hanover

there is no way to differentiate rest and motion. (There's nowhere for an observer to observe from.) — Ludwig V

For a universe that consists of a single body, there is no way to differentiate rest and motion. (There's nowhere for an observer to observe from.) — Ludwig V

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

a static being is like the Buddha in stillness. — Punshhh

Arguably so, but being thought of doesn't change it to be affected by thought. — noAxioms

Obviously, the human mind is doing the measuring in terms of locally conventional increments. But the point is that the physical universe existed long before metaphysical minds. — Gnomon

what must be the case for such experience to be possible?
— Wayfarer

I'm afraid I'm prone to afterthoughts. Our problem can be thought of as a kind of antinomy. — Ludwig V

But how does this fit with Buddhism and meditation? — Ludwig V

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.

I'm in pursuit of a more nuanced approach to reality vs appearance. — Ludwig V

I get stuck on the idealism — Ludwig V

Does, per Kant, knowledge only arise because of the mind? Isn’t is also knowledge of some thing? — Fire Ologist

You have only told me, this is your inner Self in the same way as people would say, 'this is a cow, this is a horse', etc. That is not a real definition. Merely saying, 'this is that' is not a definition. I want an actual description of what this internal Self is. Please give that description and do not simply say, 'this is that'. Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the Ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the Ātman."

Nobody can know the Ātman inasmuch as the Ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the Ātman can be put, such as "What is the Ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the Ātman because the Shower is the Ātman; the Experiencer is the Ātman; the Seer is the Ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the Ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the Ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the Ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object.

Ato'nyad ārtam: "Everything other than the Ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this Ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense". Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further. — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad trs Swami Krishnananda

The mechanics of cognitive externalism are generally considered to be physical — sime

I cannot remember what I ate for breakfast on this very day last year, and yet this doesn't seem to matter with regards to anyone's identification of me as being the "same" person from last year up to the present. — sime

The idea that NDEs behave as a sixth sense is actually in conflict with the idea that NDEs are evidence of Cartesian dualism; for how are the experiences of a disembodied consciousness supposed to be transferred to the physical body as is necessary for the wakeful patient to remember and verbally report his NDE? — sime

Merleau Ponty writes: “For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. — Excerpt from the Blind Spot Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

In the 17th century, scientists foreswore the hidden realities of the (Aristotelian) scholastics. The function of science was to understand the realities that we actually experience - except those things that we experience that were not amenable to mathematical treatment - but that was treated as a marginal note. — Ludwig V

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

I can just about get my head around "conditions of the possibility of knowledge". I've never had a firm grip on what metaphysics is supposed to be. My philosophical education was most remiss about that. — Ludwig V

Murti draws a strong parallel between Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Both begin with the insight that our experience of the world is structured by the mind and that we never encounter reality as it is in itself. For Kant, this leads to the distinction between phenomena (what appears to us) and noumena (the in-itself), showing that the categories of the understanding shape experience. Nāgārjuna similarly shows that all concepts and views are dependent and relational—empty of inherent nature or intrinsic reality (śūnyatā). Where Kant outlines the transcendental conditions of experience, Nāgārjuna critiques all fixed views, including metaphysical and epistemological views, to reveal the dependently-originated and non-substantial nature of all appearances.

Yes, according to modern cosmology, the physical universe existed for about 10 billion years without any animation or "cognition" : just malleable matter & causal energy gradually evolving & experimenting with new forms of being ; ways of existing. — Gnomon

But the positive contribution here is that, in order to discuss what a mind is, the notion of reflection has to be incorporated. There is something unique going on that is mind, and in every mental happening, there is a reflection involved. — Fire Ologist

The contemporary assertion of the dualistic nature of humanity in a spiritual context, positing spirit and body as separate entities, appears to modern individuals as something commonplace, self-evident, and taken for granted. In their popular interpretations, a significant portion of Christian denominations lean toward dualism, viewing the body as a temporary vessel for an immortal spirit, which, after the completion of earthly life, continues to exist independently or is reborn in a new body. — Astorre

These differences may be related to the influence of Platonism on Western Christianity — Astorre

The irony with the situation between Wayfarer and myself is that I am very familiar with all the arguments he presents, — Janus

we know that the cosmos was visible prior to the advent of percipients, otherwise there never would have been any percipients. — Janus

An unfortunate deductive error inferring from our inability to say with certainty what kind of existence unperceived objects have to a conclusion that there could be no such actual existence, and that saying there is any such existence is incoherent. It's called 'confusing oneself with a truism'; the truism being that it is only minds that can know anything. — Janus

if you don't agree then you must not have understood" — Janus