That's why I continue to ask the question; where's the alternative? What's the alternative theory, position and perspective that's able to follow what's already been proven as well as what has been observed and being observed in scientific research today? — Christoffer

That is a good question and I will come back to it.

I tend towards dismissing your arguments in the same spirit that you trend to dismiss a vast range of philosophical spirituality as ‘religious fantasy’. You strike me as a highly intelligent and articulate atheist with cast-iron convictions. Consider:

I am interested in answers to what reality is and how consciousness functions, but I don't really care in that sense about any meaning to it, because "meaning" is arbitrary, it is a trivial thing in this topic. "Meaning" is something I can create with what I have, it's something I can work on separately. We don't get meaning out of these theories and answers, we only get answers to the questions — Christoffer

Whereas I see philosophy (and in some ways, religion) as being precisely the concern with what Victor Frankl called ‘man’s search for meaning’. But you dismiss it as an infantile search for comfort, as being like thumb-sucking. That’s how it comes across to me.

And the reason I tend towards being dismissive is because I couldn’t say anything inside what you consider valid terms of reference which could hold any sway. What you’re asking for is a scientific explanation of what is outside the purview of scientific explanations. Whereas I feel you’re saying, if something is outside the purview of science, then how could it be worth considering?

In respect of alternative frameworks to scientific materialism which still respect science perhaps this essay might be a starting point https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience

Yeah, no surprise. In order for it to make sense, one must be thinking about what it would take in order for consciousness to be an emergent result of evolutionary progression. — creativesoul

But the problem is, you’re still regarding ‘it’ as a phenomena, as something that exists. But consciousness is not ‘something that exists’, it is the ground of experience. Now, certainly, consciousness can be treated as a phenomena, as something that can be studied and understood - that is what cognitive science and psychology deal with. But I think the ‘hard problem’ argument is not addressed to that - it is about the meaning of being (‘what it is like to be….’), which is not an objective phenomenon.

It's not possible to defeat authoritarians with kumbayah. — baker

I don't intend to. I intend to keep posting facts about the case.

Have any thoughts on what that quote itself said? — wonderer1

Sure. This part:

We begin to “know” rather than remain open to. When we cling strongly to what we have learned, it becomes easy for us to be convinced that we get it, and in fear of losing it, we begin to hold tightly to it. This fixation ends up becoming a crutch towards our growth. The teacher and teachings are both useful and to some degree, necessary, so they should be utilized, but both also must, ultimately, be allowed to drop away.

Very true. The reason I answered with that piece by Harold Stewart was just to point to the broader social context in which Zen/Ch'an is usually situated. In the modern west, it's very much an individualist attitude, but the cultures in which it is practiced are very different to that. But it's a digression from this thread.

When you attend any Buddhist ceremony or meditation centre, you will notice there’s a lot of bowing. You bow to the Three Jewels Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. One of the things I learned from Buddhism was the significance of bowing, in acknowledgement of the wisdom of the teachings, practitioners and teacher. There is a Pali text, the Parable of the Raft, in which the Buddha likens the teaching to a hastily-constructed raft built from twigs and branches, used to ‘cross the river’, but not to be carried about once the river is crossed. That is the same point that Lin Chi/Rinzai is making. But there is still a river to cross.

Small wonder, methinks, that I voluntarily neglect modern thought. — Mww

I totally get that.

If the 'subjective quality' of experience(or experience if you prefer) emerges, then a lack of experience within or regarding the more basic elemental constituents is exactly what would be required and expected, not by design so much, but rather by necessity(existential dependency and elemental constituency). — creativesoul

Sorry, but this makes no sense.

And it's here that I ask, why would our entity as humans be separated from the rest of the universe? — Christoffer

Again, a very, very long post, which unfortunately shows no insight into the fundamental plight of existence, which is precisely the sense of separateness and the accompanying anxiety that this produces. But, of course, that is dismissed on account of it being 'religious'.

Because politics is about ruling people. — baker

That is an authoritarian political philosophy.

Let's also not forget that Latin was the language of the educated classes until well into the early modern age. This has had particular impact on the philosophical lexicon as that subject was very much the preserve of the learned classes. The particular term I mentioned that @Lionino queried was the translation of the Greek 'ousia' into the latin 'substantia', and thence into the English 'substance', which is the legitimate etymology of that term. The point being, this word has a meaning in philosophical discourse quite different to that in ordinary speech, and that the conflation of the two meanings of 'substance' has unfortunate implications for philosophy.

With respect to emergent properties - the emergent qualities of substances like glass or water as analogies do not really provide the basis of explanations for consciousness in terms of emergence. New properties can emerge from simpler constituents—glass from sand, liquidity from a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. These examples show that a whole can indeed have properties that its constituent parts do not possess individually, a central idea in emergence theory.

However while these examples demonstrate physical and chemical emergence, they do not adequately address the unique challenges posed by consciousness. The emergence of physical properties like the transparency of glass or the liquidity of water can be (and have been) completely explained through physical and chemical processes. These are objective properties that can be observed and measured from an external perspective.

Consciousness, on the other hand, presents a different kind of problem. It's not just about the emergence of new properties but about the emergence of the capacity for subjective experience. This includes what it feels like to see, feel pain, or taste. This subjective quality is what is not observable or measurable in terms of objective properties of chemical substances. And that is by design, as by design, scientific observation excludes the subject.

Even if we fully understood the brain's physical and biological attributes - and we're a very long way from that - we might still lack an explanation for how these attributes give rise to subjective experience. There is an incommensurability involved which is not bridgeable in terms of more data. This gap in understanding leads us to question whether the concept of emergence, as understood in physical sciences, is sufficient to explain consciousness, or whether it is, at best, just another analogy or metaphor (or straw to grasp at).

A NOTE ON TRUMP DISINFORMATION

As this election year hits full stride, Trump's backers are putting serious money, through PACs and sympathetic media outlets, into whitewashing the events of January 6th 2021. They are attempting to downplay the severity of the attack on the Capitol, claiming it was a peaceful protest or that the violence was instigated by left-wing agitators. These claims have been widely disputed by fact-checkers and investigative journalists, but a growing proportion of Republican voters continue to believe that the event was staged by Democrats/antifa/the Left to demonise Trump or that it was a peaceful protest, or that protests by the Black Lives Matter movement were worse.

Social media and other online platforms (including this forum) are being used to spread disinformation about January 6th. Right-wing media outlets amplify disinformation and promote revisionist narratives about January 6th.

It's crucial to approach this topic with a critical eye and to rely on reputable sources for information.

The January 6th Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol: https://january6th.house.gov/
Fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact and Snopes: https://www.politifact.com/, https://www.snopes.com/
Reputable news organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR: https://www.nytimes.com/, https://www.washingtonpost.com/, https://www.npr.org/

And remember a wise saying by Democrat statesman and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

It is a fact that Donald J Trump lost the last election and failed in 60 lawsuits to have the result overturned.

It is a fact that, in the words of the January 6th Committee, Trump called the mob, motivated the mob, and lit the match that resulted in the disgraceful, deadly mob attack on the US Capital on Jan 6th 2021. It was not a peaceful protest or a false flag event, but instigated and encouraged by Donald J Trump, who is due to face court for his involvement in these events in the next several months.

Hope this is all sufficiently clear. It will be repeated as often as is necessary in this thread.

All they need to do is to declare the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to the President or deny that this clause is "self-enforcing" and requires Congress to pass law to make it enforceable. — Relativist

Let's see about that. Today Trump is saying that 'his people' on the SCOTUS bench ought to play nice, or else there will be trouble. So now threatening Supreme Court Justices with violence is fair game for the Republican Party, apparently. (You know that many other judicial officers involved in Trump-related cases are routinely subjected to violent threats and obscene social media, right? That this is now par for the course for the apparently-leading 'Presidential Candidate'?)

It is the largest criminal investigation in American history, and all the charges and convictions just so happen to fall upon the regime’s political opponents, including the biggest threat to their power, Donald Trump. — NOS4A2

This post contains a number of lies, and I have both flagged it and reported it to the other mods. It beats me why we put up with a constant stream of Trump-related misinformation from you. None of these people are victims of political persecution, they have been indicted and found guily of serious crimes. Seven people died on January 6th 2021, and private property and electoral officers private officers were ransacked and destroyed, contrary to your nonsense.

I'm tempted to say that 'other universes' is an incoherent idea. The point of the six constraints is that they must be as they are for matter to form, slight deviances lead to totally non-ordered outcomes, i.e. chaos. Whether there might be 'other universes' in which these conditions don't obtain strikes me as the most idle of idle speculations. As remarked in a Scientific American article, 'A remarkable fact about our universe is that physical constants values needed to allow for complex structures, including living things. Steven Weinberg, Martin Rees, Leonard contend that an exotic multiverse provides a tidy explanation for this apparent coincidence: if all possible enough collection of universes, then viable ones for life will surely be found somewhere.' I just fall about laughing at that idea - as if the 'proliferation of universes' amounts to 'a tidy idea', and at the lengths that people will go to, to avoid the theistic-sounding implications of the cosmological anthropic principle.

(DOES THE MULTIVERSE REALLY EXIST? (cover story) By: Ellis, George F. R.. Scientific American, Aug2011, Vol. 305 Issue 2, p38-43)

Generally, I like physicalism, but I think you miss a lot by stopping at reductionism. Maybe physicalism just gets us to our mental worlds and then we can move on from there — Mark Nyquist

You once said to me:

I just like to start with physicalism/materialism because it keeps us /me personally from believing things that just aren't true. — Mark Nyquist

I think I know why you say that - I think it's because Western culture has abandoned or rejected ways of thinking that provide an alternative to physicalism. Physicalism seems rational and scientific. Would that be about right?

that guy is one of the best instructional designers on the planet. I often watch his presentations.

The reason everyone gets it wrong is because the correct answer (4) isn't one of the options. — noAxioms

The video does explain that.

I've got that book. Rather a dull read, I will say, but the philosophical implications are very interesting. The point of the six numbers is not that they are one factor among others, but that if any one of them were even minutely different, there'd be no others.

Have a listen to Harry Cliff's 2016 TED talk about the Higgs Field and Dark Energy - and the 'end of physics'.

I saw Nancy Abrams (Joel Primack's research partner) present at SAND 2012. Pretty mind-boggling stuff. Touches on that 'deep history' kind of perspective of Brian Swimme.

"There is no deeper source of meaning for human beings than to experience our own lives as reflecting the nature and origin of our universe" - Joel Primack — Gnomon

An idea also explored in German idealism

The arguments for physicalism as the OP asked are best when we simply limit the definition of existence to only something material. Concepts, language, ideas, mathematics, logic, all of that can then simply be said to be something else. — ssu

The problem with that is, that physicalism is supposed to be true of everything that is real. Even idealism acknowledges that physical objects exist, but physicalism is the idea that everything is reducible to the physical. For that reason, the most coherent form of physicalism was atomism, which held that indivisible point-particles, combining in endless arrays and combinations, were what was ultimately real. Well, that was until quantum physics and the wave-particle duality and electromagnetic fields came along. Now physicalism usually amounts to scientism - hey, we don't know what everything ultimately is, but if we're going to find out, then science is the way to do it.

Zahavi's critique of speculative realism can be found online here.

I'm familiar with that 'koan'. In reality Zen/Ch'an is highly regimented and disciplined and is generally conducted in an atmosphere of strict routine and observance of rules and hierarchy. Have a read of Harold Stewart's take on Westerner's interactions with Japanese Zen. (Stewart was an Australian poet and orientalist who lived the last half of his life in Kyoto.)

Acolytes are expected to develop indifference to the discomforts of heat and cold on a most frugal vegetarian diet and to abstain from self-indulgence in sleep and sex, intoxicating drinks and addictive drugs. Altogether Zen demands an ability to participate in a communal life as regimented and lacking in privacy as the army.

I take it you have to meet him first.

Of course Zen too is seeing "through a glass darkly" but it gave us, "If you see the Buddha on the road kill him.", which is a plus. — wonderer1

How so?

The US Supreme Court has scheduled the first oral arguments over the 14th Amendment bans on Trump’s candidacy for Feb 8th. But again I ask, how could they arrive at a decision in respect of whether Trump engaged in insurrection in advance of the resolution if the January 6th criminal trial, scheduled to begin in March? Surely the outcome of the later case will be materially relevant to the appeal, would it not?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/politics/supreme-court-trump-colorado-14th-amendment-insurrectionist-clause?cid=ios_app

One thing of relevance is the deeply subconscious basis for our intuitions, and the fact that those aren't something that we can turn around overnight — wonderer1

They’re known as saṃskara or sankhara in Indian disciplines:

According to various schools of Indian philosophy, every action, intent or preparation by an individual leaves a samskara (impression, impact, imprint) in the deeper structure of the person's mind. These impressions then await volitional fruition in that individual's future, in the form of hidden expectations, circumstances or a subconscious sense of self-worth. These Samskaras manifest as tendencies, karmic impulses, subliminal impressions, habitual potencies or innate dispositions. In ancient Indian texts, the theory of Samskara explains how and why human beings remember things, and the effect that memories have on people's suffering, happiness and contentment. — Wikipedia

Direct insight into saṃskara is obtainable through insight meditation (vipasyana) and other meditative disciplines. No brain scanner required!

I seem to recall a very critical chapter about o-o realism in one of Zahavi’s books - https://philpapers.org/rec/ZAHTEO-2

I see the hubris as theirs, as they tout a perspective outside or beyond the human and then disparage Kant for acknowledging the inherent limitations of human reason, as if they alone are capable of seeing past it.

Although you’re right, he did say ‘surge the border’ in a Democratic debate. Not a smart thing to say, I agree.

Hence the tectonic shift in modern philosophy toward scepticism and relativism.

Do you really think those wanting to immigrate pay much attention to "context"? — jgill

Yes, a huge amount of attention. They know if they get into American jurisdiction that they will be assigned a place in the system for the duration of processing, often years. If Congress could agree on changing the conditions it would change their attitude. That’s what the Australian government managed to do with bipartisan support. But there’s zero chance of any bi-partisanship in respect of the American situation, because the Republican Party’s only interest is in exploiting the issue for partisan reasons,

I still think the idea that we have, in some respects, an inversion of Plato in the modern period holds water though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think, maybe, it’s because we retained the elements of Platonism that are useful for science and engineering (book of nature written in math) but discarded the ethical perspectives (the One, the Good) mainly because of their absorption into, and rejection alongside, Christian philosophy. Also simplistic, but I’m sure with a grain of truth.

I have no fear of science. Your posts are too long to deal with.

Because mathematics hadn't been successfully applied to the world yet, Plato decided there was simply something wrong with the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That’s a little simplistic, don’t you think? The point of the passage from Nagel that I quoted is really rather simple: the separation of the observing mind and the world, and the seizing of the mathematically-quantifiable aspects of the world as the only real attributes. That is the basis of both Hume’s ‘is/ought’ problem, and the problem of consciousness (which are two facets of the same underlying issue.)

he did call upon those fleeing their oppressive governments to "Surge the borders" of the US. — jgill

I fact checked this:

Claim: Some conservative commentators and media outlets have made this claim, often citing a speech Biden gave in 2019 where he said, "We can't build a wall high enough to keep out the yearning for freedom." They argue that this statement encourages people to migrate to the US illegally.

Context: Biden's speech was about the need for comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already living in the US. He was not specifically addressing people fleeing oppressive governments. Additionally, the full quote from Biden is: "We can't build a wall high enough to keep out the yearning for freedom. We can't hide behind a wall and pretend the world doesn't exist. We can't focus on the fear of the other instead of the promise of the one." This suggests that Biden is advocating for a more welcoming and inclusive approach to immigration, rather than encouraging illegal border crossings.

Fact-checking organizations including PolitiFact have rated the claim that Biden urged people to surge the border as "Mostly False." They note that Biden's comments were taken out of context and that he has not advocated for illegal immigration.

I'm dissappointed that you are mislead by these types of claims, as you're one of the wiser and more level-headed contributors on this forum.

:rofl:

(although, not being one to point the finger.... :lol: )

My question was addressed to ucarr, about a remark he made to you. It wasn't addressed to you.

Your suggestion, not mine — jgill

It was a sarcastic remark, of course, to make a rhetorical point - just how is it to be prevented? Australia did indeed implement harsh measures to 'stop the boats' which became a political slogan in the early oughties, never mind there were far greater numbers of visa overstayers than ever came by boat. But then, Australia is an island, and it's a long way from Africa and Central America.

I suppose what I'm saying is, I don't think the Biden administration bears particular blame for the movement of undocumented immigrants. Sure, it's happening on his watch, and in that sense, he's responsible, but as the NY Times points out, flaws in immigration policy straddles the partisan divide, and Congress has never been able to agree on any kind of solution. There's plenty of blame to go around.

the way he opened the borders of our country and allowed hundreds of thousands to migrate here non legally. — jgill

Are there alternatives? Could they be, you know, machine-gunned as they cross the Rio Grande? Seems to me part of US law that America is obliged to offer humane treatment to those who cross its borders. Here's a gift link to a NY Times analysis of the dynamics of illegal immigration. (I very much doubt that it would have been any different under a Republican president, as the article shows, the drivers are systemic, global, and a long time in the making.)

A point to consider is that any undocumented immigrant that arrives in the US or Europe or Australia obtains something that they generally will not have in their country of origin, namely human rights. And a country such as the US that recognises human rights, is obliged to accord these rights to undocumented migrants. To automatically send them back to their country of origin, which in many cases won't even accept them, is to deny their basic human rights, which, for better or worse, the US won't do.

So, you detest materialism? Post herein a picture of your right index finger after you’ve chopped it off. — ucarr

If you feel that crude metaphor conveys anything about the point at issue, perhaps it is because you don't understand it.

Practicing mathematicians pay virtually no attention to this philosophical discussion.
— jgill

And thus you are a dearly valuable exception to the rank and file establishment. — ucarr

What does this mean, exactly? That paying no attention to a philosophical discussion is a virtue? And 'the rank and file' of what organisation, exactly?

You argue in a way that feels more like an attack on science because it works too well for answering these kinds of questions. But it does not change the fact that if you attempt to answer them in any other way, you deviate from knowledge that functions as universal for all. — Christoffer

But that is the very essence of 'scientism' (link to wikipedia.) Note the sinister overtones of 'deviating from knowledge'.

I think your arguments are influenced by what Thomas Nagel describes in his essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. (Nagel is not a religious apologist, and that essay is written from the perspective of analytical philosophy. I can provide a reference to it if need be.)

Percept + concept = complex materialism. — ucarr

Tosh. Kant detested materialism, as do I.

Another mathematician, but one who ventured into philosophy and cognitive science, was Charles S. Pinter (whom I discussed briefly with jgill in the past (although I learn Pinter has since died, but then, he was 96 at time of death)). Anyway, his maths books are here, about which I know nothing, but his final work was the very interesting Mind and the Cosmic Order, published in Feb 2021, a
detailed abstract of which can be found here, and to which I would look for a possible answer to this question:

Could it be that maths, like space and time are part of our human cognitive apparatus in some way? — Tom Storm

it's a gross oversimplification. — Banno

It's a perfectly valid English expression, obfuscated by Betrand Russell in support of his own philosophical agenda.

'Don't mention the cause....' :worry:

Yes, I think it makes sense that we cannot and maybe sometimes should not go for the most reductive explanations. I don't think of science as having a goal toward explaining things in increasingly reductive or decomposed ways. — Apustimelogist

I feel as though something needs to be said about physical reductionism and it's place in culture. One of the quotations I often fall back on is from Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them.

Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Mind and Cosmos, Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Thomas Nagel, Pp35-36

This 'poweful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality' comprises the basis of what is generally described as the modern scientific worldview. Although science itself has already overflowed those bounds on many different fronts, it still retains considerable if not always obvious influence in philosophical discourse: that what is real are the objectively-measurable attributes of the kinds of entities that science is able to analyse. 'The subject' was bracketed out of this reckoning at the very outset. (The quotations that @Joshs provided in this post both diagnose and remedy this issue from the perspective of phenomenology and embodied cognitive science.)

This view is at the back of many of the arguments in favour of physical reductionism, as to admit an alternative philosophy is to have to defend some form of dualism or philosophical idealism and their attendant metaphysical baggage.

Now let’s blink out the natural world of physics, thus leaving us with pure math with no physical referents, no matter how far down the line you evaluate. What are we left with? — ucarr

Something very like Kant's 'concepts without percepts are empty'. 'Not uncoupled from the material world' does not mean 'material in nature'. Humans are metaphysical beings - we can peer into the intelligible domain and return with things like computers and airplanes.

Number is an essential, material property. — ucarr

Why 'material'? In what sense? In what sense is pure maths concerned with physical objects?

Now let’s blink out the natural world of physics... — ucarr

Rather an odd expression, but surely one of the confounding things about mathematics, is its applicability to physics. That is the basis of Eugene Wigner's celebrated essay, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. I will not propose to explain this 'unreasonable effectiveness', as Wigner himself could not, and he a Nobel-prize winning mathematical physicist. But I would defend the modest claim that one of the grounds for the great successes of modern mathematical physics, was the discovery of the means by which to express the measurable attributes of physical bodies using mathematical logic. This enabled for great predictive success, whereby predictions are made that appear to 'fall out of the equations', but which lead to real-world discoveries such as Dirac's discovery of anti-matter. (And think about the etymology of the word 'discovery', for that matter.)

You would think that if mathematics were purely conventional, it would lack this ability to make genuine, unexpected discoveries about nature. The surprising effectiveness of mathematics in making accurate, sometimes unexpected predictions about the natural world suggests a deeper connection between mathematical structures and physical reality. This view opposes the idea that mathematics is just a tool invented for practical purposes, instead hinting at some intrinsic relationship between mathematical concepts and the fabric of the universe.

But in all this, I fail to see why we should accept that numbers are material properties. They may be applied to the measurable attributes of material bodies, but that is completely different to saying that they are material entities.

House Democrats released evidence that [Donald Trump's businesses] took in at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while in office, engaging in the kind of conduct the G.O.P. is grasping to pin on President Biden. ....

Using documents produced through a court fight, the report describes how foreign governments and their controlled entities, including a top U.S. adversary, interacted with Trump businesses while he was president. They paid millions to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.

The Constitution prohibits federal officeholders from accepting money, payments or gifts “of any kind whatever” from foreign governments and monarchs unless they obtain “the consent of the Congress” to do so. The report notes that Mr. Trump never went to Congress to seek consent.

”By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous commander in chief,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, wrote in a foreword to the report.

NY Times - White House for Sale


Sure tops James Comer trying to criminalise Joe Biden loaning his son funds to by a pickup truck.