Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. — Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III

"We could give what I call an impersonal description" ~ Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III;894990" — AmadeusD

The carpenter knows that his personal 'form of bed', the formula which he follows in building a bed, is not the most perfect, ideal bed possible, it is not the divine form of bed. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not, as you say, the "attainment of this insight" or an "innate capacity for enlightenment". It is the capacity to know. — Fooloso4

We must accept as agreed this trait of the philosophical nature, [485b] that it is ever enamored of the kind of knowledge which reveals to them something of that essence which is eternal, and is not wandering between the two poles of generation and decay. — Plato, Republic, Book 6

God could appear in actuality — Astrophel

But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219

Descartes does not make clear to himself that the ego, his ego deprived of its worldly characteristics through the epochē, in whose functioning cogitationes the world has all the ontic meaning it can ever have for him, cannot possibly turn up as a subject matter in the world, since everything that is of the world derives its meanings precisely from these functions - including, then, ...the ego in the usual sense. — Crisis of the European Sciences, p82

Do you think Deacon's "constitutive absence"*3 is the missing link between Logical truth and Empirical fact*4 regarding Abiogenesis? — Gnomon

I suppose It comes down to the definitional difference between Ideal (what ought to be) and Real (what is) causation. — Gnomon

It occurs to me that maybe you could say that Deacon is trying to establish the linkage between physical and logical causation. Ran it by ChatGPT, it says that it's feasible.
— Wayfarer

I had to Google "logical causation". What I found was not very enlightening*1.

Apparently, Logical Causation is what Hume said was "unprovable"*2, perhaps in the sense that a logical relationship (this ergo that) is not as objectively true as an empirical (this always follows that) demonstration. Logic can imply causation in an ideal (subjective) sense, but only physics can prove it in a real (objective) sense.

Of course, even physical "proof" is derived from limited examples. So any generalization of the proven "fact" is a logical extrapolation (subjective) from Few to All, that may or may not be true in ultimate reality. I suppose It comes down to the definitional difference between Ideal (what ought to be) and Real (what is) causation. How is linking the two realms (subjective logic and objective science) "feasible"? Isn't that where skeptics confidently challenge presumably rational conclusions with "show me the evidence"?

Do you think Deacon's "constitutive absence"*3 is the missing link between Logical truth and Empirical fact*4 regarding Abiogenesis? I'm afraid that proving a definite connection is above my pay grade, as an untrained amateur philosopher. What is ChatGPT's philosophical qualification? :grin:

*1. What is the difference between logical implication and physical causality? :
Logical implication refers to the relationship between two statements where the truth of one statement guarantees the truth of the other. Physical causality, on the other hand, refers to the relationship between events where one event is the direct cause of another event.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/logical-implication-vs-physical-causality.1015629/

*2. Hume Causation :
Hume saw causation as a relationship between two impressions or ideas in the mind. He argued that because causation is defined by experience, any cause-and-effect relationship could be incorrect because thoughts are subjective and therefore causality cannot be proven.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-metaphysics-of-causation-humes-theory.html

*3. Causation by Constitutive Absence :
According to Deacon, the defining property of every living or psychic system is that its causes are conspicuously absent from the system
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/05/23/reading-incomplete-nature-by-terrence-deacon/

*4. Causal and Constitutive explanation :
It is quite natural to explain differences or changes in causal capacities by referring to an absence of certain components or to their malfunction. . . . .
most philosophers of explanation recognize that there is an important class of non-causal explanations, although it has received much less attention. These explanations are conventionally called constitutive explanations
file:///C:/Users/johne/Downloads/Causal_and_constitutive_explanation_comp.pdf — Gnomon

Selves are a very interesting and vivid and robust element of conscious experience in some animals. This is a conscious experience of selfhood, something philosophers call a phenomenal self, and is entirely determined by local processes in the brain at every instant. Ultimately, it’s a physical process. — Thomas Metzinger

You could start a reading group here — Fooloso4

Compare the realm revealed by sight to the prison house, and the firelight within it to the power of our sun. And if you suggest that the upward journey, and seeing the objects of the upper world, is the ascent of the soul to the realm known by reason, you will not be misreading my intention, since that is what you wanted to hear. God knows whether it happens to be true, but in any case this is how it all seems to me. When it comes to knowledge, the form of the good is seen last, and is seen only through effort. Once seen, it is reckoned to be the actual cause of all 517C that is beautiful and right in everything, bringing to birth light, and the lord of light, in the visible realm, and providing truth and reason in the realm known by reason, where it is lord. Anyone who is to act intelligently, either in private or in public, must have had sight of this. — Republic Book 7 517b

“Yes,” I said, “but the argument is now indicating that this capacity, present in the soul of each person, the instrument by which each learns, is like an eye which cannot turn to the light from the darkness unless the whole body turns. So this instrument must be turned, along with the entire soul, away from becoming, until it becomes capable of enduring the contemplation 518D of what is, and the very brightest of what is, which we call the good. Is this so?”

I can't imagine Dennett arguing the way Henry does. — Astrophel

It is said that the Buddha was the quintessential phenomenologist — Astrophel

You might not agree, but I argue, once one sees that any of the varieties physicalism or materialism and their counterpart, idealism, is simply the worst and most inhibiting metaphysics that we all carry around with us, and it is carried with an implicit unbreakable faith. It is a reduction to dust, as Michel Henry says. — Astrophel

The inversion of culture in “barbarism” means that within a particular socio-historical context the need for subjective self-growth is no longer adequately met, and the tendency toward an occultation (i.e. concealment) of the bond between the living and absolute life is reinforced. According to Henry, who echoes Husserl’s analysis in Crisis, such an inversion takes place in contemporary culture, the dominating feature of which is the triumph of Galilean science and its technological developments.

Insofar as it relies on objectification, the “Galilean principle” is directly opposed to Henry’s philosophy of immanent affectivity. For Henry, science, including modern Galilean science, nonetheless remains a highly elaborated form of culture. Although “the joy of knowing is not always as innocent as it seems”, the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientist ideology, i.e., when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable. — SEP, Michel Henry

Instead, he compared mental Information to physical Entropy. — Gnomon

Meditative emptiness is about not thinking — flannel jesus

The mundane self is time, and meditation annihilates time. — Astrophel

A large portion of thought is so deep into the subconscious level, being purely habitual, learned at a very young age, that it is not even apparent to the conscious mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

fundamental Information — Gnomon

You see, it is one thing to state in language that information is primary and can, therefore, exist independently of mind and matter. But it is another thing entirely to explicitly and coherently conceive of what—if anything—this may mean. By way of analogy, it is possible to write—as Lewis Carroll did—that the Cheshire Cat’s grin remains after the cat disappears, but it is another thing entirely to conceive explicitly and coherently of what this means.

Our intuitive understanding of the concept of information—as cogently captured by Claude Shannon in 1948—is that it is merely a measure of the number of possible states of an independently existing system. As such, information is a property ofan underlying substrate associated with the substrate’s possible configurations—not an entity unto itself.

To say that information exists in and of itself is akin to speaking of spin without the top, of ripples without water, of a dance without the dancer, or of the Cheshire Cat’s grin without the cat. It is a grammatically valid statement devoid of sense; a word game less meaningful than fantasy, for internally consistent fantasy can at least be explicitly and coherently conceived of as such.

we must stick to what is most immediately present to us: solidity and concreteness are qualities of our experience. The world measured, modeled and ultimately predicted by physics is the world of perceptions, a category of mentation. The phantasms and abstractions reside merely in our descriptions of the behavior of that world, not in the world itself.

If…you can adopt the emptiness mode—by not acting on or reacting to the anger, but simply watching it as a series of events, in and of themselves—you can see that the anger is empty of anything worth identifying with or possessing. As you master the emptiness mode more consistently, you see that this truth holds not only for such gross emotions as anger, but also for even the subtlest events in the realm of experience. This is the sense in which all things are empty. When you see this, you realize that labels of “I” and “mine” are inappropriate, unnecessary, and cause nothing but stress and pain. You can then drop them. When you drop them totally, you discover a mode of experience that lies deeper still, one that’s totally free.

We do not see Experience these days as a narrow shaky gangway between the two towers of the Knower and the Known, but as a rich countryside, containing and building both of them. Such a view is both more fruitful and closer to the facts.

Now I can ask you what is the relationship between imagination and metaphysics? — ucarr

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. — Albert Einstein, What Life Means to Einstein (1924)

The imagination of protein-based sentience — ucarr

The puzzle is, what gave Descartes’ vision its extraordinary force? — Mary Midgely

One, perhaps, likes to think that serious meditation is a true negation of the self, but this is, I would argue, mistaken. — Astrophel

meditation is an annihilation of ones "existence". — Astrophel

serious meditation is a method of discovery and liberation FROM this mundane self. — Astrophel

It's very interesting that "emptiness" is the descriptive term often associated with depression in psychology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whatever it's called, isn't that some explanatory power? — Patterner

But that doesn't mean a scientist can't have irrational, fanciful and religious beliefs in his personal life. — Vera Mont

Paul Davies has a great anthology called "Information and the Nature of Reality," with entries by Seth Lloyd, Terrance Deacon, and others, including philosophers and theologians, that is quite good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I guess a key point is that when hearing people talk about information with regard to entropy, one should interpret them as talking just about the mathematical meaning of entropy first and foremost in order to understand what they are saying, rather than paying attention to the word 'information' which is often not being used in any specific way other thsn to refer to the mathematical usage. — Apustimelogist

There is a huge gulf between physics and materialism. — Vera Mont

Will there be a trial of the soul after all? — javi2541997

So the first order of business is simple description: what IS pain, examined like this? — Astrophel

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

This mode is called emptiness because it’s empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and to define the world we live in. — What is Emptiness?

Complete linguistic analysis of the Buddhist canonical writings provides us with a perfect opportunity of becoming acquainted with this means of seeing the world which is completely opposite of our European manner of observation, of setting ourselves in its perspective, and of making its dynamic results truly comprehensive through experience and understanding. For us, for anyone, who lives in this time of the collapse of our own exploited, decadent culture and has had a look around to see where spiritual purity and truth, where joyous mastery of the world manifests itself, this manner of seeing means a great adventure. That Buddhism - insofar as it speaks to us from pure original sources - is a religio-ethical discipline for spiritual purification and fulfillment of the highest stature - conceived of and dedicated to an inner result of a vigorous and unparalleled, elevated frame of mind, will soon become clear to every reader who devotes themselves to the work. Buddhism is comparable only with the highest form of the philosophy and religious spirit of our European culture. It is now our task to utilize this (to us) completely new Indian spiritual discipline which has been revitalized and strengthened by the contrast.

maybe the spirit and the mind are more tangled than I used to think. — javi2541997

Do you deem these reasons for classifying philosophy within the humanities? — ucarr

The greatest degree of information is found in the most random or irrational sequences. — Benj96