2) I disagree. Naturalism says that all of our phenomena have natural causes (obey natural laws of this universe) — noAxioms

Ok. But, again, what is 'natural', though? Also, we do not have a complete understanding of 'natural laws', so it is difficult to determine what might not be natural.
Also, if there was another 'universe' with different laws, would that be 'not natural'?

My example of one was a spacetime diagram which has no point of view. How is that still 1st person then, or at least not 3rd? — noAxioms

Those who interpret physical theories as 'useful models' would regard that diagram as an useful abstraction that has practical value.

Yes, it seems dualistic to assume that. — noAxioms

Ok, it makes sense. A provisional dualism.

Not directly. It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence. — noAxioms

Correct. But how can you know, from your cognitive perspective, that it's not the latter?

For instance, let's say you are on a pebble beach. It's certainly useful to us to regard different pebbles as 'different things'. But this doesn't imply that each pebble is a distinct entity. In fact, IIRC we agreed before that macroscopic inanimate objects do not seem to be 'real entities' but are more likely to be useful abstractions that help us to 'navigate' in the world. Perhaps the 'pebbles' are merely emergent features of their constituents and envinronment - so the 'pebbles' are mentally imputed and not real 'entities', and we can reasonably argue for that.

So, how do you tell the difference between something 'describable' and something that is 'of the description'?

Perhaps so. This is consistent with my supervention hierarchy that goes something like mathematics->quantum->physical->mental->ontology(reality) which implies that the physical is mind independent (mind supervenes on it, not the other way around) but reality is mind dependent since what is real is a mental designation, and an arbitrary one at that. There's no fact about it, only opinion. — noAxioms

But, again, can we reasonably speak of the 'physical' or even the 'quantum' without making ontic commitments? And what about the possibility that mathematics is conceptual?
The 'worldview' you are presenting here seems to me a sort of 'neo-pythagoreanism', where mathematics is fundamental and everything else is derivative. I prefer this worldview than physicalist ones. But as Steven Hawking asked “What breathes fire into the equations?” That is, how can mathematics 'produce' everything else?

Nit: A thing 'looking like' anything is by definition a sensation, so while a world might (by some definitions) exists sans an sort of sensations, it wouldn't go so far as to 'look like' anything. — noAxioms

Good point. Notice however that what you call 'sensation' is in fact an interpretation of the 'sense data', a model if you like. In the same way, one might say that our theories might be like perceptions (interestingly, David Bohm made this point).
If, however, 'reality' has an intelligible structure, it must 'look like' in some way...

It is related to sentient experience in that some sentient thing is conceiving it. But that isn't a causal relation. Objects in each world cannot have any causal effect on each other, and yes, I can conceive of such a thing, doing so all the time. Wayfarer apparently attempts to deny at least the ability to do so without choosing a point of view, but I deny that such a choice is necessary. Any spacetime diagram is such a concept without choice of a point of view. — noAxioms

Yes, both SR and GR taken literally imply a 'block universe', i.e. only the 4D spacetime is real and 'space and time' are abstractions. Interestingly, both Minkowski and Einstein himself read relativity in this way (Einstein even wrote a letter of condolences for the passing of his friend Michele Besso saying that physics has more or less proven that space and time are abstractions, IIRC).

But notice that the question is hardly settled. Einstein, despite taking relativity at 'face value', was deeply troubled by the 'problem of the now', that is how can we reconcile our immediate experience of the 'present' and the 'flow of time' with what relativity seemed to imply.
Personally, I don't think that QM supports the 'block universe' view. After all, if quantum events are not deterministic it doesn't seem the case that 'everything is fixed'.
If, however, the 'block universe' is not 'how things really are', it certainly make us wonder how to interpret relativity. There are operational interpretations of SR, which are quite similar to epistemic interpretations of QM, i.e. SR doesn't describe the 'how things really are' but it's an useful instrument for us to make predictions and applications. GR, however, is a different animal: it's difficult in GR to deny that spacetime isn't something 'physical'. So, yes, GR definitely supports the 'block view'. QM however doesn't. So what?

I don't consider this to be just a physicalist problem. The idealists have the same problem. It's a problem with any kind of realism, which is why lean towards a relational ontology which seems to not have this problem. — noAxioms

Ontological Idealists in the most general sense posit at least that 'the mental' is in some sense fundamental. So, it's really not surprising that the 'physical' has a structure that is analogous to the mental. Same goes for your view that mathematics is fundamental. It's not surprising that mathematics is incredibly successful in physics if it is the ultimate reality.

Anyway, do you think that everything about life can be described, in principle, by math?

I was going to suggest a thermostat, which performs experiments and acts upon the result of the experiment. I always reach for simple examples. But you'll move the goalpost no doubt. — noAxioms

↪noAxioms A thermostat is an instrument, designed by humans for their purposes. As such, it embodies the purposes for which it was designed, and is not an object, in the sense that naturally-occuring objects are. — Wayfarer

@noAxioms, try to think about this in this way. Let's say you see a street signal. It certainly contains meaningful information to you. This maningful information has a physical support. But does this mean that the 'meaning' of what is written in the signal is something that exist outside mind?

Perhaps the same goes for measurements. They are certainly meaningful. But meaning doesn't seem to be something that pertains to the inanimate but only to living beings or, perhaps, only to sentient beings.
The thermostat interacts with its environment in a way that produces something that is meaningful to us.
Do measurements reveal to us an intelligible structure of the world or, rather, are we that we mentally imputing an interpretation to the data we have, according to the cognitive structure of our mind?
The figure made by Wheeler IMO is quite useful here. What is being questioned here is not the existence of 'something' outside the mind. Rather, what is being questioned is the fact the existence of such an 'intrisically meaningful' structure of the 'mind independent world' that enables us to know it. Rather, perhaps, there is no such 'intrinscally meaningful' structure in the 'mind independent world' and we know it only through the filters of our interpretative mental faculties. Therefore, we can't claim knowledge of 'the world as it is'.

What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean?

Could there ever be a thermostat that wasn't a possible human experience?

The question never was - is a thermostat a natural object, which is easily affirmed - but whether or not the objective reality of a thermostat, re: the existence of it, reduces to a necessary conscious reflection of a particular intelligence.

Even the idea of a naturally-occurring thermostat still requires some human cognitive relation by which such thing meets the rational criteria employed in the experience of that thing to which the conceptual representation initially applies. Is Ol’ Faithful a thermostat?

I wonder….but not very much….what these AI chatbots would say about that.

I wonder….but not very much….what these AI chatbots would say about that. — Mww

Something like a thermostat in-itslef would be what a thermostat could be like absent human experience. This has similarities to Kant's "things-in-themselves", albeit presented in a less critical manner.

Along those lines...

What a thermostat would be like absent human experience, is unintelligible, insofar as any named thing follows from a possible human experience. That being given, the reverse proves the case, for it remains impossible, absent human experience, to cognize how that in-itself could ever be referred to as thermostat. Or, simply put….how does a thermostat-in-itself get its name?

You might be thinking the thermostat-in-itself is the one outside my kitchen window, that I don’t experience from my tv room. Be that as it may, that thermostat, while a natural object, is not for that reason alone a naturally occuring object, nor is it absent my experience, but only my immediate awareness.

Agreed: less critical. Kant’s absent human experience means all and every human experience, ever. A totality irrespective of time.

Hey man, I'm just the mediator. Don't argue with the messenger but with the bot.

It will agree with you always.

As for how it gets its name, we give it to it, but it's meaningless.

Oh. I missed the clue. Sorry.

S'all good. :up:

I wonder….but not very much….what these AI chatbots would say about that. — Mww

A thermostat reacts. It doesn’t decide. It compares a set input (say, 22°C) to the ambient temperature and triggers a mechanism based on that difference. It operates entirely within a pre-defined causal structure: stimulus → comparison → output.

When we perform an experiment, we ask a question about the world and design a process to answer it. There's intentionality, inference, and anticipation involved—none of which apply to the thermostat. Even if you set up a robotic lab that automates experiments, the initiative, the meaning, and the goals originate from a human context. The system doesn't care—it can’t care—what the results mean.

This connects to a deep point: an experiment is not just a procedure but a question posed to nature. And asking a question is a noetic act. — ChatGPT

….a question posed to nature…. — ChatGPT

“…. It is only the principles of reason which can give to concordant phenomena the validity of laws, and it is only when experiment is directed by these rational principles that it can have any real utility. Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose….”
(B intro)

Cool. Bot ‘n’ I read the same book.

A thermostat is an instrument, designed by humans for their purposes. As such, it embodies the purposes for which it was designed, and is not an object, in the sense that naturally-occuring objects are. — Wayfarer

You need to assert that a thermostat is now not an object (in 'the usual sense') in order to make a point? I actually agree with all but that last bit since not of it prevents that object (and yes, it's an object, just like you are) from performing an experiment and acting on the result of that experiment.

'In philosophy, an agent is an entity that has the capacity to act and exert influence on its environment. Agency, then, is the manifestation of this capacity to act, often associated with intentionality and the ability to cause effects. A standard view of agency connects it to intentional states like beliefs and desires, which are seen as causing actions.'

OK, that distinguishes agent from the thermostat, which probably lacks what most would consider 'intentionality'. But physicalism doesn't deny intentionality, and intentionality is not not necessarily confined to biological objects.

A thermostat reacts. It doesn’t decide. — ChatGPT — Wayfarer

I can very much pitch my decisions as reactions to inputs, so it's merely a choice to apply one word or the other according to ones preferences.

Physicalism has to account for how physical causes give rise, or are related to, intentional acts by agents.

I don't think it has to do this. I think rather that it must be shown that these things cannot have physical causes, which admittedly many have tried to do. Any explanation by a naturalist can be waved away as usual as correlation, not causation. That won't ever change, regardless of what non-biological entities begin to exhibit agency as defined here.

(And belatedly, sympathies for your mother. Mine too was ill for a long while.)

Thanks. Not ill, but structural issues. Both knees, hips, one shoulder, all replaced. What does she do after that? Falls and breaks her elbow/hand, the only one that isn't a robot. Sigh... Problem is, we (3 kids) all live almost a day's travel away.

She's hardy stock. Her mother, sisters, all lived will into their 90's.

Try to think about this in this way. Let's say you see a street signal. It certainly contains meaningful information to you. This maningful information has a physical support. But does this mean that the 'meaning' of what is written in the signal is something that exist outside mind? — boundless

Probably. Traffic lights definitely are meaningful to a self-driving car, a straight-up example of information that has meaning outside what many consider to be a 'mind', a word that tends to be reserved for biology if not only humans. traffic lights definitely are meaningful to a self-driving car, a straight-up example of information that has meaning outside what many consider to be a 'mind', a word that tends to be reserved for biology if not only humans.
Ants leave information for each other, useless without their mental processes to detect it.
Trees communicate, also without what many consider to be a 'mind'.

... to be something that pertains to the inanimate but only to living beings or, perhaps, only to sentient beings.

Would a sufficiently independent AI device, one not doing what any humans made it to do, count as a sentient being? I've already given thin examples, but better ones will come soon as humans have dwindling roles in the development of the next generation of machines.

Do measurements reveal to us an intelligible structure of the world or, rather, are we that we mentally imputing an interpretation to the data we have, according to the cognitive structure of our mind? — boundless

Are those two mutually exclusive, or just the same thing described at different levels? Does a candle burn or is it just atoms rearranging themselves?

The figure made by Wheeler IMO is quite useful here. What is being questioned here is not the existence of 'something' outside the mind. Rather, what is being questioned is the fact the existence of such an 'intrisically meaningful' structure of the 'mind independent world' that enables us to know it. Rather, perhaps, there is no such 'intrinscally meaningful' structure in the 'mind independent world' and we know it only through the filters of our interpretative mental faculties. Therefore, we can't claim knowledge of 'the world as it is'.

What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean? — Mww

Well it wouldn't have the name 'thermostat', and it wouldn't even have 'thingness', a defined boundary where it stops and is separate from all the not-thermostat. And given certain interpretations, it has identity or not, or has a less intuitive number of dimensions say.

The question never was - is a thermostat a natural object, which is easily affirmed

the existence of it, reduces to a necessary conscious reflection of a particular intelligence.

How is it being 'natural' or intentionally created or not in any way have any bearing on the nature of the thing in itself?

but whether or not the objective reality of a thermostat

It being an objective thing is already a mind-dependent assessment. I personally doubt it, but hey, I have issues with realism, so that's just me.

But, again, what is 'natural', though? — boundless

Gray line. Natural is whatever is not magic. Dark matter and energy were recently upgraded from magic to 'natural'. If it can be empirically demonstrated that there is some non-physical 'mind object/substance' that somehow can produce deliberate physical effects, then I suppose it would similarly be upgraded to the list of natural things. But until then, its considered taboo to look at the man behind the curtain.

Also, if there was another 'universe' with different laws, would that be 'not natural'?

Pointing out that 'natural' is a relation. Our 'naturalism' means natural to our universe. It means the laws of the universe in question, so each one might have different natural physics, if 'physics' is even applicable, which it probably isn't to most.

Those who interpret physical theories as 'useful models' would regard that [spacetime] diagram as an useful abstraction that has practical value.

But you didn't answer the question. How is that not an example of a view without a perspecitve? There's no point of view since you see the whole thing, much in contrast to @Wayfarer's subjective description of a scene without observers in it.

It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence. — noAxioms

Correct. But how can you know, from your cognitive perspective, that it's not the latter?

It's always the latter from my perspective since the item in question has been described. OK, it's been described, but that description wasn't a requirement. 2+2 is still 4 even if nobody ever happens to notice that.

Perhaps the 'pebbles' are merely emergent features of their constituents and envinronment - so the 'pebbles' are mentally imputed and not real 'entities', and we can reasonably argue for that.

Grouping them into objects like that is definitely a mental thing, but the state of the system doesn't require that mental grouping to behave as it does in itself.

So, how do you tell the difference between something 'describable' and something that is 'of the description'?

By definition, I cannot give an example of only the former, since by doing so it ends up also on the latter list. That leaves discussing such things without explicit examples. I can describe a world without me in it, but the description by me still requires me.

But, again, can we reasonably speak of the 'physical' or even the 'quantum' without making ontic commitments?

Probably not. This 'speaking' doesn't seem to work without some kind of commitment like that. But the quantum system in itself presumably doesn't require being spoken of.

And what about the possibility that mathematics is conceptual?

That would mean that my supervention list is totally wrong. Seems unlikely though since it can be independently gleaned by isolated groups, something contrasted by 'god' which does not have that property.

The 'worldview' you are presenting here seems to me a sort of 'neo-pythagoreanism', where mathematics is fundamental and everything else is derivative.

It's one model, yes. Sort of MUH, with attempts to patch the blatant flaws in such a model.

But as Steven Hawking asked “What breathes fire into the equations?”

That's the cool thing about my heirarchy. No fire breathing is necessary at all. Only a realist view (which Tegmarks MUH is, BTW) has that problem.

That is, how can mathematics 'produce' everything else?

It apparently does, as demonstrated by the lack of example of something that cannot be thus produced.

Yes, both SR and GR taken literally imply a 'block universe', i.e. only the 4D spacetime is real and 'space and time' are abstractions.

I would say that it says that space and time are the same thing, which, again, perhaps is just 'entanglements'.

Interestingly, both Minkowski and Einstein himself read relativity in this way

Actually, only Minkowski at first, who reinterpreted SR as spacetime geometry, which the SR paper did not. This led Einstein to note that he didn't understand his own theory anymore, but this new way of looking at it (geometrically) was essential to completing the GR work.
This is all IIRC.

But notice that the question is hardly settled. Einstein, despite taking relativity at 'face value', was deeply troubled by the 'problem of the now', that is how can we reconcile our immediate experience of the 'present' and the 'flow of time' with what relativity seemed to imply.

Eternalism was kind of new to the physics community at the time. There's no conflict. The experience is an interpretation put there by evolution. Without that, one could not be a predicting being. But the two different views actually have identical empirical experience, so the conflict is only between models, not anything that can be used to falsify one or the other.

Personally, I don't think that QM supports the 'block universe' view. After all, if quantum events are not deterministic it doesn't seem the case that 'everything is fixed'.

But you don't know the QM is not deterministic. There are plenty of interpretations that are such, and even the dice-rolling ones do not falsify a block view. Don't confuse determinism with subjective predictability.

If, however, the 'block universe' is not 'how things really are', it certainly make us wonder how to interpret relativity.

There is generalized version of LET. Took over a century to publish one, but it's a valid interpretation that is compatible with presentism. Certain GR predictions like black holes and the big bang had to be eliminated, but if you're ok with that, then we're good. There is an empirical test for black holes, but not one that can be published in a journal. Physics has a sense of humor sometimes I swear.

Anyway, do you think that everything about life can be described, in principle, by math?

More like I haven't seen anything that cannot. Sure, some things are too complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that is isn't math. Hard to describe Fred the butcher using just math.

What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean?
— Mww

Well it wouldn't have the name 'thermostat', and it wouldn't even have 'thingness'….. — noAxioms

Pretty much, yep, hence….unintelligible.

How is it being 'natural' or intentionally created or not in any way have any bearing on the nature of the thing in itself? — noAxioms

It isn’t a question of natural; it’s naturally-occuring. It relates to things-in-themselves only insofar as things-in-themselves are the only necessary naturally-occuring existents, which, of course, a thermostat is not. To say or even imply it is the one is unintelligible, to say or imply it is the other is a contradiction.

….whether or not the objective reality of a thermostat….
— Mww

It being an objective thing is already a mind-dependent assessment. — noAxioms

I don’t agree. All that’s required for being an objective thing, is the possibility of its appearance to our senses, which, the senses being purely physiological in function, is very far from mind-dependent.

Now, I grant the logic from which this is the major is mind dependent, but in such case, the objective thing is presupposed as given, and THAT is not mind-dependent. If infinite regress is not nipped in the bud, every cognitive speculation is immediately reduced to junk, the human empirical knowledge theoretically possible from it is lost, and all the toaster ovens, particle colliders and…..er, you know…..thermostats, just never were.

I can very much pitch my decisions as reactions to inputs, so it's merely a choice to apply one word or the other according to ones preferences. — noAxioms

You have a choice, and you have preferences, which an instrument does not. Its reaction is strictly determined, whereas yours is unbounded. You could respond in an incalculable number of ways, or choose not to respond at all.

physicalism doesn't deny intentionality — noAxioms

Doesn’t it? Intentions and intentionality are, after all, very difficult to accommodate in a physical framework. Physicalism holds to the causal closure of the physical domain, which means that for every effect, there is a physical cause. Now, of course, this seems very difficult to reconcile with the apparently-obvious fact that intentions and mental acts have consequences - but a lot of effort has been made to explain away this apparent discrepancy. So it’s not really true that ‘physicalism doesn’t deny intentionality’ - what it does, is try to account for it in terms of theories of action which purport to show that intentional behaviour is ultimately reducible to brain states and is therefore physical. That seems obvious to a lot of people here but there have been many books written about it and it’s not at all regarded as resolved.

Probably. Traffic lights definitely are meaningful to a self-driving car, a straight-up example of information — noAxioms

Notice, however, that humans built those things in a way that they would react in such a manner. A dog would probably attribute a completely different meaning to traffic lights and signs than humans do.

Furthermore, self-driving cars perhaps perhaps do not find traffic lights 'meaningful' in a sense that is remotely analogous to our own finding it 'meaningful'. A computer perhaps doesn't 'understand' the calculations that it does more than, say, a mechanical calculator does.

Do you think that mechanical calculators find the input we give them 'meaningful'?

Ants leave information for each other, useless without their mental processes to detect it.
Trees communicate, also without what many consider to be a 'mind'. — noAxioms

I can accept these cases. I believe, in fact, that talk of 'meaning', intentionality and so on makes sense in the case of living beings (and perhaps even in something at the 'border' of life, like viruses).

Would a sufficiently independent AI device, one not doing what any humans made it to do, count as a sentient being? I've already given thin examples, but better ones will come soon as humans have dwindling roles in the development of the next generation of machines. — noAxioms

Honestly, I don't know. AI is doing incredibly interesting things. But I would say that perhaps they are more like incredibly complex mechanical calculators than living or conscious beings.
Will be able one day to actually build 'artificial life'? I don't know.

Are those two mutually exclusive, or just the same thing described at different levels? Does a candle burn or is it just atoms rearranging themselves? — noAxioms

My point was more like: is the intelligibility we find in the world a property of the world or a property of the world as it is presented to us? You might argue that it is both. If it is so, however, this means that we can understand features of a 'mind-independent reality', which to borrow from Bernard d'Espagnat, might be 'veiled' but partly accessible. I happen to think that the answer to that question is undecidable, an antinomy to reason. I think that the most reasonable thing to say is that the 'mind-independent reality' has an intelligible structure but it is also 'veiled' and it's not easy to 'disentangle' what comes from the interpretative faculties of our mind and what is truly 'independent' from them.

But at the same time, I am not sure if one can make irrefutable claim in one way or another.

Well it wouldn't have the name 'thermostat', and it wouldn't even have 'thingness', a defined boundary where it stops and is separate from all the not-thermostat. And given certain interpretations, it has identity or not, or has a less intuitive number of dimensions say. — noAxioms

Again, we call it a 'thermostat' because we observe it doing things that conform to a certain function we have built it to do. Does this mean that a 'thermostat' is a specific kind of 'entity'? Well, I would question that.

Just like we call a chair a certain arrangment of matter that can be used in a certain way but a chair isn't an entity in itself, we call a thermostat something that can be used in a certain way. Do the qualities of 'being a chair' and 'being a thermostat' exist independently of our minds'? I don't think so.

Independently form us, there are no 'chairs', no 'thermostats' and so on.

Gray line. Natural is whatever is not magic. Dark matter and energy were recently upgraded from magic to 'natural'. If it can be empirically demonstrated that there is some non-physical 'mind object/substance' that somehow can produce deliberate physical effects, then I suppose it would similarly be upgraded to the list of natural things. But until then, its considered taboo to look at the man behind the curtain. — noAxioms

Interestingly, despite having a reputation of being a skeptic for his questioning of causality, Hume was very convinced that of the existence of laws of nature. In fact, IIRC he denied the possibility of 'miracles' by implying that no violation of these laws was possible.
Similarly, Spinoza argued that 'miracles' were natural phenomena that, due to our ignorance we misunderstood as 'super-natural' or 'magic'.
This, however, makes the very critique questionable. For one thing it shows that naturalism is no more falsifiable than other metaphyisical theories. But even worse, the risk is that we equivocate the meaning of 'natural' in a way that it becomes empty.

It would much more helpful if, say, naturalism would simply forbid certain events.

Pointing out that 'natural' is a relation. Our 'naturalism' means natural to our universe. It means the laws of the universe in question, so each one might have different natural physics, if 'physics' is even applicable, which it probably isn't to most. — noAxioms

Ok. But notice my point above.

But you didn't answer the question. How is that not an example of a view without a perspecitve? There's no point of view since you see the whole thing, much in contrast to Wayfarer's subjective description of a scene without observers in it. — noAxioms

I retaliate that it depends on the interpretation you give of it. I'm not trying to be dense but if you interpret the 4d spacetime diagram as an useful tool, it doesn't matter that the model makes no reference to a perspective. In this lecture (starting around minute 5), Carlo Rovelli makes a distinction of 'cosmology' and what he calls 'totology', which would be a scientific study of literally 'everything without exception'. Remember that Rovelli is a relationalist, and according to his interpretation of quantum mechanics (which you also seem to like), the state of a given physical system is defined in relation to another physical system. So, it is difficult to justify a description of the 'whole universe' in a relational view. So, even from a RQM perspective, it is perhaps impossible to make truly perspective-independent descriptions. Of course, what counts a perspective is different here from an epistemic interpretation. But the point is similar.

It's always the latter from my perspective since the item in question has been described. OK, it's been described, but that description wasn't a requirement. 2+2 is still 4 even if nobody ever happens to notice that. — noAxioms

I would agree for mathematics. But I am not sure that in physics you can make descriptions without a reference for a similar reasoning that Rovelli made.

Grouping them into objects like that is definitely a mental thing, but the state of the system doesn't require that mental grouping to behave as it does in itself. — noAxioms

Ok. But, again, where is the cut-off where we can safely disentangle what is 'mental' and what is 'independent from our interpretative faculties'?
You seem to agree that carving the beach into distinct 'pebbles' is a mental imputation. So the description of the beach as a collection of pebbles is a mental imputation. But at what point we can safely say that a description is not the result of a mental imputation and is a faithful description of 'what really is'.

That would mean that my supervention list is totally wrong. Seems unlikely though since it can be independently gleaned by isolated groups, something contrasted by 'god' which does not have that property. — noAxioms

Honestly, I have a hard time to accept that mathematics isn't conceptual. Also I do believe that mathematics is independent from our particular minds. In order to reconcile these things, I accept a broadly ontological idealist view: mathematics is conceptual but our particular minds do not make up the totality of the 'mental'.

On the other hand, you seem to say that mathematics is the foundation of reality. But what is the relation of, say, your concept of 'three' and the number 'three'?

That's the cool thing about my heirarchy. No fire breathing is necessary at all. Only a realist view (which Tegmarks MUH is, BTW) has that problem. — noAxioms

How so? If mathematics is before the everything else in your view, you still have to explain how 'everything else' is derived from it. It's not obvious to me that a relational world - which you seem to accept - can be easily derived from pure math.

It apparently does, as demonstrated by the lack of example of something that cannot be thus produced. — noAxioms

You might say that math can describe everything or that everything exhibits regularities that can be understood mathematically (though I am not convinced by this, let's assume that it's true). You still have to explain how the 'production' is made.

(I am not saying you are necessarily wrong in your view but this is a problem IMO that your model should address...)

I would say that it says that space and time are the same thing, which, again, perhaps is just 'entanglements'. — noAxioms

Well, for instance in SR, inside the spacetime interval formula the time component has an opposite sign form the spatial. Also, you can travel in all directions of space but not backwards in time. So, I don't think that relativity makes space and time equal. It's either (i) space and time are aspects of the whole spacetime or (ii) space and time are useful abstraction in which we carve spacetime. I think that the more economical interpretation is (ii), as space and time are there once you specify a reference frame.

Actually, only Minkowski at first, who reinterpreted SR as spacetime geometry, which the SR paper did not. This led Einstein to note that he didn't understand his own theory anymore, but this new way of looking at it (geometrically) was essential to completing the GR work. — noAxioms

Right. Initially, Einstein apparently had an operationalist understanding of SR. But with GR he understandably had a realist understanding of spacetime. I recall that there was a dialogue in which Heisenberg pointed out to Einstein that he also reasoned in an operational way at the time he introduced SR and Einstein replied that if he truly did he was saying nonsense. Notice that Einstein was strongly influenced by Kant, Schopenhauer, Hume and Mach in his early years. It's no surprise to me that he reasoned in a operationalist way early on. But yes the more sensible interpretation of GR is actually a realist one (but, of course, we know that GR is not the whole story, so the point is moot).

Interestingly, Einstein also relied on the idealist Schopenhauer in his rejection of quantum nonlocality despite being a realist. He took from Schopenhauer that spatio-temporal separation is the basis of ontological seperation. That's why he could not accept any kind of nonlocality. He believed that if one renounces to the idea that spatio-temporal separation is the basis of ontological separation then, the way we carve the universe in distinct 'things' becomes arbitrary.

Eternalism was kind of new to the physics community at the time. There's no conflict. The experience is an interpretation put there by evolution. Without that, one could not be a predicting being. But the two different views actually have identical empirical experience, so the conflict is only between models, not anything that can be used to falsify one or the other. — noAxioms

I disagree here. If eternalism is true, it becomes quite clear that despite that the 'now' and 'the flow of time' are essential aspect of our experience they are in fact purely illusory. Honestly, I am not ready to abandon what is seems a phenomenological given as an illusion. I need more evidence. But I admit that GR makes a strong case that they are mere illusions.

But you don't know the QM is not deterministic. There are plenty of interpretations that are such, and even the dice-rolling ones do not falsify a block view. Don't confuse determinism with subjective predictability. — noAxioms

Right! But without determinism, I can't see how a block universe is untenable. Eternalism entails determinism (notice that the reverse is not true, however).
As you point out there are many deterministic interpretations of QM. So QM doesn't refute the block universe per se.

And I also believe that in GR one can even explain quantum nonlocality without much problems, given the fact that spacetime is not flat.

There is generalized version of LET. Took over a century to publish one, but it's a valid interpretation that is compatible with presentism. Certain GR predictions like black holes and the big bang had to be eliminated, but if you're ok with that, then we're good. There is an empirical test for black holes, but not one that can be published in a journal. Physics has a sense of humor sometimes I swear. — noAxioms

Are you referring to Ilja Schmelzer's theory? I read some discussions about ten years ago in physicsforums. If it is that version of LET, I didn't know that it is now accepted as valid.

Anyway, interesting. Thanks. Do you have any reference for this?

Notice that even if presentism were right, and, indeed, there is a real 'now' and an objective 'flow of time' it might still be the case that our 'now' and 'flow of time' is illusory. After all, our reference frame isn't the same as the preferred frame of such a theory.

So, I would admit that physics strongly puts into question the validity immediate experience. It's one of the most fascinating and disorienting mysteries for me.

More like I haven't seen anything that cannot. Sure, some things are too complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that is isn't math. Hard to describe Fred the butcher using just math. — noAxioms

I believe that life can't be understood in purely mathematical terms, but I acknowledge that there I can't give a compelling prove that it is the case.

Interestingly, Einstein also relied on the idealist Schopenhauer in his rejection of quantum nonlocality despite being a realist. He took from Schopenhauer that spatio-temporal separation is the basis of ontological seperation. That's why he could not accept any kind of nonlocality. He believed that if one renounces to the idea that spatio-temporal separation is the basis of ontological separation then, the way we carve the universe in distinct 'things' becomes arbitrary. — boundless

Einstein made the point especially clear in a 1948 letter he sent to Max Born (from the SEP article about Einstein's philosophy of science):

I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality. We are, to be sure, all of us aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday/Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing (’actual’) should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow ‘exist’ independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over the parts of space A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend upon the type of measurement carried out in the part of space, A; it should also be independent of whether or not, after all, a measurement is made in A.

If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.

However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe. For what is thought to by a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about the parts.

Admittedly, it's a very intuitive argument and prima facie it seems correct. It's also something that the epistemic idealist Schopenhauer was true: distinct things in the physical world (which is a part of the 'representation' aspect of his world view) could be distinguished by the 'principium individuationis', i.e. spatio-temporal separation.

Of course, we now know that quantum nonlocality is a thing and we can't use that criterion to distinguish things. I see the ER=EPR conjecture an attempt to 'resurrect' the Einstein's thesis of the centrality of spatio-temporal separation in the face of quantum nonlocality (which in turn would, however, imply that spacetime has quite a weird structure).

I notice nobody has really addressed the core question of this topic. I don't expect Wayfarer to answer since he's not a proponent of mind-independence, but none of those that do claim it seem to answer it:

the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered. — noAxioms

Here we are 500 posts in, and I don't think this has been answered. Lack of it is why I suggests that nobody really supports mind independent existence.

Notice, however, that humans built those [presumably self driving car] things in a way that they would react in such a manner. A dog would probably attribute a completely different meaning to traffic lights and signs than humans do. — boundless

Agree with all that, but none of it negates my point that those cars find meaning in the lights. Only some dog's get the meaning intended by those that built the lights, such as dogs trained to aid the blind.

A computer perhaps doesn't 'understand' the calculations that it does more than, say, a mechanical calculator does.

Perhaps, but then arguably neither does your brain. It's the process that does the understanding, not the hardware. For instance, if a human was to be simulated down to the neurochemical level (molecular level is probably unnecessary), then the person simulated would know what it's like to feel pain, but neither the computer, program, or programmers would in any way know this.

Do you think that mechanical calculators find the input we give them 'meaningful'?

Not if you give a definition of '... like a human' to the word. Otherwise, yes.

I can accept these cases. I believe, in fact, that talk of 'meaning', intentionality and so on makes sense in the case of living beings (and perhaps even in something at the 'border' of life, like viruses).

Hard to use 'intent' in the context of ants, but it can be done.

My point was more like: is the intelligibility we find in the world a property of the world or a property of the world as it is presented to us? — boundless

'Intelligible' is a relation, not a property, so X might be intelligible to Y, but not to Z.

I think that the most reasonable thing to say is that the 'mind-independent reality' has an intelligible structure ...

My opinion: mind independence has no requirement of intelligibility, but 'reality' does since it seems to be a mental designation. So I agree with your statement.

But at the same time, I am not sure if one can make irrefutable claim in one way or another.

Irrefutable is easy. It refuting the alternatives that gets challenging.

Again, we call it a 'thermostat' because we observe it doing things that conform to a certain function we have built it to do. Does this mean that a 'thermostat' is a specific kind of 'entity'? Well, I would question that. — boundless

The question was from Mww who asked "What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean?". So why we give it that name is not particularly relevant to what it is in itself.

Do the qualities of 'being a chair' and 'being a thermostat' exist independently of our minds'? I don't think so.

Agree with that.

Independently form us, there are no 'chairs', no 'thermostats' and so on.

Not by that name anyway. There have been thermostats long before humans came around and made some more. But that name is under 2 centuries old, and a human-made mechanical device serving that function is only around 4 centuries old.

Interestingly, despite having a reputation of being a skeptic for his questioning of causality, Hume was very convinced that of the existence of laws of nature. In fact, IIRC he denied the possibility of 'miracles' by implying that no violation of these laws was possible.
Similarly, Spinoza argued that 'miracles' were natural phenomena that, due to our ignorance we misunderstood as 'super-natural' or 'magic'. — boundless

There you go. What's the difference between calling something magic by another word (immaterial mind say), and just calling it 'yet undiscovered physics'. The latter phrasing encourages further investigation, but the former seems to discourage it, declaring it a matter of faith and a violation of that faith to investigate further. Hence no effort is made to find where/how that immaterial mind manages to produce material effects.

This, however, makes the very critique questionable. For one thing it shows that naturalism is no more falsifiable than other metaphyisical theories.

Of course. No metaphysical interpretation is falsifiable. The ones that are are not valid interpretations.

But even worse, the risk is that we equivocate the meaning of 'natural' in a way that it becomes empty.

Yes, as I tried to point out with my dark matter example. If something new comes along, the magic it used to be becomes natural, and naturalism is by definition safe. But it isn't a specific interpretation in itself since naturalism doesn't specify the full list of natural laws.

Remember that Rovelli is a relationalist, and according to his interpretation of quantum mechanics (which you also seem to like), the state of a given physical system is defined in relation to another physical system. So, it is difficult to justify a description of the 'whole universe' in a relational view.

Agree. There is for instance no 'state of the entire universe', only a state relative to say some event. MWI is quite similar except it does away with the relation business and goes whole hog on the absolute universe, a thing with the property of being real. Since there's nothing relative to which any state might be, there's no states, just a giant list of possible solutions to the universal wave function. It's still that one structure. One can extend MWI to include different possible states of an even more universal wave function, including different values for all the universal constants, but MWI itself seems confined to just this one set of values for those constants.

But, again, where is the cut-off where we can safely disentangle what is 'mental' and what is 'independent from our interpretative faculties'? — boundless

That's actually a really hard question, loaded with biases. A thing being an object seems intuitively mind-independent, but I showed otherwise, doing a whole topic about it. What actually IS mind independent is super difficult to glean since it's a mind doing it. "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” -- Heisenberg

Honestly, I have a hard time to accept that mathematics isn't conceptual.

Our understanding of it certainly is conceptual, but I have no trouble accepting that the mathematics in itself is not.

On the other hand, you seem to say that mathematics is the foundation of reality. But what is the relation of, say, your concept of 'three' and the number 'three'?

A little like my concept of the moon and the moon in itself, but that relation is quite different since I have a mutual measurement relation with the moon and it doesn't work that way with 3.

If mathematics is before the everything else in your view, you still have to explain how 'everything else' is derived from it.. — boundless

Tegmarks MUH book spends a lot of pages doing that, but in short, if there is nothing doesn't see to follow mathematical law, then the proposal is valid.
There's problems with this. There are a lot of mathematical objects which include me in it, exactly as I am with no experiential difference, and yet the object containing me like that is so very different than the one we model. That is a super big problem with the view, that needs to be addressed.

You might say that math can describe everything or that everything exhibits regularities that can be understood mathematically (though I am not convinced by this, let's assume that it's true). You still have to explain how the 'production' is made.

That sounds like the 'fire breathing' spoken of. Not necessary. 2 and 2 add up to 4 despite lack of instantiation by any mechanism actually performing that calculation. Similarly, a more complex mathematical entity (say the initial state of the universal wave function) yields me despite lack of real-ness.

I believe that life can't be understood in purely mathematical terms.

Agree. That the universe is mathematical does not in any way imply that we can fully understand the mathematics, or far worse, understand something complex in terms of tiny primities, which is like trying to understand Mario Kart in terms of electron motion through silicon.

I would say that it says that space and time are the same thing, which, again, perhaps is just 'entanglements'. — noAxioms

Well, for instance in SR, inside the spacetime interval formula the time component has an opposite sign form the spatial. — boundless

Yea, that sign makes it not quite the same thing, eh? Both aspects of the same 'object', but different properties in that direction.

Also, you can travel in all directions of space but not backwards in time.

One does not travel through spacetime. Travel is something done through space. It's an interpretation, a mental convenience. Reference frames are definitely abstractions.

Interestingly, Einstein also relied on the idealist Schopenhauer in his rejection of quantum nonlocality despite being a realist.

Einstein made the point especially clear in a 1948 letter he sent to Max Born (from the SEP article about Einstein's philosophy of science)
...
Admittedly, it's a very intuitive argument and prima facie it seems correct. — boundless

Intuitive maybe, but it's been demonstrated to be quite wrong. There is no valid locally real interpretation, and Einstein seems to argue for one.

He should have been around when Bell did his thing. He'd have to choose since the stance you describe is invalid. Locality or realism. Can't have cake and eat it too.

If eternalism is true, it becomes quite clear that despite that the 'now' and 'the flow of time' are essential aspect of our experience they are in fact purely illusory. Honestly, I am not ready to abandon what is seems a phenomenological given as an illusion. I need more evidence. — boundless

But there is no evidence one way or another, except eternalism is the simpler model, but then the simplest quantum models also don't mesh well with one's intuitions. So instead of needing more evidence (there isn't any to start with), you need to justify the more complicated model.

Notice that even if presentism were right, and, indeed, there is a real 'now' and an objective 'flow of time' it might still be the case that our 'now' and 'flow of time' is illusory. After all, our reference frame isn't the same as the preferred frame of such a theory.

Quite right. If it's true, our experience of it is a lucky guess since the view makes not empirical difference.

Right! But without determinism, I can't see how a block universe is untenable.

It's a kind of determinism, but not what's usually meant by the term. A block model with randomness just means that a subsequent state does not necessarily follow from some prior state. An atom might decay or might not. Bohm says that there are hidden variables that determine if it will or not. MWI says it both decays and doesn't. There is no state evolution at all under RQM since it's all hindsight, but RQM is not considered deterministic. Most of the rest are not. In a block context, that might mean that there's randomness in state evolution, but the history is all there. It's dice rolls, but equivalently all in the past so to speak.

Eternalism entails determinism (notice that the reverse is not true, however).

No, at least not the kind of determinism that QM is talking about. I actually listed 6 kinds of determinism, and block universe was only one of them, but the one the name talks about is a different kind.

And I also believe that in GR one can even explain quantum nonlocality without much problems, given the fact that spacetime is not flat.

You'll have to explain that one. I don't see this, and I don't see how lack of flatness matters. No, 'spooky action' is not implemented via worm holes, if that's what you mean.

Are you referring to Ilja Schmelzer's theory? I read some discussions about ten years ago in physicsforums. If it is that version of LET, I didn't know that it is now accepted as valid. — boundless

Yes, talking about that, and what it did was generalize an absolutist interpretation (LET) of physics. LET is the special case like SR, only applicable to zero energy situation. Schmelzer finally extended that interpretation to include gravity.

My reference is just the paper. Most of what I asserted about it comes from the abstract. Not like I read the rest of it. But it supports presentism far better, and it can be falsified similar to the way one falsifies the afterlife. Can't publish the results.

[The instrument's] reaction is strictly determined, whereas yours is unbounded. — Wayfarer

Sorry, under physicalism, there is no difference between the two. Your assertion is just that, nothing that has been demonstrated.

Intentions and intentionality are, after all, very difficult to accommodate in a physical framework. Physicalism holds to the causal closure of the physical domain, which means that for every effect, there is a physical cause. Now, of course, this seems very difficult to reconcile with the apparently-obvious fact that intentions and mental acts have consequences

None of this seems to follow. Under physicalism, human intentionality is just another thing physically caused, deterministic or not. No discrepancy is in need of resolution. You correctly point this out with: "intentional behaviour is ultimately reducible to brain states and is therefore physical". You discolor that statement with words like "attempt" and 'purport", but the statement is not falsified by your personal assessment. The only disagreement I have with the statement is it being confined to brain states. There would be plenty of physical factors outside the brain that also contribute to intentionality.

It relates to things-in-themselves only insofar as things-in-themselves are the only necessary naturally-occuring existents, which, of course, a thermostat is not. — Mww

It seems a thermostat has some sort of nature in itself just like anything else. It being purposefully made doesn't change that at all. It being purposefully made or not isn't one of the in-itself properties.

All that’s required for being an objective thing, is the possibility of its appearance to our senses, which, the senses being purely physiological in function, is very far from mind-dependent. — Mww

Quite the opposite. For one, something appearing to something's senses makes it by definition subjective, not objective. Not being a realist, I don't think anything at all has objective existence, but that's just opinion. The fault I find with objectivity lies elsewhere.

for instance, if a human was to be simulated down to the neurochemical level — noAxioms

Big 'if'. If mind (or life, or intelligence) is truly not reducible, then it's also not really explainable in other terms.

the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered.
— noAxioms
Here we are 500 posts in, and I don't think this has been answered. Lack of it is why I suggests that nobody really supports mind independent existence. — noAxioms

Well, I guess that's an opening for me to chip in. I do have a problem, however, that I haven't got my head around what the criteria are for mind-independent existence. But I can explain what I understand about unicorns. Perhaps that will help.

But first, can I ask whether you say that there is no question about the moon because there is no question whether it exists independent of any mind? If so, your general question is already answered, and we are dealing with the much more interesting question which things exist independent of any mind and which don't. A lot depends here on what "independently of any mind" means. I'm relying on my intuitions here. Perhaps we'll get a definition later.

For me, unicorns exist, all right. But they are not real creatures. They are mythical creatures. So I say that their existence is the existence of myths. Can we say that they are real mythical creatures? That sounds odd because "real" and "mythical" pull in opposite directions. We might say that they are really mythical creatures, contradicting anyone who might claim that they are real.

Myths are a complicated concept. Their existence does not depend on any specific minds, but does depend on the circulation of stories which cannot be tracked back to any specific people. If those stories stopped circulating and got forgotten, those myths would cease to exist and, although it seems odd to say so, unicorns would also cease to exist. Yet it would remain true that the myths and unicorns existed at some time, and that gives a sense to our feeling that even forgotten myths exist in the way that forgotten things continue to exist. So, in that sense, they are mind-independent, but in another sense, they are not.

The bottom line, is that, in the case of unicorns, our intuitions pull in opposite directions. Unicorns don't fit our, perhaps naive, common sense.

If I may add a comment on thermostats. We made them to meet certain purposes in our lives. In that sense, they are mind-dependent. And yet, there is a physical object that, we would like to say, exists independently of our minds. I would say that what exists indendently of our minds is a physical object shorn of its place in our lives. Without that context, it is misleading to call it a thermostat. But we can easily provide another description of it as a physical object. In that sense, it exists independently of our minds. One might add that the components of the thermostat all exist independently of our minds. It is their arrangement into the causal cycle, that makes those objects a thermostat.

I should have summarized the last pargraph. A thermostat qua thermostat is mind-dependent but qua physical object it is mind-independent.

Big 'if'. If mind (or life, or intelligence) is truly not reducible, then it's also not really explainable in other terms. — Wayfarer

Perhaps we should resist the equation of explaining something with reducing it. Physics can only explain things in certain terms. We live with things in different terms. But it's a matter of point of view - context and use - not a metaphysical problem - unless we choose to make it so.

Perhaps we should resist the equation of explaining something with reducing it. — Ludwig V

Perhaps 'understood in its own terms' was what I meant.

Perhaps 'understood in its own terms' was what I meant. — Wayfarer

I think it helps. I don't think there is much missing in the physical explanation of a rainbow. A rainbow, understood as we perceive it and conceive of it, is one lange-game or practice. However, the same - what shall I call it? --phenomenon understood in physical terms, is another.

The same, I would say, applies to colours and sounds.

It seems a thermostat has some sort of nature in itself just like anything else. — noAxioms

Nature in itself? I’m not sure how you mean the concept of nature to be understood in these cases, but I personally can think of no reason to even consider what the nature of a thermostat, or anything of existential likeness, might be. I can’t be blamed, given this general idea of a thing’s nature, for thinking a hammer’s latent nature, manifest sooner or later, is to hit my thumb instead of the nail.
————-

….something appearing to something's senses makes it by definition subjective, not objective. — noAxioms

My use of appearance merely indicates the presence of a thing as an effect on my senses, which is the parsimonious method for distinguishing the empirically objective from the rationally subjective. The effect of the thing on my senses by its appearance, affects me as a sensation, and THAT is where subjectivity arises. Effect of the object is the affect on the subject.
—————-

I don't think anything at all has objective existence…… — noAxioms

Interesting. Where do you find fault with the concept of objectivity, then?

I notice nobody has really addressed the core question of this topic. — noAxioms

Not sure why you said that, after, for instance, the discussion we had about intelligibility and the 'perspectives'.

the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered. — noAxioms

Well, it is a rather difficult point, right? If our empirical knowledge was a perfect knowledge of 'reality' we would be certain that unicorns exist or do not exist. Our knowledge, however, is certainly limited even for a direct realist. On the other hand, a direct realist might say that, in principle, we could know that. But, again, their opponents would however raise the issue: "how can you be certain that the way 'physical reality' appears to you isn't filtered with your own cognitive faculties?". As I said, I believe that we arrive an antinomy here. On the other hand, you was pretty explicit that at the fundamental level of your hierachy we have mathematics and mind is after the physical. Ho can you claim that?

Perhaps, but then arguably neither does your brain. It's the process that does the understanding, not the hardware. For instance, if a human was to be simulated down to the neurochemical level (molecular level is probably unnecessary), then the person simulated would know what it's like to feel pain, but neither the computer, program, or programmers would in any way know this. — noAxioms

Well, denying that we can't understand meaning goes against the immediate evidence. It is a phenomenological given. It's hard to deny that and I would not unless I have a very strong reason for doing so. You also assume that the simulated brain is enough to have sentience. Even within a physicalist model, however, I would question that. What if, instead, that brain needs to be in a body which, in turn, needs to be in an environment and so on...?
Also, I believe that there is no consensus that our mind is algorithmical. So, before saying this, you would also make a case that our mind is, indeed, like a computer.

Hard to use 'intent' in the context of ants, but it can be done. — noAxioms

Agreed. Unfortunately, we do not have enough words to avoid ambiguity. Ants do not move and behave as stones do. They do not 'intend' as we do, either, but they certainly have goal-directed actions.

'Intelligible' is a relation, not a property, so X might be intelligible to Y, but not to Z. — noAxioms

Here I disagree. While, it can be the case that X is intelligible for Y and not to Z, I would say that this is due to the limitations of the agents. I believe that something is either intelligible, or not.

My opinion: mind independence has no requirement of intelligibility, but 'reality' does since it seems to be a mental designation. So I agree with your statement. — noAxioms

Well, you agree for different reasons, however. Not sure why you seem to label 'reality' what I would call a 'representation' or an 'interpretation' of reality.

Do the qualities of 'being a chair' and 'being a thermostat' exist independently of our minds'? I don't think so. — noAxioms

Agree with that. — noAxioms

Good! To me this means that those qualities are part of our representation/interpretation and not of the mind-independent 'reality'. I also happen to have a difficult time to say the precise 'cut-off' where we can safely say "this quality is, indeed, something that is outside of our representation. It is indeed mind-independent". Hence the antinomy.

Not by that name anyway. There have been thermostats long before humans came around and made some more. But that name is under 2 centuries old, and a human-made mechanical device serving that function is only around 4 centuries old. — noAxioms

How can a thermostat be there long before humans came around if the quality of 'being a thermostat' is mind-dependent?

There you go. What's the difference between calling something magic by another word (immaterial mind say), and just calling it 'yet undiscovered physics'. The latter phrasing encourages further investigation, but the former seems to discourage it, declaring it a matter of faith and a violation of that faith to investigate further. Hence no effort is made to find where/how that immaterial mind manages to produce material effects. — noAxioms

Ok, I would say I agree with this. But, in general, I would say "yet undiscovered phenomena" rather than "physics", but I am okay with that.

Of course. No metaphysical interpretation is falsifiable. The ones that are are not valid interpretations. — noAxioms

Yes. I believe that certain classes of metaphysical interpretations are falsifiable, but not broad categories like 'idealism' or 'naturalism'. For instance, a 'local realist naturalism' has been falsified by Bell's experiement (BTW, I believe that even superdeterminism is actually a form of nonlocality...).

Yes, as I tried to point out with my dark matter example. If something new comes along, the magic it used to be becomes natural, and naturalism is by definition safe. But it isn't a specific interpretation in itself since naturalism doesn't specify the full list of natural laws. — noAxioms

Yup!

Agree. There is for instance no 'state of the entire universe', only a state relative to say some event. MWI is quite similar except it does away with the relation business and goes whole hog on the absolute universe, a thing with the property of being real. Since there's nothing relative to which any state might be, there's no states, just a giant list of possible solutions to the universal wave function. It's still that one structure. One can extend MWI to include different possible states of an even more universal wave function, including different values for all the universal constants, but MWI itself seems confined to just this one set of values for those constants. — noAxioms

Right! BTW, as time passes, I am growing more sympathetic with MWI and MWI-like models if interpreted as describing potentialities. I believe, however, that the mistake of these models is to assume that all potentialities actualize, i.e. a belief that whatever can happen, will happen.

(Some time ago, I read that there is even a version of MWI where the universal wavefunctions never branches. Rather, there are simply parallel 'worlds' which evolve deterministically and independently from each other and the branching is merely an illusion due to a lack of knowledge of the existence of the other 'worlds'.)

What actually IS mind independent is super difficult to glean since it's a mind doing it. "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” -- Heisenberg — noAxioms

Right! This is in fact a point I was making with my reference to the 'antinomy'. To be honest, I think that you do realize that there is an antinomy but at the same time you are reluctant to accept the consequences of that. Your notion of 'reality' is quite similar to the notion of 'empirical reality', 'representation' and so on that you find in d'Espagnat view of 'empirical and veiled reality', transcendental/epistemic idealism and also some versions of ontological idealism and realism.
I accept the presence of the antinomy and I think that this implies that we simply can't be certain about what is 'mind-independent'. In contrast to what transcendental/epistemic idealists would say, however, I think that it is reasonable to say that we can have some knowledge of the 'independent reality' but we can't prove it.

Our understanding of it certainly is conceptual, but I have no trouble accepting that the mathematics in itself is not. — noAxioms

A little like my concept of the moon and the moon in itself, but that relation is quite different since I have a mutual measurement relation with the moon and it doesn't work that way with 3. — noAxioms

Interesting, thanks. Oddly enough, I would even say something similar about my view of math. Even if 3 is conceptual, this doesn't mean that we understand it completely.

Tegmarks MUH book spends a lot of pages doing that, but in short, if there is nothing doesn't see to follow mathematical law, then the proposal is valid.
There's problems with this. There are a lot of mathematical objects which include me in it, exactly as I am with no experiential difference, and yet the object containing me like that is so very different than the one we model. That is a super big problem with the view, that needs to be addressed. — noAxioms

Two points here. Regarding the first sentence, I believe that you have not presented sufficient evidence to say that.
Regarding what you say later, I might agree. It seems that the same 'object' can be found in different mathematical structures. If MUH was right, this would imply that the 'object' exists. But how can we make sense of the fact that the same object exists in different structures? In a sense, to me this shows that math perhaps isn't enough to explain 'things'.

That sounds like the 'fire breathing' spoken of. Not necessary. 2 and 2 add up to 4 despite lack of instantiation by any mechanism actually performing that calculation. Similarly, a more complex mathematical entity (say the initial state of the universal wave function) yields me despite lack of real-ness. — noAxioms

I guess that I would repeat what I said before. Interesting, but I don't find convincing.

Agree. That the universe is mathematical does not in any way imply that we can fully understand the mathematics, or far worse, understand something complex in terms of tiny primities, which is like trying to understand Mario Kart in terms of electron motion through silicon. — noAxioms

I agree. Also, mathematical structures are holistic. Take the natural numbers. The set of natural numbers can't be reduced to its components. Rather you define the set and then you discover the relations between the numbers. Of course, I am not denying that we perhaps constructed and learn the set of natural numbers by starting from concrete examples. But at a certain point the set is to be seen as an undivided whole and it contains things that do not have a 'referent' in nature. For instance I am not sure that the number ((10000000000^100000000000000)^100000000000000)^100000000000000 is instantiated in our universe, despite being finite.

Yea, that sign makes it not quite the same thing, eh? Both aspects of the same 'object', but different properties in that direction. — noAxioms

Oddly enough, time and space are present only if you specify the reference frame. If not, you have only the spacetime and its intervals. So, I am not even sure that they are aspects of spacetime and not, say, arbitrary way of carving it.

One does not travel through spacetime. Travel is something done through space. It's an interpretation, a mental convenience. Reference frames are definitely abstractions. — noAxioms

And yet are space and time are quite 'real', right? They are a phenomenological given, immediate features of our experience. Is there a relation between reference frames and our experience?

Intuitive maybe, but it's been demonstrated to be quite wrong. There is no valid locally real interpretation, and Einstein seems to argue for one.

He should have been around when Bell did his thing. He'd have to choose since the stance you describe is invalid. Locality or realism. Can't have cake and eat it too. — noAxioms

Yup! BTW, what I find powerful of Bell's theorem and the experiments that confirmed it is that some metaphysical views of reality have since been refuted.

One, however, might feel the plight of Einstein and ask: "Well, then, how can we 'carve' the world into distinct objects if we can't spatially sperate them??" And voilà we discovered that the problem is very deep and there is no consensus about this even among experts.

But there is no evidence one way or another, except eternalism is the simpler model, but then the simplest quantum models also don't mesh well with one's intuitions. So instead of needing more evidence (there isn't any to start with), you need to justify the more complicated model. — noAxioms

The problem with rejecting our 'intuitions' is when these intuitions are immediate aspects of our experience. The flow of time is probably the strongest example. If eternalism is right, change is merely illusory. But if our experience is so wrong about something 'obvious' like that, how can I trust it? Science, after all, is empirical. If our experience gets something basic like that so wrong, how can even trust science?

Quite right. If it's true, our experience of it is a lucky guess since the view makes not empirical difference. — noAxioms

Right! And the mystery goes deeper! If the alternative to eternalism is a presentism that, in fact, does even justify the very reason we went in search for a presentism...

boundless: Right! But without determinism, I can't see how a block universe is untenable. — noAxioms

Of course, I meant 'tenable' not 'untenable'

It's a kind of determinism, but not what's usually meant by the term. A block model with randomness just means that a subsequent state does not necessarily follow from some prior state. An atom might decay or might not. Bohm says that there are hidden variables that determine if it will or not. MWI says it both decays and doesn't. There is no state evolution at all under RQM since it's all hindsight, but RQM is not considered deterministic. Most of the rest are not. In a block context, that might mean that there's randomness in state evolution, but the history is all there. It's dice rolls, but equivalently all in the past so to speak. — noAxioms

Not sure if I understood. If the state truly evolves, you can't have a block universe. Unless you mean that potentialites are what is described by 'eternalism'.

In fact, this is quite close to how I see it. As potentialities, all 'histories' are 'there' and eternalism is right for them. They have a weird 'virtual' existence, so to speak. They aren't 'nothing' but they aren't properly 'something'. Not all potentialities actualize. What is actual is what is truly 'real'.

No, at least not the kind of determinism that QM is talking about. I actually listed 6 kinds of determinism, and block universe was only one of them, but the one the name talks about is a different kind. — noAxioms

My point was that you need to have determinism in order to have eternalism. If 'the flow of time' is illusory, in order to have consistency, you need to assume determinism. If determinism is false then the future isn't inevitable.

Yes, talking about that, and what it did was generalize an absolutist interpretation (LET) of physics. LET is the special case like SR, only applicable to zero energy situation. Schmelzer finally extended that interpretation to include gravity.

My reference is just the paper. Most of what I asserted about it comes from the abstract. Not like I read the rest of it. But it supports presentism far better, and it can be falsified similar to the way one falsifies the afterlife. Can't publish the results. — noAxioms

Ok, thanks for the clarification!

Well, I guess that's an opening for me to chip in — Ludwig V

Well the fact that you reacted to a comment 500 posts means you've been paying attention to this topic, and I must thank you for that and for your contribution.

I do have a problem, however, that I haven't got my head around what the criteria are for mind-independent existence.

I don't think my criteria matter at all. It's something that should be explicitly specified by anybody that claims it, so it might vary from one view to the next. Since I consider ontology to be a mental categorization, there's nothing mind independent about it. I'm not asserting that the others are wrong, but I'm trying to explore the consistency of such a view.

But first, can I ask whether you say that there is no question about the moon because there is no question whether it exists independent of any mind?

A typical realist would probably say that. I don't. "The moon is real because of empirical evidence". Presumably the moon's existence (relative to this planet) is not dependent on humans (or any life forms) observing it, and yet it's existence is justified by observation. I challenge that logic, but to do so, I need to find somebody who supports it.

For the record, I typically use the word 'mind' or 'observer' in a physicalist way, both synonyms for information processing of sensory input. There's nothing anthropocentric about it, but others might use the word differently.

For me, unicorns exist, all right. But they are not real creatures.

OK, so you draw a distinction between 'exists' and 'is real'. As a mythical creature, it is a common referent. People know what you're talking about, but it seems no more than a concept of a thing, not a thing in itself. I am not talking about the concept of anything, but about the actual thing, so perhaps I should say 'is it real?', or better, come up with an example that is not a common referent such as a bird with 7 wings, all left ones. That at least eliminates it existing as mythology. But instead let's just assume I'm talking about a unicorn and not the concept or myth of one.

If those stories stopped circulating and got forgotten, those myths would cease to exist

Side note: Your definition of 'exists' seems to be confined to 'exists at some preferred moment in time', which implies presentism, and only membership in this universe. I consider a live T-Rex to exist since I consider 75 MY prior to my presence to be part of our universe. The notion of 'cease to exist' makes like sense to me.
I also don't confine existence to our universe which is why I call it 'our' universe instead of 'the' universe. I find presentism to be a heavily mind dependent view. Just saying...

The bottom line, is that, in the case of unicorns, our intuitions pull in opposite directions.

The bottom line should be an answer to my question. Do real unicorns (not the myth) exist or not, and how might that answer be justified? Perhaps unicorns are again a bad example of mind-independence because they presumably implement mental processes of their own. Perhaps we should discuss some questionable inanimate entity.

If I may add a comment on thermostats. We made them to meet certain purposes in our lives. In that sense, they are mind-dependent.

Anything deliberately designed seems mind-dependent, yes. The thermostat was my example of Wayfarer's query for something not human that performs an experiment and acts on the result of that experiment. I didn't propose it as something mind independent.

I would say that what exists indendently of our minds is a physical object shorn of its place in our lives. Without that context, it is misleading to call it a thermostat.

So an alien-made device on a planet out of our access cannot be called a thermostat by us? How about the temperature regulatory systems that the first warm-blooded animals evolved? Both those are sans-human-context.

Not sure why you said that, after, for instance, the discussion we had about intelligibility and the 'perspectives'. — boundless

Sorry. I didn't see how that discussion actually applied to what I'm asking. Mind independent existence shouldn't be confined only to things that have a certain relationship to a potential mind (intelligibility).

the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered. — noAxioms

Well, it is a rather difficult point, right?

I know, and it's one I apparently failed to articulate well in my OP.
As explored in my reply with Ludwig V above, perhaps the unicorn is a poor example, but it is difficult (contradictory?) to identify something that has no experience associated with it.

On the other hand, you was pretty explicit that at the fundamental level of your hierachy we have mathematics and mind is after the physical. Ho can you claim that?

By 'after', you mean mind supervenes on the physical. My hierarchy doesn't count since I'm not claiming mind independent existence. I have existence supervening on mind, so that's pretty explicitly mind dependence. That hierarchy is a proposal, not something elevated to 'belief'. It seems to work pretty well though.

Well, denying that we can't understand meaning goes against the immediate evidence.

I didn't say that. There's no claim that 'I' = brain. I'm just suggesting that understanding is perhaps a physical process that takes place utilizing components, none of which understands what the process understands. That equates 'I' with 'process'.

Also, I believe that there is no consensus that our mind is algorithmical. — boundless

It kind of is if it utilizes classically deterministic primitives, and I've never seen a biological primitive that leverages randomness. All the parts seem to have evolved to leverage repeatability, sort of like how transistors do despite using quantum effects. Sure, it involves a lot more chemistry than does a computer, so in that sense, it's not the same. It doesn't implement an instruction set, but a computer need not do that either. I have designed a few computers with no instructions and no clock ticks.

Ants do not move and behave as stones do.

They're life forms, so of course not. But they're bloody close to full automatons. Super close to what a herd of identically manufactured robots would be like, which admittedly aren't designed to work together. Maybe nanobots, which are.
.

Not sure why you seem to label 'reality' what I would call a 'representation' or an 'interpretation' of reality.

Reality is an interpretation of empirical data. That's what I'm calling an interpretation here. People interpret that data differently, so there's all these different opinions of what is real. If being real is no more than an ideal (a mental designation), then there's no truth to the matter.

How can a thermostat be there long before humans came around if the quality of 'being a thermostat' is mind-dependent? — boundless

It wasn't a named quality back then. Nothing with the language to name it. So was it what we now call a thermostat? It's not like it was this funny isolated object, separate from what it controlled. It was spread out, integrated throughout what needed to have its temperature regulated.

Yes. I believe that certain classes of metaphysical interpretations are falsifiable, but not broad categories like 'idealism' or 'naturalism'. For instance, a 'local realist naturalism' has been falsified by Bell's experiement (BTW, I believe that even superdeterminism is actually a form of nonlocality...). — boundless

Superdeterminism is supposed to be local, but it kind of prevents empirical investigation, so it's an empty metaphysical proposal, sort of like BIV where all sensory input is rejected due to suspicion of it being lies. Thus superdeterminism is not listed as a valid quantum interpretation since it doesn't conform to data, but rather fully rejects it. Yes, local realism has been falsified. Here, realism has somewhat a different meaning that what the realists mean by the word.

There is a way to falsify presentism: Just jump into a large black hole. Presentism says it is impossible to be inside one since the interior never happens. No point in doing so of course, but you'll know for sure during what short time you have left to live.

BTW, as time passes, I am growing more sympathetic with MWI and MWI-like models if interpreted as describing potentialities. I believe, however, that the mistake of these models is to assume that all potentialities actualize, i.e. a belief that whatever can happen, will happen.

What's the point of MWI if not to point out that all potentialities (valid solutions to the wave function) occur? Some do and some don't? That seems to make far less sense, a reintroduction of dice rolling for no purpose.

I accept the presence of the antinomy and I think that this implies that we simply can't be certain about what is 'mind-independent'. — boundless

Wasn't the question though. The question was, do you have an opinion about it? What's the most mind-independent thing you can describe, something as unlike an apple as you can get? Does describing it disqualify it? I'm still not clear where you stand with unicorns, or a better example than unicorns.

Regarding the first sentence, I believe that you have not presented sufficient evidence to say that. — boundless

One does not present evidence of a negative. One provides a counterexample to falsify it.

But how can we make sense of the fact that the same object exists in different structures?

Example: It evolves naturally in one and by chance in many others.

In a sense, to me this shows that math perhaps isn't enough to explain 'things'.

Yes, it's a huge problem.

For instance I am not sure that the number ((10000000000^100000000000000)^100000000000000)^100000000000000 is instantiated in our universe, despite being finite.

You should have grouped the parentheses from the right, yielding a much larger number. Anyway, that number is the distance, in meters, between a certain pair of stars, given 1) an infinite universe, and 2) counterfactuals, the latter of which is dubious. Still, a distance between potential stars then.

And yet are space and time are quite 'real', right?

Dunno. You just got finishing saying that these are not defined without a frame, and a frame is an abstraction.

They are a phenomenological given, immediate features of our experience. Is there a relation between reference frames and our experience?

Probably, but out experience is physical, the same regardless of frame chosen to describe it. This is sort of like the twin paradox, illustrating that while time dilation is a coordinate effect (frame dependent), differential aging (noting the different ages of twins at reunion) is physical: the same difference regardless of frame choice.

One, however, might feel the plight of Einstein and ask: "Well, then, how can we 'carve' the world into distinct objects if we can't spatially sperate them??" — boundless

Why can't we spatially separate them?

If eternalism is right, change is merely illusory.

Disagree. Change is typically defined as difference in state over time, and eternalism is not incompatible with that. The illusion of time flow is a gift of evolution, allowing beings to predict the immediate future and be far more fit that something that can't.

But if our experience is so wrong about something 'obvious' like that, how can I trust it?

Trust it. Just because it isn't rational doesn't mean that it isn't essential for fitness.

Science, after all, is empirical. If our experience gets something basic like that so wrong, how can even trust science?

Science actually doesn't render much of an opinion, but rational logic does. Humans are by nature not rational. It takes effort to ignore the biases.

If the state truly evolves, you can't have a block universe.

OK, that's one usage of the term 'evolves'. Another is simply that one state is a function of the prior, classically or completely.

In fact, this is quite close to how I see it. As potentialities, all 'histories' are 'there' and eternalism is right for them. They have a weird 'virtual' existence, so to speak. They aren't 'nothing' but they aren't properly 'something'. Not all potentialities actualize. What is actual is what is truly 'real'.

This sounds like MWI until the part of about partial actualization. Not sure what it is with that. MWI is a very deterministic interpretation, but with the partial actualization bit thrown in, it ceases to be.

My point was that you need to have determinism in order to have eternalism.

Disagree, per the examples I gave. Presentism vs eternalism is merely an ontological difference. If one is possible without determinism, then so is the other.
Having said that, and having floated the idea that ontology is a mental designation, it would seem to follow that presentism and eternalism are the same thing, just interpreted differently, an abstract different choice without any truth behind it. I hadn't realized that until now.

My use of appearance merely indicates the presence of a thing as an effect on my senses, which is the parsimonious method for distinguishing the empirically objective from the rationally subjective. — Mww

I find both "empirically objective" and "rationally subjective" to be somewhat contradictory terms. It is quite difficult to communicate with such a gulf in how we choose to use language.

Where do you find fault with the concept of objectivity, then?

Objective implies something that is, independent of context. Not being a realist, I find very little that meets that. OK, arguably mathematics is objective, but one can argue against even that.

Big 'if'. If mind (or life, or intelligence) is truly not reducible, then it's also not really explainable in other terms. — Wayfarer

You responded to a comment to somebody else and totally ignored the fallacies identified in my comments regarding your own assertions.

I didn't ignore them intentionally - I just didn't notice them (and still don't know which comments you're referring to. The word ‘fallacies’ appears just once on this page, in the post above this one.)

I find both "empirically objective" and "rationally subjective" to be somewhat contradictory terms. It is quite difficult to communicate with such a gulf in how we choose to use language. — noAxioms

Ehhhh….we use language the same way, as means to represent a favored system, one in which you find the terms contradictory, another in which I find them complementary. The gulf resides in the disparity of the systems, not so much the words used to talk about them.

Objective implies something that is, independent of context. — noAxioms

As first responder herein, I admitted to unabashedly supporting mind-independent reality, which makes explicit something that is, and is necessarily, regardless of what I think about it.

I’m not sure how to relate the mind-independence of reality with context-independence, if mind just is the context from which reality is independent. If mind is necessary context for that objective which is independent, it follows the totality of context-independence for the objective, is impossible.

Sorry. I didn't see how that discussion actually applied to what I'm asking. Mind independent existence shouldn't be confined only to things that have a certain relationship to a potential mind (intelligibility). — noAxioms

No worries. As I said, it didn't help that I used terms like observer and perspective in a rather liberal way. Regarding this point you are making now about intelligibility I see you but if there are non-intelligible things, can we know them?

As explored in my reply with Ludwig V above, perhaps the unicorn is a poor example, but it is difficult (contradictory?) to identify something that has no experience associated with it. — noAxioms

And here you raise a good point, indeed. Can we really think about things that are outside our 'experience'? Read what philosopher Michel Bitbol said:

As soon as you think about something that is
independent of thought, this something is no longer independent of thought! As soon
as you try to imagine something that is independent of experience, you have an
experience of it – not necessarily the sensory experience of it, but some sort of
experience (imagination, concept, idea, etc.). The natural conclusion of this little
thought experiment is that there is nothing completely independent of experience. But
this creeping, all-pervasive presence of experience is the huge unnoticed fact of our
lives. Nobody seems to care about it. Few people seem to realize that even the
wildest speculations about what the universe was like during the first milliseconds
after the Big Bang are still experiences. Most scientists rather argue that the Big Bang
occurred as an event long before human beings existed in the universe. They can
claim that, of course, but only from within the standpoint of their own present
experience...
Ironically, then, omnipresence of experience is tantamount to its absence.
Experience is obvious; it is everywhere at this very moment. There is nothing apart
from experience. Even when you think of past moments in which you do not
remember having had any experience, this is still an experience, a present experience
of thinking about them. But this background immediate experience goes unnoticed
because there is nothing with which to contrast it.
This was well understood by Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the most clearheaded
philosopher of the twentieth century. One of my favourite quotes of
Wittgenstein’s is this one: ‘[Conscious experience] is not a something, but not a
nothing either!’

(Michel Bitbol https://www.academia.edu/24657293/IT_IS_NEVER_KNOWN_BUT_IS_THE_KNOWER_CONSCIOUSNESS_AND_THE_BLIND_SPOT_OF_SCIENCE_")

If we answer to this that, indeed, we can know something 'mind-independent' we have to assume that what is 'mind-independent' is conveniently intelligible, at least in part. If we answer in the negative, at least a transcendental idealism seems inexcapable. Note that even with the first answer we have to explain intelligibility.

I have existence supervening on mind, so that's pretty explicitly mind dependence. That hierarchy is a proposal, not something elevated to 'belief'. It seems to work pretty well though. — noAxioms

Ok, I see. What about a dual-aspect view though? If the mental and the physical arise both from math, perhaps neither mind nor the physical has a precedence.

It kind of is if it utilizes classically deterministic primitives, and I've never seen a biological primitive that leverages randomness. All the parts seem to have evolved to leverage repeatability, sort of like how transistors do despite using quantum effects. Sure, it involves a lot more chemistry than does a computer, so in that sense, it's not the same. It doesn't implement an instruction set, but a computer need not do that either. I have designed a few computers with no instructions and no clock ticks. — noAxioms

It seems that you assume here that the only possible alternative are either determinism or probabilism. But what if our knowledge of 'the world' is limited and, in fact, the regularities of nature make room from something else?

Superdeterminism is supposed to be local — noAxioms

Yeah, but ironically even it needs the existence of wildly nonlocal unexplained correlations that some how 'trick us' in believing that 'local realism' is false. One might, however, ask the superdeterminist how these correlations were there in the first place.

Yes, local realism has been falsified. Here, realism has somewhat a different meaning that what the realists mean by the word. — noAxioms

Yes, but there is a resemblance. In physics, the lack of realism means that physical quantities have no definite values unless they are measured (take your favorite interpretation of what a 'measurement' is, it's not relevant for what I am saying now). In philosophy, 'realism' strictly speaking not only means that there is a 'mind-independent reality' but also that it is knowable. Kant's transcendental idealism is not a 'realism' in this strict sense because it posit an unknowable 'mind-independent reality'. The resemblance here is that both claim there is always something 'definite'.
So, while I agree that that 'local realism' in physics is not really a metaphysical category, it seems to me that some metahphysical models - even 'anti-realist' in the philosophical sense - have been excluded. For instance, Schopenhauer's version of transcendental idealism was proven wrong.

There is a way to falsify presentism: Just jump into a large black hole. Presentism says it is impossible to be inside one since the interior never happens. No point in doing so of course, but you'll know for sure during what short time you have left to live. — noAxioms

Here I use relationism to defend presentism. Since there is no 'view from nowhere', when I jump into a black hole for me time stops. For you, it doesn't. So a global presentism is certainly refuted, but perhaps a local one?

What's the point of MWI if not to point out that all potentialities (valid solutions to the wave function) occur? Some do and some don't? That seems to make far less sense, a reintroduction of dice rolling for no purpose. — noAxioms

Well, the merit of such a 'MWI' would be to reintroduce a version of 'potentiality'. Also, if the world isn't deterministic, it makes clear that "things could have been otherwise". Of course, I don't think that such a MWI alone would be able to explain QM's results. But maybe it can be integrated in some ways.

Wasn't the question though. The question was, do you have an opinion about it? What's the most mind-independent thing you can describe, something as unlike an apple as you can get? Does describing it disqualify it? I'm still not clear where you stand with unicorns, or a better example than unicorns. — noAxioms

Funny thing is that, dependending on the context, I'll answer in different ways. In general, I believe that we can't know if there is something mind-independent. However, that there is some mind-independent reality is the most plausible asumption we can make. I would perhaps say that, in general, living beings are what is certainly mind-independent, they can't be understood as parts of any 'representation' of our cognitive faculties.

Also, I should add, however, that in a deeper sense, perhaps, nothing is 'mind independent'. As I mentioned before, I lean towards some of forms of 'ontological idealism' and theism, some forms of mind as fundamental. But such a 'mind' is not our own.

Sorry, I know it isn't clear.

One does not present evidence of a negative. One provides a counterexample to falsify it. — noAxioms

Well, for instance, I have the 'impression' that my actions are neither deterministic nor probabilistic. And that impression is quite strong for me. So, I consider that immediate impression as evidence that, perhaps, there is something other than determinism or probabilism. Prove me wrong.

Example: It evolves naturally in one and by chance in many others. — noAxioms

Or maybe they are different 'versions' or aspects of the same object.

You should have grouped the parentheses from the right, yielding a much larger number. Anyway, that number is the distance, in meters, between a certain pair of stars, given 1) an infinite universe, and 2) counterfactuals, the latter of which is dubious. Still, a distance between potential stars then. — noAxioms

Well, right, but if the universe is not infinite, then, you can conceive a natural number that hasn't a 'referent'. Note that even for a simple structure as natural numbers, then, it's difficult to find a 'physical support'. You already need an infinite universe!

Probably, but out experience is physical, the same regardless of frame chosen to describe it. This is sort of like the twin paradox, illustrating that while time dilation is a coordinate effect (frame dependent), differential aging (noting the different ages of twins at reunion) is physical: the same difference regardless of frame choice. — noAxioms

While I can't concede you that 'experience is physical' you make a good point here.

Why can't we spatially separate them? — noAxioms

I meant to write something like: "if local realism is wrong, is there a non-arbitrary way of distinguishing objects? If so how?"

Disagree. Change is typically defined as difference in state over time, and eternalism is not incompatible with that. The illusion of time flow is a gift of evolution, allowing beings to predict the immediate future and be far more fit that something that can't. — noAxioms

But from our experience of change, we get the a very convincing impression that the present alone is real and the future and the past aren't. Eternalism says that past, present and future are equally real. So, it is interesting that, if eternalism is right, we are favoured by a very deep self-deception.

Trust it. Just because it isn't rational doesn't mean that it isn't essential for fitness. — noAxioms

Yes, but note that if experience goes so wrong and it is the starting point of science even science itself has shaky grounds so to speak.

Science actually doesn't render much of an opinion, but rational logic does. Humans are by nature not rational. It takes effort to ignore the biases. — noAxioms

We are potentially truly rational beings. We can be rational but very often we either can't or choose not to be.

This sounds like MWI until the part of about partial actualization. Not sure what it is with that. MWI is a very deterministic interpretation, but with the partial actualization bit thrown in, it ceases to be. — noAxioms

Yes, I know. And I don't see it as a problem.

Disagree, per the examples I gave. Presentism vs eternalism is merely an ontological difference. If one is possible without determinism, then so is the other. — noAxioms

Honestly, I do not get how non-deterministic models are compatible with eternalism. I'll reflect on what you have wrote.

Having said that, and having floated the idea that ontology is a mental designation, it would seem to follow that presentism and eternalism are the same thing, just interpreted differently, an abstract different choice without any truth behind it. I hadn't realized that until now. — noAxioms

Well, I'm not sure how this doesn't imply something like either a form of idealism or a radical skepticism. The only possible way I can think of that they can both be 'true' is that they give good predictions and are useful.

They're life forms, so of course not. But they're bloody close to full automatons. Super close to what a herd of identically manufactured robots would be like, which admittedly aren't designed to work together. Maybe nanobots, which are. — noAxioms

Again, I believe that we have to agree to disagree here. Based on how experience my choices, I am open to the possibility that also ants might not have an 'algorithmic mind'. So, while robots can emulate the ants' behavior (becuase they are programmed to do so), I question that they would be the same.

To use a probably not very good analogy, it is like to compare a portrait of a human being to the human being. It well represents some features of the human being but certainly they aren't the same.

Reality is an interpretation of empirical data. That's what I'm calling an interpretation here. People interpret that data differently, so there's all these different opinions of what is real. If being real is no more than an ideal (a mental designation), then there's no truth to the matter. — noAxioms

...Unless, there is something that goes 'beyond' the representations that gives an independent criterion on the 'truthfulness' of the representations.

It wasn't a named quality back then. Nothing with the language to name it. So was it what we now call a thermostat? It's not like it was this funny isolated object, separate from what it controlled. It was spread out, integrated throughout what needed to have its temperature regulated. — noAxioms

By quality I meant 'what makes a thermostat, a thermostat'. If I negate the mind-independence of that, there is no mind-independent thermostat. Note that a 'thermostat' is dependent on the existence of the 'temperature'. But is 'temperature' a property of things outside our conceptual categories or is a concept we introduced to make sense of our experience?

Well the fact that you reacted to a comment 500 posts means you've been paying attention to this topic, and I must thank you for that and for your contribution. — noAxioms

It's an excellent topic.

I don't think my criteria matter at all. It's something that should be explicitly specified by anybody that claims it (sc. mind-independent existence), so it might vary from one view to the next. — noAxioms

It might well. The variations will be very instructive.

Since I consider ontology to be a mental categorization, there's nothing mind independent about it. I'm not asserting that the others are wrong, but I'm trying to explore the consistency of such a view. — noAxioms

If I believe that the moon is exists independently of what I, or anyone else, thinks about it, is that an ontological claim? If so, the mere fact that we categorize or classify something in some way, in my view, is no ground for claiming that it is mind-dependent, though the classification obviously is.

"The moon is real because of empirical evidence". Presumably the moon's existence (relative to this planet) is not dependent on humans (or any life forms) observing it, and yet it's existence is justified by observation. I challenge that logic, but to do so, I need to find somebody who supports it. — noAxioms

I would not dream of claiming that the moon is real because of empirical evidence, because that is not true. The moon exists because of complex events in the solar system, some billions of years ago. We know it exists because of empirical evidence, but that is an entirely different matter.

OK, so you draw a distinction between 'exists' and 'is real'. As a mythical creature, it is a common referent. People know what you're talking about, but it seems no more than a concept of a thing, not a thing in itself. I am not talking about the concept of anything, but about the actual thing, so perhaps I should say 'is it real?', or better, come up with an example that is not a common referent such as a bird with 7 wings, all left ones. That at least eliminates it existing as mythology. But instead let's just assume I'm talking about a unicorn and not the concept or myth of one — noAxioms

I don't quite see your point. We can agree that your birds do not exist. But, since you have imagined them, they are imaginary birds, and consequently not real birds, and not real. They don't seem at all problematic. That makes them different from mythical creatures. Mythical creatures such as unicorns have an additional feature. Why would we ignore that?
As to the distinction between "exists" and "is real", I had assumed that anything that exists is real. A forged banknote is not a real banknote, but it is a real forgery. The reality of the banknote depends, so to speak on how you classify it. The difference is that there is no classification under which I can say that a unicorn exists. That's a difference in meaning between "forged" and "mythical".

Your definition of 'exists' seems to be confined to 'exists at some preferred moment in time', which implies presentism, and only membership in this universe. I consider a live T-Rex to exist since I consider 75 MY prior to my presence to be part of our universe. The notion of 'cease to exist' makes like sense to me. I also don't confine existence to our universe which is why I call it 'our' universe instead of 'the' universe. I find presentism to be a heavily mind dependent view. Just saying... — noAxioms

I must confess that I don't have a firm view of about presentism and eternalism. We seem to have a difference in our understand of "exist". I wouldn't dream of saying that dinosaurs exist in the sense of being alive. I accept that dinosaurs exist in the sense that their remains are still to be found in various places. On the other hand, I do maintain that they did not exist before they evolved in the Triassic period.

The bottom line should be an answer to my question. Do real unicorns (not the myth) exist or not, and how might that answer be justified? Perhaps unicorns are again a bad example of mind-independence because they presumably implement mental processes of their own. Perhaps we should discuss some questionable inanimate entity. — noAxioms

The bottom line, then, is that the answer depends on your definition of "exist" and "real".

So an alien-made device on a planet out of our access cannot be called a thermostat by us? How about the temperature regulatory systems that the first warm-blooded animals evolved? Both those are sans-human-context. — noAxioms

Yes, that's true. I wouldn't hesitate to call either of those cases thermostats, because in each case, they are part of a living system or part of a living being. On the other hand, if we found an inanimate system that included a feedback loop that tended to maintain itself in a steady state, I would hesitate to call it a thermostat, but probably come down on the side of doing so, on the grounds that it is at least analogous to what we now call a thermostat.

Reality is an interpretation of empirical data. That's what I'm calling an interpretation here. People interpret that data differently, so there's all these different opinions of what is real. If being real is no more than an ideal (a mental designation), then there's no truth to the matter. — noAxioms

"Real" is more complicated that "red" or "large". Many, if not all, objects can be classified in several ways, according to context and point of view. Things can be real under one designation and not real under another. As to reality as philosophers debate it, I don't really understand what they are talking about - unless they mean real things in general. But since what is real depends on how it is described, that doesn't mean very much to me. "Real" does not mean "Ideal". On the contrary, the real is quite often opposed to the ideal.

Yes, local realism has been falsified. — noAxioms

Could you please enlighten me - What is "local realism"?

Having said that, and having floated the idea that ontology is a mental designation, it would seem to follow that presentism and eternalism are the same thing, just interpreted differently, an abstract different choice without any truth behind it. I hadn't realized that until now. — noAxioms

I must confess, when I've come across that argument, I haven't found it particularly interesting. So I'm not disappointed by that conclusion.

As first responder herein, I admitted to unabashedly supporting mind-independent reality, which makes explicit something that is, and is necessarily, regardless of what I think about it. — Mww

I agree. The interesting part is which items qualify as mind-independent and under what criteria.

But is 'temperature' a property of things outside our conceptual categories or is a concept we introduced to make sense of our experience? — boundless

I'm a bit puzzled by this. Why can't it be both?

If I believe that the moon is exists independently of what I, or anyone else, thinks about it, is that an ontological claim? If so, the mere fact that we categorize or classify something in some way, in my view, is no ground for claiming that it is mind-dependent, though the classification obviously is. — Ludwig V

Yes, that's an ontological claim, and of mind-independence. That part is easy, and quite common. The challenge is with where it ends. Pick something that exists despite lack of evidence, or something that doesn't exist, with justification of why not. It need not be something known obviously. So it's an opinion. My topic is about if your opinion is self-consistent, because few think about it further than opinions about what is seen. This is why the moon doesn't matter.

I would not dream of claiming that the moon is real because of empirical evidence, because that is not true.

Poorly worded on my part. Typical claim is that "I know the moon exists due to empirical evidence". It's an epistemic claim about ontology, but not directly an ontic claim.

The moon exists because of complex events in the solar system, some billions of years ago.

That's a description of how it was created and already assumes the moon shares the same ontology as those solar system events long ago.

We can agree that your birds do not exist.

Why should I agree with that? The bird example was admittedly a reach for impossibility/improbability, but a helicopter gets close to fitting the description.

But, since you have imagined them, they are imaginary birds and consequently not real birds, and not real.

Imagining something presumably isn't what makes it not real. Again, I'm not talking about the concept of something, but about the thing itself. I have a imagined image of the moon, what it's like up there, which doesn't make the moon nonexistent.

As to the distinction between "exists" and "is real", I had assumed that anything that exists is real.

Contradicting your prior quote: "For me, unicorns exist, all right. But they are not real creatures.".

A forged banknote is not a real banknote, but it is a real forgery. — Ludwig V

Different definition of 'real' there. We're discussing ontology, not 'being genuine'.
I've seen whole topics devoted to the latter: "My signature is not mine since it was made by a pen, not by me". Games like that.

The difference is that there is no classification under which I can say that a unicorn exists. That's a difference in meaning between "forged" and "mythical".

To be a unicorn, all it needs to be sort of horsey-like with a single horn on its head. There's no requirement to correspond exactly to the human myth (attracted to female virgins, blows rainbows out of its butt). A Rhino is almost one, similar to how manatees were sometimes taken for mermaids. Still, not particularly horsey. I don't like the unicorn example because it is so improbably that there is not a planet in the infinite universe somewhere that has produced them. And that's a mind-dependent opinion because I reference 'the universe', making it preferred due to us being in it. I mean, Tegmark calculated how far away is an exact copy of Earth (given a classical universe). If that's there, there's plenty of unicorns between us and it.

So again, just because there's a myth about it, why does that preclude the reality of one? It's like you're saying that the myth causes its noexistence.

I must confess that I don't have a firm view of about presentism and eternalism. We seem to have a difference in our understand of "exist". — Ludwig V

There are many definitions, rarely clarified when the word is used. Some examples:
1) Idealistic: A thing exists if it is conceived. Not particularly mind independent.
2) Part of this universe: The universe is what is real, as is its contents, observed or not.
2p) Part of this universe now. There is a preferred moment in time, and only the current state of the universe is real. The rest is not.
2e) Time is part of the universe, so all states/events share the same ontology.
3) Relational: X exists relative to Y if Y has been affected by X. This is seemingly relevant only in causal structures.
4) Existence is whatever we designate as such, an opinion which doesn't have a truth value.
5) Objective: Existing (or being real) is a property of some 'things' and not a property of others. It is unclear how to determine this property, but two interacting things probably have the same ontology as each other.

There are other definitions, but that's a taste. Your intuitions seem to lean heavily towards 2p. I favor the relational definition most often since it is far more compatible with quantum mechanics. I've been exploring the 4th one.
The 5th one allows (but does not require) other universes to exist, ones that are far simpler, or ones with 4 spatial and 2 time dimensions and stuff like that. I find #5 empty since the property doesn't seem to be required for anything. My prior topic was all about just that.

Reality is an interpretation of empirical data.

I want to say this is a mind-dependent definition, but it might be too hasty. The apple exists not because it is observed, but its observation suggests an interpretation of reality that includes that apple. Fair enough, but it doesn't say how the interpretation deals with things not observed, and this topic is mostly about that.

Could you please enlighten me - What is "local realism"? — Ludwig V

A recent Nobel prize in physics was given for proving this again, despite Bell doing it in the 60's.

'Local' refers to the principle of locality, that information, cause/effect, cannot go faster than light. 'Spooky action at a distance' suggests otherwise, that measurement of one of a pair of entangled particles instantly (whatever that means, given relativity of simultaneity) affecting the state of the other, no matter how distant. Whether this actually occurs has never been verified, so there are local interpretations of QM such as Copenhagen, RQM, MWI, Qbism.

'realism' in this context refers to the principle of counterfactual definiteness which states that a system is in a given state even in the absence of measurement. So for instance, a photon exists in space en-route before it finally hits something. It has a location and momentum and such. It factually goes through one slit or the other despite nobody measuring/knowing which one.
Realist interpretations include Bohmian Mechanics and Transactional interpretation. These all require faster than light cause-effect.

Proving that reality is not locally real means that at most one of the two above principles is true.
An example that rejects both principles is objective collapse interpretations.


This is all quite relevant to the topic, because under most interpretations, the moon is not objectively real, but only real to that which as measured it, which usually means anything that has in any way interacted with it by say receiving a photon emitted by the moon.

Can we really think about things that are outside our 'experience'? Read what philosopher Michel Bitbol said:

As soon as you think about something that is independent of thought, this something is no longer independent of thought! — boundless

Sure, but I'm not asking about something not thought of. I'm asking about something that doesn't require that thought for its existence.

The natural conclusion of this little thought experiment is that there is nothing completely independent of experience. — Bitobt

Totally doesn't follow from what he writes. Not impressed. All that follows is that nothing thought of goes un-thought of, a trivial tautology.

If we answer to this that, indeed, we can know something 'mind-independent' we have to assume that what is 'mind-independent' is conveniently intelligible, at least in part. — boundless

I cannot agree. 1) An apple is typically presented as mind-independent, but it is intelligible. 2) (Caution: new word coming) The thing in question could be entirely intelligible, but lacking anything in any way experiencing, imagining, or knowing about it, it merely fails to go itelligiblated.

Ok, I see. What about a dual-aspect view though? If the mental and the physical arise both from math, perhaps neither mind nor the physical has a precedence.

You mean independently, one not supervening on the other? Yea, then there'd be no precedence between those two.

It seems that you assume here that the only possible alternative are either determinism or probabilism.

Those seem to be the only valid alternative in QM. Even the consiousness-causes-collapse interpretation doesn't have mind doing anything deliberately. There's not control to it. All the interpretations exhibit phenomenal randomness.

But what if our knowledge of 'the world' is limited and, in fact, the regularities of nature make room from something else?

Then we're wrong, being insufficiently informed.

Superdeterminism is supposed to be local — noAxioms

Yeah, but ironically even it needs the existence of wildly nonlocal unexplained correlations that some how 'trick us' in believing that 'local realism' is false. One might, however, ask the superdeterminist how these correlations were there in the first place. — boundless

Those correlations might be widely separated, but never is there superluminal cause-effect. Thus is is considered a local thing, but not an interpretation.

Here I use relationism to defend presentism. Since there is no 'view from nowhere', when I jump into a black hole for me time stops.

No it doesn't. Time is experienced normally for all observers in both views. Under presentism, you simply abruptly cease to exist at the event horizon. The experience under eternalism is of being inside, also with time phenomenally flowing as normal.

So a global presentism is certainly refuted, but perhaps a local one?

I don't know what these are, and absent me jumping into a black hole, I've not refuted anything.

But from our experience of change, we get the a very convincing impression that the present alone is real and the future and the past aren't.

That's the impression, yes. Doesn't make the impression correct, especially since both interpretation give that same impression.

Also, I should add, however, that in a deeper sense, perhaps, nothing is 'mind independent'. As I mentioned before, I lean towards some of forms of 'ontological idealism' and theism, some forms of mind as fundamental. But such a 'mind' is not our own.

Maybe you're not the person to ask then, as I'm also not.

Well, for instance, I have the 'impression' that my actions are neither deterministic nor probabilistic. — boundless

We all have that impression, but as said, I give little weight to that evidence. I find my actions deterministic in the short run, but very probabilistic as the initial state is moved further away. So sure, given a deer crossing in front of my car, my reaction would likely be the same every time. On a longer scale, it is not determined in the year 1950 that i will choose vanilla today since it isn't even determined that i will exist. Under MWI for instance, fully deterministic, I both choose and don't choose vanilla, but under the same MWI, almost all branches (from one second ago) have me swerving (nearly) identically for the deer.

So, I consider that immediate impression as evidence that, perhaps, there is something other than determinism or probabilism. Prove me wrong.

There is dualism, which is something other. But immediate impression isn't good evidence for that one since the determinism and probabilism both also yield that same impression.

Well, right, but if the universe is not infinite, then, you can conceive a natural number that hasn't a 'referent'.

Granted. A torrid universe is a possibility for instance. Finite stuff, but no edge. I think a torrid universe requires a preferred orientation for the spatial axes. I wonder if one can get around that.

I meant to write something like: "if local realism is wrong, is there a non-arbitrary way of distinguishing objects? If so how?"

Don't understand this. This marble is red, that one is blue. How is that not distinguishing objects, and what the heck does lack of locality have to do with that?

Eternalism says that past, present and future are equally real. So, it is interesting that, if eternalism is right, we are favoured by a very deep self-deception. — boundless

It has immense pragmatic utility to be so deceived. Evolution would definitely select for it.

We are potentially truly rational beings. We can be rational but very often we either can't or choose not to be.

My investigation makes us fundamentally irrational, but with rational tool at our disposal. This is kind of optimal. If the rational part was at the core, we'd not be fit.
So for instance, I am, at my core, a presentist, and I act on that belief all the time. The rational tool is off to the side, and instead of being used to rationalize the beliefs of the core part, it ignores it and tries to figure things out on its own. But it's never in charge. It cannot be.

Honestly, I do not get how non-deterministic models are compatible with eternalism. I'll reflect on what you have wrote.

Suppose physics says that the next state is the square root of the prior state (9). Determinism might say subsequent state is 3, but randomness says it could be 3 or -3. Either value in the block is not a violation of the physics, but if there can only be one answer, it can't be both. It can be there, so eternalism isn't violated, but it can't be predicted from the state 9.

The only possible way I can think of that they can both be 'true' is that they give good predictions and are useful.

They don't make predictions at all. If they did, only one would be true. Hence falsifiability.


To use a probably not very good analogy, it is like to compare a portrait of a human being to the human being. It well represents some features of the human being but certainly they aren't the same.

I didn't ignore them intentionally - I just didn't notice them (and still don't know which comments you're referring to. The word ‘fallacies’ appears just once on this page, in the post above this one.) — Wayfarer

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1000411
Near the bottom. Your replied only to a part of that comment addressed to boundless.

As first responder herein, I admitted to unabashedly supporting mind-independent reality, which makes explicit something that is, and is necessarily, regardless of what I think about it. — Mww

OK, reality is real because it's necessary. That's something. Necessary for what? What would be violated by there not being anything?

Totally doesn't follow from what he writes. Not impressed. All that follows is that nothing thought of goes un-thought of, a trivial tautology. — noAxioms

His point seems to me that there are limits to our 'imagination' and our conceptual models. Our minds is not a passive 'recorder' of 'what is outside of us'. In fact, they actively try to interpret things according to their own categories. So, it's not obvious that 'the world we see' isn't a representation. And, in fact, the same goes for unpercieved objects.

I cannot agree. 1) An apple is typically presented as mind-independent, but it is intelligible. 2) (Caution: new word coming) The thing in question could be entirely intelligible, but lacking anything in any way experiencing, imagining, or knowing about it, it merely fails to go itelligiblated. — noAxioms

The question you should be asking is: why is the apple intelligible?

You mean independently, one not supervening on the other? Yea, then there'd be no precedence between those two. — noAxioms

They might depend on a common 'source', for example, or maybe they are aspects of the same thing. In both cases, the mental would not 'supervene' on the 'physical'.

Those seem to be the only valid alternative in QM. Even the consiousness-causes-collapse interpretation doesn't have mind doing anything deliberately. There's not control to it. All the interpretations exhibit phenomenal randomness. — noAxioms

Yes. Before QM, all physical theories were deterministic. With QM, we found out an apparent probabilism, the status of which is of course controversial. Assuming that such a probabilism is 'real', why can't we think that there are other possibilities besides determinism and probabilism?

Then we're wrong, being insufficiently informed. — noAxioms

In a sense, yes. But I would not even call newtonian mechanics 'wrong' tout court. Our physical theories give us incredibly precise predictions. They have to be at least partially right.

Those correlations might be widely separated, but never is there superluminal cause-effect. Thus is is considered a local thing, but not an interpretation. — noAxioms

Yes, I know. I just find bizzarre that a 'scientific realist' would prefer to say that there are 'unexplained nonlocal correlations' than saying that, perhaps, instead there are nonlocal interactions of some sorts. If we renounce to find an 'explanation' of those correlations, why not simply take an epistemic interpretation of QM?

No it doesn't. Time is experienced normally for all observers in both views. Under presentism, you simply abruptly cease to exist at the event horizon. The experience under eternalism is of being inside, also with time phenomenally flowing as normal. — noAxioms

Interesting, thanks. Not sure, however, how this address my point about relationalism.

Maybe you're not the person to ask then, as I'm also not. — noAxioms

Well, for the purposes of our discussion let us ignore that part.

We all have that impression, but as said, I give little weight to that evidence. — noAxioms

Yes, I know. And I am not in a position to tell you that you are being 'unreasonable' here. In fact, I find your motivations quite valid. I was just saying why I find that a problem.

I find my actions deterministic in the short run, but very probabilistic as the initial state is moved further away. So sure, given a deer crossing in front of my car, my reaction would likely be the same every time. On a longer scale, it is not determined in the year 1950 that i will choose vanilla today since it isn't even determined that i will exist. Under MWI for instance, fully deterministic, I both choose and don't choose vanilla, but under the same MWI, almost all branches (from one second ago) have me swerving (nearly) identically for the deer. — noAxioms

Ok, I get that. Also, despite saying what I said, I also recognize that perhaps we are less free than we naively think we are. But I still can't renounce that I have a 'little spot' of freedom that allows my choices to be neither fully determined nor probabilistic. YMMV.

There is dualism, which is something other. But immediate impression isn't good evidence for that one since the determinism and probabilism both also yield that same impression. — noAxioms

Good point. Perhaps, it is me that I should explain how my 'impression' isn't compatible with determinism and probabilism.

Don't understand this. This marble is red, that one is blue. How is that not distinguishing objects, and what the heck does lack of locality have to do with that? — noAxioms

If the two marbles, however, are in some way 'nonlocally entangled', you can't treat them as two separate objects but perhaps as two parts of an undivided whole. In fact, what is common between, say, most readings of de Broglie-Bohm interpretation* and Neumaier's thermal interpretation is that entangled systems do form an undivided wholeness. Perhaps this also means that two different 'objects' can occupy the same position (or limited region of space).

*There is also a 'Humean' reading of that interpretation that denies that there is a real interaction between entangled particles and/or they form an undivided whole. For that reading it 'just happens' that particles follow a nonlocal law of motion. Just as with the superdeterminists, I don't get these realists that do not seek an explanation...if you are interested, I'll link some sources.

It has immense pragmatic utility to be so deceived. Evolution would definitely select for it. — noAxioms

Fair enough. But I find the thing curious. I can accept that a limitation of our knowledge might be useful. But (self-)deception? I find it curious, but I admit that this doesn't refute your point, of course.

Granted. A torrid universe is a possibility for instance. Finite stuff, but no edge. I think a torrid universe requires a preferred orientation for the spatial axes. I wonder if one can get around that. — noAxioms

Right!

My investigation makes us fundamentally irrational, but with rational tool at our disposal. This is kind of optimal. If the rational part was at the core, we'd not be fit.
So for instance, I am, at my core, a presentist, and I act on that belief all the time. The rational tool is off to the side, and instead of being used to rationalize the beliefs of the core part, it ignores it and tries to figure things out on its own. But it's never in charge. It cannot be. — noAxioms

I respect this. But my view is that 'being rational' is a full realization of our own nature. So, for me, it is more difficult to accept what you say here. Perhaps, however, it isn't impossible. And, also, I have different reasons to say that unrelated to the topic of the discussion.

Suppose physics says that the next state is the square root of the prior state (9). Determinism might say subsequent state is 3, but randomness says it could be 3 or -3. Either value in the block is not a violation of the physics, but if there can only be one answer, it can't be both. It can be there, so eternalism isn't violated, but it can't be predicted from the state 9. — noAxioms

Well, I don't understand how it isn't violated except if both values actualize, i.e. a MWI-like scenario (not of the modified type I imagined before)

They don't make predictions at all. If they did, only one would be true. Hence falsifiability. — noAxioms

Yes.

“…. For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears, which is absurd….”

What’s violated, absent the something that necessarily is…the LNC and the principle of cause/effect.

….reality is real because it's necessary. — noAxioms

Reality is not real; things that appear to the senses are real, and those are real necessarily. Reality is merely that general pure conception representing the totality of real things that appear to the senses, and from which the possibility of experience itself, is given.