For example, lets assume that the account you mention is accurate and defies mundane natural explanations. Then unless one has defined personhood in terms of personal memories, one cannot conclude that the child is a reincarnation of the previous person he is said to remember. In which case all that one concludes is that the child presently has abnormal access to novel information of historical significance. — sime

From memory, Stevenson does consider ideas such as a kind of collective memory. It’s been a long time since I read anything but he canvasses those kinds of ideas. He was reticent in claiming that the cases he studied prove that reincarnation occurs, but at the same time, the copious evidence he gathered makes it seem a at least a possibility. But even that says something about the topic at hand, doesn’t it? That ‘consciousness’ as the ground or core of identity is more fluid than we might normally think?

Furthermore, as I’ve mentioned several times, it’s interesting that Buddhist cultures believe that rebirth is real, but they reject that ‘a person’ or ‘a soul’ is reborn. As is well known, Buddhism denies there is a permanent unchanging core or essence of a person, but they do agree that karma propagates life to life. I’ve found, discussing it with Buddhists, that despite the dogmatic prescription against the idea of a soul, they accept that there is a ‘gandhabba’. In the early Buddhist texts, a gandhabba may represent the subtle form a consciousness takes after death, before it is reborn into a new physical body. (Gandhabba can also be celestial spirits and minor deities.) This intermediate existence is sometimes called the antarabhava or “in-between state” in Mahayana and some Theravada interpretations. Just as in Christian folk beliefs, the gandhabba becomes associated with a foetus during the gestation period - naturally, to one that it is drawn to as a consequence of karma. So in effect, despite the ‘no-soul’ dogma, there is a functional equivalent to the soul, albeit described in terms of a mind-stream or process, rather than eternally existent entity.

In respect of the question of identity, Buddhists will respond, if you ask them, ‘are you the same person you were as a child?’ ‘No’. ‘Then are you a different person?’ Also, ‘no’. There is a continuity, but also change. I don’t think Buddhism has a difficulty with that. Overall, I find the Buddhist attitude congenial in these matters.

So I’m not really seeing your philosophical objection at this point.

his position seems to be that without perceivers we couldn't know anything. Sure, but that doesn't entail a lack of anything, does it? — AmadeusD

The way I put it is that 'existence' is not an on/off, is/isn't concept. Saying that 'the object doesn't exist without an observer' isn't necessarily the same as saying that it vanishes or becomes non-existent in the absence of one. But outside any conception of its existence, what can we possibly be talking about? The way I put it is that the mind provides the frame within which anything we think or say about existence takes place. Granted though, that is my way of putting it, not necessarily his. Also - see if you can find a copy of the book, or other of his materials. He does anticipate many of the apparently obvious gotchas that people point at him.

(The Essentia Foundation interview with Hoffman might be a good source. At least it's free!)

Yes - many arcane details to consider. Serves me right for introducing physics into the conversation but then it is part of what Hoffman discusses in his book, at the beginning of Chapter 6: Spacetime is Doomed. Thanks anyway for the explanations, I'm learning from them.

e.g.

Most of us believe deeply in a physical reality, consisting of objects in spacetime that existed prior to life and observers; no observer is needed, we believe, to endow any object with a position, spin, or any other physical property. But as the implications of quantum theory are better understood and tested by experiments, this belief can survive only by clinging to possible gaps in the experiments, and those gaps are closing. — Donald Hoffman, Case against Reality

I don't mean to go that far in ascribing credit to Chalmers. I'm merely using his title to describe the still privileged human condition vis-á-vis the natural world. — ucarr

Fair enough. And looking at it through that lens, the problem is precisely that of the relationship of quantitative measurement and qualitative judgement. That is why that annoying piece of philosophical jargon, 'qualia', is central to debates about the so-called problem of consciousness. But it's anticipated in Hume's 'is/ought' distinction. What can be measured precisely as distinct from what ought to be done. I agree with your designation of the 'hard problem' as 'what it is like to be...', as Chalmers uses exactly this expression. But I think there's a more direct expression of what he's trying to convey - he's referring to the meaning of being, or the meaning of existence. That is the philosophical issue.

(incidentally, interesting to note that German universities recognise a division that Anglo universities don't, namely Geisteswissenschaften - a set of human sciences such as philosophy, history, philology, musicology, linguistics, theater studies, literary studies. The term translated literally means something like 'sciences of the spirit'. )

But on the view that all sensation is somehow illusory, it's also the case that when I later properly identify my car I have also failed to see things as they really are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A common argument against Bishop Berkeley. But he does consider it in his dialogues.

Say we see an oar in water, Hylas says, and it appears bent to us. We then lift it out and see that it is really straight; the bent appearance was an illusion caused by the water's refraction. On Philonous' (i.e. Berkeley's) view, though, we cannot say that we were wrong about the initial judgement; if we perceived the stick as bent then the stick really must be bent. Similarly, since we see the moon's surface as smooth we cannot really say that the moon's surface is not smooth; the way that it appears to us has to be the way it is.

Philonous has an answer to this worry as well. While we cannot be wrong about the particular idea, he explains, we can still be wrong in our judgement. Ideas occur in regular patterns, and it is these coherent and regular sensations that make up real things, not just the independent ideas of each isolated sensation. The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

Are there gradations of illusion here? Do we rank perceptions by their approximation of truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are gradations of reality, so I guess that is like the inverse of that. But the deep, underlying issue is one which I think you, in particular, will grasp, more so than others.

I think it is possible to maintain the old scholastic mantra that "everything is received in the manner of the receiver," without setting up such issues, but it's difficult. The term "objective" is particularly thorny because it has become a sort of chimera of Lockean objectivity (properties that exist 'in-themselves') and Kant's "noumenal," with the less loaded definition of "the view with relevant subjective biases removed" lumped in with these. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What was the historical context of Berkeley's idealism? It was a reaction to the emerging materialism which had started to creep into the 'new' philosophies of Hobbes and Locke. That the objects of sense have a reality independent of our perception, which our ideas represent - representative realism, in fact. This is the genesis of much modern materialism. Berkeley's arguments were a protest against that, aiming to undercut the idea of a 'mind-independent empirical reality'. But by this stage, empiricism had already dispensed with the residue of Platonism and Aristotelian realism that still animated scholastic philosophy, dessicated though it might have become. Part of the sweeping changes to do with the decline of scholastic realism (Theological Origins of Modernity by Gillespie is mainly about this.)

My theory is that Aquinas' insight that you mention, 'everything received in the manner of the knower', is precisely what had become lost in the transition to the empiricism and nominalism of early modern period. This is why that terms such as 'idealism' and indeed 'objective' only start to enter the lexicon in the early modern period. It signifies the transition to a new form of consciousness - that of modern individualism, as distinct from the 'participatory' or 'I-thou' form of consciousness that characterised the earlier epoch. It corresponds with the loss of that connectedness with being, articulated in Aquinas' epistemology as the union of the knower with the known (ref). That retains an element of the idea of union which was severed by empiricism. Again, the origin of that is clearly given in Perl's book (which incidentally I learned about from John Vervaeke.)

The emergence of Berkeley's idealism and the notion of 'objective knowledge' are both characteristics of that underlying historical trend. And one hallmark of empiricism is the insistence on the mind-independence of the objects of science and (from Descartes) the supposed soveriegnty of the individual 'I'. Starting with Kant, continuing through phenomenology, we see the critical phase of showing that 'mind-independence' in the sense posited by materialism can't be maintained (even if in rather different ways.) That I see as the background to these debates, at a very high level. (See What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, Joshua Hochschild (.pdf))

But maybe a start would be to say that "men see things as many sees things," rather than "man sees things not as they really are." — Count Timothy von Icarus

In Buddhist Studies, I learned there is a Sanskrit term, yathābhūtaṃ, which means exactly 'to see things as they truly are'. Naturally, that is an attribute of the Buddha, but it can be extended by analogy to other philosophical and spiritual traditions. Like the Latin 'Veritas'. I think it conveys the idea of 'sagacity', or 'sapience' - what is required of sound judgement at a very holistic level. Which of course seems an impossible ideal in fragmented and hyper-specialsed world we now inhabit. But surely a major part of that has always been self-knowledge, still as elusive as always. We are entangled and bound up with false conceptions. Philosophy was intended as a therapy for that.

So Harris and Biden appear at what amounted to a campaign event, I think in Washington? Anyway, the subject was Medicare reforms and rebates, making a list of important therapeutic drugs less expensive and more available. An actual policy achievement announcement!

While over in the clown car show that is MAGA, they’re pleading with Dear Leader to at least try and appear to be saying something policy-related and sensible, even if their party has wasted the last legislative session on wild-goose chases about impeaching Biden and advanced zero legislation.

But no - Dear Leader says he has every right to be ‘mean’ about Harris, because ‘she’s trying to put me in jail’ and then reverts to his stream-of-addled-consciousness rants. Business as usual.

To say we create, especially with respect to that which is regulated by empirical principles, suggests more power in us than we possess. — Mww

Well, maybe ‘create’ is a strong word. But look at the way science has managed to peer into the realm of possibility and pluck things out of it that actually work. Like this magic little iPad I sit here and type this on. I sometimes wonder if an experimental outcome in physics is like a special case of that. So, maybe ‘making manifest’ would be better than ‘creating’.

Only a matter of precedent, that’s all. The Culture Wars are alive and well but that was an identifiable milestone.

The sciences are all about measurement. Through the lens of the sciences, to measure a thing is to contain it and thereby to know it. — ucarr

Well, true that measurement is central to science, but so too is theory - the framework within which measurements are interpreted. The key fact in recent history being the scientific revolution and the overthrow of the medieval synthesis. Measurement was key aspect, but so too was a radically different vision of nature.

The humanities are rooted in communication of voices arising from The Hard Problem — ucarr

Well, I'm sure David Chalmers would be flattered to be counted as the Founder of the Humanities, but I'm not sure it is warranted.

Mention might also be made of the famous Two Cultures speech, C. P. Snow, 1959, and the 'science wars'.

The question is: do I exist outside of your mind, Wayfarer? — Apustimelogist

You and I are different individuals, no question about that. In the mind-created world thread, I do try and address the objection that 'idealism says that "the world is all in the mind"' as I think that's what you believe I am arguing (@Banno most certainly believes that.)

So: You have your mind, and I mine. But we are instances of a more general phenomenon—human consciousness, or the human mind. This isn't something just to be studied 'from the outside' as object, but is the ground or basis of all experience and knowledge. While there’s no question that the objectively-existing elements of the world, as analyzed by science, are real, they always appear to us as patterns within experience. In that sense, mind is the irreducible basis of existence—not as a constituent of objects, but as the condition through which anything can be said to exist at all.

I understand that at the time of my death there is a world that will continue to exist, although obviously the world as I see it no longer will. But then I don't think that the type of idealism I'm defending must necessarily deny any of that. What I'm driving at is that we're instances of 'mind' in a more general sense than that of the individual consciousness. I'm talking about human consciousness, or better, the human mind, not as something to be studied 'from the outside' so to speak, but as the ground or basis of any and all experience, knowledge, and theorisation. Hence the requirement for a perspectival approach.

The consensus in the scientific mainstream is that the mind, or human consciousness, is an emergent or epiphenomenal construct arising from the objectively-existent elements identified and understood by the natural sciences. That is naturalism or physicalism. What I take analytical idealism to be arguing, on the contrary, can be paraphrased as: whatever these objectively-existing elements analysed by the sciences are, and there's no question that they exist, they appear to us as patterns in experience. Everything occurs within experience, or in mind in that general sense (Hoffman says somewhere that 'experience is the coin of the realm'). Mind is the irreducible basis of existence in that sense - not in the sense of being an objective constituent of objects, but in the sense that to say of anything that it exists, that it exists for a mind (per Schopenhauer.)

This approach can also draw from phenomenology, which asserts that the world is always given to us through experience, or "intentionality." We don't simply observe a pre-existing world from a distance; rather, the world appears to us through the lens of consciousness, shaped by our perceptions, language, and understanding. Phenomenology doesn't deny the existence of an external world, but it emphasizes that this world is always inseparable from how it is experienced. In this way, the form of idealism I'm arguing for doesn’t reject the reality of the world but insists that mind is the condition of its intelligibility and experience. We can't 'get outside' that.

Think about how deeply-entrenched the idea of 'apart from' or 'separate to' is embedded in our usual world-picture. When the question is asked about 'what exists', that mental construct is already underpinning it. So hence the 'phenomnological epochē' which is learning to see those automatic assumptions that so pervade what we consider to be normal and real. It's different from 'scientific objectivity' - not in conflict with it, where it is necessary, as it so often is, but it operates in a far wider context.

God is at least as complex as a human being, so therefore the same argument would apply to a God. — Philosophim

But is He? Richard Dawkins also says that, but it founders on the rock of divine simplicity.

There's a lot of philosophical background to this argument which presumably Dawkins is not familiar with. Dawkins' is based on the human- and science-centred view, which is that 'what is more intelligent is more complex', as humans are more intelligent than animals and have more complex brains.

Dawkins says in The God Delusion that God must be more complex than the entire universe. But this is a highly anthropomorphic conception of God, as kind of super-manufacturer, which is completely at variance with classical theism. And indeed, Dawkins is often taken to task by even non-theistically-inclined reviewers for his ignorance of the basics of theology (the assumption seems to be that as he regards it as a meaningless subject, there's no need to actually understand any of it.)

According to the doctrine of divine simplicity, God is simple, not complex, and not composed of parts.

God is necessary because he is simple and not because he exists in all metaphysically possible worlds. And while one may say that the simple God is or exists, God is not an existent among existents or a being among beings, but Being (esse) itself in its prime instance and in this respect is different from every other being (ens). — SEP

Accordingly, 'the divine' is of a different order of being, and its author not at all a cosmic director or manufacturer with high degrees of complexity. It means something totally different to that.

I looked at your thread on 'first cause', but I don't think you're at all familiar with the classical description of 'first cause'. A forum thread is not the place to try and fill that void, and anyway, I lack the expertise to do it.

Suffice to say, the 'argument from the complexity of God' is way off base.

All that said, I'm surprised that @Sam26 has introduced the subject of intelligent design, as it's a thoroughly discredited notion as far as this forum is concerned, and hardly relevant to the topic of the OP, even more so as Sam regularly eschews any religious motivation for his entries.

Those definite outcomes, however, may come from statistical contexts which are incompatible or cannot be represented on a single, unique probability space. — Apustimelogist

So even though there's a single, unique probablity space, it won't ever be captured the same way by two observers. There's a good get-out-of-jail card, right there. I'll take your point that ChatGPT could be wrong but I still don't see it defusing the observer problem.

The real objects are actual particle properties which are hidden-variables and they always have a definite outcome at any time so there is always ever only one way the physical world is at any one time. — Apustimelogist

Which falls under the title of 'transcendental realism' - the real world exists external to us, even though we can never capture what it is.

Summary table on different interpretations. (Says I'm wrong about the 'stochastic intepretation' not defusing the 'observer problem'.)

I can only access information from the world by looking at it through my perspective, yet when I am not looking at it, the external causes of those percepts (in my perspective) continue to exist even when I am not looking and even despite the fact I cannot actually characterize them independently of my perceptions - but something is there, without needing to specify too much about that something. — Apustimelogist

I think that's near to what Kant describes as 'transcendental realism'.

There are two crucial paragraphs in his Critique to wit:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. (CPR, A369)

Having carefully distinguished between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, Kant then goes on to introduce the concept of empirical realism:

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. (A370)

Time and space are 'in us' i.e. they're supplied by the mind. And Donald Hoffman says something similar - there's a video interview of called Space Time is a VR Headset (which I haven't yet reviewed). So empirical realism enables us to act as if the world is real in itself.

What you're doing with 'something' is imagining the world with no observers in it as a kind of placeholder for 'what is really there' - but that is still a projection, a mental operation.

Can possibilities really be reduced to zero? Seems like that would be the same as there being zero possibilities, which kinda makes experimental results rather suspicious. — Mww

I take it what it means is that prior to measurement there is the superposition described in terms of the wave function but the moment a measurement is registered then all possibilities other than the one describing that specific outcome are now zero.

Not what I said, and not what the source said.
— Wayfarer
Well, it's the quote you used. — Banno

Here's the paragraph from which you cherry-picked a couple of words:

Is there external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is. And the reason is because we have no direct access to that physical world other than through our senses. And because our senses conflate multiple aspects of that world, we can never know whether our perceptions are in any way accurate. It's not so much do we see the world in the way that it really is, but do we actually even see it accurately? And the answer is no, we don't.

that there is a proper way to describe how the world is, given by physics, and other ways of describing the world are wrong. That the only true description of the world is that given by physics. — Banno

Not what I said, and not what the source said. I maintain that world described by physics is an abstraction based on the measurable attributes of objects and their relations, which is why I mentioned this quote:

The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

'Scientism' is the problem of believing that the world independent of any observers is what is real, that science really does give us a kind of total objectivity. Which is why I also mentioned 'The Blind Spot of Science', as that is its subject matter.

I really don't know why you have so much trouble understanding what I write. I was a technical writer for 20 years and I write in plain English. Yet you consistently construe me to be saying things that I don't say, or are even the opposite of what I say.

The journal in which that article is published is Constructivist.info . And what is 'constructivism'?

Constructivist philosophy is based on the idea that knowledge and understanding are not passively received from the outside world, but actively constructed by individuals through their experiences and interactions. It emphasizes that reality is subjective and that each person creates their own version of reality based on their perceptions, background, and cognitive processes.

It's clearly descended from Kantian philosophy. The 'actively constructed by' gives that away.

For instance, my problem with saying that "the 'measurement' makes manifest something that was only 'potentially existent'" is that it can be misleading: if one attributes some kind of 'reality' to those 'potentialities', we have a 'realist' view. After all, if it is supposed to describe 'what is really happening' when a measurement is done, then how is not a 'realist' interpretation? — boundless

It is realist, but I think he really does say there are degrees of existence:

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

Isn't that something like possibility space? It's governed by constraints but is still a field of possibilities. I think due to that idea, much of modern technological culture is reliant. The Greeks allowed us to peer into the domain of the possible and realise some of them.

But I am also impressed with QBism. But it can still be epistemic, as all of the 'permanent possibilities of experience' are themselves described by the laws of physics, with strong attractors emergent patterns and so on, but now interlaced with observation. But they still remain essentially grounded in subjective experience insofar as they're disclosed to us.

(The other recent great book I read on this is Nature Loves to Hide, Shimon Malin).

Right. And even @Banno’s cups - he made not have made ‘em, but he did choose them. And they were made because there are coffee- and tea-drinkers. All true but nevertheless they remain like all objects ‘permanent possibilities of experience.’

I was reminded of the ‘does the moon exist?’ question by Apustimologist’s comment along similar lines. That’s what I was responding to. It is of course true that competing interpretations of quantum physics can never be resolved (but even that says something.)

My take on the 'observer problem' is not very complicated. The answer to the question 'does an electron exist prior to being measured?' is that it just is the wave-function, which is a distribution of possibilities, right? So it doesn't definitely exist, or exist as a definite object - there really is just a pattern of probabilites. It is the observation that reduces all the possibilities to zero (collapsing the wave function.) What's 'spooky' about it is mainly that the act of measurement is not itself part of the equation. And also the ontology of the purportedly fundamental particles of physics. A realist would rather hope there was a definitely-existing point-particle somewhere along the line. It's like the measurement 'makes manifest' something that was previously only potentially existing. (This is something that Heisenberg said, referring to Aristotle's 'potentia' (source).

That ties in with the role that I see in 'the observer' generally. As that video Is Reality Real? says 'of course there's an external world. We just don't see it as it is.' Our brain/mind is constructing reality on the fly at every moment.

You may not be familiar with the research. It wasn’t based on 'past-life regression'. The cases Stevenson sought out were those where children claimed to be someone other than who they were known to be e.g. would start saying 'your not my family' or 'this is not my home, I live in (some other place)' etc. Then the researchers would look for evidence of that claimed previous identity, trying to identify death notices, locations, and other details to corroborate the infant's story.

In Sri Lanka, a toddler one day overheard her mother mentioning the name of an obscure town (“Kataragama”) that the girl had never been to. The girl informed the mother that she drowned there when her “dumb” (mentally challenged) brother pushed her in the river, that she had a bald father named “Herath” who sold flowers in a market near the Buddhist stupa, that she lived in a house that had a glass window in the roof (a skylight), dogs in the backyard that were tied up and fed meat, that the house was next door to a big Hindu temple, outside of which people smashed coconuts on the ground.

Stevenson was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a flower vendor in Kataragama who ran a stall near the Buddhist stupa whose two-year-old daughter had drowned in the river while the girl played with her mentally challenged brother. The man lived in a house where the neighbors threw meat to dogs tied up in their backyard, and it was adjacent to the main temple where devotees practiced a religious ritual of smashing coconuts on the ground.

The little girl did get a few items wrong, however. For instance, the dead girl’s dad wasn’t bald (but her grandfather and uncle were) and his name wasn’t “Herath”—that was the name, rather, of the dead girl’s cousin.

Otherwise, 27 of the 30 idiosyncratic, verifiable statements she made panned out. The two families never met, nor did they have any friends, coworkers, or other acquaintances in common, so if you take it all at face value, the details couldn’t have been acquired in any obvious way. — Source

This case was one of around 2,700 gathered over several decades of research.

why should it be assumed that the question of reincarnation has a definite and absolute answer that transcends our conventions? — sime

As I mentioned to Philosophim, the point about the children with past-life recall is that there is at least the possibility of validating their statements against documentary and witness accounts, something which is obviously not possible with near-death experiences, as they are first-person by definition.

Ian Stevenson, who conducted that research, never claimed that his research proved that reincarnation occurred, although he did say the evidence suggests it. He concentrated on the methods for screening possible cases and validating the resulting records.

Daniel Dennett once said in a video that compatabilism is the best solution to the freedom/determinism debate. It solves a lot of problems, he said. This question, mind you, doesn't require there to be a God. The universe itself could be the infallible mover of the world, or part of one's subconscious mind instead. Basically compatabilism says a force of higher power can make a human person do something with infallible force while leaving the human's freedom intact. — Gregory

Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive, meaning that even in a deterministic universe (where all events are caused by preceding events in accordance with the laws of nature), human beings can still be considered free in a meaningful sense. But it doesn't usually involve the idea of an external force (like a higher power or subconscious mind) making someone do something with "infallible force" while preserving their freedom. Dennett was a strict materialist, i.e. the causal factors he saw were those known to natural science. Nothing at all about "higher powers" in his reckoning, all such ideas being remnants of "folk psychology".

A core idea in compatibilism is that freedom is about acting in accordance with one's desires and rational decisions, even if those desires are in reality determined by prior causes. Dennett and other compatibilists argue that free will is compatible with determinism because what matters is that individuals act according to their own motivations and reasoning, rather than being coerced or forced by external agents. The concept of being "forced" with "infallible force" typically falls outside compatibilist definitions of freedom because it would imply a kind of coercion that most compatibilists would reject.

Critics often argue that compatibilism, particularly Dennett's version, offers only an illusory or superficial sense of freedom, rather than any real autonomy. While compatibilists like Dennett redefine free will in a way that seems to accomodate determinism, the resulting "freedom" is illusory. For instance, according to Dennett, as long as a person is acting in accordance with their desires and motivations, without coercion or external interference, they are acting freely—even if those desires are themselves determined by prior causes.

On atonment, is not it crystal clear that someone cannot receive merits from someone else. How can another man's actions change the karmic situation of a person when dealing with his conscious. Again, this seems to be obvious to me. A person's moral state and repercussions are entirely in their own hands, no? Nevertheless the largest religion in the world believes otherwise. Again, what am i missing?? — Gregory

I think you're missing the background against which the whole idea of atonement makes sense. In ancient Judaism, atonement was achieved through sacrificial rituals, where offerings were made to reconcile the people with God after they had sinned. The idea of the 'scapegoat' comes from these practices—symbolically placing the sins of the community onto a goat and sending it away, taking their guilt with it (Leviticus 16).

Christianity takes this concept to a cosmic level. In Christian theology, Jesus is seen as the ultimate sacrificial lamb, whose death on the cross atones for the sins of the world (hence the Christian expressions of the 'Lamb of God' and 'the blood of the Lamb'). This is the basis of the doctrine of 'vicarious atonement,' especially in Catholic and Protestant traditions—where Christ's sacrifice is believed to be on behalf of all humanity, reconciling them to God.

However, note that the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't emphasize this doctrine in the same way. Instead, they interpret Christ's life, death, and resurrection as part of the process of theosis—the idea that 'God became man so that man might become God,' meaning that the Incarnation and resurrection are central to humanity's transformation and union with God, not just atonement for sin.

However, it's important to note that compatibilism, which is a philosophical position on free will within a deterministic framework, is largely grounded in a materialist worldview. This seems quite distinct from the theological notions of atonement found in the Bible, where divine grace and intervention play central roles in addressing human sin. The two ideas belong to very different domains of thought—compatibilism in philosophy of mind and determinism, and atonement in religious and moral theology—so it's not clear how they relate to one another.

:up:

At the same time, what does it even mean to convey something intelligibly what does exist even mean? — Apustimelogist

I know, many big questions here. We'll keep mulling it over, no doubt!

I take the point that many people do believe that quantum mechanics suggests that the world is observer relative in a radical way but I strongly believe in my preferred stochastic interpretation which does not take this view at all and has particles in definite positions all the time while the wavefunction is not a real object and there is no collapse due to observers. So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist. — Apustimelogist

The point of Massimiliano Proietti's confirmation of the Wigner's Friend paradox is that the two apparently-contradictory results were actually observed, so whatever interpretation is chosen has to accomodate that, the nub of the issue being the observer-dependency of the outcome.

I ran this through ChatGPT to see what it had to say about how the stochastic interpretation would deal with this paradox. The conclusion it came up with was:

Stochastic quantum mechanics can accommodate the Wigner’s friend paradox by positing that observer-dependent realities are a natural consequence of the underlying randomness in quantum evolution. Different observers may be witnessing the outcomes of distinct stochastic processes, leading to multiple, equally valid, yet conflicting results.

Accordingly, while stochastic quantum mechanics provides a robust framework for understanding phenomena like the Wigner's friend paradox, it offers little reassurance to those who wish to defend a single, objective reality. Instead, it implies the possibility that reality is fragmented, observer-dependent, and shaped by underlying random processes. For proponents of a unified, objective reality, this interpretation is likely unsettling, as it suggests that the reality is indeterminate, rather than being fixed and the same for all observers.

As always with ChatGPT it could be mistaken, but it seems intuitively correct to me.

What's worse, Trump is lying about the 2024 election before it even occurs. His current lie is that Biden's decision not to run is 'a coup' or is 'not constitutional'. Pretty soon all the MAGA stooges will be baying that in unison (although there are quite a few Republicans being obliged to admit that it's really not true.)

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/14/politics/donald-trump-harris-election-outcome-denial/index.html

But what is being constructed here? — Apustimelogist

The world, to all practical intents and purposes. I think the sense that 'the world exists independently of observers' is fallacious, because of the meaning of the word 'exists'. Whenever we say of something that 'it exists', we already impose on it a structure and form that we bring to bear on it. We can't think outside that. The prestige of science tends to privilege the idea of objectivity, such that we accept that the world described by science is 'the real world'. But that world is actually an abstraction constructed from the extraction of quantifiable data from patterns of experience. Hence my recent reference to Schrodinger:

The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

Then having removed it, we wonder where it's gone, and try and work out ways to reconstruct it or explain it. And that is philosophical question, not a scientific question.

So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist. — Apustimelogist

I looked at the article on stochastic quantum mechanics, but I can't read the math. But in any case, it surely torpedoes LaPlace's daemon.

Your coffee cups are safe.

So we agree on this? — Banno

If you wish to discuss it, at least make some reference to that post I entered on the previous page, the book the thread is about, or the video which features Donald Hoffman, author of the book that this thread is about.

The cup is in the dishwasher. — Banno

Johnson kicks stone.

One of the points Donald Hoffman makes in that video above answers the question I had of him, 'what does objective mean?' At 1:37 he says 'By objective reality, I mean what most physicists would mean: that something is objectively real if it would continue to exist even if there were no creatures to perceive it.'

Take the time to watch that video. Hoffman features in it.

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking. — Apustimelogist

Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious.

Now you might say ‘so what? We all know that subatomic particles are spooky, but that doesn’t apply to the objects of day to day experience.’ But the issue is, day to day objects are supposed to be composed of these same particles and forces which were supposed to be ‘fundamental’. This was to become the subject of the ‘Bohr-Einstein’ debates that were to run on until Einstein’s death decades later.

Bohr and Heisenberg’s attitude (although differing in some respects) constituted the basis of what comes to be called the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. It’s not a scientific theory but commentary on the implications of quantum mechanics.

Copenhagen posits that quantum systems don’t have definite properties until they are measured or observed. Prior to observation, particles exist in a state of superposition, where they can hold multiple potential states at once. It is only upon interaction with an observer or measurement device that one of these possibilities becomes reality. Bohr said that it was impossible to say whether said objects were 'really' waves or 'really' particles, because the answer to that depended on the way the question was asked.

This leads to the key role of the observer: the act of observation itself plays a fundamental role in “collapsing” the quantum wave function, determining the specific outcome of a particle’s state. In other words, in quantum mechanics, reality at the subatomic level isn’t fixed until it’s observed, blurring the line between objective existence and subjective experience.

This view clashes with classical physics, which assumes an objective world that exists independently of observation, as Einstein famously advocated with his rhetorical question about the moon. For Copenhagen proponents, the observer is essential in the transition from potentiality to actuality.

This suggests that, at least at the quantum level, the observer is integral to how the world takes form, raising deep questions about the nature of reality. And despite much water under the bridge, the question about the moon remains an open one. That is the distant background to much of the discussion about physics in Hoffman's book.

But there's another layer of argument altogether, that from cognitivism. Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. This is going on every second. A lot of Hoffman's argument is based on analysis of those cognitive processes and what conditions them.

In my view, a philosophical precursor to that can clearly be traced back to Kant, who likewise understood the sense in which the mind creates the world - this is his famous 'copernican revolution in philosophy'.

On the basis of all of this, I generally argue for the fact that, while the objective domain is independent of any particular observer - you or me - the objective world nevertheless is grounded in the irreducibly subjective process of world-construction. And that because of the over-valuation of science and objectivity, this constructive process is generally invisible to us. That is the subject of the book, The Blind Spot of Science, by Frank, Gleiser and Thompson. And also Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles S. Pinter.

He’s behaving like a juvenile. Spouting conspiracy theories and insults. His handlers are desperately trying to get him to sound like he knows what he’s doing, to no avail. The further behind he falls the more he will flail. There’s a chance that he will actually become pathetic. That’ll be the death knell.

I actually didn't like his excursus in speculative idea of contemporary physics — boundless

Me neither. Didn’t really understand it either. Although I can see the connection with QBism.

…beings that are conscious to be conscious. — boundless

‘Meta-conscious awareness’ is the term, I believe.

I'm finding Donald Hoffman's book alternately interesting and frustrating. His formula of 'fitness beats truth' makes me want to ask what is the ‘truth’ that is ‘beaten by fitness’. He says that we don’t see ‘objective reality’ but that we see what evolution primes us to see. But at the same time, as we all have the same evolutionary heritage, then why that can’t also be ‘objective’? We’ll all share a very large pool of common objects of experience, so if I call a tomato an orange, or measure a meter to be 80cm, I’ll be objectively mistaken.

Anyway - perceptive review of the book by a physicist can be found here https://4gravitons.com/2024/02/23/book-review-the-case-against-reality/

Wayfarer, I keep telling you I'm a lot more open to your ideas then you'll allow in your own head. Give people a chance, especially if they're willing to engage with you. — Philosophim

Fair enough, point taken, I will keep that in mind in future. Apologies if I was dismissive.

Stevenson was widely scorned for his research, as the whole idea of reincarnation is anathema to both regular science and Christian culture (where it was essentially declared heretical in the fourth century.) I’ve brought him up a few times on the forum but it provokes a lot of pushback. I think there’s a tendency to be either repelled by the idea or to be fascinated by it. Stevenson’s cases are not at all of famous historical figures. The remembered previous lives were generally those of very ordinary people, who often lost their lives in tragic circumstances. That’s one of the aspects of his research that lends plausibility.

Stevenson was associated with the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, the activities of which are mainly concerned with parapsychology and other paranormal phenomena. He has a successor there, Jim Tucker, but he’s not so well known (or notorious!) as was Stevenson.

From my point we can replace the word physics with, "Measureable". And as I noted earlier, logically, if there is some other type of substance that interacts with the human body, it must be detectable in some way. It would be part of reality, and measurable. — Philosophim

The word ‘substance’ can be misleading in this context. As a technical term in philosophy it means something very different to the usual meaning, which is ‘a material with uniform properties’. In philosophy, the word derives from ‘substantia’, which was the Latin word used to translate the Greek ‘ouisia’ from Aristotle. ‘Ousia’ is nearer in meaning to ‘being’, and ‘substantia’ is supposed to mean ‘that which stands under’. So in some ways, the meaning is nearer to ‘subject’ than ‘substance’ in the normal sense. But I think it’s misleading to believe that ‘substance’ in this context can be taken to mean something objectively measurable or perceptible - although that is obviously suggested by Descartes ‘mind-body’ dualism. I think it’s a major legacy issue from early modern philosophy.

I have often thought the memories and their preservation could be captured somehow. Generally though memory is stored as a medium, and it needs a translator to process it into an experience. — Philosophim

Animals often seem to remember things, like homing pigeons or Atlantic salmon that find their way back to their home stream from across the ocean. We put it down to ‘instinct’ as if that explains it, or assign it to their ability to somehow read magnetic fields. But what if there are biological fields? This is where Rupert Sheldrake comes in. And he’s another maverick, many dismiss him as a quack - when his first book was published, the then-editor of Nature said it ought to be burned (‘for exactly the same reason that Galileos’ books were banned - they were heresy!’) But anyway, he has a theory of morphic resonance, that ‘nature forms habits’, and that these are expressed in both organic and inorganic forms (i.e. through crystal formation.) Sheldrake has published quite a few papers on it, but again they’re frustratingly inconclusive. I’m afraid it always seems to be that way in respect of paranormal studies, (in fact I wonder if that is actually a ‘feature not a bug’. His research findings can be reviewed at sheldrake.org.)

But then, as we’re talking about reincarnation, it is a fringe issue, so maybe fringe theories are apposite. In any case, I don’t find the idea that ‘nature forms habits’ to be startlingly outlandish - the difficulty seems to be, in what medium are such memories preserved? I won’t venture an answer, but I don’t think it’s a ridiculous question. Although maybe the underlying idea behind both topics is the sense that the universe is more ‘mind-like’ than ‘machine-like’ in its operations.

I'm not complaining about criticism, but about the weird appeal to authority. You didn't actually say why my analogy was poor. — hypericin

I didn't mean to annoy you. I included a link to a book review which was earlier shown to me on this forum. It's Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which talks about the 'mereological fallacy':

In Chapter 3 of Part I - “The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience” - Bennett and Hacker set out a critical framework that is the pivot of the book. They argue that for some neuroscientists, the brain does all manner of things: it believes (Crick); interprets (Edelman); knows (Blakemore); poses questions to itself (Young); makes decisions (Damasio); contains symbols (Gregory) and represents information (Marr). Implicit in these assertions is a philosophical mistake, insofar as it unreasonably inflates the conception of the 'brain' by assigning to it powers and activities that are normally reserved for sentient beings. It is the degree to which these assertions depart from the norms of linguistic practice that sends up a red flag. The reason for objection is this: it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. These claims are not false; rather, they are devoid of sense.

Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being. Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter.

Australian cities are overwhelmingly motonormative. Partially because of the dictates of distance and geography, as it's a vast landscape with long distances between urban centers and suburbs. There's been a big push in Sydney to upgrade public transport, taking the form of a driverless metro train system which has cost billions and involved tunnelling under Sydney harbour.

Parts of the Sydney CBD have been made car-free, but it's ringed by busy roads. And Sydney also now has about the most expensive network of toll roads in the world. In my childhood, the only toll in Sydney was southbound on the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1 shilling, in pre-decimal days.) Now there are electronic tollgates all over the place, it costs me twenty bucks to drive from my home in the greater metro area to my son's place. A lot of people in the outer suburbs pay hundreds of dollars a week in tolls.

But then, there's also been a concerted push, mainly by Green-leaning councillors, to upgrade bikeways in the City of Sydney. But Sydney is not kind of bicyclists, because it's hilly, and because of the traffic. Overall Australia is overwhelming motonormative and I can't see it changing anytime soon.

Consider that nirvana is not really a knowledge claim (enlightenment), but a value claim (liberation) — Constance

I don't think that's correct, the honorific name 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'. And according to Buddhist dogma, what is known is 'the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering'. To be enlightened is to be liberated from the morass of suffering that is entailed in saṃsāric existence. I'm not saying you should believe it, but that is what Buddhists themselves would say. In Platonic terms, there's definitely a 'noetic' element to Nirvāṇa, insight into a truth.

The only way I can confirm such an idea evil is a privation would be to ignore the direct evidence of suffering. But is this reasonable? — Constance

I agree it seems a preposterous notion, but I believe there's a sense in all the cosmic religions that existence is inherently imperfect and bound to entail suffering. In Christianity, that is represented in the Fall and the original sin. In Buddhism, it is represented by beginningless ignorance in which living beings are ensnared. The first link in the chain of dependent origination in Buddhism is ignorance. Liberation from ignorance is also liberation from being reborn due to karma (although in Mahāyāna doctrine, enlightened beings may be voluntarily born out of compassion.)

Alongside the 'doctrine of evil as privation' there's also the kind of theodicy explained by John Hick in his Evil and the God of Love. Hick argues that suffering plays a crucial role in the development of moral and spiritual virtues. According to Hick, humans are not created as perfect beings but rather as morally immature creatures with the potential to grow into morally and spiritually mature individuals. Suffering and challenges are necessary conditions for this growth, as they provide opportunities for individuals to develop virtues such as courage, compassion, and patience. Hick also says that for love and goodness to be genuine, they must be freely chosen. Suffering is a consequence of the freedom that God grants humans. This freedom allows for the possibility of both good and evil actions. Without the possibility of suffering, free will would be meaningless, and humans would be automatons, incapable of genuine love and moral choice.

The reason this all seems alien to modern culture, is that today's culture tends to normalise the human condition, by putting the individual self at the fulcrum. But then, that's the essence of a secular age, the only redresses being political, social and technological.

:up: Thank you :pray:

Thank you both, I’ll chew it over.

I’m thinking of the most basic form, what it is that any being described as conscious has.