• References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    I understand that - what is physical is defined in contrast with or distinct from what is supernatural or spiritual. That's a part of my point - it is an aspect of the 'Cartesian division' which I've already referred to. I'm trying to explain what is wrong with the expresssion 'spiritual/supernatural objects...'
    — Wayfarer

    Why does it matter, if it's a category that maps to an empty set?     — Relativist

    The argument is that the reference to "spiritual/supernatural objects" is a category error. That by declaring the 'spiritual or supernatural' to consist of 'objects' you are making it an empty set.

    Of course it sounds vague when what you want is something very specific, determinable by scientific enquiry, an 'atomic fact'. Questions of this kind are always elusive, that's why the positivists wanted to declare them all meaningless as a matter of principle. They're difficult in a way different to technical and scientific questions.

    The only thing being "transformed" is the mind of the person, not the external world. — Relativist

    There, again, is your belief that the world is a certain way, that it has a determinate existence external to your cognition of it. But this is just what has been called into question by both cognitive science and quantum physics.

    you seem to be latching onto the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of QM — Relativist

    The linked article says it postulates that 'consciousness is the main mechanism behind the process of measurement'. I say that too is a categorical error - consciousness is not a mechanism nor one cause in a sequence of events. The way I put it is that the act of observation or measurement is ineliminable - cannot be eliminated - in the derivation of an observational outcome. This is why quantum physics calls objectivity into question - not because consciousness is 'a factor' or 'a mechanism'.

    I'm essentially arguing that quantum mechanics shows us the limits of the subject/object distinction that classical physics assumed. This is closer to what philosophers like Bohr and Heisenberg were getting at - that the measurement problem isn't a technical issue to be solved but a conceptual lesson about the nature of physical knowledge itself. Hence that Bohr aphorism I already quoted. Here's another one: 'In our description of nature, the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.' Do you see the Kantian implications of this statement? That we do not see the phenomenon 'in itself', as it is, independently of our observation of it. We're involved in producing the outcome. Whereas in classical physics, we're at arms length from the outcome, we can maintain that sense of separateness which objectivity requires. But that sense of scientific detachment and objectivity, is also very much a cultural artifact, typical of a very specific period in history and culture. It is also where objectivist physicalism is located.

    The fact that you will invariably interpret this as being a causal sequence where consciousness is one thing, the effect another, is the same issue as treating the spiritual or supernatural as 'an object'. As I said, requires perspectival shift to see why.

    You've provided no reason to think this is a false distinction — Relativist

    I just have! I'm trying to convey a difficult point about the nature and limitations of objective thought, but everything I'm saying is interpolated into an idiom within which only what is considered objective is admissable. Consequently, we're 'talking past' one another. Much of analytical philosophy is propositional in nature - propositions built around a lexicon of states-of-affairs, properties, and the like (hence the interminable and circular threads on 'jtb'). Participatory and perspectival knowing are different to that. They're more characteristic of tradional philosophies, in existential and spiritual practices, ways-of-being in the world.

    I'll hasten to add, I'm no exemplar of the philosophic sage who has mastered such 'ways of being' and what they entail. By no means. But I at least recognise them.

    So life and mind are fully part of Nature and entrained to its thermodynamic constraints. — apokrisis

    You did mention

    Paticcasamuppada as your Buddhist mates would say. — apokrisis

    Let's unpack that, for those unfamiliar with the terminology. Paṭiccasamuppāda (Pali Buddhism) and Pratītyasamutpāda (Sanskrit Buddhism) refers to the 'chain of dependent co-arising'. It is a causal chain, comprising 12 steps (nidanas) the details of which are too voluminous to summarize here. It is casually expressed as 'This being, that becomes; this ceasing, that fades away'. It begins with 'avidya', meaning ignorance (literally 'not seeing') and unfolds through this 12-step sequence comprising in part mental formations, name and form, feelings, cravings, and so on (wikipedia entry.) It is represented iconographically as the Bhavachakra, the 'wheel of life and death'. There is also a reverse formulation, with the negation of each of the 12 links, culminating in nibbana which is release from the wheel of life and death.

    Within this lexion, materialism or physicalism are designated ucchedavāda (nihilist) the view that the subject is nothing other than the body, and that death is annihilation. At the opposite extreme is sassatavāda, the view that there is an eternal I or self that is reborn in perpetuity. In the Buddha's culture, there was widespread (though not universal) belief in reincarnation, so the 'eternalists' were those who believed that by virtuous practices, they could secure an un-ending sequence of propitious re-births in the future. (I'm inclined to think that this also describes populist Christian views of Heaven.)

    So implicity within all of this, there is a beyond life-and-death. But it would be a mistake to conceive of it as 'something that exists'. A Sōtō Zen master, for whom I have great respect, put it like this:

    Buddhists believe in the Universe. The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit.

    I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.

    Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.

    So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word spirit is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively.     — Nishijima-Roshi, Three Philosophies and One Reality

    I'm struck by the similarity to one of the aphorisms at the end of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

    The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

    If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

    What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

    It must lie outside the world.     — 6.41

    But what could lie outside the world? From our viewpoint, nothing. But that is not the 'nothing' of nihilism. It is 'that of which we cannot speak'.

    But semiosis happily puts human values back in the actual world. — apokrisis

    I grant that, it has a lot in common with phenomologists and existentialists, and I've learned and am learning a lot from it. It's a big improvement on lumpen materialism. But as you will often acknowledge, it envisages no end to the existence apart from its physical dissolution.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    I respect that your noetic structure differs from mine, and would not suggest this means you're objectively wrong. — Relativist

    Fair enough, mistake on my part. However I don’t take issue with physicalism because you hold it, but because I believe it’s a mistaken philosophical view. I believe I’ve given you many grounds on which I and others believe physicalism to be a mistaken philosophical view, but that you don’t recognize the arguments.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Folk like Pattee who directly tackle the symbol grounding issue and show how biology works. — apokrisis

    The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two categories. ...I have not solved this problem… All I can do is set up the problem clearly by specifying the minimum logical and physical conditions necessary. — Howard Pattee, Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis

    The story of how epistemic creatures could arise as Nature’s way of accelerating its entropy flow. — apokrisis

    Nihilism.


    Then watch this short video by cosmologist Sean Carroll... — Relativist

    There's an anecdote I sometimes tell. During the 1950's the then Pope Pius XXIV said:

    Indeed, it seems that the science of today, by going back in one leap millions of centuries, has succeeded in being a witness to that primordial Fiat Lux, when, out of nothing, there burst forth with matter a sea of light and radiation [... Thus modern science has confirmed] with the concreteness of physical proofs the contingency of the universe and the well-founded deduction that about that time the cosmos issued from the hand of the Creator.

    Lemaître was reportedly horrified by that intervention and was later able, with the assistance of Father Daniel O’Connell, the director of the Vatican Observatory, to convince the Pope not make any further public statements on religious or philosophical interpretations of matters concerning physical cosmology.

    According to the theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Paul Dirac,

    Once when I was talking with Lemaître about [his cosmological theory] and feeling stimulated by the grandeur of the picture that he has given us, I told him that I thought cosmology was the branch of science that lies closest to religion. However Lemaître did not agree with me. After thinking it over he suggested psychology as lying closest to religion.     — Wikipedia

    What impressed me about this was the fact that Lemaître was, as you will know, a Catholic priest, and yet he was horrified by the Pope's suggestion that his cosmological theory had anything to say about the articles of the faith. He would obviously have no time for the endless debates about the matter that occupy the Internet. That, and that he had the temerity to have the Pope advised to stop saying something, and that the Pope complied, signifying his respect for scientific opinion.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    The term, "subjectively real" seems problematic. The "contents" of my mind (my mental states) are objectively real - but known only to me. If I'm interpreting you correctly, you are simply suggesting the converse of objectivism. — Relativist

    I think this interpretation is really a symptom of the old Cartesian division between mind and world, self and other. We inherit, both innately and culturally, the sense of being a private self “inside” the body facing an “external” world of objects. Within that picture, “subjective” ends up meaning personal, private, even arbitrary, while “objective” means whatever any observer can check third-person.

    But what I mean by “subjective” is not the merely personal. It refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness — what phenomenology calls ipseity, or subject-hood. Every sentient being is a subject of experience in this sense. The personal is what’s idiosyncratic to me alone, but subjectivity is foundational and shared. Without it, there could be no experience of reality at all. But we tend not see it, because it is the assumed endogenous background to everything we say and do.

    And you keep leaning on semiotics and believing it is leading you to idealism. You see it as a sword to smite materialism. — apokrisis

    There’s no need to cast this in terms of “swords” and “smite.” I appreciate that you pointed me toward biosemiotics in the first place; thanks to your contributions, I’ve read a bit, including Marcello Barbieri’s Short History of Biosemiotics. What stood out to me is that biosemiotics is not a monolithic discipline. Barbieri distinguishes between at least three schools—Copenhagen, Tartu, and Code biology—each of which interprets the relation between symbols and physics differently. Hoffmeyer emphasizes semiosis as an emergent property of life, Barbieri stresses codes as rules not derivable from physics alone.

    That’s why I don’t see semiotics as simply a “sword for idealism.” What it shows is that meaning, coding, and interpretation can’t be captured by physical causation on its own. That opens a space where physicalism doesn’t have the last word, and where the epistemic/ontological split really matters. And phenomenological biology is also significant, with the way that it identifies the emergence of intentional actions in biology as the ground of 'ipseity' or what becomes fully developed in h.sapiens as the sense of self. All of that kind of thinking can be understood as naturalist without necessarily being physicalist. That is the province of enactivism or embodied cognition, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and which I think has at least an idealist element in it, in recognising the ineliminable role of the subject.
  • Hate speech - a rhetorical pickaxe
    PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION

    Department of Educational Standards and Community Safety

    Administration Announces Removal of Voltaire Materials from Public Institutions, Citing Harmful Content.

    Following a comprehensive review by the Committee on Safe Learning Environments, the Administration today announced the immediate removal of all works by and about François-Marie Arouet, generally known as Voltaire, from public school curricula and library collections. The 18th-century author's writings have been deemed inconsistent with current community values and potentially harmful to social cohesion. "While we respect historical context, we cannot ignore the clear pattern of inflammatory rhetoric that permeates Voltaire's work," stated Dr. Patricia Mooreland, Director of Content Standards. "His persistent attacks on established institutions, combined with his documented use of divisive language regarding religious communities, creates an environment that is simply incompatible with our commitment to inclusive education."

    The decision affects approximately 847 titles across the district's 23 branches, including "Candide," "Letters on the English," and various biographical works. Parents and educators have been provided with a curated list of alternative Enlightenment-era materials that promote critical thinking without the "needlessly provocative elements" found in Voltaire's corpus. School Superintendent Janet Brightwater emphasized that this action reflects the Administration's dedication to fostering learning environments where all students can feel safe and valued. "Education should challenge young minds," Brightwater noted, "but not at the expense of community harmony or respect for Christian beliefs. We remain committed to teaching the Enlightenment period through more constructive voices who advanced human knowledge without resorting to satirical attacks that could normalize intolerance."


    (AI was utilised in the preparation of this post.)
  • Hate speech - a rhetorical pickaxe
    President Trump remembered the conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a “martyr” on Sunday in remarks at his memorial in Arizona, but he pivoted swiftly to blunt politics by saying that he hated his political opponents and that they “cheated like dogs.”

    Striking a far different tone from that of Mr. Kirk’s widow, Erika, who spoke immediately before him, Mr. Trump said he disagreed with Mr. Kirk’s view of wanting the best for one’s opponent.

    “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” he said.     — at Kirk Memorial
  • Idealism in Context
    Only absolute reality cannot be granted to it (time) according to what has been adduced above. It is nothing except the form of our inner intuition. — CPR A36/B53

    Think of a melody. Each note has its own distinct individuality while blending with the other notes and silences that come before and after. As we listen, past notes linger in the present ones, and (especially if we’ve heard the song before) future notes may already seem to sound in the ones we’re hearing now. Music is not just a series of discrete notes. We experience it as something inherently durational.

    Bergson insisted that duration proper cannot be measured. To measure something – such as volume, length, pressure, weight, speed or temperature – we need to stipulate the unit of measurement in terms of a standard. For example, the standard metre was once stipulated to be the length of a particular 100-centimetre-long platinum bar kept in Paris. It is now defined by an atomic clock measuring the length of a path of light travelling in a vacuum over an extremely short time interval. In both cases, the standard metre is a measurement of length that itself has a length. The standard unit exemplifies the property it measures.

    In Time and Free Will, Bergson argued that this procedure would not work for duration. For duration to be measured by a clock, the clock itself must have duration. It must exemplify the property it is supposed to measure. To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do.     — Who Won when Einstein Debated Bergson?
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Idealism is fatuous as it imagines the world made perfect under a set of guiding values like good, truth, beauty, the divine. — apokrisis

    Ever read Schopenhauer? Yours is the man-in-the-street version of idealism, which is 'the hope that everything will turn out for the best'. Idealism properly understood is the mainstream of Western philosophy, beginning with Plato. It understands mind as fundamental to existence, not as a material constituent but as the faculty through which and by which whatever we are to know is disclosed. Your attitude embodies just the false dichotomy that Vervaeke is describing, between 'pragmatist physicalism and unrealistic idealism'. In reality, idealist philosophy is perfectly capable of both realism and pragmatism, where that is called for, but it also sees something beyond the physical.

    The caricature of idealism as 'placeless notions of perfection' is simply false. Schopenhauer, for example, was not an optimist but a pessimist, yet still an idealist in the sense that the world is representation, grounded in will. Likewise, Kant’s transcendental idealism or Hegel’s absolute idealism were not about escaping into Never-Never Land but about showing that reality is only intelligible because it is already structured by reason.

    Pragmatism doesn’t escape this. William James and C S Peirce both recognised that our practices of inquiry are already shot through with values—truth, coherence, what works. That’s why the supposed fact–value dichotomy is broken: there are no 'brute facts' apart from a horizon of meaning in which they matter. In fact, Peirce himself appears in encyclopaedia entries under the heading of "objective idealism" — a fact you always reject because it doesn’t suit the physicalist attitude you want to buttress with selective borrowings from his philosophy.

    So what you’re doing is just restating the very dichotomy Vervaeke critiques. You’re setting up 'pragmatism vs. idealism' as if they were exclusive alternatives, whereas the real point is that the framework of such dichotomies is what constrains thought in the first place. They are poles in a dialectic, not exclusive and exhaustive truth-claims.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    For anyone interested, current email update from John Vervaeke. It discusses some of the themes we’ve been looking at in this and other threads.

    Why Our Modern Worldview Limits Your Understanding of Reality

    Reveal
    The dominant framework of the Middle Ages divided reality between the natural (governed by space, time, and causality) and the supernatural (a domain populated by God, angels, demons, and metaphysical powers transcending the material world).

    But the Enlightenment rejected this dichotomy because they claimed it undermined their attempts to do science (make sense of the world), conduct ethics, and practice politics.

    They proposed that the natural is all there is—but they didn’t realize that they merely traded one distorting framework for another (which now silently constrains how we understand ourselves and the world).

    Let me explain:

    When the Enlightenment rejected the supernatural/natural dichotomy, they treated the supernatural not as false in a specific way, but as ontologically irrelevant—as a category that had lost its ability to do explanatory work. In other words, not real.

    From two realms, one was chosen: the natural.

    But the postmodernists saw a fundamental flaw in this rejection:

    The Enlightenment framework simply replaced that dichotomy with a whole gridlocked grammar of its own dichotomies.

    The supernatural/natural was replaced with subjective-objective, fact-value, is-ought, theory-data, measurement-meaning, analytic-synthetic.

    What the postmodern critique reveals is this:

    How can you reject the supernatural/natural dichotomy while running yourself on the basis of all these unquestionable dichotomies that you assert as intrinsically and necessarily so?

    The problem with these dichotomies is that they constrain us to experience the world in a particular way.

    They become the unexamined structure through which we interpret experience, including our understanding of religion.

    Take for example Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" (NOMA):
    Gould claimed he had solved the problem of the relationship between religion and science.

    His proposal:
    Science is about facts; religion is about values. Since the two occupy entirely distinct domains, they cannot conflict. They can't possibly challenge each other.

    Isn't that wonderful?

    But Gould is only presupposing—not justifying, not even explicitly referencing:
    He’s invoking the fact/value dichotomy as if it were a given.

    He's just seeing looking through this dichotomy.

    And there are profound problems with this supposed clarity:

    If the world is so cleanly divided how is it that nowadays ideas emerge (like Richard Dawkins’ claim) that every cell is a map of its environment, running on the same patterns and principles?

    What he's pointing to is the ancient idea of microcosm and macrocosm—that the structure of the world is mirrored in the structure of the self.

    This challenges the idea that the self is somehow sealed off from the world in subjective isolation. It suggests a profound fit between organism and world.

    Or consider Karl Friston’s proposal that you are a model of the world:

    Your cognition is not merely representational, but enactive. Your brain and body do not passively mirror reality; they are dynamically coupled to it.

    So how is this coming to the fore in a world divided, according to all these dichotomies?

    This question points to the problem that arises when dichotomies are taken to be features of your worldview—as if they disclose the very structure of reality and the limits of what can be known.

    One of the most prominent is the fact-value split—and it leads to what William Desmond called “default atheism.”

    For 28 years, cognitive scientist Dr. John Vervaeke has given his life to pioneering the scientific study of wisdom and transformation. His discoveries blend ancient and modern ways of knowing—bringing together philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, information processing, linguistics, and studies of religion.

    His Awakening From the Meaning Crisis series has earned him global notoriety and his academic work has gained the respect of the scholarly and scientific community. His lectures and discussions have been viewed by millions.

    This cognitive explanation of meaning-making has attracted leaders in many disciplines to the work. His teachings have served as a clarion call, around which practices are being honed and communities are being built that are having a proven ability to bring transformation and meaning to many.     — About John Vervaeke



    Ontic Structural Realism as now the fact of metaphysics catching up with the physics — apokrisis

    From what I’ve read, ontic structural realism is the attempt to rescue scientism from the wreckage of materialism. It has no interest in the nature and plights of existence as lived, but only in the abstract representation of physical forces. It’s like the Vienna Circle 2.0.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Gnomon
    In Western metaphysics, ‘creation’ has a specific status, reserved for the Creator (‘creature’ meaning ‘created being’). It is of course used more broadly nowadays, for all manner of creative work, but it still retains some overtones, in the philosophical context. But I’m not going to retroactively update it. Besides, ‘mind-constructed world’ just doesn’t have a ring to it.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump is going full totalitarian mode now. The latest outrage is the firing of Erik S. Siebert, a DA who had been told to rake up incriminating evidence on James Comey (previously FBI director), Letitia James (the NY DA who had successfully brought mortgage fraud charges against Trump) and Senator Adam Schiff (Manager of the first Trump impeachment). Apparently Siebert had concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. Trump had Siebert fired, then blasted Pam Bondi in a public social media post, insisting that DOJ find a way to bring charges, more or less 'come hell or high water'. (He's now drafted another lackey, er, lucky attorney to do his dirty work.)

    Such White House interference in Dept Justice actions is, of course, almost completely unprecedented and highly irregular to say the least. Trump complained that the two impeachments and five indictments brought against him were all 'based on nothing', so in his (twisted) mind, filing false charges against perceived adversaries is no different (and as usual never mind the actual facts). NY Times coverage (gift link). Rachel Maddow comment.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    So two guys who ran the risks of heresy charges and book bans unless they made a show of still being good Catholics. Their moves towards materialist explanations had to be publicly renounced — apokrisis

    It is true that Descartes had to forego the publication of some of his works for fear of religious persecution, and that the trial of Galileo was arguably the marker of the ‘scientific revolution’. But I don’t think that the ‘Cartesian division’ that I referred to was solely a result of those political pressures. Another major impetus was epistemological, with Galileo’s recognition of the importance of the Platonic dianoia and with his identification of the so-called ‘primary attributes’ of bodies - those attributes being just the ones ideally suited to his new physics. Obviously a contestable argument, but this division is where the pervasive notion of the ‘purposelessness’ of matter (and hence the Cosmos) originated. Meaning, purpose and intentionality was 'subjectivized' with the external world being conceived in purely mechanical and quantitative terms.

    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. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

    But you’re spot on in saying that the fear of religion was a factor. And it remains a motivation for the continual re-definition of physicalist explanations in light of the implausibllty of lumpen materialism, whilst trying to avoid the hazards of anything that sounds 'spiritual'.

    I brought up the "spiritual/supernatural" because there are common beliefs about it, and my purpose was to explain what it means to be physical. — Relativist

    I understand that - what is physical is defined in contrast with or distinct from what is supernatural or spiritual. That's a part of my point - it is an aspect of the 'Cartesian division' which I've already referred to. I'm trying to explain what is wrong with the expresssion 'spiritual/supernatural objects' by saying that terminology comes from a kind of conceptual confusion which can be traced back to Descartes' 'res cogitans' ('thinking thing'). The attempt to objectify or think of 'the spiritual' (whatever it may or may not be) in such objective terms is a category error (which Gilbert Ryle also said in Concept of Mind, in relation to Descartes.) There is no objective existent which corresponds with 'spirit' because (again whether it is real or not) it transcends the subject-object division. (Which is why mystical practices are aimed at deprecating the sense of 'otherness' or self-identification which characterises egoic existence.)

    How does our "participation" in existence differ from the participation of the sun? — Relativist

    The sun, to our knowledge, is not a rational sentient being, as are we.

    The idea of participatory ontology is part of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke's roadmap. There are four ways of knowing: propositional, perspectival, procedural and participatory (ref.)Participatory knowledge is the knowledge of what it’s like to occupy a role in your environment or relationships. Vervaeke considers this to be the most profound of the four types of knowledge. It involves being in a deep, transformative relationship with the world, participating fully in something that is wider than you.

    It is not just knowing about, but knowing through active engagement and transformation within specific contexts or environments. It shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the world, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging.

    This kind of knowledge is experiential and co-creative, often seen in the dynamics of relationships, culture, and community participation.

    A large part of Vervaeke's analysis is how our immersion in propositional knowiedge, at the expence of other forms of knowing, results in just that sense of separateness and division, which, I would argue, philosophy proper is aimed at ameliorating (for which see Pierre Hadot's writings on philosophy as a way of life).

    Of course, this is all light years away from David Armstrong's physicalism. I know, he was Head of Department where I studied undergrad philosophy. (Can't speak highly enough however of Associate Prof, Keith Campbell, who's 'Philosophy of Matter' course was a highlight of my degree studies.)

    I gather that you're challenging the direction it took, but swimming against the current is extremely challenging. — Relativist

    You're telling me! :rofl:

    Referring to this as "observer dependency" implies there's something special in the relation between a human observer and the quantum system being measured. The more objective description is "entanglement" - which occurs when a quantum system interacts with a classical object. — Relativist

    The 2022 Physics Nobel was about this. Indeed, “observer dependency” could be rephrased more precisely as “measurement-dependency” or “interaction-dependency” - but it still marks a break from naïve objectivism (where objects are assumed to have definite properties regardless of measurement).

    The Nobel presentations also did not try to “resolve” what “real” means in the sense of ontology. The experimental results deepen the mystery, and many interpretations still vie for supremacy.

    And then, there's the all-too-obvious point that all such measuring devices and instruments are extensions of human sensory abilities. 'The apparatus has no meaning unless the human observer understands it and interprets its reading,' as Schrödinger put it.

    the concept of each universal has something to do with the world outside ourselves - does it not? I claim that the universal "90 degrees" that I conceptualize is exhibited in the walls of my room. The abstraction is distinct from the walls that exhibit it, but it describes an aspect of the walls- and this same as aspect is exhibited in many places. — Relativist

    Of course it does. But again I'm trying to draw attention to the implied understanding in your framing of the issue, of the separateness of mind and world. Universals, in the medieval account, are the way in which the intelligible features of the world are absorbed by intellect. As I put it in Idealism in Context:

    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 long sought, not through discursive analysis 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.

    So, participatory knowledge, again. The way in which this type of realism fell out of favour, to be replaced by nominalism and empiricism, is the subject of a fascinating book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, M A Gillespie. And that's also related to epochal changes in consciousness.

    I know there's a lot to take on in all of this, but your questioning is causing me to recap what I've been studying. I know it's very different to the Anglo analytic philosophy.

    Quantum fields fit the state-of-affairs model: they are particulars with properties and relations to other quantum fields. — Relativist

    That’s precisely the issue: the category “states of affairs” is elastic enough to accommodate whatever physics happens to throw up. It’s not doing explanatory work so much as retrofitting itself to whatever the latest theory says exists.
  • Idealism in Context
    I would understand Mww's example like this. Time is already required, as the internal intuition, prior to writing a number, then when it is written, it is apprehended through the external intuition as having a spatial presence — Metaphysician Undercover

    The way I took it is that addition of numbers is sequential - first, 7, then 'add 5' giving the result '12'. It is the fact of the sequential order of mental operations that assumes time. The spatial representation (writing the numbers down) is only a useful aid; the grounding of number itself is in time, not space.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Matter has been dematerialised in physics. It is now raw potential. Pure possibility. — apokrisis

    Indeed!

    ...the common conception of “reality” is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.

    "This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.

    Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”     — Source

    As Heisenberg says, this is broadly compatible with Aristotle's notion of matter as pure potentiality ('res potentia'). And once we admit potential as ontologically real, we also re-introduce the idea of inherent directionality — a kind of natural teleonomy, putting back what Galileo's physics had taken away.

    The dualist complaint about physics was that it only spoke to inanimate matter – lumps of stuff – and that made it a story of pure contingency. Billiard balls clattering about mindlessly. The materialist view of nature was patently soul-less. — apokrisis

    It's more than a 'dualist complaint', it was an inevitable consequence of the Cartesian/Galilean division. The resulting sense of the cosmos 'devoid of purpose' and 'product of blind forces' still holds a lot of sway in today's world. See for instance this current thread.

    Who needs a creating god when mathematical logic already enforces its absolute constraints on material possibility? — apokrisis

    Who mentioned God?

    Physicalism now clearly sees the world in hylomorphic fashion as an interaction between naked contingency and rigid constraint. — apokrisis

    Which is why hylomorphism lives on. By defending universals, D M Armstrong is invoking hylomorphic language, but he drains it of the very thing that makes hylomorphism distinct — the irreplaceable role of form as intelligible order. For him, universals and laws are just physical constituents. That is a flattening of hylomorphism, as it fails to recognise the fundamental role of nous in recognising the forms. By contrast, pansemiotic or process views (including Whitehead’s) retain the sense in which form, meaning, or constraint is not reducible to the physical but is constitutive of intelligible reality.

    It all starts with a fluctuation. — apokrisis

    Hence the 'six numbers' of Martin Rees. The mother of all a priori's. Why? They were undeniably prior in the sense that they pre-condition everything that subsequently developed. That’s the anthropic cosmological argument in a nutshell - though it needn’t import God into the picture, only the recognition that constraint precedes contingency.
  • What is an idea's nature?
    But is it not so much more complex than this? Why is a marble a marble and a pebble a pebble? Or for that matter, a stone a stone, and a ball of dough a ball of dough. They're all similar, aren't they? — Outlander

    But if they form a sphere - one of marble, another of stone, etc - then we recognise the sphere, irrespective of the matter from which it is formed. That is why, in Aristotle's form-matter philosophy, the 'form' is what makes an object intelligible. If it's a lump or has no particular form, then it is not any thing, in that sense.
  • Idealism in Context
    “…. That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its form. (…) It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us à posteriori; the form must lie ready à priori for them in the mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation….” (A20/B34) — Mww

    Here again the echo of Aristotle's form-matter dualism. He transposes Aristotle’s schema from the level of substances to the level of cognition. Instead of matter/form being ontological constituents of objects, they are now epistemic constituents of experience:

    Sensation provides the raw material (matter).

    Space and time provide the form that makes it intelligible.

    The two together yield phenomena — objects for us.

    When we draw a figure or number, that becomes the appearance, and that, conditioned by space, combined with time already established as present in the mind, and we have an actual phenomenon. — Mww

    That is very helpful - it helps me understand much better Kant's connection of time with number and space with geometry. :100:
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Everything that physics theorizes to exist is causally interconnected. Physicalism is a thesis that the complete set of causally connected things comprise the totality of reality. It seems to me it is this interconnectedness that is the anchor.

    The term "physicalism" is used largely for historical reasons. These are discussed in the SEP article on physicalism. Personally, I make sense of it by considering proper subsets of the sorts of things commonly treated as existing: spiritual/supernatural objects (e.g. angels), abstract objects, and physical objects. Physicalists deny the existence of the first two.     — Relativist

    But again, please understand what I see as the fundamental category error in this formulation. By casting the non-physical in terms of 'spiritual/supernatural objects', you are already framing it within the paradigm of objectivism - the assumption that whatever is real, is, or could be, an object of cognition. Notice the empiricist presuppositions in this attitude. This is a metaphilosophical point concerning questions about how philosophy itself is conceived.

    This orientation toward “what is objectively so” is a distinct cognitive mode, one that shaped modern science and the so-called “scientific worldview" (and, hence, so much of modern life). It begins with Galileo’s distinction between primary (measurable) and secondary (sensible) qualities, and with Cartesian dualism, which divided res cogitans from res extensa. A further division soon followed between “natural” and “supernatural.” The Charter of the Royal Society, for instance, explicitly forbade canvassing metaphysical questions, assigning them to the Churches, which then held enormous power.

    These divisions can be summarized quickly, but they represent a major chapter in intellectual history (the subject of Edmund Husserl's posthumously published "The Crisis of the European Sciences"1). The challenge is that we are so immersed in this orientation that we don’t see it; it provides the spectacles through which questions are viewed. Philosophy, to my mind, means learning to look at those spectacles, not only through them.

    All that in mind, “the nature of being” can be understood very differently. In phenomenological (and also Indian) philosophy, being is participatory: something we are always already enacting, not a detached object of analysis (even though objectivity has its place). Here, the subject–object split is not the sole lens through which existence must be interpreted. And if nothing is said about what is spiritual, that might only be because, with Wittgenstein, there is 'that of which we cannot speak', but which is nevertheless of foundational significance in philosophy. But the upshot is, there are things that are subjectively real, that is, can only be known first-person, but which are as foundational as any purported 'atomic objects of cognition'. This is what we designate Being, which includes the irreducible fact of the subject to whom the objective world is disclosed.

    Are you are claiming that universals are nothing but abstractions of aspects of the things we perceive, measure, and theorize: existing exclusively in minds but having no ontological significance to the objects thenselves. That would be fine, but it's a different definition. — Relativist

    I think, again, this question is posed against the implicit division of subject and object, mind and world. And, again, this is so deeply knit into our way of being that it's very difficult to see it any other way. But my take on universals is that they are intrinsic to the way in which the mind assimilates and interprets sensory experience. Intellectual abstractions, the grasp of abstract relations and qualities, are what binds rational conceptions together to form coherent ideas. But these are neither 'in the world' nor mere pyschological constructs, they are universal structures of intelligibility disclosed through consciousness. (As you've mentioned Edward Feser's blog, see his Think, McFly, Think.)

    Particulars are reducible to simpler particulars, all the way down to the ground: atomic particulars/states of affairs which are irreducible. These atomic states of affairs still have all 3 sets of constituents (bare particular, intrinsic properties, relations to other particulars). ... Electrons had -1 electric charge before anyone recognized there were electrons and they each have this exact charge. — Relativist

    You've opened the door here to the fundamental question that arose with quantum mechanics, that of 'observer dependency'. And you can't defray that by claiming that this is only one of various competing interpretations. Even the competing interpretations are trying to account for the fact of observer-dependency, or show some way in which it can be discounted. And that, in turn, is necessitated by the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle doesn’t necessarily imply “no reality” before observation, but it does mean that the classical assumption—that particulars have determinate, observer-independent properties at bottom—can’t be sustained without qualification. What is real, is a range of possibilities expressed by the wave-function (ψ), which are condensed into a single value by registration or measurement (the so-called 'wavefunction collapse'2).

    So when you write that “particulars are reducible … all the way down to atomic states of affairs,” you’re really invoking a metaphysical picture inherited from classical physics. But precisely that picture is what quantum mechanics has called into question, forcing contemporary physicalism to uncouple itself from physics as such. Which, again, implies that Armstrong's 'atomic facts' are conceptual placeholders.

    My one hope is that you have a bit more respect for my position after this exchange. — Relativist

    While I certainly respect your contributions and the clarity and courtesy with which you’ve presented your position, I must respectfully disagree with the philosophy of physicalism.

    What would help would be some short description of a reasonable form of idealism. — Relativist

    A'friend link' to my Mind-Created World on Medium.

    Mind over Matter, interview with Bernardo Kastrup.

    --------------------------------------------

    1. How the untimely death of RG Collingwood changed the course of philosophy forever, Prospect Magazine, for insights into Ryle's attitude towards Husserl

    2. The Timeless Wave of Quantum Physics, Wayfarer.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    In its early modern form, materialism drew its authority directly from the successes of the new science. Galileo’s mathematization of motion, Descartes’ mechanics of matter, and Newton’s laws of gravitation seemed to reveal the basic structure of the cosmos. To be a materialist was simply to affirm that what physics discovered was what reality ultimately consisted of. Nature, on this view, was transparent to the methods of natural philosophy, and materialism gained its prestige by tying its fortunes to the steadily advancing discoveries of science.

    By contrast, contemporary physicalism has quietly shifted ground. It still borrows the authority of science, but without committing itself to whatever physics currently says about the world. Instead, it invokes “the scientific worldview” in a more nebulous sense, using scientific facts when they support its claims, but disclaiming any dependence on physics when they do not. The result is less a rigorous ontology than a posture of allegiance: a declaration that, whatever reality ultimately turns out to be, it will count as “physical” by definition. This maneuver preserves physicalism from refutation, but only by reducing its content to a loyalty oath.
  • The Mind-Created World
    The mind-created world, as I understand the OP, has no external cause and is a monism where everything that exists has mental properties. — JuanZu

    Not quite what it says. I don't claim that the mind is constitutive of objects in the way that wood is constitutive of boats or clay of pots. It is an epistemological arrgument.

    ↪alleybear
    I acnowledge that the word 'created' might be a poor choice of words in the context. I'm referring more to the role of the mind in constructing or synthesising what we take to be a completely independent and external world.
  • Panspermia and Guided Evolution
    I have a book published mid 1980’s The Intelligent Universe, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingha mentioned in the article. They made a good case for panspermia, I felt. They say there are vast clouds of proto-organic matter drifting around in the cosmos, and that when planetary conditions are right, some of it might fall to ground and begin to combine and develop. Also that viruses arrive in interstellar matter. Hence the name ‘panspermia’ - the idea of the earth as a fertile ovum and comets as interstellar sperm. I like it more than Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    how can physicalism transcend physics? If physics is not relevant to physicallsm, then why describe such a foundational ontology as “physical” at all? Physical compared to what?
    — Wayfarer
    I googled the definition of Transcend:
    "to rise above or go beyond the limits of"

    Each of the postulates of physicalism goes beyond what physics can properly do:
    -identify the ontological structure of existents as states of affairs
    -the ontology of universals: that they exist at all; that they exist immanently
    -the ontological structure of laws (relations between universals); physics can identify instrumentalist methodology (equations). As I described, theoretical models are heuristics and/or metaphysical claims.
    -that physical reality = the totality of reality.     — Relativist

    Thanks for clarifying. But this seems to sharpen the question rather than resolve it. If physicalism transcends physics in the sense you describe, then these postulates are not discoveries of physics but metaphysical commitments. In that case, why call the framework ‘physical’ rather than simply metaphysical realism?

    If the claim is that “physical reality = the totality of reality,” then the term “physical” is carrying a great deal of weight. But if what you mean by “physical” is not fixed by physics itself, then what anchors it? Otherwise, “physicalism” looks less like an ontology than a promissory note: asserting that whatever is real must fall under the heading of the physical, even when the meaning of “physical” is left indeterminate.

    I’ve already disputed the idea that universals are physical. I’ve been researching it and found another philosopher, E J Lowe, who also disputes this idea from within an analytical perspective. Lowe rejects Armstrong’s “physicalist” version. Armstrong insists that universals exist wholly in each of their instances — so that “redness” is literally a physical constituent of each red object. Lowe argued this borders on incoherence: how can one and the same entity be wholly present in two places at once? He advocates a weak form of immanence, where universals are always instantiated but are not themselves located in space and time. Universals, in Lowe, are not reducible to particulars nor are they spatiotemporal. That’s why he says they are “always instantiated” but not literally in space and time. He goes on to argue on these grounds and other grounds that physicalism is incoherent.

    Me, I say that universals can only be recognised by a mind. They are dependent on the mind’s ability to identify likeness etc. They are part of the intellectual apparatus of rational thought.

    every object that is examined is accounted for by simpler and simpler components. The absence of a bottom layer implies the series as a whole isn't accounted for, and it would be impossible for an infinite number of parts to assemble. — Relativist

    That problem is not addressed by the assertion that at bottom, everything must be physical, especially in the absence of any notion of the physical that is stipulated by physics.

    That is really all I have to say on the matter. I am not and will never be persuaded by physicalism.


    Re Ontic Structural Realism - I don’t much like their style. Same for much of analytical English-speaking philosophy, Armstrong, Lewis, Quine etc. I’m interested in existentialism, phenomenology, non-materialist philosophy of mind, Buddhism and Eastern philosophy.

    A remark like this suggests to me you aren't trying to understand, and are instead casting judgement, rooted in your own perspective. — Relativist

    Philosophy is critical. I too feel that criticism of the idealist ideas I put forward is based on their not being understood. Philosophical debates are often like that. But I stand by the criticisms I’ve offered and I don’t see them as having been rebutted.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    ↪Relativist
    I appreciate the time and care you've taken to explain your viewpoint but I'm afraid we'll remain at loggerheads.

    Example: Armstrong's "atomism" is an ontological claim that there is an irreducible bottom layer of physical reality. — Relativist

    But how can physicalism transcend physics? If physics is not relevant to physicallsm, then why describe such a foundational ontology as “physical” at all? Physical compared to what?

    And if the irreducible bottom layer of reality cannot, even in principle, be identified by or with the theories of physics, then on what basis is it called "physical"? Armstrong’s “atoms” may be a neat philosophical posit but unless they’re tied to some determinate content, why regard them as more than symbolic? And if they’re only symbolic, then the reality they possess is conceptual rather than physical.

    And what, for that matter, is the supposed threat of “infinite regress”? If Armstrong’s atoms were shown to be untenable, what regress would be entailed? It seems to me that invoking the specter of regress is simply a way to secure closure by stipulation — to insist that there must be a final layer, whether or not physics ever finds one.

    Physicalism respects the discoveries of physics, and as such is a form of scientific realism, but it doesn't entail treating any specific findings in physics as an element of the ontology or as a set of assumed facts upon which it depends. — Relativist

    How convenient!

    The scope of ontology is the totality of existence. Physicalists are philosophers who assert the physical world to BE the totality of existence, but it is not a conclusion derived from physics. — Relativist

    But surely the totality of existence includes human beings. You're not seeing the point of Chalmers critique:

    It (the 'hard problem' is problematic for a physicalism that assumes science can and will answer all questons about the natural world — Relativist

    But it's important to grasp that this is not the meaning of the 'hard problem'. It's not the want of knowledge about the natural world. It's pointing to a matter of principle, not something which can be solved by the accumulation of further facts. In a way, the hard problem of consciousness is simply a rhetorical device: it is pointing out that no matter how sophisticated the objective understanding of consciousness, the first-person nature of experience (or existence) will always elude that description. That isn’t a gap waiting to be filled — it’s the structural blind spot of objectivist science. But I won't repeat myself, and thanks again.
  • Idealism in Context
    You could say the role of the synthetic a priori in science is precisely to bridge the gap between logical necessity and empirical causation. Logic alone gives tautologies, while experience alone gives contingent observations. Kant’s point is that principles like “every change in velocity has a cause” are synthetic a priori: they enable prediction, but also hold necessarily for all possible experience. That’s what allows physics to be both law-governed and universally valid.

    Of course, it’s said that much of this comes to grief in quantum physics (but that’s a separate topic and even there the debate turns on how to interpret the a priori structures of knowledge, not on whether they exist at all.)
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine
    They’re different topics, but there is a way of connecting them, subject of a forthcoming OP.
  • Idealism in Context
    What is the ideal situation in which an a priori judgment is imagined to take place? Prior to what, exactly, can we know that 7+5=12? — J

    A priori means “prior to experience.” If you tell me you have seven beers in the fridge and I bring to another five to give you, I can know you have twelve beers without opening the fridge door. That’s a trivial example, but it illustrates the point: the truth of 7+5=12 doesn’t depend on checking the fridge.

    This is where Kant’s answer to Hume comes in. Hume divided truths into those that are true by definition (analytic) and those known only from experience (synthetic a posteriori). Kant showed there’s a third, crucial category: synthetic a priori judgments, which extend knowledge while still being necessary. That’s how mathematics and mathematical physics are possible — Dirac’s deduction of antimatter being a dramatic case in point.

    Kant didn’t believe in Plato’s innate ideas, but he did argue that the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the understanding are innate conditions of human reason. Later, Quine challenged these distinctions in Two Dogmas of Empiricism, but that’s a separate debate.
  • The Mind-Created World
    I submit that it is incompatible with the Gerson view of Platonism. — Paine

    Sure, but that is not a topic of debate in this thread.
  • Idealism in Context
    ↪J
    Quite, the Prolegomena. That’s where I read it.


    A nice case of the “unreasonable effectiveness” is Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter — it literally “fell out of the equations” long before there was any empirical validation of it. That shows mathematics is not just convention or generalisation, but a way of extending knowledge synthetically a priori.
    — Wayfarer

    IMO, that is a merely an instance of an inductive argument happening to succeed. A purpose of any theory is to predict the future by appealing to induction -- but there is no evidence of inductive arguments being more right than wrong on average. Indeed, even mathematics expresses that it cannot be unreasonably effective, aka Wolpert's No Free Lunch Theorems of Statistical Learning Theory.     — sime

    But inductive arguments are a posteriori by definition. Dirac’s prediction of antimatter was not an inductive guess but a deductive consequence of the mathematics of the electron. It’s a perfect case of the synthetic a priori: by synthesising the elements of the theory, he saw that negative counterparts must exist — long before observation confirmed it.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine
    The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment. — Bateson, Form, Substance, and Difference

    That is perfectly in keeping with the ‘mind-created world’. Bateson is one of the sources of ‘enactivism’ and a major influence in The Embodied Mind, which comprehensively deconstructed ‘the view from nowhere’.
  • Idealism in Context
    ↪sime
    If mathematics were merely convention, then its success in physics would indeed be a miracle — why should arbitrary symbols line up so exactly with the predictability of nature? And if it were merely empirical, then we could never be sure it applies universally and necessarily, which is precisely what science assumes (hence the endless invective directed at things which are said to fall outside physical laws). Kant’s claim is that mathematics is neither arbitrary convention nor empirical generalisation, but synthetic a priori: it extends knowledge while still being based on necessary truths.

    A nice case of the “unreasonable effectiveness” is Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter — it literally “fell out of the equations” long before there was any empirical validation of it. That shows mathematics is not just convention or generalisation, but a way of extending knowledge synthetically a priori. (Of course, as Sabine Hossenfelder reminds us, mathematics can also mislead if we take the beauty of equations as a substitute for empirical test.)

    ↪Janus
    I’m objecting to the theory that mathematical knowledge can be attributed to the generalisation of or abstraction from experience. We have to have the ability to count and perform various other mental operations on concepts in order to grasp maths. And even then there is an enormous range of skill that can be observed amongst people, with a Terrence Tao at one end of the spectrum, and those with a rudimentary ability in mathematics at the other. No amount of experience can close that gap, if the ability is not there.
  • Idealism in Context
    ↪Janus
    Briefly, although it wasn’t on the curriculum of the courses I did.

    In my view, he makes too little of what can be derived from experience in combination with symbolic language — Janus

    Kant in no way denied the fundamental role of language, I don’t think that would have ever occurred to him.

    The ‘empirical doctrine of mathematics’ is associated with John Stuart Mill, although as I understand it, very much a minority view.
  • Idealism in Context
    What Kant seems to gloss over is that this kind of a priori reasoning is distilled from perceptual experience, — Janus

    Other creatures also have perceptual experience, and some can even discriminate small quantities. But they don’t go on to develop arithmetic. That shows arithmetic is not just “distilled” from perception, but depends on something prior in our cognitive framework — the capacity to represent number as such, and to apply operations universally and necessarily.

    I'm familiar with Quine's argument, which is why I mentioned it, but my aim here, as the 'synthetic a priori' was mentioned, was simply to recap what they are.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Can you provide an argument that supports it. — Janus

    I provided the argument for it upthread, but it was ignored. That argument was, you have wildly divergent views of what quantum physics means (realist, idealist, anti-realist etc), so how can you appeal to physics for a metaphysical thesis, when these foundational issues are still a matter of controversy.

    ...supposed authorities... — Janus

    They're known as 'citations'.
  • AI cannot think
    Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'.
    — The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

    What scientific study does he cite for this empirical claim? If my dog goes and gets a ball when I say "go get your ball," even new balls not previously seen, have I disproved his claim by showing the dog's understanding of categories? If not, what evidence disproves his claim?     — Hanover

    Perhaps by scattering a range of balls of different sizes and saying 'fetch the large, white ball' or 'the ball nearest the lemon tree.' That might do the trick.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    If you are waiting for Wayfarer to provide an actual argument you'll be waiting a long time, perhaps forever. — Janus

    You might turn your attention to the 3 arguments presented in the post above this one.

    Such as the claim that 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature'. How would you respond to that?
  • Idealism in Context
    ↪Janus
    You’re right that one can treat “7+5=12” as analytic by stipulation, or check it a posteriori with pebbles. But Kant’s point is that neither account explains why mathematics is both necessary and informative. If it were analytic, it would be tautological; if empirical, it would be contingent. The synthetic a priori is his way of capturing that “in-between” character. It also has bearing on how mathematics is 'unreasonably efficacious in the natural sciences.'
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Who are you showing this to? — Relativist

    I hope to make a plausible case for anyone reading. So, sure, I seek to persuade. I've explained, I hope, that I believe physicalism is lacking in some fundamental respects (as would any other critic of physicalism.) As you are advocating physicalism, then I would hope to show you in particular what's wrong with it.

    This has no bearing on the what I said, except to the extent that Philosophy deals with more than ontology (the ONLY thing physicalism is dealing with). — Relativist

    Would I be correct in saying that you believe that 'ontology' comprises 'the set of all actually existing things', and that your position is that all actually existing things are physical? After all, you said:

    Physicalism is the theory that everything that exists, is composed of physical things, and that they act and assemble entirely due to physical forces due to laws of nature.
    ....     — Relativist

    ...physics theory makes the theoretical claim that everything that exists in the material world (the domain of physics) is composed of elements of the quantum fields (as identified in the standard model) It's a claim supported by evidence and theory ....The metaphysical claim is that an object IS its physical compostion, there's nothing more to the object..

    I don’t intend to misrepresent you, but when you define physicalism as the thesis that everything that exists is composed of physical things, governed by physical forces and laws of nature, supported by an argument from 'the scope of physics', then from my point of view it does sound like physics is being taken as the ontological grounding for your metaphysics. How is it not?

    You don't agree, but you haven't explained why you disagree. — Relativist

    I have, repeatedly, but you haven't engaged with the arguments I've put forward.

    First, do you recognize any cogency in David Chalmers' argument? That 'the nature of experience' cannot be fully captured by scientific descriptons? If you don't, why not? If you do, how does it fail as argument against physicalism?

    Second: I've made the point (and again, this is not something of my devising), that scientific method assumes at the outset a division between subject and object, and assigns primary reality to the objectively-measurable attributes of objects, while assigning appearances to the so-called 'secondary attributes' of the subjective mind. I'm saying that physicalism overlooks or ignores this methodological division, and this has philosophical consequences. This is the thrust of the article The Blind Spot of Science is the Neglect of Experience. The thrust of phenomenological philosophy is based on recognising the implications of this 'bifurcation' of the world into subjective and objective.

    Third: I've mentioned the conflicing interpretations of physics. Rather than open a whole can of worms, let me boil it down to this question. Neils Bohr said "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature." Werner Heisenberg: 'What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Now, surely, this has some bearing on your physicalist thesis. These two scientists were central to the discovery of the modern theory of the atom. Yet they're saying that physics does not describe nature as it is. Do you think that is so? If not, why?

    I can consider most philosophical issues even when framed in terms inconsistent with physicalism. That's because I regard the framing as paradigm, which can be utilized without ontological commitent to the paradigm. — Relativist

    This seems to rest on a misunderstanding of philosophy as such. Scientific models can indeed be treated as paradigms without ontological commitment — Newtonian mechanics still works fine for spacecraft navigation, even if we know relativity is more fundamental. Same with quantum physicists' 'Shut up and calculate'. But philosophy isn’t just a pragmatic use of conceptual models. Its concern is precisely with what is real, and what it means to exist. To treat philosophical frameworks as if they can be referenced without ontological commitment is to miss the point of philosophy. Ontology can't be firewalled of to a specialised sub-division separate from the rest of philosophy, it's intrinsic to it.

    I've given the above arguments repeatedly over the course of this thread, and to my recollection, you haven't engaged with any of them, other than the vague accusation of them being 'category mistakes'. If they are, then how so?
  • AI cannot think
    ↪T Clark
    I asked ChatGPT ‘When an LLM ‘gets’ a joke and signal ‘ha ha’ - it doesn’t actually feel amused, so much as recognizing it as a joke and responding accordingly, right?’

    Chat GPT: ‘Yes, when an LLM ‘gets’ a joke and says ‘ha ha,’ it isn’t actually amused — it’s just recognizing the pattern of a joke and producing the kind of response people usually give. It’s a simulation of amusement, not the feeling itself.

    So just like brain-image reconstructions give us a modelled output rather than direct access to the brain’s “movie” ‘.
  • AI cannot think
    ↪T Clark
    That's an interesting Pinker quote, although I myself frequently think in English sentences - not that I regard that as typical or as something everyone would do. Others have said here there are people who can read and speak perfectly well without ever being aware of a stream of thought in their minds. I think my 'bottom line' with respect to AI (with which I now interact every day) is that LLMs are not subjects of experience or thought. And if ask any of them - Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT - they will affirm this. They are uncannily like real humans, right down to humour and double entrendes, but they're reflecting back at us the distillation of billions of hours of human thought and speech.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    ↪Relativist
    Furthermore, I don’t think it’s helpful to frame this as though my philosophical outlook simply reduces to my personality or my particular “areas of concern” which is essentially a form of ad hominem argument. I've given reasons, not just preferences, for why I think physicalism must be incomplete as a philosophy. If you believe I’ve misunderstood, then the most productive way forward is to show where the reasoning fails, not to suggest the reasoning is invalid because of the kind of person offering it just prefers a different approach.

    I've given numerous, documented reasons for my arguments, including:

    • The Hard Problem: first-person experience (“what it is like”) is not captured by third-person physical accounts.
    • Universals and theory of meaning: truths, logical relations, and mathematical structures are not physical categories, even if they can be represented in physical media.
    • The Blind Spot: since Galileo, science has bracketed the subject to focus exclusively on objects — but philosophy must also account for the subject who knows and experiences.

    All of these are dismissed by you as 'category errors' or 'not relevant' without any attempt at addressing them.
  • AI cannot think
    ↪punos
    The reconstructions are extraordinary, no question. But it’s important to see what’s really happening: the system has to be trained for hours on each subject, with researchers mapping brain activity against known images and then building statistical models to translate those signals back into visuals. So what we’re seeing isn’t the brain “projecting” a movie by itself, but a reconstruction produced through a pipeline of human design, training, and interpretation. Without that interpretive layer, the raw neural data wouldn’t 'look like' anything. They don’t show that the brain literally contains images — they’re model-based translations of neural activity, not direct readouts of images 'stored' in the neural data.
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