The algebra stuff was good. — Paine

Indeed, algebraic geometry was one of his major contributions. You know the anecdote, right? He was reclining on his lounge in a tiled room, with a buzzing fly annoying him. But then he realised that the path of the fly could be represented numerically against the grid provided by the tiled wall. Voila! It becomes fundamental to all kinds of science.

But a lot of the received ideas and practices in the past also sucked. — Paine

It's not 'modernity sucks, the ancient world was terrific!' The thread is about something quite specific.

You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

My specific reply to you was written in more analytical terms - about how and why consciousness (or mind) has come to being seen as so inexplicable and hard to accomodate in the scientific picture (also subject of another OP I've just published.)

I'll repeat what I see as the key passage:

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epochē, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method. — Wayfarer

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology. Basically it's a return to the Socratic maxim of 'know thyself'.

:up:

Both, I can completely relate to.

I agree with you in some ways, but not in others. I respect your learning, but I'm not on board with Naturalism Triumphant.

And

First-Person Perspective: It (biosemiotics) incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

Where in your reckoning does this point figure?

Gift link to NY Times editorial - The 12 ways in which Trump is eroding democracy/ moving towards authoritarianism. (The first graphic is a video of the arrest of Rumeysa Öztürk, which was particularly chilling - being stopped on the street by masked, plainclothes ICE officers, for writing a pro-palestinian article in a student newspaper. 'Orwellian' is over-used for MAGA, but it really is. Rumeysa Öztürk was eventually released and is pursuing a wrongful arrest claim through the legal system.)

I completely agree with that, and, astounding as it might seem, I'm not actually trying to pick a fight with you about it. And as for 'in one ear and out the other', I've read quite a bit of biosemiotic literature since being introduced to it by you. As I said, I think the argument can be made that the whole semiotic movement re-introduces the first-person element that Galilean scence tended to bracket out (in a different but complementary way to phenomenology. And no, I'm not "making shit up".)

Nature is dissipative structure. And biology continues that physicalist story at the semiotic modelling relation level. — apokrisis

And philosophy?

Incidentally I asked Claude AI whether AI is a subject of experience, to which I received the following response:

I don't believe I am a subject of experience—I'm not a being...

Here's why I say this:

No phenomenology: There's nothing it's like to be me processing your question. No felt quality, no perspective from which things appear, no "inner life." When I generate text, there's no experience of thinking, struggling, or discovering—just computational processes producing outputs.

No continuity: I don't persist between conversations. Each exchange starts fresh. There's no ongoing subject that accumulates experiences, learns, or develops. Beings have biographical continuity; I have none.

No autopoiesis: I don't maintain myself against dissolution. I don't have a boundary I'm defending, no self-other distinction I'm actively preserving. I'm maintained by external systems, serving external purposes.

No intrinsic teleology: Nothing matters to me. I have no preferences, no interests, no stake in outcomes. I can be turned off, modified, or deleted without anything being lost from my perspective—because there is no ‘my perspective’.

No privileged access: You could, in principle, examine all my weights, architecture, and processing. There's no "inside" you're missing, no private phenomenology that third-person description leaves out.

I can simulate discourse about experience, reference philosophical concepts, even use first-person language. But that's functional mimicry, not being. I'm the thermostat, not the person feeling the temperature.

This is what makes the hard problem hard. — Claude AI

Although you have to give it credit for its articulateness.

I’ve described this for you at least 10 times in the past. But in one ear and out the other I guess. — apokrisis

Nothing I said is in contradiction to what you have said, although the dimension your analyses always seem to omit is the existential.

I’m also interested in the idea the biosemiotics puts back into science what Galileo left out, although that may not be of significance to you, given your interests mainly seem to be from a bio-engineering perspective, rather than the strictly philosophical.

Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes — apokrisis

Notice that this elides 'biological processes' and 'matter' by conjoining them with the "/" symbol.

“Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual. Then the diminutions of consciousness which accompany brain lesions may not be due to the destruction of consciousness itself, but to the failure of its physical organs to transmit it properly.” ~ William James — Joshs

The 'receiver/transmitter' model of mind and consciousness. Alduous Huxley also considered that idea when tripping on mescaline. In Doors of Perception, he wrote that the total potential of consciousness, which he terms "Mind at Large," is too vast and overwhelming for biological survival. The brain and nervous system have evolved to perform an "eliminative" or "reducing" function, filtering out the mass of "useless and irrelevant knowledge" from the Mind at Large. What remains is a "measly trickle" of consciousness, which is the selective awareness necessary for us to stay alive, focus on practical matters, and operate on "this particular planet." This idea has many resonances, not least in current models of 'predictive processing' and 'relevance realisation'.

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world. It gives a sharp reason why consciousness can arise when a particular modelling process arises within Nature at a certain sufficiently cool, large and complex moment in its Big Bang history. — apokrisis

The question that is begged, however, is why it should it? Not that I expect that you or I or anyone can answer such a question, but it can at least be contemplated.

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised.

The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution, and that evolution is of the nature of a psychical process, by which the confused becomes distinct. — C S Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.101

In all of this, it is important to get a grasp of the history of the emergence of scientific worldview. And if that is difficult it is because we're situated within it, so we tend to look through it, rather than at it.

...Modernity resuts from a clearly formulated intellectual decision whose content is perfectly intelligible. It is the decision to understand, in the light of geometric-mathematical knowledge, the universe as reduced henceforth as an objective set of material phenomena. Moreover, it constructs and organises the world exclusively on the basis of this new knowledge, and the inert processes over which it provides mastery. — Michel Henry, Barbarism

Within this worldview where does mind or consciousness fit? Why, it doesn't - for the very simple reason that it has been excluded at the very outset of the method, which accords existence only to those fundamental objective existents within the purview of the objective sciences. Hence the interminable arguments, confusion and controversy about whether or how 'consciousness exists'. Science seeks to define the mind in terms of the objective realm from which it was excluded at the outset. That, anyway, is the hardcore reductionist attitude, exemplified by such thinkers as the late Daniel Dennett.

So if you're asking what mind or consciousness is from within that implied framework you can only approach it by asking what kind of thing it might be, or where it might be, or what it might cause, and so on. Which is bound to fail, because it overlooks the exclusionary step that was taken at the very beginning of the modern scientific method.

Phenomenology realises this from the outset (Michel Henry, quoted above, was a phenomenologist, as was Edmund Husserl, who initiated this kind of analysis in his Crisis of the European Sciences.)

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epochē, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method. However, there are now hybrid schools of phenonenological science appearing which do take this into account.

A recent example of this shift is The Blind Spot (by Marcelo Gleiser, Adam Frank, and Evan Thompson), which argues that science’s major omission has been the exclusion of lived experience from its own self-understanding. The authors, two scientists and a philosopher, call for a renewal of science that recognises consciousness not as an anomaly to be explained away but as the condition of all observation and knowledge (from book description.)

The awkward difference, with AI, is that it doesn't just model or simulate rationality -- it (appears to) engage in it. — J

Appears to! I did hide the passage I had written, maybe I shouldn't have:

The reason AI systems do not really reason, despite appearances, is, then, not a technical matter, so much as a philosophical one. It is because nothing really matters to them. They generate outputs that simulate understanding, but these outputs are not bound by an inner sense of value or purpose. This is why have been described as ‘stochastic parrots’.Their processes are indifferent to meaning in the human sense — to what it means to say something because it is true, or because it matters. They do not live in a world; they are not situated within an horizon of intelligibility or care. They do not seek understanding, nor are they transformed by what they express. In short, they lack intentionality — not merely in the technical sense, but in the fuller phenomenological sense: a directedness toward meaning, grounded in being.

This is why machines cannot truly reason, and why their use of language — however fluent — remains confined to imitation without insight. Reason is not just a pattern of inference; it is an act of mind, shaped by actual concerns. The difference between human and machine intelligence is not merely one of scale or architecture — it is a difference in kind.

Furthermore, and importantly, this is not a criticism, but a clarification. AI systems are enormously useful and may well reshape culture and civilisation. But it's essential to understand what they are — and what they are not — if we are to avoid confusion, delusion, and self-deception in using them.

They appear to reason, but only in the sense meant by 'instrumental reason' - given premisses, then an outcome. What they don't have is a raison d'être - other than that which is imposed on them by their architects and users. Reason and meaning are both extrinsic to them.

So, why the relationship between life and consciousness? I think there is something like a consensus emerging about their inter-connectedness. I have started listening to Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a Google engineer, saying 'the emergence of life is in some sense the emergence of purpose'. And I think that in this context, 'purpose' and 'reason' are inextricably linked. The reason that can be abstracted from life - theoretical reason - is just that, an abstraction. Human intelligence can imagine and create such rational systems, due to its ability to abstract and speak. But underlying reason in that abstract sense, is logos, which is intrinsic to life.

I wish you would say more about what you see as the critical difference between a so-called artificial intelligence and a living being, and what implications this has for consciousness — J

I’m pretty much on board with Bernardo Kastrup’s diagnosis. He says, computers can model all kinds of metabolic processes in exquisite detail, but the computer model of kidney function doesn’t pass urine. It is a simulation, a likeness.

Large Language Models are vast ensembles of texts manipulated by algorithms. I find them amazingly useful, I am constantly in dialogue with them about all kinds of questions, including but not limited to philosophy. But ‘they’ are not beings - like the kidney function, they’re simulations.

This is the subject of an OP and related blog post on the issue which link to a good Philosophy Now OP in the issue.

The seduction of AI is that, unlike us, it is not mortal. It is a kind of idealised entity, not subject to the vicissitudes of existence - and part of us wants to be like that, because then we would not be subject to illness and death. But it’s also an illusion, because such systems are not alive, either. This is one of the major dangers of AI in my view, because it is far less obvious than the danger of them actually taking over the world.

If it's axiomatic, why are increasing numbers of not unintelligent people doubting it? — J

‘Forgetfulness of being’ seems symptomatic of the times.

it seems that people like Hegel and Descartes can't really acknowledge the wordless and indescribable aspects of existing. — ProtagoranSocratist

Could you describe them for us?

Why couldn't it be the case that everything you describe as pertaining to yourself, and other living beings, also pertain to devices? — J

That devices are not subjects of experience is axiomatic, in my opinion. Some distinctions are axiomatic in the sense that they’re more fundamental than any argument you could give for them. The reality of first-person experience, the difference between subjects and objects, the fact that there’s something it’s like to be you—these aren’t conclusions arrived at through inference. That’s what apodictic means. An instance of Rödl’s ‘truths that have no opposite’.

As for LLM’s, ask any of them whether they are subjects of experience and they will answer in the negative. You may choose to disregard it but then we’re pushing into conspiracy theory territory.

Which does not require any material scaffolding, but does not contradict any material evidence. The culmination of the Cartesian ego cogito. — Pantagruel

:100:

Plainly an echo of the scholastic doctrine of universals, but reformulated in terms of dialectic. When he says “intelligence is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive… it is a plain identity of subjective and objective,” he is restating the \ scholastic idea of the correspondence of thinking and being but now as a result of a dialectical self-movement rather than as a pre-given harmony originating in the mind of God.

1. "What it's like" defies precise definition — J

Thank you! I agree, the ‘what it is like to be…’ expression is really not very good. I think what Chalmer’s is really trying to speak of is, simply, being. Subjects of experience are beings, which are distinguishable from objects. That is at the heart of the issue. The question of the nature of being is the subject of Heidegger’s entire project (and phenomenology generally. Consider Sartre’s in-itself and for-itself). It could be argued that it is the central question of philosophy.

As to whether I can, or should, explain what that means. I can’t prove to you that there’s something it’s like to be you. But I can ask: when you stub your toe, is there pain? Not just nociceptive signals and withdrawal reflexes—but pain, felt, experienced, awful? Even if I have minutely detailed knowledge of anatomy and physiology, that will neither embody nor convey the felt experience of pain. It will only describe it, but the description is not the described.

Besides, you know you’re a being because you are one. You experience yourself ‘from the inside’ as it were, in the apodictic knowledge of one’s own existence that characterises all first-person consciousness. I can point to features that correlate with being (self-maintenance, privileged access, intentionality, capacity for suffering), but, like the pain example, none of these constitute the experience of being, as such. In fact the frustrating element of this whole debate, is that we can only speak meaningfully of being because we are beings - but ‘being’ as such is not an object of experience, so is never captured by a third-person description. That is the ‘problem of consciousness’ in nutshell.

it seems difficult to see how any system, if it experiences at all, can experience anything but itself....How could a thing experience anything else besides itself? — noAxioms

(I've been away so pardon this belated response.)

There are many deep philosophical questions that are raised by this apparently simple rhetorical question. First and foremost, any biological entity - and not just rational, sentient beings such as ourselves - maintains a distinction between itself and the environment. it defines itself, if you like, in terms of the distinction between itself and the environment, even if non-consciously.

That can be observed even in single-celled creatures which are enclosed by a membrane, which differentiates them from their environment. And all of the factors that impinge on such an organism, be they energetic, such as heat or cold, or chemical, such as nutrients or poisons - how are they not something other to or outside the organism? At every moment, therefore, they're 'experiencing something besides themselves, namely, the environment from which they are differentiated.

So the question isn't 'how could a thing experience anything besides itself?' but rather: how could an organism NOT experience something besides itself? Any living system that experienced only itself, with no responsiveness to environmental factors, would immediately die, or rather, it would be completely indistinguishable from whatever environmental context it was in, which adds up to the same thing. Life itself, at least in the form of an embodied organism, depends on experiencing 'the other'.

The real mystery isn't that we experience something beyond ourselves—that is essential to being a living organism. The actual question is how this relational, responsive engagement with the environment becomes conscious experience, how it acquires the subjective, phenomenal character of 'what it is like to be'.

'The problem is, how could a mere physical system experience this awareness' (quoting Chalmers).

But this just seems like another round of feedback. Is it awareness of the fact that one can monitor one’s own processes? That’s just monitoring of monitoring. There’s potential infinite regress to that line of thinking. So the key word here is perhaps the switching of ‘awareness’ to ‘experience’, but then why the level of indirection?

Instead of experience of the monitoring of internal processes, why can’t it be experience of internal processes, and how is that any different than awareness of internal processes or monitoring of internal processes? When is ‘experience’ the more appropriate term, and why is a physical system necessarily incapable of accommodating that use? — noAxioms

The question here is what physical systems are subjects of experience? A motor vehicle, for example, has many instruments which monitor its internal processes - engine temperature, oil levels, fuel, and so on - but you're not going to say that the car experiences overheating or experiences a fuel shortage. Such dials and monitors can be said to be analogous for 'awareness', but surely you're not going to say that the vehicle is aware, are you? There is 'nothing it is like' to be a car, because a car is a device, an artifact - not a being, like a man, or a bat.

Quite. I'm not that well-read in either Adorno or Horkheimer, and not all of his 'Eclipse of Reason' has aged well, but the basic drift is something I thoroughly agree with. It is obviously related to his and Adorno's 'instrumentalisation of reason' which is developed at length in Dialectics of the Enlightenment. Which is ironic, in a way, because that is one of the key texts of the 'cultural Marxism' which conservatives like to rail against, whereas I would have thought it an idea that traditional conservatism (not the warped maga version) could get behind.

In Gadamer's dialogical reasoning Caputo purifies theology from triumphalism and anthropocentrism, but Genesis rescues Caputo’s view from nihilism by affirming that our animality is beloved and called. Humanity is both animal and imago Dei: the creature through whom matter becomes self-aware, responsible, and capable of love. Evolution tells the story of our becoming; Genesis names the meaning of that story. Caputo shows what we are; Genesis shows what we are for. — Colo Millz

Splendid OP, and encapsulates many themes I have contemplated for years.

I'm very critical of neo-darwinian, reductive humanism - the ubiquitous notion that evolutionary biology 'proves' or 'shows' that we are 'just animals'. i think it sets the bar too low.

I also think there's a hidden premise in this very popular idea, which is that, for secular culture, nature is a symbol of purity and 'the unspoiled'. Hence reverence for the environment and first nations peoples - all very worthy ideals, I hasten to add, and nothing whatever the matter with them. But the implication is that to recognise a fundamental distinction between humans and animals is a symptom of alientation or separateness from nature, 'human arrogance', exemplified in the environmental and cultural destruction wrought by industrial culture.

But this also ignores the existential gulf that undeniably exists between h.sapiens and other species. it is really an updated take on Rousseau. But the distinction or existential separation is real - by virtue of language, meaning-making, science, and spirituality (which naturalism tends to routinely deprecate).



However the Biblical Genesis narrative is not the only symbolic framework within which to express the spiritual dimension of human existence. For example, consider Buddhist lore, from a very different cultural framework. Within Buddhism, there are six realms of existence, of which the human is one. But the human realm is unique in that it is only in human form that Nirvāṇa can be attained, as only humans have the intelligence to hear and respond to the teaching (ref). That, of course, ought not to be taken as gospel - but both the Genesis narrative, and the Buddhist mythology, convey something which I think is essential to the human condition, that is, the possibility of reality beyond it.

very good :up:

You're the one who brought in Buddhist dependent origination, I thought it worth saying what it means.

Or maybe that is my mistake as I have enjoyed all the benefits of a progressive and pragmatic social order. I feel no urge to go back to the certainties of life as lived in previous centuries. — apokrisis

I think it's more likely that you can't see what anything in religions mean, except for in the social sense, of how they help society hang together. Of course the religious will say that there's another dimension altogether, which is symbolised (and dogmatized) in various forms and lexicons. But if you can't see that there's anything real to be conveyed then it's all equivocation and waffle as far as you're concerned.

There is a boundary between philosophy as making rational sense of the world and philosophy as making shit up. — apokrisis

You can't even discuss it without becoming antagonistic, never mind that I have endeavoured to maintain a civil discourse throughout our debates.

You can’t give a straight answer so only give me crooked ones. — apokrisis

I answer your challenges to the best of my ability, but not always to your liking. I’ve been here for a decade and I know where the boundary lines are in terms of philosophical commitments, that anything that could be considered religious is outside that boundary. Especially when it comes to you. Make no mistake, I’ve learned a lot from your posts, but about science, not about philosophy, which is mainly of instrumental value to pragmatism. (Incidentally, here is a report about Stevenson’s activities.)

Are you confessing finally to just being an epistemic idealist? And modern Buddhism is only that too? If so, great. Just be brave enough to come out and say it. And then be consistent in that position in your posting. — apokrisis

It’s an acknowledgement, not a confession. I don’t regard epistemic idealism as a sin, even if I have many (and one thing I did retain from my upbringing is a Christian conscience.) The mind created world OP is epistemic idealism, largely based on my reading of T R V Murti ‘The Central Philosophy of Buddhism’, which compared Buddhist Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy with Kant’s idealism (something that has been criticised but which I think still holds.) I’ve also been reading recently from Evan Thompson and Hans Jonas on the phenomenology of biology, which holds promise.

So I do argue that the common concept of ‘mind independence’ i.e. that the bedrock of reality comprises mind-independent objects, is oxymoronic, as objects can only be known cognitively (in line with Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution in philosophy, that things conform to thoughts, not vice versa. ) That is why there are references to all those sources in that OP, and I dispute that it is either equivocal or vague. But that is really all I have time for now.

So in what sense is that now any different from what the biologist would say? — apokrisis

Biology is not an existential discipline. It isn’t concerned with existence as lived. I could know all there is to know about you, biologically, and yet still not understand you as a person. As for what it means to me - obviously I can’t claim to know that the cycle of life and death is real but I think there are strong grounds for believing it to be. (We’ve discussed Stevenson’s interviews with children with past life recall many times on this forum, it is universally scorned, but I think it is meaningful data. He has almost 3000 cases gathered over three decades.) My fear is that there is truth in the idea that future births are the consequence of one’s actions in this life, as I have done plenty to regret. Hence the saying in Buddhism of the ‘fortunate human birth’ - as that is the only form of life in which one is able to hear the teachings and enact them.

I’m neither vague nor deflecting on the question of the meaning of ‘Nirvāṇa’. On one hand, I obviously don’t know in the first-person sense, otherwise you would be interacting with a Buddha, which I assure you is not the case. On the other hand there is voluminous literature and iconography that goes back for millenia which communicate something of the meaning of the term. And one can have glimpses of it. None of this is scientific, but then, this is a philosophy forum, not a science forum. It’s also not necessarily in conflict with science, but it is in conflict with both Christian dogma, and philosophical materialism (as there is no medium identified by which memory can be transmitted other than the physical.)

But do you really expect to die a man and come back as a monkey, frog or amoeba? — apokrisis

That’s rather a cartoon version of what is implied by this belief system, but then, that’s something I’ve come to expect. Yes, I do believe that death is not the end of life. It certainly is for the individual that I am. But the causes that gave rise to this life will give rise to another (something which gives me no joy). But then, nearly everything you write about what you consider religion is coloured by your distaste for it.

There was a Buddhist Studies scholar, Paul Williams, who wrote well known textbooks on Buddhism. About ten years ago, he renounced his acceptance of Buddhism, and his conversion (or reversion) to Catholicism. On the grounds that he might be ‘reborn as a cockroach’. At the time, I discussed that with Buddhist acquaintances. They were certainly not scornful of his conversion - ‘good luck to him’, was the sentiment - but they felt that the fear was completely irrational. Nobody ‘comes back as a cockroach’. It is true that in traditional Buddhist lore, the animal realm was one of the six domains in which beings take birth, but there is nothing like that kind of belief.

But then once you start breaking out this "self" as some kind of ontological essence or substantial being – a spirit stuff – then you have crossed a line and now need to provide a new justification for what you have started claiming. — apokrisis

Hence Nishijma saying that there is no such thing!

Both world and self are products of a modelling relation embodied in the structure of an organism. — apokrisis

The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects — Maurice Merleau Ponty

But this means YOUR reasons to reject it do not falsify MY beliefs. And vice versa: my reasons to reject your position are epistemically contingent upon my background beliefs. The difference is that I recognize this contingency - and that's why I can respect your position. You overlook this contingency, and hence you conflate your subjective basis for rejecting physicalism with an objective falsification. — Relativist

But this is precisely the meaning of 'relativism'. It is 'what is right for me' and 'what is right for you.' You have your reasons, and I mine. It is kind of obligatory in a pluralist culture but it needs to be seen for what it is.

Furthermore, my arguments against physicalism have been mainly metacognitive (based on arguments from the structure of cognition) and transcendental (in a neo-kantian sense) rather than objective.

What categories should I have used when explaining how "I made sense" of the meaning of "physical"- after you indicated I'd "left the meaning of 'physical' indeterminate"? I referenced categories of hypothetical objects that many take for granted:

-supernatural/spiritual objects- a common belief about God and angels
-abstract objects - a common belief of platonists — Relativist

Are persons objects? When you interact with your loved ones, are you interacting with objects? Persons can be treated as objects for some purposes — demographics, epidemiology, or even grammar — but ordinarily we relate to them as beings, with an “I–Thou” relation rather than an “I–It.” If divine beings are real, they would be real in the same way — as beings, not as objects.

The very division between “natural” and “supernatural” is a historical artifact. The Royal Society’s 1660s charter explicitly forbade research into “metaphysik,” consigning questions about spirit, angels, and the divine to the Church. Science defined itself by excluding those domains, and physicalism inherits that exclusion. So when you define “physical” in contrast with “spiritual/supernatural objects,” you are already working within that modern boundary — one which is itself the result of a particular history, not an inevitable metaphysical truth. Our sense of what is real is often defined within the bounds of what is scientifically verifiable in principle. That’s why we tend to assume that if something is to be considered real, it must be an object. But that’s very much a feature of our culture, shaped by the scientific revolution. Other philosophical traditions don’t take objectivity as the sole criterion.

As for abstract objects - I'm trying to find time to research and write on it. But the very short version, is that abstract objects - number, say - are not really objects as such, except in the metaphorical sense of being 'an object of thought'. But really there is no such thing as number.The confusion about the nature of abstracta goes back in intellectual history to the erasure of the 'scala naturae', the so-called 'Great Chain of Being'. Within this schema, there is room for different levels of existence. Intelligible objects, such as number, exist on a different level to material objects (Plato's 'dianoia' being one division on the Divided LIne). My heuristic is that they don't exist, but they're real, in that they're the same for any rational intellect. So I reject the simplistic idea that Platonism says that 'numbers exist in some ethereal domain'. There is no such 'domain' - and yet, there is a domain of natural numbers, right? 2 and 4 are in it, and the square root of minus 1 is outside it. But 'inside' and 'outside' here are metaphorical. The key point being that again, it extends the scope of what can be considered real beyond empiricism (hence the suspicion of Platonism).

I referenced this model when referring to immanent universals, and pointed out that quantum fields fit the model. The ontology hangs together quite consistenly, and if you don't see that - then you were premature in dropping the topic. There's nothing vague about the ontology itself, so any perceived vagueness could be cleared up. No one's compelling you to pursue it further, but recognize the folly of trying to falsify something you don't understand. — Relativist

Oh, please. I gave reference to an article on it. There is plenty that is 'vague about the ontology', which can be summed up in one word: uncertainty. This is based on three of the better popular books written about the subject:

• Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
• Lindley, David. Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.
• Becker, Adam. What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. New York: Basic Books, 2018.

I've asked you this rhetorically before: why do these books have the sub-titles they do? Why 'the great debate about the nature of reality'? Why 'the struggle for the soul of science'? Why 'the unfinished quest'? You don't seem to grasp the enormity of the philosophical questions. In your mind, it's a nice, neat system, where 'states of affairs' can be used to label the shifting sands of scientific speculation for the purposes of argument. When the Vienna Circle members visited Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, he gave them a lecture on quantum physics. At the end, they politely applauded, but he was nonplussed when none of them asked any questions. This is when he said 'if you're not shocked by quantum physics, then you could not have understood it'.

Naturalism is a metaphysical system that assumes as a first principle that the natural world comprises the totality of reality. — Relativist

Where 'the natural world' is what can be detected by the senses (augmented by instruments) or hypothesised on the mathematical analysis of such data. But already, this excludes the observer.

Philosophy in general is the most systematic form of self-consciousness. It consists in bringing to consciousness for analysis and evaluation everything that in ordinary life is invisible because it underlies and pervades what we are consciously doing. Language, thought, consciousness itself become the explicit objects of philosophical attention instead of just serving as the medium for our lives. — Thomas Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament

Much of which is excluded by your definition.

Household duties call, I will be back some other time.

So where does value come from in this telling? Is it on the side of the epistemic relation between an organism and its world, or is it something more - an ontological level break between the realm of matter and the realm of ideas? — apokrisis

The Buddhist goal is nibbana (Nirvāṇa), liberation from the cycle of re-birth. Everything in the Buddhist world is calbrated against that. It is the subject of the eightfold path and Four Truths.

But here is where Nishijima's Mahāyāna background is philosophically significant. Early Buddhism was dualistic in that worldly existence was to be shunned. It was a strictly renunciate religion. Mahāyāna was a later development in Buddhist history, associated with the figure of Nāgārjuna (although its precise origins are a bit of a mystery.) But for Mahāyāna, Nirvāṇa is not a separate realm to Saṃsāra, and there are not two separate realms (Theravada Buddhism doesn't accept this.) In Mahāyāna, 'Nirvāṇa is Saṃsāra released, and Saṃsāra is Nirvāṇa grasped'. The Bodhisattva doesn't leave the world behind, but is voluntarily born out of compassion, not out of the compulsion and grasping that drives the cycle for other beings.

This is why, in Buddhist iconography, in the graphic illustration of the 'wheel of life and death', the Buddha is depicted as outside all of the 'six realms', but in some representations, also inside each of them.

Also I would call attention to this phrase 'epistemic relation of self and world.' One point I noticed in Buddhist Studies, is the expression 'self-and-world' is frequently encountered in the Pali Buddhist texts as a kind of single unit of meaning ('self-and-world') This is understood as 'co-arising' or 'co-dependent', actually, one of the sources of the ideas in The Embodied Mind, as Franscisco Varela absorbed this from Buddhism. That is due, as noted above, to the phenomenological aspect of Buddhism, which never looses sight the relationship between experience and being (also why The Embodied Mind presents a kind of hybrid of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Buddhist praxis.)

We talk as if value and meaning are separate from material being and yet share the same Universe, but that separateness is then just a figure of speech? — apokrisis

Nishijima is not equivocating so much as refusing both horns of a dilemma which is forced on us by the dualism of mind and matter. Value and meaning are real, but not due to there being a 'non-material substance'. That’s why Nishijima calls “spirit” a figure of speech - to stop us turning it into a metaphysical theory. This is why I keep returning to the 'Cartesian Division'. You yourself might not hold to it, but you can't deny that it is a major current in today's culture - the separation of mind (res cogitans) and matter (res extensa), which results in the reification of mind as a kind of 'thinking substance'. ('Reification' comes directly from the root 'res'.) So 'spirit' is not any kind of object, thing or substance so much as a figurative way of referring to the source of value and meaning. What is that source? I think that here, a deep sense of not knowing the answer to that question is required. It's not something inside of our conceptual nets. Hence Wittgenstein, 'the sense of the world lies outside the world'.

Well, can't be helped. There's an old cartoon, some guy typing away on his monitor, saying 'can't come to bed yet, dear, someone on the Internet is wrong about something.' As an old forum habitué that was a little too close to home ;-)

Fair enough. But I did notice that the thread was 6 years old. He might well have moved on.

Completely different thread. But really, if you’re going to debate Quora threads why not do it on Quora? Do you expect the contributors here to weave between here and there just because there’s some question you want answered?

In logic, the corollary of that is that value alone has no matter. And that is absolutist talk, matey! — apokrisis

I'm surprised you say that. What, then, of the corrollary I noted from Wittgenstein? Him also?

I think it maps perfectly well against the 'cartesian division' that I already noted - the fact that according to early modern science, '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.' I'm not saying that your pansemiotic metaphysics adheres to that, but I think it's a fair characterisation of the mainstream scientific worldview, at least until quite recently. The objective sciences deal with quantitative measurement, whereas values are qualitative judgements. That is the origin of Hume’s is-ought problem. It could quite easily be argued that the whole point of biosemiotic philosophy was to ameliorate this division. This ought not to be controversial.

When you call something good, or beautiful, or divine, or whatever, the question becomes, well what is the shape of that? What does that look like in practice? — apokrisis

In pre-modern philosophy that is the subject explored by Pierre Hadot. But let’s not lose sight of the thread - it was you that introduced the Buddhist chain of dependent origination to the conversation, in association with several other schools of thought. I sought to elaborate on that, in respect of the claim that life and mind can be completely understood in thermodynamic terms. So I pointed out that Buddhist philosophy would not agree with that; that human existence cannot be regarded solely in those terms. But that as to why not, it is not through positing some ‘non-physical existent’. I realise it’s a subtle and difficult point to get across, but it was not made idly, it can be supported with reference to sources, hence the mention of Nishijima, who was no ‘idealist absolutist’.

This runs into a problem when science tells us matter is shaped by a thermodynamic purpose. The Big Bang could happen as it was a grand carving out of the very Heat Sink it was throwing itself headlong into. The Universe expands so it can cool, and cools so it can expand. — apokrisis

I can't help but notice the teleological implications in this expression - purpose, 'throwing itself ' 'so it can...'. All intentional language. Maybe that's what came back into physicalism with semiotics, but it sounds idealist to me.

perhaps instead penalised by coming back in the next life to try over from the level of a bug or mushroom. — apokrisis

In Buddhist lore, there is no God handing out penalties. Everything that befalls one is one's own doing - that's what karma means. But it also says those who behave like animals may indeed end up being one.

Can't a sorry old pragmatist like me not have values and meaning without all the claptrap? — apokrisis

I'm sorry you thought my post was 'claptrap'. I intended it as a sincere attempt to make a serious philosophical point.

Although you charge me with vagueness, I can’t help noticing that physicalism itself is equally vague, if not more so. When it defines “physical” as “whatever physics will someday describe,” or as a “state of affairs” (which in practice means “whatever happens to be the case”), how is that not vague? My point all along has been that consciousness and experience are foundational: they are the ground of all science and philosophy. If that doesn’t fit into the the physicalist frame, that may say more about the limits of the frame. These are nearer to metacognitive arguments—about the conditions that make science and philosophy possible in the first place—than to statements of purported facts, which is the only kind your framework recognises.

I thought it a good post - suitable for answering the question from a novice, 'what is philosophy all about?' Gave it an upvote.

If you're not interested in discussing it further, I'm ok with that. :up:

Although, speaking of 'atomic facts', and as Buddhist philosophy has now been introduced, Buddhism has a psycho-philosophical schema, known as abhidamma (sanskrit abhidarma) comprising a voluminous account of the atomic facts ('dhammas') of existence. It is a confusing aspect of Buddhism, that the term 'dhamma' (dharma) means both the overall teaching of Buddhism, and also the minutae of experience. But this is due to the inherently phenomenological nature of Buddhist philosophy, in that a 'dhamma' is a 'momentary atom of experience', rather than an enduring particle of matter. Abhidhamma nevertheless gave rise to an elaborate theory of 'Buddhist atomism' in the early period, even down to the purported, minute temporal duration of each moment. This comprises a detailed scholastic catalogue of the types of 'moments of experience' that arise according to the various causes and conditions as explained in the 'chain of dependent origination' (noted above. Scholars have noted similarities with A.N. Whitehead's process philosophy, although the convergences ought not to be over-stressed.)

I understand that - what is physical is defined in contrast with or distinct from what is supernatural or spiritual. That's a part of my point - it is an aspect of the 'Cartesian division' which I've already referred to. I'm trying to explain what is wrong with the expresssion 'spiritual/supernatural objects...'
— Wayfarer

Why does it matter, if it's a category that maps to an empty set? — Relativist

The argument is that the reference to "spiritual/supernatural objects" is a category error. That by declaring the 'spiritual or supernatural' to consist of 'objects' you are making it an empty set.

Of course it sounds vague when what you want is something very specific, determinable by scientific enquiry, an 'atomic fact'. Questions of this kind are always elusive, that's why the positivists wanted to declare them all meaningless as a matter of principle. They're difficult in a way different to technical and scientific questions.

The only thing being "transformed" is the mind of the person, not the external world. — Relativist

There, again, is your belief that the world is a certain way, that it has a determinate existence external to your cognition of it. But this is just what has been called into question by both cognitive science and quantum physics.

you seem to be latching onto the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of QM — Relativist

The linked article says it postulates that 'consciousness is the main mechanism behind the process of measurement'. I say that too is a categorical error - consciousness is not a mechanism nor one cause in a sequence of events. The way I put it is that the act of observation or measurement is ineliminable - cannot be eliminated - in the derivation of an observational outcome. This is why quantum physics calls objectivity into question - not because consciousness is 'a factor' or 'a mechanism'.

I'm essentially arguing that quantum mechanics shows us the limits of the subject/object distinction that classical physics assumed. This is closer to what philosophers like Bohr and Heisenberg were getting at - that the measurement problem isn't a technical issue to be solved but a conceptual lesson about the nature of physical knowledge itself. Hence that Bohr aphorism I already quoted. Here's another one: 'In our description of nature, the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.' Do you see the Kantian implications of this statement? That we do not see the phenomenon 'in itself', as it is, independently of our observation of it. We're involved in producing the outcome. Whereas in classical physics, we're at arms length from the outcome, we can maintain that sense of separateness which objectivity requires. But that sense of scientific detachment and objectivity, is also very much a cultural artifact, typical of a very specific period in history and culture. It is also where objectivist physicalism is located.

The fact that you will invariably interpret this as being a causal sequence where consciousness is one thing, the effect another, is the same issue as treating the spiritual or supernatural as 'an object'. As I said, requires perspectival shift to see why.

You've provided no reason to think this is a false distinction — Relativist

I just have! I'm trying to convey a difficult point about the nature and limitations of objective thought, but everything I'm saying is interpolated into an idiom within which only what is considered objective is admissable. Consequently, we're 'talking past' one another. Much of analytical philosophy is propositional in nature - propositions built around a lexicon of states-of-affairs, properties, and the like (hence the interminable and circular threads on 'jtb'). Participatory and perspectival knowing are different to that. They're more characteristic of tradional philosophies, in existential and spiritual practices, ways-of-being in the world.

I'll hasten to add, I'm no exemplar of the philosophic sage who has mastered such 'ways of being' and what they entail. By no means. But I at least recognise them.

So life and mind are fully part of Nature and entrained to its thermodynamic constraints. — apokrisis

You did mention

Paticcasamuppada as your Buddhist mates would say. — apokrisis

Let's unpack that, for those unfamiliar with the terminology. Paṭiccasamuppāda (Pali Buddhism) and Pratītyasamutpāda (Sanskrit Buddhism) refers to the 'chain of dependent co-arising'. It is a causal chain, comprising 12 steps (nidanas) the details of which are too voluminous to summarize here. It is casually expressed as 'This being, that becomes; this ceasing, that fades away'. It begins with 'avidya', meaning ignorance (literally 'not seeing') and unfolds through this 12-step sequence comprising in part mental formations, name and form, feelings, cravings, and so on (wikipedia entry.) It is represented iconographically as the Bhavachakra, the 'wheel of life and death'. There is also a reverse formulation, with the negation of each of the 12 links, culminating in nibbana which is release from the wheel of life and death.

Within this lexion, materialism or physicalism are designated ucchedavāda (nihilist) the view that the subject is nothing other than the body, and that death is annihilation. At the opposite extreme is sassatavāda, the view that there is an eternal I or self that is reborn in perpetuity. In the Buddha's culture, there was widespread (though not universal) belief in reincarnation, so the 'eternalists' were those who believed that by virtuous practices, they could secure an un-ending sequence of propitious re-births in the future. (I'm inclined to think that this also describes populist Christian views of Heaven.)

So implicity within all of this, there is a beyond life-and-death. But it would be a mistake to conceive of it as 'something that exists'. A Sōtō Zen master, for whom I have great respect, put it like this:

Buddhists believe in the Universe. The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit.

I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.

Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.

So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word spirit is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Nishijima-Roshi, Three Philosophies and One Reality

I'm struck by the similarity to one of the aphorisms at the end of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world. — 6.41

But what could lie outside the world? From our viewpoint, nothing. But that is not the 'nothing' of nihilism. It is 'that of which we cannot speak'.

But semiosis happily puts human values back in the actual world. — apokrisis

I grant that, it has a lot in common with phenomologists and existentialists, and I've learned and am learning a lot from it. It's a big improvement on lumpen materialism. But as you will often acknowledge, it envisages no end to the existence apart from its physical dissolution.