If I had a machine that could pump out meaningful, experimentally under-determined, and intelligible philosophical statements/systems by the thousands is indulging in the debate or discussion around them a proper place of a rational individual, a modern philosopher, or a practicing physicist? Or should such speculation always be avoided with extreme prejudice? — substantivalism

There is no such machine, because meaning comes from what matters, and nothing matters to a machine. It has no skin in the game, so to speak (only natural, as it has no actual skin).

Ever happened upon Sabine Hossenfelder's book Lost in Math? There might be some commonality between what you're asking and that book.

So existence is basically a "suffering", in terms of this definition being the temporariness of satisfied states, and the initial lack that we feel, an incompleteness that is basically never-ending. — schopenhauer1

Right. As you say, similar to Schopenhauer, where he converges with Buddhist and Hindu ideas.

But the cruel part is the "fooling" aspect. As the human animal, unlike mere instinct or simpler forms of experience that other animals exhibit, is that we make "goals" for ourselves. And those goals often are thwarted, and we are disappointed, or when they are reached, they are but temporary, and thus "the vanity" of Ecclesiastes. And throughout all this will-thwarting-temporary satiation, we have the anxieties and physical ailments of social and physical harms. We are self-aware, we know this. Yet what biases delude us? — schopenhauer1

But isn't it an inevitable consequence of being human, in a way that it is not for animals? Hereunder an excerpt from a powerful essay by another contemporary Buddhist, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, which was written as a reflection on 9/11 and the religious rationale for terrorism (although that particular aspect is not relevant at this point). I quote it, because I think it's a plausible, existential account of the source of the angst for self-aware beings such as ourselves.

In his book The Theory of Religion, translated by Robert Hurley (Zone Books, 1992), Georges Bataille analyzes the arising of human consciousness as it emerges out of animal consciousness and shows how religious sensibility necessarily develops from this. His argument goes like this:

The animal world is a world of pure being, a world of immediacy and immanence. The animal soul is like “water in water,” seamlessly connected to all that surrounds it, so that there is no sense of self or other, of time, of space, of being or not being. This utopian (to human sensibility, which has such alienating notions) Shangri-La or Eden actually isn’t that because it is characterized at all points by what we’d call violence. Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “isness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world. Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my me, though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it the sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity.

Of course, much more need be said, and this is only an excerpt, but I think it frames the issue well.

'Axiology, derived from the Greek words “axios” (value) and “logos” (study), is the philosophical exploration of value. It encompasses the examination of what is valuable and why, exploring the nature of values, their hierarchy, and their relationship with individuals, societies, and cultures. Axiology encompasses both ethics (the study of moral values) and aesthetics (the study of beauty and taste).'

So, in the case of Buddhism, the basis of value - the fundamental axiology, if you like - is the ubiquitity and unavoidable nature of suffering, old age and death. Its formulaic exposition is always given in those terms - you will loose what you love, be beset by things you don't like, suffer, and die. Those are given facts of existence. Liberation from that (nibbana, Nirvāṇa) is the extinction of the factors that drive continued existence in the mode of existence subject to these conditions.

But you're making an error if you think materialism requires these scientific models to be correct depictions of reality. The metaphysics does not depend on these models to correspond to reality. — Relativist

So, what does it depend on, then?

In a Buddhist sense, you might agree with Schopenhauer that Buddhist practice is what the self-aware animal must look to. — schopenhauer1

Well, look at the mythological description of the origin of Siddhartha's quest. He comes of age sorrounded by luxury and shielded from misfortune and suffering. But then he undertakes excursions outside the palace walls with his trusty charioteer, and sees the 'four sights'. Which four sights? An old man, bent over and walking very slowly with a stick. A sick man, in a state of distress. A corpse being escorted to the burning ghats. And finally a renunciate (sramana) with a serene countenance. This set the curriculum, so to speak, for Siddharta's quest, culminating in his realisation as the Buddha, by which he was forever liberated from the round of saṃsāra - sickness, old age and death.

As to the relationship of humans and animals - as is well-known Buddhism is generally a humane religion, never having practiced animal sacrifice (unlike Vedic brahmanism.) Nevertheless Buddhists do not agree that humans are on the same plane of existence as animals, as humans have sufficient intelligence to hear the teaching and follow it. (See David Loy, Are Humans Special?, discussing Buddhist views on the significance of human life. Although I'm well aware that regarding human life as somehow different or 'special' is nowadays a very politically-incorrect stance, which I'm reminded of anytime I post about it.)

:rofl:

No, but they're also not understandable outside the scientific context within which they were discovered.
— Wayfarer
I don't understand why you say that. Please elaborate. — Relativist

The question was about elementary particles and genes. These are part of scientific models.

It is well known that the nature of the existence of former, in particular, is rather ambiguous, to say the least. Although I don't want to divert this thread too far in this direction, this is where the Copenhagen interpretation of physics is relevant. This says that physics does not reveal what nature is in itself (or herself, some would say) but as how she appears to our methods of questioning. So these 'elementary particles' are not mind-independent in that sense - which is the implication of the observer problem. They only appear to be particles when subjected to a specific kind of experimental setup. This is part of why there is a tendency towards philosophical idealism in modern physics (e.g. Henry Stapp, John Wheeler, Werner Heisenberg, Bernard D'Espagnat, Shimon Malin, can all be said to advocate for one or another form of philosophical idealism. The latter's book is called Nature Loves to Hide.)

As for genes, and whether these comprise a fundamental explanatory unit, again, the emergence of epigenetics has given rise to an understanding that genes themselves are context-dependent. That is not downplaying the significance of the discovery of genes (or quantum theory, for that matter) but the role they are both assigned by physicalism as being ontologically primary or fundamental.

If you don't believe we can know truths about the world, that seems more significant than whether or not the mind can be adequately accounted for through physicalism. I don't see how you could propose a superior alternative with such a background assumption. — Relativist

I don't know how you could come to that conclusion. We know all manner of things about the world. I'm not denying that scientific knowledge is efficacious. What I'm questioning is the metaphysics of materialism, which posits that 'Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary' (The Blind Spot). Armstrong's physicalist philosophy would maintain that exact view, would it not? That the mind is 'the product of the brain'? What else could 'materialist theory of mind mean? And I think it can be questioned, without saying that nobody knows anything about the world.

I think I can see the point you're having difficulty with (and please don't take this to be condescending.) Philosophical idealism is nearly always understood as the view that 'the world only exists in the mind'. I think that is how you're reading what I am saying, which is why you believe that for me to acknowledge the reality of objective facts will undermine idealism. But what I'm arguing is that this is a misreprentation of what is true about idealism.

To get a bit technical, it's the difference between Berkeley's idealism, and Kant's. Kant acknowledges the empirical veracity of scientific hypotheses (empirical realism). After all, he was a polymath who devised a theory of nebular formation, which, adapted by LaPlace, is still considered current. But transcendental idealism still maintains that in a fundamental sense, the mind provides the intuitions of time and space, within which all such empirical judgements are made. I know it's a really hard distinction to get. Bryan Magee says 'We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counter-intuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.'

If what is addressed by the term “reality” (I presume physical reality which, in a nutshell, is that actuality (or set of actualities) which affects all minds in equal manners irrespective of what individual minds might believe or else interpret, etc.) will itself be contingent on the occurrence of all minds which simultaneously exist—and, maybe needless to add, if the position of solipsism is … utterly false—then the following will necessarily hold: reality can only be independent of any one individual mind. As it is will be independent of any particular cohort of minds—just as long as this cohort is not taken to be that of “all minds that occur in the cosmos”. — javra

I have read about Bernardo Kastrup's idea of 'mind at large'. At first I was sceptical of it but I've come around to it, if it is understood simply as 'some mind'. Not yours or mine, or anyone's in particular but as a genre.

’m inclined to suggest Bergson was Kantian, but the article doesn’t support me, so I better not. — Mww

Maybe it does. Consider this paragraph:

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. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.

This provides a connection between Bergson's concept of 'lived time' (or duration) and Kant’s idea of time as a form of intuition—a foundational structure through which we experience and organize reality. Bergson's critique aligns with Kant in suggesting that time is not merely a succession of isolated moments that can be objectively measured, but a continuous and subjective flow that we actively synthesize through consciousness. This synthesis is what lets us experience time as duration, not just as sequential units.

In this account, Bergson is challenging Einstein’s emphasis on clock-based measurement, pointing to the irreducibility of subjective experience in understanding time’s nature. Kant’s notion of time as an a priori intuition parallels this because he saw time as essential to organizing our experiences into coherent sequences. It’s not a feature of objects themselves but rather of our way of perceiving them—a precondition that shapes experience.

This is connected to why I argue for the 'primacy of perspective'. Without an observing mind that strings things together, there is no time as such. And despite Einstein's undoubted genius, he could never let go his realist convictions. I see that as a philosophical shortcoming.

Deep questions, I agree.

I asked you to say explicitly what you thought was wrong with Husserl's criticism of naturalism, which you didn't do. How about this excerpt from Bryan Magee's 'Schopenhauer's Philosophy'? You will notice that it opens with the very challenge you have just given:

Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

If you think this is wrong, say why.

I don't think this is a hard fact to grasp, but surprisingly you seem to have much difficulty understanding (or is it perhaps accepting?) it. — Janus

If you address the actual argument, I will respond.

Do you deny that science can tell us much about the real, mind-independent world? Are elementary particles and genes pure fiction? — Relativist

No, but they're also not understandable outside the scientific context within which they were discovered.

I've said, I don't deny the reality of there being an objective world, but that on a deeper level, it is not truly mind-independent. Which is another way of saying objectivity cannot be absolute.

Why does this matter? — Relativist

As for whether you're defending physicalism, the link to this discussion was made from this post in another thread in which you claimed to be 'representing David Armstrong's metaphysics'. I see the above arguments as a challenge to Armstrong's metaphysics. As I'm opposing Armstrong's metaphysics, this is why I think it matters.

For me the idea of explaining the nature of the subject in physicalist terms is simply, under a certain conception of the nature of the subject, a misunderstanding of what could be possible in attempting to combine incommensurable paradigms of thought. — Janus

You put a lot of effort into disagreeing with something you actually don't disagree with.

We are already there in those subjects as the investigator, but we don't appear in the subject itself just as the eye does not appear in the visual field. — Janus

True - but not trivial. That is an insight I claim you will never find called out in mainstream Anglo philosophy. It challenges the point of physicalist philosophy of mind, which is to explain the nature of the subject in objective physical terms.

Dualism could be true. We could be descended from ancestors who were directly created by a God, and it doesn't change anything: there is still an external world and our senses deliver a functionally accurate understanding of it. Why doubt that? You seem to either deny it, or at least doubt it. Why? It's not dependent on physicalism. — Relativist

My issue with dualism, in the Cartesian sense, is that it tends to reify consciousness, treat it as a spiritual 'substance', which is an oxymoronic term in my view. I think some form of revised hylomorphic dualism (matter-form dualism) is quite feasble, one of the reasons I'm impressed with Feser's 'A-T' philosophy. I'm impressed by many of his arguments about the nature and primacy of reason, such as Think, McFly, Think. But he is critical of Cartesian dualism, at least as it has come down to us, and I think the 'Cartesian divide' is the source of many of the intellectual ailments of modernity.

But you agree there is an mind-independent reality:

though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye
— Wayfarer — Relativist

I do, but this is qualified by declaring that the world is not ultimately or really mind-independent, insofar as any judgement about its nature presupposes, but then 'brackets out', the observer.

The error I'm calling out is the 'absolutisation' of objective judgement. There's an Aeon essay (now a book) I frequently refer to, The Blind Spot of Science. It says, in part:

Behind the Blind Spot sits the belief that physical reality has absolute primacy in human knowledge, a view that can be called scientific materialism. In philosophical terms, it combines scientific objectivism (science tells us about the real, mind-independent world) and physicalism (science tells us that physical reality is all there is). Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary. The scientific task becomes about figuring out how to reduce them to something physical, such as the behaviour of neural networks, the architecture of computational systems, or some measure of information.

This framework faces two intractable problems. The first concerns scientific objectivism. We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience.

This doesn’t mean that scientific knowledge is arbitrary, or a mere projection of our own minds. On the contrary, some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.

The second problem concerns physicalism. According to the most reductive version of physicalism, science tells us that everything, including life, the mind and consciousness, can be reduced to the behaviour of the smallest material constituents. You’re nothing but your neurons, and your neurons are nothing but little bits of matter. Here, life and the mind are gone, and only lifeless matter exists.

To put it bluntly, the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness. — The Blind Spot

Why think our inherent belief in a world external to ourselves is false or completely inscrutable? — Relativist

In line with the above, it's true in one way, but not in another. The very first thing any organism has to do is establish and maintain a boundary between itself and the environment. It is a basic condition of existence. And from a common-sense (or naive realist) point of view, we're indeed all separate people and separate from the world. But this is illusory in the sense that reality itself is not something we're apart from or outside of. One of Einstein's sayings, often put on posters, captures it:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. — Albert Einstein, Letter of condolence sent to Robert J. Marcus on the death of a son

I acknowledge that we'll never understand much about the mind through a physical analysis of brain structure. — Relativist

It matters for materialist theories of mind, such as D M Armstrong's and others, surely. They all proclaim the identity of brain and mind.

Again, the thrust of 'mind-created world' (and it might have been better called 'mind-constructed') is in line with cognitivism, the insight into the way the mind synthesises sensory data with inherent faculties of judgement so as to generate, construct, or create the sense of the world within which science and all else is conducted. It's not as radical as it might seem, but it is definitely a challenge for physicalism, which is the context in which we're discussing it.

There are many other constructs in physics and science that fit that description. — Apustimelogist

Right. Like the standard model of particle physics itself. Something which physicalism tends to overlook. But the main point is, I think the non-physical nature of the wavefunction mitigates against 'objective collapse' theories like Penrose's. As I said in the essay I wrote on it, his theories, like Einstein's, are based on the conviction that the universe *should* be deterministic. But that is a philosophical, not a scientific, argument.

If there's something about it that you would like to discuss with me specifically, then please feel free to let me know and I would be happy to discuss — Bob Ross

I felt the major point was Kant's relationship with modern cognitive science. You could say that in some respects some of his major ideas have been vindicated, the point being that unlike what some might say, he hasn't been left behind by subsequent science.

https://aeon.co/essays/who-really-won-when-bergson-and-einstein-debated-time

So - is your question basically ‘what does it all mean’?

Some of the posters held at the Women's March in DC today:

"We need a leader not a creepy tweeter."

"Uncle Sam stay outta my clam."

"Roe, Roe, Roe your vote."

"No sex with men until Roe comes back."

"Grab him by the ballot."

"Sometimes you gotta flush twice."

It was the backstory to my remark about Calvin.

Well, yes, agree.

It was a flippant line, poor form on my part considering the topic. Although there is some factual basis, it’s not coincidental that Calvin has been parodied as ‘The Ayatollah of Geneva’. That book I often mention (Tim Wood also mentions it upthread) Theological Origins of Modernity by M A Gillespie lays out a superb case of the watershed in intellectual history, when Ockham’s nominalism, and theological voluntarism, displaced scholastic realism at the centre of Western thought. From a reader review:

Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descartes and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which according to Gillespie dismantled the rational God and Cosmos of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, born out of a concern that anything less than such would jeopardize His divine omnipotence. (In other words, a God not bound to observe logic and no respecter of reason.)

Subsequent intellectual history is, in Gillespie's reading, a grappling with the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will will in order to preserve God's absolute power. However, this in turn culminated in an ambivalence about salvation. If God simply wills whom to save, human action has no real merit (ex. Luther's "sin boldly"). Gillespie's chapter on the debate between Erasmus-Luther was among the most interesting in bringing this out.
Also fascinating is Gillespie's detailed analysis of Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. The latter is usually depicted as an atheist (or his religiosity dubious at best) and his philosophy as chiefly political but Gillespie believes him sincerely religious (if not exactly orthodox) and reveals the underlying metaphysical concerns behind his thought.

And so Gillespie says, even in modern times, we are bequeathed with a similar wrestling between humanity's political ambitions (the expansion of freedom) and the inability to reconcile this with science's inherent determinist worldview. Likewise, in the post-9/11/ confrontation with Islam (which makes a brief appearance at the end) we are again confronted with the fideism and absolutism of Islam which sees the West's assertion of individual autonomy as a challenge to God's omnipotence, for whom our only response ought to be obedience.

Gillespie writes: the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age. Viewed from this perspective, the process of secularization or disenchantment that has come to be seen as identical with modernity was in fact something different than it seemed, not the crushing victory of reason over infamy, to use Voltaire’s famous term, not the long drawn out death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed, and not the evermore distant withdrawal of the deus absconditus Heidegger points to, but the gradual transference of divine attributes to human beings (an infinite human will), the natural world (universal mechanical causality), social forces (the general will, the hidden hand), and history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason). …

That the deemphasis, disappearance, and death of God should bring about a change in our understanding of man and nature is hardly surprising. Modernity … originates out of a series of attempts to construct a coherent metaphysic specialis on a nominalist foundation, to reconstitute something like the comprehensive summalogical account of scholastic realism. Th e successful completion of this project was rendered problematic by the real ontological differences between an infinite (and radically omnipotent) God and his finite creation (including both man and nature).

We’re all caught up in the throes of this, every day.

I don't see that as inconsistent with the fact that from the perspective of phenomenological inquiry what is fundamental for us is what we are and can be aware of. I don't agree with the kind of thinking that counts what is fundamental for us as being fundamental tout court. Such thinking is too human-centric for my taste. I view it as a conceit. — Janus

It is naturalism (or physicalism) that is human-centric. Why? Because of having excluded the subject from consideration of what is real and declaring the measurable attributes of objects the sole criterion for what exists, as if that has philosophical significance, independently of any perspective whatever (something that the ‘measurement problem’ has made explicit.) Phenomenology, following Kant, is intellectually humble, in that it acknowledges the role of the subject in science, thereby overturning the conceit implicit in the presumption of a ‘view from nowhere’. And I continue to refer to The Blind Spot of Science, by Thompson, Frank and Gleiser, because I think it’s an important book that makes a case very similar to that I have given in the OP. It’s not an ‘appeal to authority’, it is an acknowledgement of a similar line of argument from recognised scholars.

Nothing about that inherently suggests anything about subjectivity. — Apustimelogist

That wasn’t the point at issue, which was that Ψ is outside of spacetime. (Among the interpretations are subjectivist ones like QBism, which makes sense to me.)

Anyway - I had the realisation the other day, when challenged with ‘name one thing that is outside space and time’ that the wavefunction fits that description, and yet is also at the heart of the success of modern physics.

This is not only not reassuring, it makes man entirely helpless, and it makes all of reality bottom out in the completely unintelligible and unfathomable. — Tom Storm

Sounds like Calvinism to me.

I suppose one way to "cope" with a lack of meaning could be to actually uncover to true meaning of life, how to "be a good person," or "life a good life," etc. :grin: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah I had the idea philosophy had something to do with that. Evolutionary biology, maybe not so much.

A first step would be to isolate (if it's not something that the brain as a whole does), how or where sensory information from all senses come together (as the mind is amalgam of the information from all five senses at once) from which the model is constructed.
— Harry Hindu — J

No such faculty. This is the problem of the subjective unity of experience which currently escapes scientific definition.

It’s from Dermot Morgan’s Introduction to Phenomenology. I quoted it in support of my overall argument, which is also similar to The Blind Spot of Science, another of your favorites :wink:

:100:

I asked if you had any comment on the passage about Husserl. Apparently not, but never mind.

ECMT posits that religiosity evolved to mitigate existential anxiety, foster cooperation, and provide meaning – functions that aren't necessarily incompatible with scientific inquiry.
2h — ContextThinker

Agree, but does it acknowledge that religions might make valid truth claims?

So Husserl is conceited?

Fair. But then a label turned them down because they didn’t have trumpets so you weren’t alone. But, I meant with regards to the issues at hand.

my understanding is wrong, and that is the issue — Mww

Never!

Might as well brag about being the only animal to play checkers. — goremand

As if that is the sum total of our achievements….

I don't follow this argument. — Janus

Any comment or criticism of the above snippet about Husserl?

The Logic of the Diamond Sutra: A is not A, therefore it is A Shigenori Nagatomo

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to make intelligible the logic contained in the Diamond
Sutra. This `logic’ is called the `logic of not’. It is stated in a propositional form: `A is not A, therefore it is A’. Since this formulation is contradictory or paradoxical when it is read in light of Aristotelean logic, one might dismiss it as nonsensical. In order to show that it is neither nonsensical nor meaningless, the paper will articulate the philosophical reasons why the Sutra makes its position in this contradictory form. The thesis to be presented is that as long as one understands the `logic of not’ from a dualistic, either-or egological standpoint, it remains contradictory, but in order to properly understand it, one must effect a perspectival shift from the dualistic, egological stance to a non-dualistic, non-egological stance. This thesis is advanced with a broader concern in mind: to reexamine how the self understands itself, how it understands others, and how it understands its intra-ecological relationship with nature.

.pdf, 32 pages including footnotes.

Don't you think the issue here is the difficulty of questioning the instinctive sense of the reality of the sense-able world? (a.k.a. naive and/or scientific realism). As Bryan Magee puts it in his book on Schopenhauer:

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

Modern society, generally, is overall realist in its orientation, it takes the sense-able world as possessing an intrinsic reality, which transcendental idealism calls into question. That's why I sometimes say, in a whimsical kind of way, that to understand it is to 'go through the looking glass' - it requires a literal cognitive shift or flip (and yes, I think Lewis Carroll was on to this!) Something like the satori of Buddhism, albeit perhaps not in the ultimate sense that Buddhists understand it, but a step in that direction.

There have been various reductionist and biologically-based attempts to explain or rationalise religion in terms of evolution. Evolutionary adaption is said to account for everything about human existence. Notable was Daniel Dennett's 'Breaking the Spell' (the New York Times review of which caused a bit of uproar).

Notice that none of the references provided are actually about religion, presumably indicating the conviction that religions have no content other than providing imagined solace or comfort from existential dread. Presumably the question of whether they can be in any sense true is put to one side.

Science provides an alternative framework for understanding the world, addressing existential questions through empirical evidence and rational inquiry. — ContextThinker

Modern scientific method excludes from consideration factors that are not amenable to objective measurement and analysis. Science’s framework was intended to provide knowledge through observation, experimentation, and rational analysis, with an emphasis on objectivity and reproducibility. That framework has been hugely successful in advancing our understanding of physical and biological phenomena, but until recently, it has never really engaged directly with existential questions.

The quoted passage instead suggests the 'conflict thesis', which generally casts religion as an outdated or superseded cognitive mode especially when viewed against the background of scientific progress. According to this view, science and religion are fundamentally at odds: science is seen as the domain of rational, evidence-based inquiry, while religion is framed as an artifact of cognitive biases or a tool for coping with existential anxiety. The implication is often that religion has no genuine insights to offer about reality or the human condition and so can only be understood in Darwinian terms, never mind that it is primarily a biological theory about the evolution of species.

But the times they are a'changing. In recent years there’s been a notable shift, particularly with the intersection of disciplines like cognitive science, neuroscience, and contemplative science, which are beginning to engage with questions of consciousness, well-being, the nature of meaning, and genuine philosophical enquiry. People like John Vervaeke are at the forefront of this movement, questioning the traditional limits of scientific inquiry and suggesting that cognitive science, in particular, is poised to explore existential questions more rigorously, in so doing entering into dialogue with many religious and spiritual philosophers and practitioners.

References: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, John Vervaeke (Video playlist).

Andrew Newberg and 'Neurotheology' (website)

Mind and Life Institute (website)