The neurons of the central nervous system terminate in mechanical switches — apokrisis

Despite the appeals to semiosis, signs and meaning, C S Peirce, you default to physicalism where it counts. Who or what presses these buttons, and to what end? That is a philosophical problem, not a question of bio-engineering.

His account often mentions, and is compatible with, QBism, which is not the realist theory in the sense that you insist on.

he has a book to sell, a name to make. There is a social incentive for him to angle his story so as to attract the audience he does. — apokrisis

And that's a blatant ad hom, he's just a shabby opportunist. There are a lot of things I question about his account, but that's not one.

if the scope of knowledge is defined in purely objective terms. But then, you tend to naturally look at philosophical questions through a scientific perspective, don't you?
— Wayfarer

What are the alternatives? I genuinely can't conceive of any off the top of my head. — Apustimelogist

Right - my point exactly. I think the assumption that objectivity defines the scope of knowledge is what is at issue. I'm not taking a shot at you in particular, I think this is very much the assumed background of the culture we live in. But I also think it's philosophy's task to be critical of that.

But if you just figured out that some observed phenomenon is not possible to explain; then you'd need to believe in dualism. — god must be atheist

Physicalism could be falsified by clear evidence of something nonphysical existing. — Relativist

Ed Feser gives the example of the metal detector. Defenders of physicalism will say:

1. The predictive power and technological applications of physics are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.

2. Therefore what physics reveals to us is all that is real.

Which can be compared with:

1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has.

2. Therefore what metal detectors reveal to us (coins and other metallic objects) is all that is real.

Now metal detectors are specifically adapted to those aspects of the natural world susceptible of detection via electromagnetic means. But however well they perform this task -- indeed, even if they succeeded on every single occasion they were deployed -- it simply wouldn’t follow for a moment that there are no aspects of the natural world other than the ones they are sensitive to - - that there are no things other than metal objects.

Similarly, what physics does -- and there is no doubt that it does it brilliantly -- is to capture just those aspects of the natural world susceptible of the mathematical modeling and detection that makes precise prediction and technological application possible. But here too, it simply doesn’t follow for a moment that there are no other aspects of the natural world. (And it might also be noted that despite the spectacular success of mathematical physics, there are many profound anomalies and conundrums thrown up by it.)

As I mentioned above, until the middle of the 19thc nobody knew that there were electromagnetic fields. Since the discovery of Maxwell's field equations and its integration with physics, these are now understood to be even more basic than sub-atomic particles- before then, they weren't even considered.

But what if there were biological fields, which could only be detected by organisms? No matter how sensitive and how accurate your metal detection or particle-accelerator instruments were, these would be invisible to them, outside the scope (the 'boundary conditions') of your instrumentation.

Furthermore, all this is taking place in a cultural context which has inherited the dualism of 'mind and matter' from early modern science. So against that backdrop, to demonstrate the existence of something which was not physical, would presumably to identify and isolate the mysterious 'res cogitans', the 'thinking substance' which Descartes identified as 'consciousness'. But this gives rise to a whole set of interlocking problems, starting with the so-called 'interaction problem'. And that's maybe because the whole model, which again is foundational to the modern world, has radical deficiencies.

So once these kinds of factors are considered, different perspectives become available. It means going back and re-examining the pathway by which the conclusion that 'the universe is solely physical' was arrived at. It sounds daunting, but it's eminently achievable.

No, that's an appeal to authority fallacy. — Philosophim

Appealing to data in response to a claim is not a fallacy. If you claim that near death experiences must be hallucinatory, then evidence to the contrary ought to be considered also, and Pim Van Lommel's books are a source of that evidence. I've gone back and looked at the first page again - after 7 years :yikes: - Sam presents his arguments carefully enough, and of course it is right and proper that they're challenged, but there is testimonial evidence - and what other kind could there be for this subject?

What I'm getting at, is not the belief that these experiences have no basis in reality, but why they can't have any basis in reality. I think there's a mindset to disprove or deny any possibility of them being real. I think that's the question that ought to be explored. But your responses are underwritten by the conviction that they could not be real. Let's discuss why they couldn't be, what would have to be the case for such experiences to be real.

So, I disagree with your carte blanche dismissal of what Sam has been presenting. I think it's more likely that it concerns something that is so at odds with your worldview that it couldn't be admitted. That was the point of the Richard Lewontin quote I provided.

And yet in practice, there are procedures developed by neurologists to determine brain death in hospital situations. — apokrisis

While this is true, it is not really the point. Recall Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and there are many pages devoted to the question of the neural correlates of consciousness and what is involved in mapping sensory experiences against neural activity. He discusses the split-brain procedures and various neurological anomalies and the nature of optical illusions. But the nub of the issue is this:

We have no scientific theories that explain how brain activity—or computer activity, or any other kind of physical activity—could cause, or be, or somehow give rise to, conscious experience. We don’t have even one idea that’s remotely plausible. If we consider not just brain activity, but also the complex interactions among brains, bodies, and the environment, we still strike out. We’re stuck. Our utter failure leads some to call this the “hard problem” of consciousness, or simply a “mystery.” We know far more neuroscience than Huxley did in 1869*. Yet each scientific theory that tries to conjure consciousness from the complexity of interactions among brain, body, and environment always invokes a miracle—at precisely that critical point where experience blossoms from complexity. The theories are Rube Goldberg devices that lack a critical domino and need a sneak push to complete the trick.

What do we want in a scientific theory of consciousness? Consider the case of tasting basil versus hearing a siren. For a theory that proposes that brain activity causes conscious experiences, we want mathematical laws or principles that state precisely which brain activities cause the conscious experience of tasting basil, precisely why this activity[…]

If we propose that brain activity is identical to, or gives rise to, conscious experiences, then we want the same kind of precise laws or principles—that link each specific conscious experience, such as the taste of basil, with the specific brain activities that it is identical to, or with the specific brain activi“ies that give rise to it. No such laws or principles have been offered [footnote reference to Integrated Information Theory].

If we propose that conscious experience is identical, say, to certain processes of the brain that monitor other processes, then we need to write down laws or principles that precisely specify these processes and the conscious experiences with which they are identical. If we propose that conscious experience is an illusion arising from some brain processes attending to, monitoring, and describing other brain processes, then we must state laws or principles that precisely specify these processes and the illusions they generate. And if we propose that conscious experiences emerge from brain processes, then we must give the laws or principles that describe precisely when, and how, each specific experience emerges. Until then, these ideas aren’t even wrong. Hand waves about identity, emergence, or attentional processes that describe other brain processes are no substitute for precise laws or principles that make quantitative predictions.

We have scientific laws that predict black holes, the dynamics of quarks, and the evolution of the universe. Yet we have no clue how to formulate laws, principles, or mechanisms that predict our quotidian experiences of tasting herbs and hearing street noise. — Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality

______

*The English biologist Thomas Huxley was flummoxed by this mystery in 1869: “How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.

I think what makes brains conscious is that they are general informational processors whose interface to the world is the result of the modelling of sensory information you are talking. To brains, as far as they/we are concerned, such models are the subjective plentitudes we experience, they/we are wired to interface with the world in this way. — hypericin

It's a mistake to say that brains do anything - that is what is described in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience as the 'mereological fallacy', attributing to the part what only a whole is capable of.

we are simply limited to describing what living things do (or what things we deem as being alive do) and nothing more. — Apustimelogist

That is true, if the scope of knowledge is defined in purely objective terms. But then, you tend to naturally look at philosophical questions through a scientific perspective, don't you? Isn't that why you find Aristotle 'diametrically opposed' to your way of thinking when I've mentioned him? (That link above returns a 404 by the way, due to the inclusion of the ending colon in the URL.)

I would love for there to be life after death. Only weird people who cut themselves in the dark while crying to death metal don't. — Philosophim

It is obviously true that ‘the next life’ is a fertile ground for wish-fulfilment and fantasies of living forever, but in cultures which believe in the reality of the afterlife, not all Near Death Experiences are roses and sunshine. Buddhist sacred art depicts an elaborate hierarchy of hell-realms in which beings remain enmeshed for ‘aeons of kalpas’ as a consequence of their actions in this life. There’s a publisher, Sam Bercholz, founder of Shambhala Books, which is a large American publisher of Buddhist literature. He suffered an NDE after undergoing heart surgery which he recounts in an illustrated book, A Guided Tour of Hell:

This true account of Sam Bercholz’s near-death experience has more in common with Dante’s Inferno than it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent to gain insight into human suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam’s encounters with a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and delusion reveal to him how an individual’s own habits of fiery hatred and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless cycles of time. Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs.

So, it’s not all just ‘wake up and smell the roses’. Worse things can happen.

I can find at least one person in a professional setting who will go to bat for anything. The only thing that matters is the soundness of their evidence and the logic of their argument. — Philosophim

I raised Pim Van Lommel's book because it is a source of evidence and argument. It's not something I have first-hand experience of, but if you claim that all NDE's are 'merely hallucination' then the evidence of a cardiovascular doctor who has amassed considerable data to the contrary is salient, because you're writing as if there is no such evidence.

The philosophical point is, what is the significance of such claims? If you believe they're hallucinatory, then they're not significant. But, your objections illustrate my point, as they're based on the conviction that it's all superstition and pseudo-science. I'm not going to try and persuade you otherwise, but I have an open mind about the question.

Trump is not going to deal with being challenged in the polls. I think there’s a chance he’ll go to pieces.

What are your thoughts about the current state of the GOP? Is it in disarray or better than ever? — Shawn

See Shameless, Brian Tyler Cohen.

:ok:

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a long-winding text that rarely commits to anything actionable, but when it very occasionally does, it turns out to be wrong. — Tarskian

That text figures in many a list of great philosophical books and is also particularly relevant in our day. While I perfectly agree that Kant’s writing is voluminous and extremely difficult, I don’t believe he can be dismissed so easily. Furthermore I’m sure many who dismiss him fail to grasp the significance of that work.

Successfully arguing a point by using partial functions, is hard — Tarskian

:chin: You seem to me to be highly trained in a specific subject area but much of what you say is impenetrable to others not so trained.

It is naive to believe that by merely studying the old masters, you will be able to make a relevant contribution to the world of philosophy as it exists today. Instead, you will find yourself mostly divorced from the contemporary discourse. — Tarskian

Something I will call out, is the inherent tendency of moderns to ‘historical presentism’ - that what we know now, what with science being so powerful, renders much or even all of pre-modern philosophy archaic and superseded. There is an element of truth insofar as factual matters are concerned, but in respect of questions of meaning and the nature of lived existence, the border isn’t at all clear-cut. — Wayfarer

.

And by the philosophical canon I don’t just mean ancient philosophy, there are many interesting current philosophers.

Accountancy companies and engineering firms might have philosophies concerning how they do business but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have wider application outside their spheres.

I totally get that. I now have far too many books, and always the nagging realisation of how little I know. Still, I do try and relate what I’m thinking or arguing with some touch-points in philosophy generally. Something I will call out, is the inherent tendency of moderns to ‘historical presentism’ - that what we know now, what with science being so powerful, renders much or even all of pre-modern philosophy archaic and superseded. There is an element of truth insofar as factual matters are concerned, but in respect of questions of meaning and the nature of lived existence, the border isn’t at all clear-cut.

:lol:

I've skimmed more of the book, and am reading the concluding chapter. But at this point, I must say I don't really understand it, nor do I like it much. What he's saying seems to be compatible with the idealist type of philosophy that I favour. But I'm really not clear on a lot of it, like what conscious agents are (I no more understand that than Whitehead's 'actual occasions of experience'. )

Not long ago, nobody knew what ‘an electromagnetic field’ is. Now, fields are more fundamental than atoms, which are said to be only 'excitations of fields'. So, what is ‘physical’ is being constantly re-defined. Hence the proliferation of sci-fi movies about alternative realities and many worlds. Physics sure ain't what it used to be.

And I've long argued that if an individual life is understood as part of a continuum extending before physical birth that has consequences beyond physical death, that this can provide a framework within which the life beyond is at least conceivable. Consider that if Sheldrake's 'morphic resonance' is real (and I know that this is a contested claim) - something of the kind at least provides a medium for the persistence of habit-patterns beyond the confines of birth and death.

The Buddhist view of re-birth is instructive in this context. It is not that there is an individual entity that transmigrates from life to life (a view that is harshly condemned in the early Buddhist texts). Rather there are patterns of causation that give rise to individual lives, and these patterns can be propogated from life to life, concieved as a mind-stream (cittasantana) of which individual lives are instantiations. It is much more like a process view than an entity view. The aim of the Buddhist path is to dissociate from these repetitive patterns of experience (saṃsāra, literally 'going around') which constitutes liberation. Otherwise the same patterns will go on to generate further lives (many of which will be, shall we say, considerably less fortunate than this one, according to Buddhist lore.)

I think the work of Ian Stevenson and his followers around reincarnation are closer than the NDE research, though I have to say I haven't look at the latter research for about ten years. — Bylaw

There's also a book by a Buddhist scholastic monastic, Bhikhu Analayo, called Rebirth in Buddhism which contains a disspassionate account of the matter. I mention Stevenson from time to time, but his ideas are hugely controversial and to all intents taboo, especially on this forum. As rebirth is an accepted element in Buddhist cultures, such material doesn't suffer the same social approbation as it does in the West. (Stevenson used to say, 'when I talk about rebirth in the West, people say "that's nonsense, it never happens". When I talk about it in the East, people say "why bother with it? It happens all the time".)

Again, no one, and I mean no one, is saying that NDE's aren't real. This is the part you seem to keep glossing over. If a bunch of people have a hallucination, no one doubts they have a hallucination. — Philosophim

I don't know if Pim Van Lommel has been mentioned in this thread but he claims to have research that indicates that nde's can't be dismissed as mere hallucination. I'm not going into bat for that research, only noting that it does exist, and that he is a cardiovascular doctor who has a considerable body of research to draw on. Information about his book can be found here.

//

I think an interesting philosophical question to consider about this matter is, why the controversy? Not only is it controversial, but it provokes a great deal of hostility about 'pseudo-science' and 'superstitious nonsense'. As I said above, it's a taboo. I believe it's because it challenges the physicalist account of life, that living beings are purely or only physical in nature. If we believe that, then it's a closed question - and it's not necessarily a question we want to contemplate opening again.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. — Richard Lewontin, review of Carl Sagan, Candle in the Dark, January 1997

The other point I would definitely include is ‘some reference to the canonical texts of the philosophical tradition’. This thread, for instance, contains none.

? We tend to gravitate to the philosophical ideas that match our personality and inclinations. — Tom Storm

So say us moderns whose whole notion of philosophy tends towards an ego-centred outlook.

Maybe, but it's meaningless. It conveys nothing significant.

My definition begins with the word itself: philo (love) sophia (wisdom), philo-sophia, 'love~wisdom'. What that means, how to realise it.

Yeah right. Say that, and everyone freaks out.

No, I said his definition is idiosyncratic. It doesn't mean that it's incorrect, but it is very much of his own devising, to wit:

philosophy is a mathematical capability of the language at hand. — Tarskian

Compare the orthodox definition from Brittanica for example.

I don't understand many of @Tarskians posts as they rely heavily on mathematics and symbolic logic. The gist seems to be that Godel's incompleteness theorem introduces a 'foundational crisis' in philosophy and mathematics because it indicates reality is not logical all the way down, or something like that. But I've left that to others who are more conversant with the intricacies to thrash out, as much of it is beyond me.

(Which is not to say I don't believe there is a 'crisis in philosophy' - I have on my desk Edmund Husserl's The Crisis of the European Sciences, published after his death, and composed mainly in the 1920's and 30's. It too addresses themes about the limitations of positivism, the implications of what we now call 'scientism', and the the impact of the mathematization of nature in post-galilean science etc, but it's very much broader in scope than simply consideration of the impact of Godel's incompleteness theorem.)

For a perception to be fit, it must correlate to truth in some way. Pure hallucination cannot do an organism any good — hypericin

He doesn’t say that perceptions are hallucinations per se. See this interview. As I’ve said above, Hoffman’s is really an argument against cognitive realism, but calling the book The Case Against Reality is more dramatic.

Hoffman's seems to be saying that the structure of space-time and objects can be different to what we perceive. — Apustimelogist

Chapter 6 of the book is called ‘Spacetime is Doomed’. There are many interviews with Hoffman arguing this. Of course many think he’s entirely mistaken.

My interpretation is that space and time are real, but they rely on an irreducibly subjective element. Why? Because, what can space be without scale? and time without duration? Both of these entail perspective, and perspective is what the observer brings. (I think this is also consistent with Kant’s analysis.)

I’ve mentioned a controversial paper by another scientist, Andre Linde, who’s a heavy hitter in the physics community, as the principle author of inflationary theory. He annoys a lot of his colleagues by saying things like:

The universe and the observer exist as a pair. You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words — it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.

Again, I think ‘dead’ is overly dramatic. I think ‘formless and meaningless’ would be closer to the mark.

I don't think these positions even necessarily go hand in hand with a "disenchanted naturalism," and certainly they don't go hand in hand with science. Rather, the first is just a bad inference from the assignment of values to "objects themselves" in early modern mathematical physics, with people mistaking the shape of their mathematical model for the structure reality, and the second is due to early modern philosophers being rather poor students of the scholastics and missing their careful distinctions vis-á-vis the role ideas play in sign relations — Count Timothy von Icarus

Excellent analysis as always. This passage from an essay on Whitehead makes the same point:

According to Whitehead, it is not so much the explicit as the implicit presuppositions that most fundamentally determine the conceptual framework of an epoch. For him, one of, not to say the most fundamental and momentous, though in some areas nonetheless very useful of all the implicit presuppositions of modern philosophy and science, characterized by the bifurcation (of nature), lies in the endeavour to describe reality on the basis of substance and quality, subject and predicate, particular and universal:

All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality, particular and universal. [...] We find ourselves in a buzzing world, amid a democracy of fellow creatures; whereas, under some disguise or other, orthodox philosophy can only introduce us to solitary substances [...]

Whitehead locates the systematic roots of thinking in the mode of substance and attribute in the hypostatization and illegitimate universalization of the particular and contingent subject–predicate form of the propositional sentence of Western languages. The resulting equation of grammatical–logical and ontological structure leads to conceiving the logical difference between subject and predicate as a fundamental ontological difference between subject and object, thing and property, particular and universal.

In general, Whitehead’s critique of substance metaphysics is directed less against Aristotle himself, “the apostle of ‘substance and attribute’” than against the reception and careless adoption of the idea of substances in modern philosophy and science, precisely the notion of substances as self-identical material. Historically, Whitehead sees the bifurcation sealed with the triumph of Newtonian physics, within which the mechanistic-materialist understanding of matter was universalized and seen as an adequate description of nature in its entirety. In this way, scientific materialism became the guiding principle and implicit assumption of the modern conception of nature at large:

One such assumption underlies the whole philosophy of nature during the modern period. It is embodied in the conception which is supposed to express the most concrete aspect of nature. [...] The answer is couched in terms of stuff, or matter, or material [...] which has the property of simple location in space and time [...]. [M]aterial can be said to be here in space and here in time [...] in a perfectly definite sense which does not require for its explanation any reference to other regions of space-time.

My view is that Descartes’ rendering of substance as ‘thinking thing’ was a fundamental mistake in modern philosophy, as it objectifies the subject, as a kind of ethereal essence. That is the mistake that phenomenology sought to rectify

I also wonder whether there might be a resemblance between Hoffman’s ‘conscious agents all the way down’ and Whitehead’s ‘actual occasions of experience’, but I’ve never really understood that aspect of Whitehead’s philosophy.

I think my position is not to argue about some single notion of veridicality, or objective truth - If, there is in principle no perspective-independent way that organisms can view and interact with the world perceptually, then such a notion is undermined in the sense that organisms simply cannot pick out such single "veridical" perspective even if there is an actual objective way the world is independently of our perception in principle (very difficult to see how this isnt the case from my perspective). — Apustimelogist

But notice here the assumed perspective that our perception is limited to that of being an ‘organism’. It’s inherently reductionist, as if a biological analysis of the relation between organism and environment is the only meaningful perspective on the question of truth. But I question that h.sapiens is simply an organism, in fact I wonder if this is one of the prejudices introduced into modern culture by popular Darwinism.

For example, in Aristotle reason (logos) was more than just a tool for survival; it was the capacity to grasp rational truths and to understand the fundamental principles of logic, ethics, and metaphysics. For Aristotle, reason is a fundamental aspect of the human soul (psyche), specifically the rational soul, which is what distinguishes humans from other animals. (I might also add that it introduces the existential plight of the awareness of death and loss although that’s not made explicit in Aristotle.)

Aristotle posited that reason has an intrinsic orientation towards truth - ‘man desires to know’. It is through the faculty of reason that we can discern the forms (in the Aristotelian sense as ‘the essence of things’). In this context, reason is not merely a byproduct of evolution geared towards survival, but a natural capacity aimed at understanding the world as it truly is. Now, of course many aspects of Aristotelian philosophy such as his physics have been superseded but I believe the ‘doctrine of the rational soul’ is not among them.

Seems to imply to me that what I perceive is radically different in structure to the actual objective world. But in my story about the actual objective world, if coherent perception is to work effectively by mapping consistently to actual structures of the world so that we can get payoffs, then in some sense it must be the case that our perceptions are still mapping to an embedded subset of the objective of the world with that structure — Apustimelogist

In Chapter Three of Hoffman's book he discusses a dialogue he had with Francis Crick about the Kantian distinction between appearance and things in themselves, but I think he's suggesting that Crick misconstrues the nature of his distinction. Crick believed that the object 'as it is in itself' is simply the same object that our perceptions represent but existing unperceived. However, I think that is nearer to what Kant refers to as 'transcendental realism'. I don't think it correctly grasps the somewhat radical nature of what Kant was claiming. You have in mind the world (or object) that you think is ‘there anyway’ irrespective of whether you consider it or not. It’s not so simple.

can we actually ascertain an objective fact of the matter about perceptual reference from within our perspectives? An even deeper question perhaps. — Apustimelogist

Capital T Truth. It’s the provenance of the sages who were at the origin of the Western philosophical tradition, such as Parmenides. Google the book Timothy mention above Eric D Perl, Thinking Being - some kindly soul has posted a PDF copy online.

Now, when moderns talk about "mind-independent" being they are generally bringing in a whole load of metaphysical assumptions alien to the earlier period. The "mind-independence" here is sometimes framed as a causal one. "The mind doesn't create the world; looking at things doesn't make them spring into existence." This point is made a lot, but it's a little strange because I know of no one who ever argued that looking at things makes them exist. But I think we end up here because of the modern division between subject and object, and the division between primary qualities that exist "out there" "in objects themselves," and secondary qualities (e.g. color or taste) that are said to only emerge in interactions between objects and minds — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, exactly correct. The formulation of idealism that I’ve explained in ‘mind-created world’ discusses this misapprehension of idealism as things springing into and out of existence, nevertheless it is exactly what I’m accused of suggesting whenever I raise it. But I think the over-arching issue of objects, subjects and their relations is unique to the modern period. And it comes from the attempt to treat the whole of existence as an object of scientific scrutiny. As phenomenology points out, and this was its unique insight, reality itself is not something we’re outside of or apart from (an insight shared with non-dualism.) Whereas the modern period is marked by a new sense of self-consciousness, the Cartesian ego who can only be certain of his own existence, the intelligent subject confronting a world of dumb matter.

For much of ancient and medieval philosophy, created things only exist within a web of relations — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly, because the world was the expression of a will, not simply dumb matter being acted upon by physical forces. Existence was ‘participatory’ in that through religious mythology and ritual we re-enact and participate in creation. We had yet to see ourselves as pieces of flotsam thrown up by what basically amounts to a highly sophisticated chemical reaction, Stephen Hawking’s ‘chemical scum’.

To get the "mind-independence" of modern thought you need to have already, perhaps unknowingly, started with some metaphysical assumptions about relationships, reductionism, the subject/object distinction, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You articulate exactly the themes I’ve been exploring ever since joining this forum and its predecessor. Whitehead’s ’unconscious metaphysics in science’.

I haven’t got to the final chapter of Hoffman’s book yet, but I’ll keep going with it.

Are you implying that a brain cannot invent or learn to use logic? — Apustimelogist

‘Learning to use’ is not quite the same as ‘inventing’. Was the law of the excluded middle invented by us, or was it discerned? Would it be something that is ‘true in all possible worlds’?

There’s also the mereological fallacy, the attribution to parts that which is an attribute of the whole. Brains don’t do anything, rather agents make judgements.

Seems to me that even if there may be no kind of access to a single perspective-independent view of the world, an organism benefiting from fitness payoffs will need perceptual faculties that are synchronized to and can differentiate the actual structure of the world. — Apustimelogist

Of course organisms must respond appropriately to their environments but most organisms are able to do that without the exercise of reason. Walruses and whelks have gotten along for millions of years without it. So there’s nothing there that is in conflict with what Hoffman is saying. The claim is that our cognition is conditioned by adaptation to see in terms of what is useful from the perspective of evolution, not what is true. So - what is true? What does the word even refer to? Well, that’s a question that neither walruses nor whelks can ask. Whereas we can ask it, and the answer matters to us.

What Hoffman is calling into question is the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. That objects are real independently of his or your or my mind is a largely unspoken assumption about the nature of things. It is at the basis of the search for objective fact. But the reality is, there can be no truly mind-independent objects per se because of the way that knowledge of them is attained, through the senses, and their characteristics then adjudicated according to various cultural and scientific norms.

In pre-modern philosophy, it wasn’t objects that were understood as being real independently of any mind, but their Ideas (forms or principles). That was the conviction behind scholastic realism, inherited from Greek metaphysics. Logical realism, which is related, says, for example, that logical laws and principles are real, insofar as they’re the same for all who can perceive them. So they’re mind-independent, on the one hand, as they’re not the product of your mind or mine, but they’re also only perceptible through reason, to be grasped by the intellect (as ‘intelligible objects’). But that implies a very different epistemology to objective or cognitive realism which put sensory experience at the centre of judgement about the nature of reality.

The decline of logical realism and the ascendancy of medieval nominalism and empirical realism is the deep historical cause behind the perplexities this question brings up. The pre-modern mind did not live with the sense of separateness that characterises modernity, it dwelled in a very different life-world, quite likely impossible for us to even imagine. We’re discussing the tip of a very large iceberg.

@Count Timothy von Icarus - any convergence here with Robert M Wallace on Platonic idealism?

:clap: Well said! Better than I could have said it myself.

The idea there is an underlying "objective reality" is also the product of our cognitive faculties. So is the idea of "truth." — T Clark

It could be said that this simply characterises the outlook of post-modern nihilism. Strawberry Fields, nothing is real, nothing to get hung about. Maybe it’s just a consequence of our highly fragmented and confusing cultural moment that calls that into question. But the counter to that is that philosophers have always been concerned with capital T Truth. It’s a very difficult question to bring into focus, but through comparison of the historical schools of philosophical spirituality, it can be discerned.

For that matter, Donald Hoffman is now associated with The Essentia Foundation. They make the case that the confusion in our culture is in is due to the overwhelming influence of philosophical materialism, the belief that matter is ultimately real and the basis of mind and life. You can read about them here.

I don't really know what you mean by different order… — Apustimelogist

What I’m referring to is the distinction between physical causation and logical necessity, so there’s not much point addressing that issue if you don’t understand it.

I don't know if there is anything inherently reliable about reasoning. — Apustimelogist

…using reason to try to ascertain a reasonable position.

In Western countries… — schopenhauer1

Such as…? It sounds like the agenda of the ‘radical right’ in the USA, but if my intuition is correct, they’re going to get a shellacking in the forthcoming elections.

On the other hand, humanists, existentialists, and secularists who hold notions of "virtue" or "civic virtue" argue that Enlightenment values can temper the excesses of pure hedonism in a secularized society. — schopenhauer1

I read years ago that sexual products and services including production and distribution of pornography generate many times the revenue of, say, sports broadcasting. I see not a lot of comment from those espousing ‘enlightenment values’ in that regard. When there’s discussion of the possible connection between pornography and sexual violence against women, there’s a lot of throat-clearing about the evils of censorship and a correct understanding of ‘consent’.

They believe that reason, individual rights, and scientific inquiry provide a framework for a meaningful and virtuous life without the need for religious dogma. — schopenhauer1

Against the backdrop of universe which is assumed to be devoid of reason and purpose. The religions and cosmic philosophies of times past at least provided a meaningful sense of the human place in the grand scheme, nowadays sublimated into Elon Musk’s utopian dreams of colonising Mars. (And I wonder how many will benefit from that adventure, even if it happens, which I doubt.)

Also I recall an earlier thread from a year ago on the same topic. It might not be too late to merge this thread into that one, as many of the same arguments were canvassed back then.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14166/ontology-donald-hoffmans-denial-of-materialism/p1

If natural causation didn't come up with our reasoning abilities then who ever did did a pretty bad job considering all the people who's reasoning erroneously led them to naturalism. — Apustimelogist

What do you think 'natural causation' comprises, and how might it be related to reason? It's actually quite a deep question, explored in part in this earlier thread. The gist is that causation of the kind that characterises physical and chemical reactions, is of a different order to logical necessity, which is the relationship between ideas.

I know what a straw man argument is, but I think your characterisation of Plantinga's argument in those terms is incorrect, your reference to 'co-operative naturalism' notwithstanding.

Furthermore, if you think it through, Plantinga's argument is quite consistent with the naturalistic axiom that one ought not to hold to certain beliefs, but only entertain fallible hypotheses which are subject to disconfirmation by further discovery. Naturalism in that sense is not a world view as such, but working assumptions in the service of scientific method. It is not co-incidental in this regard that Bishop Berkeley was classified as an empiricist.

Plantinga completely neglects consideration of evolution in a social species... — wonderer1

Probably probably because it's irrelevant.

Supposing Plantinga's straw man account of evolution results in a self defeating position. It's still merely an argument based on a straw man. — wonderer1

When he published his paper on the evolutionary argument against naturalism, a number of scholars responded critically to it, but, so far as I know, not along the lines that it was a straw man argument. (There's an expensive compendium of critical essays and Plantinga's responses available at Amazon, not that I'm going to go to the trouble or expense.)

The ability to 'disseminate information amongst social species' - for example species that make sounds on the approach of predators, like meerkats, or that of bee dances - is obviously advantageous to survival, but what does that have to do with the issue at hand?

At issue is whether rational inference can be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms - but there's no need for meerkats or bees to demonstrate rational inference. Their behaviours can be described in terms of stimulus and response. (Speaking of straw men....)

There are actually several overlapping issues at stake. Donald Hoffman is concerned with the veracity of perceptual cognition - that we don't see reality as it is. In the context of his book, he doesn't pay much attention to the validity of rational inference, but presumably he must have some confidence in it, else he would, as several have suggested, saw off the branch he's sitting on.

Alvin Plantinga is more concerned with epistemology of reason - that reducing reason to natural causation undermines it. There are plainly many complex and deep issues at hand. I don't defend Plantinga's theistic conclusion, but I maintain there's an element of truth in his criticism.

(There's an intriguing pre-cursor to this style of argumentation in the Phaedo. This is 'the argument from equality'. Here Socrates argues that our ability to perceive that two things as equal, relies on our innate grasp of what equality means, which is a rational insight, not something acquired through empirical means, as we must already have the knowledge of 'equality itself' to judge things as equal or not. ref)

Redemption is a fairy tale, as is consummation of faith, unless there is an absolute decree making it so. What would this be? Traditionally, God. But what is God once the traditions and bad metaphysics are removed? I am arguing that the surviving metaphysical residua of a God reduction down its essence is metaethics. — Constance

There's an expression encountered from time to time in perennialist circles, 'the good that has no opposite'. It is distinguished from the our conventional sense of what is good, which is defined in opposition to, and so in association with, the bad. The 'good that has no opposite' is a true good beyond the opposites. That is what must be discerned. The 'doctrine of evil' that flows from that is 'evil as privation of the Good', which is associated with Augustine, but similes of which can be found in Advaita. This is that evil has no real existence, it is real in the sense that shadows and holes are real, as an absence or lack of knowing the true good. Redemption consists in coming to awareness of the true good, which is concealed or obscured by ignorance (in Advaita) or the original sin (in Augustine.)

Thinking ones thoughts were purely a matter of biological dispositions would indeed be naive, but who actually thinks that way? — wonderer1

I think biological determinism remains a potent force in contemporary thought. The whole of naturalised epistemology would seek to ground reason in terms of evolutionary psychology, would it not? A physicalist theory of mind has to maintain that mental operations can be reduced to physical causes.

This is where Plantinga's argument is relevant. He says that in naturalized epistemology reason and cognitive processes are seen to be grounded in evolutionary psychology and neurobiology. This means that our ability to reason is understood as a product of evolutionary processes that favor adaptive behavior.

Plantinga's argument contends that if our cognitive faculties are the result of evolutionary processes driven purely by survival, then there is no reason to accept that that they produce true beliefs, only that they produce beliefs that are advantageous for survival. (This is where his argument dovetails with Hoffman's.) Therefore, if one accepts both naturalism and evolution, one has a defeater for trusting the reliability of their cognitive faculties, including the belief in naturalism and evolution themselves. This is a self-defeating position.

Reasoning itself is based on 'ground and consequent' relations. Such arguments assert that reasoning involves understanding logical relationships and following principles of validity and soundness, which are not simply reducible to physical processes or evolutionary adaptations. So again if reason were purely the product of physical neurobiological processes, it would lack the normative force of logical inference, where conclusions are drawn based on grounds (premises) and consequents (conclusions). Physical processes operate through causal relations, but logical inference operates through rational justification, which is of a different nature.

The argument here is that reason must in some sense transcend purely naturalistic explanations if we are to trust its conclusions. This implies that reason possesses a normative dimension that cannot be fully accounted for by naturalistic evolutionary processes alone. Reason involves not just causal relationships but also logical relationships, which include principles of validity, soundness, and truth that seem to operate on a different level from mere physical causation.

Plantinga (and others) make this an argument for natural theology, i.e. that the Divine Intellect is the source of reason, however I believe the argument stands on its own two legs, so to speak, without reference to God. That is the thrust of Nagel's paper mentioned above.

What is that common view that he thinks is self-refuting? — SophistiCat

The common view that Donald Hoffman seeks to challenge is our belief that objects continue to exist independently of our perception of them when they’re not perceived. He doesn’t claim they cease to exist when not perceived - something continues to exist - but they don’t possess the identity which we impute to them, which is what the mind has been conditioned by evolutionary biology to recognise in terms of what he calls ‘fitness payoffs’. It’s in this respect that his findings are similar to Berkeley’s and Kant’s (whom he mentions).

I had also thought Hoffman’s arguments could be used against him, on the grounds that they would also undercut scientific reasoning, but he does address these kinds of objections towards the end of Chapter 3 (with references to journal articles articulating those objections in detail.)

I think what Hoffman is really challenging is ‘cognitive realism’, the instinctive belief that our sensory perception reveals the world as it really is. I think his book would have been better titled The Case against Cognitive Realism, but of course that title would loose a great deal of zing.

I’ve considered writing a comparative analysis of Hoffman, Plantinga, and Thomas Nagel’s ‘Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion’. They are all concerned with the implications of evolutionary biology on the nature of knowledge, but from different perspectives, Hoffman from cognitive science, Plantinga from natural theology, and Nagel on the sovereignty of reason. I often cite Nagel’s essay, particularly in regard to his analysis of why claims that reason can understood solely in terms of evolutionary biology is self-refuting.

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

The "innocents" versus the "unhuman". Only some of the people are truly "the people". At a minimum the unhuman should have no role in government. — Fooloso4

We watched the very chilling Civil War movie the other week. The most chilling scene in that disturbing movie was when the group of journalists who were at the centre of the plot were asked by a menacing militia fighter, at gunpoint, ‘what kind of Americans are you?’ The implication clearly being, which side of the civil war you’re on determines whether you’re going to be killed or not. Obviously a fictional exaggeration, but a similar dynamic underwrites a great deal of the rhetoric of the extreme wing of MAGA.

One thing Tim Walz immediately brings to the campaign is JOY! He just looks so darned happy to be there. He radiates joy. As opposed to The Other Guy, who scowls, mocks and ridicules, and is also looking increasingly miserable as his rating points sink slowly (or actually, not so slowly) in the west. Again, it's a simple campaign theme: hope v hate. Let's hope for hope.

But I think you lean towards a physicalist interpretation of the inherent ambiguity implicit in the ‘epistemic cut’, so as to avoid the suggestion of being non-scientific or being tarred with the brush of philosophical idealism. And as a ‘science of meaning’, semiotics is not nearly so reducible to predictive formulae as are those of physics. The range of meanings able to be embodied in and communicated by both DNA and by languages is boundless :-)

Ok, but you aren't coming from a well informed perspective. (Or do you no longer deny that there is evidence for physicalism?) — wonderer1

I made that remark a long time ago, but I really didn't think at the time you understood what I meant. When I say there is no evidence for physicalism, I am referring to the metaphysical view that "what is real is reducible to physics." This claim is not something that can be subject to scientific demonstration. It's not a claim within physics itself - there are physicists who do maintain that claim, and others who question it.

The point is that physicalism is a methodological assumption regarding what can be objectively measured and predicted. While it may be sound methodologically, it is still an assumption that operates within a framework composed of other assumptions and constraints. When this assumption is extrapolated to make claims about the nature of reality or being as such, those assumptions may no longer be applicable. That is the distinction between a metaphysical (or philosophical) claim, and physics as such, which has a more restricted scope.

Do you see the distinction I'm trying to make?

So what you are concerned with is only a pseudo-problem from a physicalist perspective. — wonderer1

I think it's more that the physical sciences offer pseudo-solutions to a problem that their modus operandi can't accomodate.

JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman

“Unhumans,” an anti-democratic screed that far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec co-wrote with the professional ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, comes with endorsements from some of the most influential people in Republican politics, including, most significantly, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. ...

The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec. ...

“Unhumans” lauds Augusto Pinochet, leader of the Chilean military junta who led a coup against Salvador Allende’s elected government in 1973, ushering in a reign of torture and repression that involved tossing political enemies from helicopters. ...

Vance provided the first blurb on the “Unhumans” book jacket. “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people,” he wrote. “Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.” — NY Times

Inclluding purges of the civil service and intelligence agencies, a plan already outlined in detail in the Project 2025 manifesto.

So now we can add unhuman to unmarried female cat-lovers…..

How we understand "accident" is not as simple as you suggest. — apokrisis

No, it's more like a handy kind of gap-filler, which can be assigned roles in many different contexts.

Regarding the 'epistemic cut', I noticed this passage from Howard Pattee in The Information Philosopher site:

A description requires a symbol system or a language. Functionally, description and construction correspond to the biologists’ distinction between the genotype and phenotype. My biosemiotic view is that self-replication is also the origin of semiosis.

I have made the case over many years (e.g., Pattee, 1969,1982, 2001, 2015) that self-replication provides the threshold level of complication where the clear existence of a self or a subject gives functional concepts such as symbol, interpreter, autonomous agent, memory, control, teleology, and intentionality empirically decidable meanings. The conceptual problem for physics is that none of these concepts enter into physical theories of inanimate nature

Self-replication requires an epistemic cut between self and non-self, and between subject and object.

Self-replication requires a distinction between the self that is replicated and the non-self that is not replicated. The self is an individual subject that lives in an environment that is often called objective, but which is more accurately viewed biosemiotically as the subject’s Umwelt or world image. This epistemic cut is also required by the semiotic distinction between the interpreter and what is interpreted, like a sign or a symbol. In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.

I call this the symbol-matter problem, but this is just a narrower case of the classic 2500-year-old epistemic problem of what our world image actually tells us about what we call the real world. — Howard Pattee

So - how does 'the conceptual problem for physics is that none of these concepts enter into physical theories of inanimate nature' support the idea that this is a physical theory? It seems to me that by acknowledging the separation of observer and observed, the 'epistemic cut' actually re-affirms an ontological difference between the physical and biological which is also noted by Jonas above. (There's a dismissive reference at the end of the article to the convergence of the 'epistemic cut' with Heisenberg's philosophy of physics, but this is all far from settled as you well know.)

So if I were to argue that living organisms in whatever form they take, amount to the emergence of intentionality, I don't think I would be saying anything at variance with the passage quoted above.