Are you saying there is a hard problem of biology too? — T Clark

The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm, but this is not the case. The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life—biological information and the genetic code—that are totally absent in the inorganic world, which means that information is present only in living systems, that chemistry alone is not enough and that a deep divide does exist between life and matter. — Marcello Barbieri, What is Information?

The physical sciences can describe organisms… as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – [their] structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. — Thomas Nagel

they (idealists) still have the problem of explaining what empirical criteria can be used to determine what is or isn't conscious. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The divide between organisms and minerals is pretty clear, is it not (leaving aside viruses and prions which seem to straddle it.)

Thought is at least correlated with that physical phenomenon, so it's not like you can completely disconnect it. — schopenhauer1

Kastrup's answer is that the physical process is what the thought looks like from across the dissociative boundary, when viewed from the outside. Just as 'sadness' appears as tears and facial contortions to an observer, but is a subjective reality to those undergoing it. So it's not as if there's physical sadness and mental sadness.

Are we pieces of matter that learned to think? Or ideas that learned to enrobe themselves in matter? Is one of those options inherently less improbable than the other? — Pantagruel

Nice way of summarising it. I vote (2).

But you appeal explicitly to biological criteria:

At an abstract level, organisms adapt to different types of information in their environments, producing forms that are specialized in various ways to interact with that information. — Pantagruel

Whereas we’re discussing the metaphysical implications of science. Do you see any difference between the biological adaptations of animals and intellectual interpretation, or do you see the latter as on a continuum with the former? Are such conjectures a form of or in service of adaptation?

The whole monism/dualism question leads to a category error. Is everything derived from physical matter? Assuming yes, — Mark Nyquist

Big assumption, and also question-begging. I would almost agree with the remainder apart from the appeal to biology. Or maybe you could say that the ability to perceive causal relations has imposed reason upon us - posed us questions that only we, amongst other denizens of the biological realm - can ask and be aware of asking. But is that still determined by biology alone?

Excellent! Glad we agree. I see that as being a more expansive definition of scientific method than it’s cookie-cutter image.

At an abstract level, organisms adapt to different types of information in their environments, producing forms that are specialized in various ways to interact with that information. — Pantagruel

Yeah but that’s biology. The parameters of what we’re discussing are no longer determined by that, and I think rationalising science, or any other human activities, in those terms is inherently reductionist. And there are better things than simply being well-adapted.

Hi Richard, and welcome to the Forum. Excellent first post - but tell me this. Once upon a time, I considered, but never enrolled in, a Project Management training course. I didn’t go ahead, but I did learn there is a document or collection called the Project Management BoK - meaning ‘book of knowledge’. I never went on to study it, but you would think science has, at least, something corresponding - a kind of core set of methods, techniques, attitudes, and, yes, even ‘how-to’ knowledge, that was to some extent passed on, like guild knowledge. No?

No. I mean they’re used to smooth over annoying inconsistencies in current models. Like I said, Everett devised many worlds to avoid the spooky implication that the measurement problem was mind-dependent. Hidden variables theories to make spooky action-at-a-distance go away. The multiverse is routinely invoked to explain away the anthropic cosmological principle. And so on. Examples could be multiplied.

What if they solve problems of cognitive dissonance? You know, are used to keep challenged paradigms immune from criticism? Multiverse arguments and ‘hidden variables’ and the like give you a lot of metaphysical elbow-room.

In some sense, spirit is a self-modification of nature — plaque flag

The fundamental condition of existence is alterity. (c)

The optimist view is Trump hasn’t had enough time to COMPLETELY destroy the Republican Party, But, you know, give him enough rope….

The wheels of justice turn slow but sure :cool:

Trump might not get the Republican nomination, but then go as an independent, which will be absolute poison for the actual Republican nominee. — ssu

:pray:


Let’s not forget Trump’s clinching of the Republican nomination was nearly derailed at the 2016 Republican Convention. I’m certain there would be enough never- and anti-Trumpists to shoot him down in 2024 - even if he does make it as far as the Convention.

I think DeSantis is going to fizzle. Like someone said, he’s the kinda guy who’d confiscate the neighbors’ kid’s soccer ball if it landed on his lawn

There was apparently a precursor to the steam engine in the first century AD. — Janus

Not to forget the Antikythera Machine! (Actually saw the original in Athens last September,)

I'd agree with everything except the last part. — schopenhauer1

Sorry - what part don’t you agree with? If it’s that you can’t map thought content with neural data, I would have thought that was a clear implication of the rest of the argument.

but I do agree that mathematics played a part, particularly in physics and chemistry. — Janus

I had thought that Descartes’ discovery of algebraic geometry - the idea of dimensional co-ordinates - was of absolutely fundamental importance in the ‘new sciences’. That, allied with Galileo’s mathematicization of nature, and the discovery of universal laws of motion, all of which preceded the mechanised harnessing of fossil fuels (although that no doubt was an enormous economic factor.)

Bearing in mind we all routinely do things that would have been thought ‘excluded from reality’ by our forbears.

Agree with the sentiment. It is perfectly reflected in those articles you sometimes see ‘scientists puzzled over why consciousness exists’, ostensibly because it seems to serve no evolutionary purpose.

the lack of Trump supporters here is a mark of quality. — RogueAI

:100:

Still reckon Trump will never get the Republcan nomination, polling data notwithstanding.

Useful summary and review here.

Actually it was tongue-in-cheek, I read somewhere recently that Team Trump can't stand her (probably because she's too much like him). He'd want someone who was going to more of a hand-puppet.

This muddling of the two is where the hidden dualism comes into play. It is this constant category error that trips people up into not understanding any "hard problem". It leads to blind scientism, and a constant not "getting" the problems that arise from philosophy of mind. — schopenhauer1

:clap:

Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart meaning to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes. — Ed Feser

Kari Lake!

Can’t relative self-similarity over time do the job of providing a perspectival point of view, a way continuing to be the same differently? — Joshs

I suppose, but it seems a bit contrived.

I'll go back to where this started:

Even Husserl recognized that the ego is nothing but an empty zero point of activity, harboring no intrinsic a priori content. This empty ego is not a person, or a human, or a subject. — Joshs

What is 'an empty ego'? Seems something like 'an unclenched fist' - which of course is no longer a fist, but a hand. But so long as one is a conscious being, there is an element of self-awareness, isn't there? That is what differentiates 'beings' from rocks and logs. As to whether there is a priori content - a human being has considerable potential ability to understand language, reason, and so on, whether or not that is activated by his/her environment or education. Within that there are recognisable structures (like Chomsky's universal grammar).

A crude ontology takes the frequent practically justified 'transparency' of the subject to an extreme that thinks it can keep familiar worldly objects without the subject that helps constitute them. — plaque flag

Right. That's what I think is the basic subject of discussion in Thomas Nagel's book The View from Nowhere - the attempt of naturalism to attain a completely non-subjective point of view by restricting the scope of science solely to the consideration of objective domain and its purely qualitative attributes.

The meaningrich lifeworld in which the project of natural science makes sense depends on the embodied social-cultural 'timebinding' subject — plaque flag

Right again - we're seeing that in, for instance, biosemiosis which is much more aware of those kinds of contextual factors.

For Husserl there is a subject pole and an object pole for every act. — Joshs

I get that, and often refer to it, but I think to deny the reality of agency is a slippery slope towards nihilism. I mean, given that there may be no 'ultimately defineable' subjects or objects, there are still subjects and objects.

Objectivity as unbiasedness (perhaps you'll agree) is not a problem. — plaque flag

But that's the distinction I tried to draw in another thread between the objectivity of science, and the detachment of a Meister Eckhardt. There are many confused debates here about the ultimate anchors for objectivity, which would imply the necessity of an ultimate or unchanging object. In the absence of that seems to threaten total relativism and subjectivism. That is where the transcendental has to be distinguished from the objective.

In other words, if a theoretical model can not be efficiently simulated via quantum computer then it cannot be efficiently realized in the real world. — Pantagruel

But the point of the critiques of speculative physics and cosmology is that they might never be testable at all. As Ellis and Silk put it:

Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.

Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.

These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any. — Scientific Method - Defend the Integrity of Physics

I've often noticed how easily multi-verse and many-worlds speculations (granted that these are different but often conflated) provide metaphorical elbow-room for speculative rationalisation of scientific-sounding claims.

For instance, In the Copenhagen interpretation of physics, the wave-function collapse is considered a fundamental and irreducible aspect of quantum reality, where the act of measurement causes the system to "choose" one of its possible states, leading to the observed outcome. The Everett interpretation of quantum physics offers an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics in which wave-function collapse doesn't occur. It dissolves this conundrum by saying that what appears as wave-function collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is actually the result of the quantum system branching into multiple parallel universes, each corresponding to a different outcome. But then, the many-worlds interpretation itself may not be amenable to empirical falsification, and the requirement of multiple universes seems at the least highly unparsimonious. The idea may fairly be regarded as a metaphysical rather than a scientific theory (Philip Ball's critique is often cited.)

There are many of these interpretive problems thrown up by current science.

Aristotle sums up the ancient position on knowledge when he says that all men naturally desire knowledge. Bacon marks the position of modern philosophy when he declares that knowledge is power. — Fooloso4

Aristotle, and Greek philosophy generally, also differentiated different kinds of knowledge, did they not? Phronesis, techne, episteme, and so forth - which had different attributes and spheres. Many of those distinctions seem to have become blurred. And Bacon's re-definition of knowledge as power easily morphs into knowledge as instrumental utility, thenceforth the entire 'instrumentalisation of reason' trend criticized by the Frankfurt School.

My answer to the question would be framed in terms of my quest to understand the dominance of scientific materialism in modern culture. That is of course a meta-philosophical quest, a ‘philosophy of philosophy’, rather than something within philosophy itself. Some of the relevant books I have read about it are Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, and (parts of) A Secular Age, Charles Taylor. It’s a dialectical process which has taken centuries to unfold and is still unfolding.

But the bone of contention is ‘is it science’?

I feel as thought what I’m attempting to say is considerably simpler than what you’re taking it for. Never mind, it’s good to thrash these things out.

Hence the requirement for the vertical dimension, the qualitative domain.

I don't see materialism as a bogeyman as you apparently do — Janus

The issue is that materialism only considers objects and their quantitative attributes to be real, not to put too fine a point on it. It says that intelligent agents such as ourselves can be explained and understood solely in those terms, and that the qualitative domain - the felt quality of existence - has no intrinsic reality apart from that. That is the source of what John Vervaeke and Gregg Henriques are describing as ‘the meaning crisis’ of modern societies.

It’s appropriate that Trump is being indicted and very likely he will be convicted. But it’s also likely that he will continue to dominate the political discourse in the US, and will have a huge impact on the 2024 Presidential election, even if he doesn’t win. But the fact that he might win, which is suggested by a lot of polling data, is deeply troubling. It seems that a significant proportion of the electorate, amounting to many tens of millions of people, actually believe Trump’s lies. Polling has his support close to Biden’s and streets ahead of the (admittedly very weak) Republican alternatives.

It also seems obvious that were Trump to win, he would be able to finish the job of overturning American democracy, persecuting his opponents and gutting the bureaucracy. It is clear that the reason he admires Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin is because they are the kinds of leaders he wants to be. He wants to be able to jail or execute those who oppose him. But what’s really scary is that, in all this, he is getting millions of Americans to help him overthrow the Constitution, all the while believing that they’re actually protecting it. So the Trump nightmare is still not over, and might not be over even when he’s a convicted felon. It’s deeply disappointing, and deeply troubling.

Even Husserl recognized that the ego is nothing but an empty zero point of activity, harboring no intrinsic a priori content. This empty ego is not a person, or a human, or a subject. — Joshs

So are there subjects of experience?

Thoughts ? — plaque flag

There's a word for 'embodied subjects' that applies to all sentient organisms, and by which we ourselves are routinely described - that is, 'being'. That's why I will often say (usually to much derision) that the nature of being is the proper study of ontology, and that it should be distinguished from the objective analysis of whatever exists. So, given that,

Any ontology that doesn't bother to make sense of these fails by the sin of omission. — plaque flag

I agree! I got into a big argument with a former mod about this, and my claim (which I've since abandoned) that the term 'ontology' was derived from the first-person participle of the verb 'to be' (the English equivalent of which is 'I am'.) But it is nevertheless the case that the word 'ontology' is derived from the Greek verb 'to be'. He posted an apparently classic article, The Greek Verb to Be and the Problem of Being, by Charles Kahn, which canvasses many of these issues.

I also think that there is a scientific attitude, a characteristic way of approaching problems.
— Quixodian

I agree with you. But I think a similar attitude can exist in philosophy, and that what we call science is an offshoot of this. The difference being that scientists’ ontology is naturalism. — Mikie

And an emphasis on quantification, objectivity, and replicability. Naturalism is a theoretical posit intended to differentiate science from traditional metaphysics which is associated with religion. An barrier that remains in place, if only implicitly, in this day.

While string theory has been highly productive.... — Pantagruel

Producing what, exactly? Other than research grants and tenures for academics, I mean.

Interesting bit of terminology - advocates for string theory and related multi-verse conjectures are often scornful of the insistence that speculative science ought to be subject in principle to validation or falsification by observation or experiment. They devised a slang word for those insisting on such criteria - the popperazi :grin:

The modern philosophers gave themselves a task not entertained by the ancients, to master nature. — Fooloso4

Is that the task of the philosopher, or of the engineer, technologist and scientist? I would have thought the philosophers would have plenty on their hands figuring out a meaningful narrative in the midst of constant upheavel.

Certainly there had been scientific and technological advances, but nothing on the scope of the scientific revolution. — Fooloso4

I really don't know how you can say that. Our entire worldview is going through revolutionary changes with incredible speed. The world is literally changing before our eyes.

Splendid post and very much on point. (You also just got a new follower on Medium ;-) )

Another book that would qualify for your list is The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, Heinrich Pas - a novel presentation of philosophical monism.

There's an enormous thirst for penetrating metaphysical and philosophical analysis. Quite apart from the fact that all of us here spend some time each day discussing it on this very forum, there's a huge and ever-growing list of web portals and organisations about ideas: aeon.co, scienceandnonduality.com, bigthink.com, closertotruth.com, and iai.tv come to mind, without even having to think about it. The latter hosts numerous livestreamed panel conversations with philosophers, scientists and technologists. Youtube has millions of streamed sessions and presentations on metaphysical topics. As John Haldane put it in response to Stephen Hawking's put-down of philosophy as not being able to keep up with physics, philosophy lives!

Hey Sam, a recent long interview with Pim Von Lommel https://youtu.be/NVsBFOB7H44

The scientific image (and arguably the philosophical image) is intentionally independent of any contingent human being. That's it's job. To be the truth, not just your truth or mine. — plaque flag

The issue with the (modern) scientific image is the assumption of separation between observer and observed. That itself is not a product of science but a consequence of the tendency towards modern individualism which was a defining feature of the culture gave rise to science. But the way that it showed up in modern science, was that the subject was excluded by the process of separating primary and secondary attributes - the primary being just those attributes measurable by the sciences, the secondary being associated with qualitative perception. That was the modern scientific equivalent of the 'self-abnegation' of the sage or mystic but with the cardinal difference that the latter maintained the qualitative dimension, whereas in the scientist, the qualitative dimension was equated with the (merely) subjective, and the separation of subject and object was the basic stance (leading to the state of 'cartesian anxiety').

So when you say 'the truth, not just yours or mine', that's what I mean when I refer to THE mind, not your or my mind. You and I are examples or instantiations of the cultural- and species mind. Individuation is an attribute of only the very topmost level of that mind. But that is the mind which the world is not independent of or apart from - not your mind or mine, but THE mind. It's almost like 'mind at large' but it's important not to objectify or reify it.

I am made of ghosts and mud — plaque flag

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul — Gen2:7

You did mention in another thread you’ve been reading Husserl, right? Your penultimate paragraph is phenomenological through and through, in its guise as embodied cognition.