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. — Ludwig V

For me anyway, the only mind-independent items are those I don’t think about, either particularly, from the lack of occassion yet for which an experience is nonetheless possible immediately upon such occassion, or, generally, from the impossibility of a conception sufficient to represent them, for which there can never be an experience at all.

This relates iff mind-dependence begins at intuition, not perception, insofar as, with respect to criteria, at intuition is the first representational construct, which replaces the empirically real of things effecting the senses, in a theoretical point of view regarding the human intellectual system.

I’m not a fan of the concept of mind; all that is mind can be replaced by reason. The explanatory power of mind I can do without; of reason I cannot.

Apart from them there is vast nothingness. — prothero

Interesting phrase. Can nothingness be vast?

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 — ChatGPT

Indeed, there is no decision. There is only one possible course of action, and the thermostat cannot not take it.

What if a tiny critter has a sensor for food, a sensor for poison, and flagella to take it toward food and away from poison. The sensors weigh which sensory input is stronger, and the stronger gets control of the flagellum.

So a decision is made.

Yes, that's an ontological claim, and of mind-independence. That part is easy, and quite common. The challenge is with where it ends. 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. — noAxioms

I think I understand that. So "unicorn" is not an irrelevant example. I like it just because it is not straightforward, but requires some thought. That's much more instructive than the moon.

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. — noAxioms

OK.

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. — noAxioms

Well, yes. It is an object in the solar system, so it seems a reasonable assumption. Any question about that is pretty much incomprehensible to me.

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. — noAxioms

You are right. It is curious that we talk of the imaginary friends that some small children have, meaning that they do not exist. Yet it is perfectly possible to imagine something that is real - such as a friend who is absent. My grounds are precisely the ones that you were reaching for - improbability or impossibility. Those grounds are defeasible, but the implausibility of the idea means that it would not be easy to convince me of the opposite - especially in this age of deep fakes!

As to the distinction between "exists" and "is real", I had assumed that anything that exists is real — Ludwig V
Contradicting your prior quote: "For me, unicorns exist, all right. But they are not real creatures.". — noAxioms

Sorry. I meant to explain that.
My model for "real" relies on the common use of the word, in which something that is unreal under one description will (normally) be real under another. This contradicts the common assumption that "real" and "unreal" are exclusive, which neglects the fact that many things we would describe as unreal do in fact exist and are real under a different description. Hence "A forged banknote is not a real banknote, but it is a real forgery."

As I was writing, I realized that unicorns and mythical creatures and 7-winged birds are imaginary creatures and "unicorns are real mythical creatures" and "7-winged birds are real imaginary creatures" seemed malapropisms. But unicorns and 7-winged birds do not, to put it this way, have the same mode of existence as forged bank-notes and industrial diamonds.

Different definition of 'real' there. We're discussing ontology, not 'being genuine'. — noAxioms

True. I get a bit confused by "mind-indendent reality", which, pretty clearly is about existence.

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. — noAxioms

If I write something like that, you can be pretty sure it is a joke.

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 .... 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. ..... — noAxioms

You did cite unicorns in your earlier post. It is true that my disbelief in them is defeasible. (Most claims about non-existence are.) But your argument is wildly speculative and does not even begin to convince me. Until there is better evidence, I shall continue to classify them as mythical and claim they don't exist, except in the way that mythical creatures (Pegasus, the Gorgons, etc.) exist and not in the way that horses exist.

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. — noAxioms

I see your point. Compare "imaginary". My reply is the same.

There are many definitions, rarely clarified when the word is used. Some examples:- ..... 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. — noAxioms

Thinking about it, I'm really not content to say that past events and future events don't exist. It makes sense to say that all events, past, future and present exist, but in different modes. "X event happend in the past", "Y event will happen in the future", and "Z event is happening now" are all true and all those events are real, hence exist. So I don't accept 2p.
I've worked with 4) most of the time, though I would resist the apparent arbitrariess of "whatever we designate" and substitute "whateven the language we are involved in specifies". But I would insist on the truth value. I've talked about different modes of existence in this post. That reflects the effect of context on the meaning of "exist" .

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. — noAxioms

I don't think you've got that quite right. Surely, the data are also part of reality? Also, on the face of it, it looks as if you are saying that reality is not (directly) observed, so your problem disappears. I'm not sure about reality, but I'm pretty sure that what counts as real depends on the context. "Real money", "Real food", "Real champagne" all have different definitions.

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

That's odd. There must be a story about that.

Edit. Text deleted here.

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. — noAxioms

Thanks very much for that. It was very helpful.

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. — noAxioms

Yes, I've gathered that modern physics seems to have become something that Bishop Berkeley would have approved of, - apart from the refusal to include God. But there also seems to be very little consensus.

I'll venture on one ignorant comment. If you try to define space and time or space-time without any physical objects, you are bound to run in to trouble. At least, it seems obvious to me that those dimensions only have meaning in a universe that includes some actual objects. But then, so far as I can see, a space-time diagram is a method for plotting physical objects, like a map, rather than a description of reality, like a picture.

You did cite unicorns in your earlier post. It is true that my disbelief in them is defeasible. (Most claims about non-existence are.) But your argument is wildly speculative and does not even begin to convince me. Until there is better evidence, I shall continue to classify them as mythical and claim they don't exist, except in the way that mythical creatures (Pegasus, the Gorgons, etc.) exist and not in the way that horses exist. — Ludwig V

Is it not surprising and disappointing that we still don't have words or phrases for such common things, and can only say things like "mythical creatures (Pegasus, the Gorgons, etc.) exist and not in the way that horses exist"?

"X event happend in the past", "Y event will happen in the future", and "Z event is happening now" are all true and all those events are real, hence exist. — Ludwig V

What if Y doesn't happen in the future? An uncountable number of things had been "sure bets" never happened. How can Y be real in the sense that either X or Z are real?

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

Does asking that help nail down a mind-independent reality? Perhaps the answer to that question does.

Assuming that such a probabilism is 'real', why can't we think that there are other possibilities besides determinism and probabilism?

Maybe there are, but they'd still have to conform to the theory.

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.

Newton is not wrong, and it is all still taught in schools. But it is a simplification, and requires more exactness at larger scales.

YMMV.

What does the rest of the world say? How does that acronym convert to metric?

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. — boundless

Unsure of the difference. A local interpretation asserts neither nonlocal correlation nor interaction.

If we renounce to find an 'explanation' of those correlations, why not simply take an epistemic interpretation of QM?

Isn't that kind of what Copenhagen does?

Also, despite saying what I said, I also recognize that perhaps we are less free than we naively think we are.

Well, plenty of folks want to assert free will because it sounds like a good thing to have, and apparently it is a requirement for some religions to work, which makes it their problem, not mine. If I'm designing a general device to make the best choices, giving it free will would probably be a bad thing to do. Imagine trying to cross the street.

How about a moth? Moths fly about in unpredictable ways, making them harder to catch, and thus more fit. That's a benefit over deterministic (or at least predictable) behavior. Maybe moths are the ones with free will.

If the two marbles, however, are in some way 'nonlocally entangled' — boundless

What does that mean? I only know 'entangled'. Is there a difference between locally entangled and nonlocally? Anyway, I presume the marbles to be entangled, in superposition of blue/red. You'll measure one of each, but until then, they're not any particular color. The marbles are far apart.

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).

Well, my only comment here is that this sounds a lot like your prior quote about time being entanglement, and space as well, all this being a sort of solution to the different ways relativity and QM treat time.

For that reading it 'just happens' that particles follow a nonlocal law of motion.

I just picked this bit out. What is a nonlocal law of motion? Example?

I do appreciate links since you've already sent me down several new pages I've not heard of before. Always good to read new things.

But my view is that 'being rational' is a full realization of our own nature. — boundless

Dangerous. I don't think you'd be fit if you had that realization. Part of it would be the realization of the lack of need to be fit.

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)

Which is why I said 'only one value', because yes, otherwise it's something like MWI, which is back to full determinism, and you wanted an example of block randomness.

- - - -

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. — noAxioms

Well, yes. It is an object in the solar system, so it seems a reasonable assumption. Any question about that is pretty much incomprehensible to me. — Ludwig V

But I said 'share the same ontology' without saying what that ontology is. I also somewhat misspoke, since a presentist would say the moon 'is' while the Theia event (where the moon is created) 'was', a different ontology.

I get a bit confused by "mind-indendent reality", which, pretty clearly is about existence.

OK, so pick something that doesn't exist, and justify that. Or pick something that exists outside of experience, and justify that. That's what I'm looking for in this topic: Somebody who can come up with a consistent model of mind-independent existence. But when pressed, it seems that everybody's limits of what exists or doesn't relies on things gleaned through observation.

You did cite unicorns in your earlier post. It is true that my disbelief in them is defeasible. (Most claims about non-existence are.) But your argument is wildly speculative and does not even begin to convince me.

You're missing the point. The speculative argument is about the odds of them existing in this universe, which is only relevant if only things in our universe exist. If that's the case, it is the preferred universe because it's observed, no? I'm not trying to-argue that unicorns exist (or don't). I'm trying to argue that your notion of what exists is a mind-dependent one.

But I would insist on the truth value.

Definition 4 totally discards truth value. 2 can have a truth value even if it's a relative truth. 2 boils down to [is a member of a preferred set, and members of other sets don't matter].

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

That's odd. There must be a story about that. — Ludwig V

The recent prize was given for apparently proving things to more precision, developing new techniques for taking such measurements. Good stuff, but the pop articles make it sound like it wasn't already known. Bell's theorem (and not just 'theory') demonstrated the impossibility of local reality almost 60 years ago.

I'll venture on one ignorant comment. If you try to define space and time or space-time without any physical objects, you are bound to run in to trouble.

Seems mathematically valid, but meaningless, much like a blank graph of X-Y axes needn't bother with numbering the tick marks on the axes.

At least, it seems obvious to me that those dimensions only have meaning in a universe that includes some actual objects. But then, so far as I can see, a space-time diagram is a method for plotting physical objects, like a map, rather than a description of reality, like a picture.

Funny then that I find the picture less like reality and more like an abstract interpretation.

What if Y doesn't happen in the future? An uncountable number of things had been "sure bets" never happened. How can Y be real in the sense that either X or Z are real? — Patterner

The block interpretation answers that one at least. There are versions of presentism that say that Y (in the future) exists as fact. You're 'sure bets' are not fact, but merely predictions made without access to the full history. So yea, you could have a block universe, but with a preferred moment in time. This is the 'moving spotlight' view and it even permits some of the nondeterministic interpretations.

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

I don't see how the lack of anything violates any of those laws, or why those laws (especially the cause/effect law which isn't relevant at all outside a causal structure) apply to this non-state. Also, it seems that the reality of our universe is violated by your causal law there since it needs something to have caused it.

Reality is not real; things that appear to the senses are real

Pretty much an idealistic statement, and I don't need idealists defending the realist view, as this topic asks.

Is it not surprising and disappointing that we still don't have words or phrases for such common things, and can only say things like "mythical creatures (Pegasus, the Gorgons, etc.) exist and not in the way that horses exist"? — Patterner

It may be that I/we are stretching the language. There's not a lot of popular interest in the modes of existence - even, I suspect, among philosophers.

What if Y doesn't happen in the future? An uncountable number of things had been "sure bets" never happened. How can Y be real in the sense that either X or Z are real? — Patterner

Yes, it is tempting to treat the future differently from the present or past. Perhaps the ground is that the the future is undetermined while the present and past are determinate and can't change. But one needs to show that this is quite different from the generalized uncertainty that would point out that our belief in X or Z is also defeasible. The determinism, whether logical or causal, will chip in to demolish us completely.

Bell's theorem (and not just 'theory') demonstrated the impossibility of local reality almost 60 years ago. — noAxioms

It was the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics which was awarded to the experimentalists who proved it. (I wrote an article on it for anyone interested).

I don't see how the lack of anything violates any of those laws…. — noAxioms

…..and yet, in order to not understand what I said, what I said necessarily must have been something that appeared to your senses. Hence, the LNC….which follows from the quoted absurdity on the bottom of pg17….you can’t claim to misunderstand something that wasn’t there.

Same deal with the cause/effect principle. What I said caused your misunderstanding; your misunderstanding is an effect causally related to what I said. If I hadn’t said it you wouldn’t have misunderstood it.

….I don't need idealists defending the realist view…. — noAxioms

….and yet an idealist can defend a realist view better than a realist, insofar as the latter denies, or at least refuses to acknowledge that he necessarily employs, the very intellectual machinations the former provides, for defending anything at all. Not to mention, of course, a proper idealist is in fact a dualist, as are all humans, with respect to their fundamentally relational cognitive powers.

(Sigh)

Does asking that help nail down a mind-independent reality? Perhaps the answer to that question does. — noAxioms

Yes. Because if intelligibility is due to the 'representation' of the cognitive faculties of the mind, then anything intelligible can be a 'mind-independent' reality.

Maybe there are, but they'd still have to conform to the theory. — noAxioms

Before early 20th century it seemed uncontroversial that everything is deterministic. Then, QM happened and experts debate. Why do we have to be so certain that, in the future, we will find out that physical laws allow that some events are neither probabilistic nor deterministic?

Newton is not wrong, and it is all still taught in schools. But it is a simplification, and requires more exactness at larger scales. — noAxioms

Yes. It might be that both deterministic and probabilistic models are a simplification or, better, they are valid in a determinate context.

What does the rest of the world say? How does that acronym convert to metric? — noAxioms

I meant that I am aware that my views here are unconventional. But I do not find the arguments that they are wrong persuasive. And I certainly understand people who think that determinism and probabilism are the only allowed possibilities. I disagree. But fine.

Unsure of the difference. A local interpretation asserts neither nonlocal correlation nor interaction. — noAxioms

According to superdeterminism, there are correlations that 'trick us' in believing that either 'realism' (CFD) or 'locality' is wrong. But superdeterminists argue they are mere coincidences.

Isn't that kind of what Copenhagen does? — noAxioms

Yes, right! I mean why not embrace Copenhagen if one is content with a purely kinematical model?

Well, plenty of folks want to assert free will because it sounds like a good thing to have, and apparently it is a requirement for some religions to work, which makes it their problem, not mine. If I'm designing a general device to make the best choices, giving it free will would probably be a bad thing to do. Imagine trying to cross the street. — noAxioms

Well, if all my actions are deterministic, it is quite controversial to attribute to myself moral responsibility. After all, I literally could not have behaved otherwise.
Probabilistic choices are no better. Yes, I could have acted otherwise but, again, how can I be blamed if, ultimately, my choices are a result of a blind mix of deterministic and probabilistic mechanism?

To make sense of moral responsibility, you need to impute to moral agents some deliberative power and a sense of right and wrong.

Of course, ethics is something external to physics. But I would like that my 'worldview' is something coherent, a stable unit. It is difficult to 'believe' to have free will half of the time becuase I have to assume it to have a coherent concept of moral responsibility and in the other half 'believe' that I have no free will. Cognitive dissonance is quite a risk.

How about a moth? Moths fly about in unpredictable ways, making them harder to catch, and thus more fit. That's a benefit over deterministic (or at least predictable) behavior. Maybe moths are the ones with free will. — noAxioms

Would you consider moths as moral agents?

What does that mean? I only know 'entangled'. Is there a difference between locally entangled and nonlocally? Anyway, I presume the marbles to be entangled, in superposition of blue/red. You'll measure one of each, but until then, they're not any particular color. The marbles are far apart. — noAxioms

Yeah, sorry I mean 'entangled' in a way to produce nonlocal correlations.

Well, my only comment here is that this sounds a lot like your prior quote about time being entanglement, and space as well, all this being a sort of solution to the different ways relativity and QM treat time. — noAxioms

Well, Rovelli proposed that in reconciling GR with relativity, the spacetime of relativity gets quantized because it is the gravitational field and like other fields become quantized. However, 'time' as a measure of change remains. Same goes for space, if it is interpreted as a relation between things.

So, perhaps uniting GR and QM resolves the 'tension' between the apparent denial of the 'flow of time' and our experience.

I just picked this bit out. What is a nonlocal law of motion? Example?

I do appreciate links since you've already sent me down several new pages I've not heard of before. Always good to read new things. — noAxioms

It is good to hear that, thanks. The model I had in mind is described in this paper: "Reality and the Role of the Wavefunction in Quantum Theory" by Sheldon Goldstein and Nino Zanghì. It is an interpretation of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation (dBB) where there is no mention of a quantum potential that 'guides' the particles in a non-local way as Bohm and Hiley believed (and was the concept that inspired Bohm to have more speculative ideas like the 'implicate order', 'active information' and so on that also have been adopted by Hiley) and the somewhat more 'restrained' but still different versions of dBB by people like John Bell and Antony Valentini, who treat the wavefunction as a physically real field that guides the particle but make no mention of the quantum potential. Anyway, according to the variant in the linked paper, the wavefunction should be thought as a 'law of motion', a sort of kinematic law that, however, is explicitly nonlocal. There is no explanation of why particles move in they way they move. They just move that way. The only advantage with respect to a 'Copenaghen-like' view is that here you can easily visualize 'what happens'. But there is absolutely no explanation of why particles behave the way they behave.

Dangerous. I don't think you'd be fit if you had that realization. Part of it would be the realization of the lack of need to be fit. — noAxioms

I believe that our life is, among other things, a learning process where we can learn to become more and more rational. It would be quite weird to me that, ultimately, deceiving myself is something that is good for me. Perhaps, however, it is too dangerous to 'take a step too far' or 'learn things before due time' etc.

Which is why I said 'only one value', because yes, otherwise it's something like MWI, which is back to full determinism, and you wanted an example of block randomness. — noAxioms

I need to reflect on this. I still can't make sense of a probabilistic block. Perhaps I have a wrong idea of what a block should be.

But I said 'share the same ontology' without saying what that ontology is. I also somewhat misspoke, since a presentist would say the moon 'is' while the Theia event (where the moon is created) 'was', a different ontology. — noAxioms

Are you also saying that there is no connection between those two facts?

OK, so pick something that doesn't exist, and justify that. Or pick something that exists outside of experience, and justify that. That's what I'm looking for in this topic: Somebody who can come up with a consistent model of mind-independent existence. — noAxioms

I don't see that things that don't exist are relevant here. Mind-independence doesn't apply to them.
What if there cannot be a single model that applies to both unicorns and the moon?

But when pressed, it seems that everybody's limits of what exists or doesn't relies on things gleaned through observation. — noAxioms

How could we possibly know about things that exist independently of our minds without observation? The role of the senses is precisely to give us information about the world outside or beyond our minds.

You're missing the point. ... I'm not trying to-argue that unicorns exist (or don't). I'm trying to argue that your notion of what exists is a mind-dependent one. — noAxioms

I don't see why you would think that what I would say about the existence of unicorns can be generalized to everything that exists. The speculative argument does not bring anything into existence, so it is no ground for thinking that anything is mind-dependent. However, I do agree that notions and concepts and ideas are mind-dependent (mostly). But it does not follow that the objects of notions and concepts and ideas are necessarily mind-dependent. The moon is a case in point. We have an idea of something that exists quite independently of human beings.

Definition 4 totally discards truth value. 2 can have a truth value even if it's a relative truth. 2 boils down to [is a member of a preferred set, and members of other sets don't matter]. — noAxioms

You're right. I made the mistake of picking the criterion that seemed closest to what I think. I don't really think that there is a general definition of existence. What existence means depends on the kind of object your are talking about. So there is one criterion for the moon existing and a different one for unicorns existing; the criteria for thermostats are different again. The criteria for existence are truth-conditions, so are not themselves true or false.

Funny then that I find the picture less like reality and more like an abstract interpretation. — noAxioms

I'm a bit puzzled about what you mean by "the picture" here.

Bell's theorem (and not just 'theory') demonstrated the impossibility of local reality almost 60 years ago.
— noAxioms
↪Ludwig V
It was the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics which was awarded to the experimentalists who proved it. (I wrote an article on it for anyone interested). — Wayfarer

Thanks for that. I did look at it, and it was interesting. But I'm simply not competent to comment.

Of course, ethics is something external to physics. But I would like that my 'worldview' is something coherent, a stable unit. It is difficult to 'believe' to have free will half of the time becuase I have to assume it to have a coherent concept of moral responsibility and in the other half 'believe' that I have no free will. Cognitive dissonance is quite a risk. — boundless

This is a bit of a distraction. However, let me say that I think that most philosophers do actually decide to live with the dissonance. Perhaps they actually prefer the argument and would be disappointed if they couldn't have it.
Suppose you started with recognizing two facts. First, we sometimes act freely. Second that the world appears to be deterministic. The only problem is to develop an account of those two facts that recognizes both. Doing that will require rejecting the concepts that are taken for granted in formulating the problem. For example, free will is defined in opposition to determinism, so we need to get rid of that concept. It doesn't make any sense anyway. Determinism, on the other hand, is treated as if it was true. But if it is true, it is empirically true, and I don't see how we can possibly know that, so we need to think that through again.

But I said 'share the same ontology' without saying what that ontology is. I also somewhat misspoke, since a presentist would say the moon 'is' while the Theia event (where the moon is created) 'was', a different ontology. — noAxioms

Are you also saying that there is no connection between those two facts? — Ludwig V

No, I'm not also saying that.

I don't see that things that don't exist are relevant here. Mind-independence doesn't apply to them.

It absolutely does apply. The justification given for its nonexistence gates whether the chosen stance is valid or not. It's the core point of this whole topic.

What if there cannot be a single model that applies to both unicorns and the moon?

Then you don't have a valid model, let alone several of them. A quite simple model might say that both exist, the unicorns just being somewhere else where we don't see them. That example shows that there can be a single model that applies to both. Another is that unicorns don't exist, but moon does. That's likely more popular, but it isn't specified why the model declares unicorns to be nonexistent, so it's incomplete.

How could we possibly know about things that exist independently of our minds without observation?

I've never required us to know about them. This is a model, not proof of existence or not. The topic is not about epistemology. We can't know if the unicorns exist or not, and we certainly can't know if our chosen model is sound or not, but we can at least come up with a valid one.

I don't see why you would think that what I would say about the existence of unicorns can be generalized to everything that exists.

You got it backwards. The general rule is what I'm after. The unicorns end up on one side or the other depending on the rule chosen. Rule first, then assessment of unicorn or whatever. Point is, I want a rule that you might assert belief in, and one that has the property of mind-independent existence. If you can't do that, then my title is pretty accurate: Nobody really believes in mind-independent existence. They might assert it, but they apparently don't have a coherent model that supports it.

What existence means depends on the kind of object your are talking about. So there is one criterion for the moon existing and a different one for unicorns existing; the criteria for thermostats are different again. The criteria for existence are truth-conditions, so are not themselves true or false.

OK. Sounds like the beginnings of a complex model. I would have probably classified moon, unicorn, and thermostat in the same category of either 2: Part of this universe, or 3, relational.

I'm a bit puzzled about what you mean by "the picture" here.

You compared my suggestion of a spacetime diagram to a picture of the same subject, presumably from some point of view.

Before early 20th century it seemed uncontroversial that everything is deterministic. — boundless

Classical (Newtonian) physics is not deterministic, and if they thought so 1.2 centuries ago, they didn't think it through. Norton's dome is a wonderful example, but that was published only a couple decades ago.

Why do we have to be so certain that, in the future, we will find out that physical laws allow that some events are neither probabilistic nor deterministic?

We're not so certain, but can you even think of an alternative? One alternative is that the system isn't closed, but non-closed systems have always failed to be either deterministic or random.

According to superdeterminism, there are correlations that 'trick us' in believing that either 'realism' (CFD) or 'locality' is wrong. But superdeterminists argue they are mere coincidences.

Yes. Empirical data cannot be trusted, and that's why it's not an interpretation of evidence, but rather a denial of it, similar to BiV. Yes, superdeterminism can be locally real. It's a loophole. Still is even under the new improved 'proof' 3 years ago.

If all my actions are deterministic, it is quite controversial to attribute to myself moral responsibility. — boundless

That's the line, yes, and its a crock. FW is only needed for moral responsibility to something not part of the deterministic structure, such as an objective moral code. But I've seen only human social rules, hardly objective at all.
The alternatives are randomness and not-closed system. The former doesn't yield external moral responsibility either (as you point out), so the latter is required, in which case the system is simply larger, and we're back to determinism or randomness again.

After all, I literally could not have behaved otherwise.

That does not absolve you of responsibility (to something within the closed system) for your choice. This has been fact for billions of years. You are responsible to eat. Punishment is death. Nothing unfair about that.

To make sense of moral responsibility, you need to impute to moral agents some deliberative power and a sense of right and wrong.

All correct. All those are best implemented with deterministic mechanisms.

Cognitive dissonance is quite a risk.

I get along with it fine.

Would you consider moths as moral agents?

Not much. They're not particularly social. My point was that moths find utility in, if not randomness, at least unpredictbility. Utilization of randomness has nothing to do with morals.


My, but we're digressing, no?

The model I had in mind is described in this paper: "Reality and the Role of the Wavefunction in Quantum Theory" by Sheldon Goldstein and Nino Zanghì. It is an interpretation of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation (dBB) where there is no mention of a quantum potential that 'guides' the particles in a non-local way as Bohm and Hiley believed — boundless

Said 'guide' sounds like pilot waves, something definitely associated with dBB. The variant doesn't go along these lines then.

Anyway, according to the variant in the linked paper, the wavefunction should be thought as a 'law of motion', a sort of kinematic law that, however, is explicitly nonlocal.

I don't know enough about QM to comment about wave functions being anything but nonlocal. I mean, they're supposed to describe a system, or at least what's known about a system. The latter suggests that the real wave function is different than the one we measure. It being a system means that it's nonlocal since systems are not all in one place. That it sort of describes a state implies a state at a moment in time, but a nonlocal moment in time is not really defined sans frame. So we really need a unified theory to speak the same language about both theories.

It was the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics which was awarded to the experimentalists who proved it. (I wrote an article on it for anyone interested). — Wayfarer

So what didn't Bell prove 55 years prior? From reading up on the prize, it was for vastly improved techniques and closing several (but not all) holes.

and yet, in order to not understand what I said, what I said necessarily must have been something that appeared to your senses. Hence, the LNC….which follows from the quoted absurdity on the bottom of pg17….you can’t claim to misunderstand something that wasn’t there. — Mww

This makes no sense. If there wasn't anything, there'd be no misunderstanding, no existing claim of anything. That isn't a contradiction.
It only becomes a contradiction if you claim the existence of misunderstanding, and also claim the lack of existence of anything.

Hence there seems to be no necessary existence of anything.

So what didn't Bell prove 55 years prior? — noAxioms

Bell didn’t prove anything. At the time, the required experimental apparatus and know-how didn’t exist. He worked out what needed to be proven, but the actual proof had to wait for those guys that won the Nobel (well after Bell had died).

Is anyone willing to defend a mind-independent view? — noAxioms

Yes. How did you type your response and send it over the internet to me? Do you think there was a mind involved that created the electricity? Do you think that if your power was out, you could walk over to your computer, type a message, and it would appear on the internet? Reality constantly smacks us in the face with a two-by-four with contradictions daily to what our mind wants to believe is true.

There is often a confusion between "What we know" and "What is". What we know is what can be best reasoned with the limited information we have. But even that knowledge could be contradicted one day if we haven't yet encountered everything that involves the knowledge claims reasonableness.

What we know is clear: There is a world independent of our own minds. Does that mean we've grasped that world accurately? What does accurately mean? To create a concept of the world that when applied is good enough for most purposes. Gravity accelerates at 9.8 meters per second on Earth. For most calculations, this gets us the outcome we predict consistently. And in this regard we have what could be considered an accurate assessment of reality independent of a mind. We didn't set gravity to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second on Earth, we discovered it.

Mind independence doesn't mean what we might think it means. When talking common-sense realism: of course the moon exists when nobody is looking, and the tree falls in the forest where nobody can hear. And on a common-sense level, that is quite true.

But the question of whether things exist independently of the mind, is not the question of whether they exist whether or not you or I, in particular, are aware of them. The question arises from the realisation of the role of the mind in perceiving what we know to be the external world. The brain and the central nervous system are in contact with the world through the sense-faculties of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The mind or brain integrates all of that data with our remembered world-model to construct a panoramic vision we know as 'the world' (panorama literally meaning 'seeing all'). Without that conscious and unconscious process of data reception and synthesis, there would be no world to see. It's not something infants see; they have to learn how to see it, an act which takes the first few years of life.

'Sure', might be the response 'but even if you're not conscious or not there, "the world" continues to exist.' And in one sense, it does - but again, we only know that, because we're able to consciously contemplate it. We have an innate sense of its existence, and all of the empirical data indicates that it existed before we, as individuals, were born, and will continue after we die. But that knowledge is still grounded in our 'mind's eye', so to speak - even our knowledge of what it is.

Realism neglects the role of the mind in this process. It takes the world as given, without considering the role the mind plays in its construction. That is the context in which the idea of mind dependence or independence is meaningful.

This is a bit of a distraction. However, let me say that I think that most philosophers do actually decide to live with the dissonance. Perhaps they actually prefer the argument and would be disappointed if they couldn't have it. — Ludwig V

Ok, but I think that 'truth' is not contradictory. Philosophers seek truth and I would assume that there is a way to reconcile these things. If determinism and probabilism can't give a reasonable account of moral responsability it is quite a deep problem.

Suppose you started with recognizing two facts. First, we sometimes act freely. Second that the world appears to be deterministic. The only problem is to develop an account of those two facts that recognizes both. Doing that will require rejecting the concepts that are taken for granted in formulating the problem. For example, free will is defined in opposition to determinism, so we need to get rid of that concept. It doesn't make any sense anyway. Determinism, on the other hand, is treated as if it was true. But if it is true, it is empirically true, and I don't see how we can possibly know that, so we need to think that through again. — Ludwig V

Not sure about your point here. Are you saying that we can still 'believe' in free will even if all empirical evidence goes against it because, even if there is no free will, we can't be certain of it?
To me that would be self-deception.

Classical (Newtonian) physics is not deterministic, and if they thought so 1.2 centuries ago, they didn't think it through. Norton's dome is a wonderful example, but that was published only a couple decades ago. — noAxioms

What? Interesting, wow. Anyway, I don't think that at that time people thought that it wasn't deterministic. Even chaotic systems are deterministic despite the appearances.

We're not so certain, but can you even think of an alternative? One alternative is that the system isn't closed, but non-closed systems have always failed to be either deterministic or random. — noAxioms

I can think of an alternative but I can't formulate it mathematically and I can't think of how to make a scientific test that can be used to falsify the idea.

Yes. Empirical data cannot be trusted, and that's why it's not an interpretation of evidence, but rather a denial of it, similar to BiV. Yes, superdeterminism can be locally real. It's a loophole. Still is even under the new improved 'proof' 3 years ago. — noAxioms

Agreed. If emprical data can't be trusted, what even is the point to do science?

That's the line, yes, and its a crock. FW is only needed for moral responsibility to something not part of the deterministic structure, such as an objective moral code. But I've seen only human social rules, hardly objective at all. — noAxioms

We generally do not held accountable people if they could not act otherwise (e.g. for instance, one might be regarded as 'not guilty' due to reason of insanity - the assumption here is that the transgress didn't have the capacity to act otherwise). If determinism were true, the same would be true for all. I guess that one can think that punishments could have some utilitarian sense but I can't make sense of talking about of moral responsability.

The alternatives are randomness and not-closed system. The former doesn't yield external moral responsibility either (as you point out), so the latter is required, in which case the system is simply larger, and we're back to determinism or randomness again. — noAxioms

Right, if closed systems are either deterministic or probabilistic nothing really changes. I think that it is a questionable assumption but I respect it. After all, there are good reasons to regard it as true so it's not irrational. I do believe, however, that a more 'complete' picture that gives the due importance to ethics suggests that such an assumption might not be valid. Or at least that there are heavier consequences than what it is generally assumed.

That does not absolve you of responsibility (to something within the closed system) for your choice. This has been fact for billions of years. You are responsible to eat. Punishment is death. Nothing unfair about that. — noAxioms

In a sense, yes, I agree death by starvation is a sort of punishment for death. But if one that dies of starvation didn't have the possibility to act otherwise can we held that person accountable?

Not much. They're not particularly social. My point was that moths find utility in, if not randomness, at least unpredictbility. Utilization of randomness has nothing to do with morals. — noAxioms

Ok.

My, but we're digressing, no? — noAxioms

Yes, sorry for that. But I don't treat different areas of culture as separated from each other. Scientific knowledge isn't something that has no effect on ethics and vice versa. Both are quite important and if they contradict each other there is something amiss in one or the other. From a practical point of view, I would say that ethics is even more important. So, I don't think that we should ignore the fact that some of its constitutive assumptions seem to be in tension with what science tell us.

But yes, it is off-topic.

I don't know enough about QM to comment about wave functions being anything but nonlocal. I mean, they're supposed to describe a system, or at least what's known about a system. The latter suggests that the real wave function is different than the one we measure. It being a system means that it's nonlocal since systems are not all in one place. That it sort of describes a state implies a state at a moment in time, but a nonlocal moment in time is not really defined sans frame. So we really need a unified theory to speak the same language about both theories. — noAxioms

In the 'wave function as a law' model the laws are simply descriptive. There is no 'pilot wave' that guides them, no causal agent for their motion. That's why I said it is a kinematic model. Both the Bohm-Hiley and the Valentini-Bell variants do have a dynamics. In the first, there is a 'quantum potential' that depends only on the form of the wavefunction (that's why in later years Bohm thought that it is a kind of 'informatiuon pool' and the particles have some kind of ability to decode information) that act on the particles with a 'force' which in turn causes an acceleration - all is described as in classical physics with second-order time derivatives. The other 'realist' model doesn't use the quantum potential. It is also a model that uses only first derivatives of positions and, according to Valentini, it is a very big difference with respect to classical mechanics.
Still, both models treat the wavefunction as a causal agent. This isn't true for the 'wave function as a law' model. While the latter is better than superdeterminism, it is still curious that one wants to make a CFD model without a dynamics.

Bell didn’t prove anything. At the time, the required experimental apparatus and know-how didn’t exist. He worked out what needed to be proven, but the actual proof had to wait for those guys that won the Nobel (well after Bell had died). — Wayfarer

Well, Bell proved mathematically that no 'local realistic' theory can make the same predictions of QM (outside some problematic loopholes like superdeterminism). In itself it is a powerful result. Of course, the 'experimental proofs' came later. The first experiments however were made in the 80s and Bell was still alive.

Nice article BTW.

Realism neglects the role of the mind in this process. It takes the world as given, without considering the role the mind plays in its construction. That is the context in which the idea of mind dependence or independence is meaningful. — Wayfarer

Right. Honestly, part of the problems in these discussions is that 'realism' is often assumed to be the position that there is something that exists even in the absence of our minds. This of course gives an incredible amount of 'realisms'. Physicalism is a type of realism. But also theism is. But even epistemic idealism is a form of 'realism' becuase it doesn't say that reality is only minds and mental contents.

'Realism' is, however, also an epistemic position. It claims that there is a reality different from minds and mental contents that can be known by mind as it is. Of course, even with this definition realism covers a lot of positions. But with this definition realism excludes an epistemic idealism or a skeptical position where nothing outside minds and mental contents, representations etc can be known and also an ontological idealism where there is nothing outside minds and mental contents ('weaker' forms of ontological idealism, which claims that fundamental reality is mental but do not deny the existence and the knowability of something different from minds and mental contents however are in fact forms of realism).

In order to prove 'realism' in this sense one should be able to identify what can, with certainty, be said to be different from minds and mental contents (including representations). That is, one should be able to distinguish 'what pertains to reality as it appears to us' and 'what pertains to reality as it is itself'. Contrary to appearances, when one considers the regulating role that the mind has in ordering our experience it becomes quite hard to just do that.

The first experiments however were made in the 80s and Bell was still alive. — boundless

I stand corrected.

Nice article BTW. — boundless

Thank you :pray:

My comments on mind (in)dependence were mainly to illustrate that what it means is not as obvious as many would think.

It only becomes a contradiction if you claim the existence of misunderstanding, and also claim the lack of existence of anything. — noAxioms

Which is precisely what you did, on both counts, affirming the LNC violation you asked for.

My comments on mind (in)dependence were mainly to illustrate that what it means is not as obvious as many would think. — Wayfarer

Agreed. Unfortunately, however this is also because there is a tendency to use the same words with different meanings. But this isn't a problem only for philosophers. Think about how much the term 'observer' varies among the various interpretations of QM.

Antony Valentini — boundless

@noAxioms, if you are interested in this 'variant' of dBB, there is this lecture by Valentini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZV9crCZM8 that I watched years ago.

Here, among other things, he suggests that his version of dBB can make different predictions with respect to standard QM. In fact, IIRC he suggests that these deviations might be observed in the early stages of the universe. Interestingly, if that happens it would be possible to send faster than light signals.

No, I'm not also saying that. — noAxioms

Then I'm afraid I don't see what you are getting at.

It absolutely does apply. The justification given for its nonexistence gates whether the chosen stance is valid or not. It's the core point of this whole topic. — noAxioms

I'm afraid I'm lost again.

A quite simple model might say that both exist, the unicorns just being somewhere else where we don't see them. That example shows that there can be a single model that applies to both. Another is that unicorns don't exist, but moon does. That's likely more popular, but it isn't specified why the model declares unicorns to be nonexistent, so it's incomplete. — noAxioms

This doesn't help me at all.

I've never required us to know about them. This is a model, not proof of existence or not. The topic is not about epistemology. We can't know if the unicorns exist or not, and we certainly can't know if our chosen model is sound or not, but we can at least come up with a valid one. — noAxioms

I don't understand any of the above.

You got it backwards. The general rule is what I'm after. The unicorns end up on one side or the other depending on the rule chosen. Rule first, then assessment of unicorn or whatever. — noAxioms

A general rule would be good. But how can one work that out without looking at specific cases? Rule first is just wild guessing. You'll have to come back to assessment of specific cases after that. So why waste time?

OK. Sounds like the beginnings of a complex model. I would have probably classified moon, unicorn, and thermostat in the same category of either 2: Part of this universe, or 3, relational. — noAxioms

I don't understand how 2 or 3 applies to all three and I don't see how that classification tells me anything about their mind-indendence.

You compared my suggestion of a spacetime diagram to a picture of the same subject, presumably from some point of view. — noAxioms

That's not quite what I meant. I have no idea what spacetime would look like and even less idea what a picture of spacetime would look like. We seem to be agreed that what we actually have is a diagram, not a picture.

Are you saying that we can still 'believe' in free will even if all empirical evidence goes against it because, even if there is no free will, we can't be certain of it? To me that would be self-deception. — boundless

So far as I can see, and I may be wrong, many, if not most, philosophers are compatibilists and are trying to cash that out by re-conceptualizing the problem. To put is another way, the approach is that both traditional free will and traditional determinism are interpretations of the world. If they jointly produce absurdity, we need to think of both differently. Have a look at Wikipedia - Determinism

Without that conscious and unconscious process of data reception and synthesis, there would be no world to see. — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you say that. It we did not have the equipment, we would not be able to carry out the process, and so would be unable to see what would still be there.

But that knowledge is still grounded in our 'mind's eye', so to speak - even our knowledge of what it is. — Wayfarer

Of course our knowledge is "grounded in our mind's eye", but that doesn't mean that the things we know about (most of them) would vanish if our mind's eye or even the eye in our heads did not exist. Knowledge is not existence.

Realism neglects the role of the mind in this process. It takes the world as given, without considering the role the mind plays in its construction. That is the context in which the idea of mind dependence or independence is meaningful. — Wayfarer

I don't know what "realism" does. But I do not deny the role of the mind in the process of perceiving the world. I just deny that the world would cease to exist if our minds etc. ceased to exist.

Reality constantly smacks us in the face with a two-by-four with contradictions daily to what our mind wants to believe is true. — Philosophim

I like that. Yes, one of the ways that we can tell what the real world is, is by the way it smacks us in the face if we do not pay enough attention to it.

What we know is clear: There is a world independent of our own minds. — Philosophim

Basically, I do agree with you. I even agree with you that we usually have not grasped what we know accurately. But I think there are things in our world that are "mind-dependent" as well as those that are "mind-independent". The difference matters, because it maps the limits of what we can change. It would be a useful piece of philosophical work to chart the difference, if only we could set aside our hunger for grand generalizations.

Of course our knowledge is "grounded in our mind's eye", but that doesn't mean that the things we know about (most of them) would vanish if our mind's eye or even the eye in our heads did not exist. Knowledge is not existence. — Ludwig V

Knowledge, you will agree, is mind-dependent. Outside of knowledge of the object, the object neither exists nor doesn't exist. This is elaborated in The Mind Created World, if you're interested in further discussing it.

Knowledge, you will agree, is mind-dependent. Outside of knowledge of the object, the object neither exists nor doesn't exist. This is elaborated in The Mind Created World, if you're interested in further discussing it. — Wayfarer

you can imagine that I'm not paticularly sympathetic - especially to the second sentence. However, I've read the first paragraph of your thread and will read further. We'll see.

I hope so. Nothing like a good opponent!

So far as I can see, and I may be wrong, many, if not most, philosophers are compatibilists and are trying to cash that out by re-conceptualizing the problem. To put is another way, the approach is that both traditional free will and traditional determinism are interpretations of the world. If they jointly produce absurdity, we need to think of both differently. Have a look at Wikipedia - Determinism — Ludwig V

Yes, that's a possible solution. But still, it seems to me that compatibilists simply do not address the problem. If we cannot act differently, how can we be held accountable?
The reason why we do not attribute guilt to those who are considered 'not guilty' by reason of insanity it is because we do not think they have been able to act otherwise. Their mental state was too compromised.

Unless someone gives a solution to this problem, I am afraid that, despite its popularity, I can't accept compatibilism.

The reason why we do not attribute guilt to those who are considered 'not guilty' by reason of insanity it is because we do not think they have been able to act otherwise. Their mental state was too compromised. — boundless

Yes - "too compromised" means "not working as it should or normally does." If their mental state was normal, we would hold them responsible. Yet a deterministic account cannot point to any significant difference between those states. Compromised state and uncompromised state are all the same to it. So our judgement is made in a different framework or category. In practice, when people are behaving normally and their mental state is not compromised, we do not bother with the causal, deterministic level of explanation. We only pay attention to it when things have gone wrong, and those normal explanations don't apply.
Let me offer you this. It seems to me that there is no problem whatever in seeing rational action as entirely compatible with determinism, because calculating machines can perform calculations and yet we know that they are also behaving deterministically. But we only pay attention to the deterministic level of explanation when the machine is not functioning properly. When it is working properly, we have no doubt that it showed the result 4 because it was asked 2 + 2. We don't appeal to its causal states, because they cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect answers, so causal explanation wouldn't explain anything.
Okay, it's not freedom. But it is a step in the right direction. The key is the recognition that actions, as opposed to events, are explained in a different category from events.

Honestly, I do not find that convincing at all.

If our actions are truly deterministic and we could not have acted otherwise, the only way I can think about 'ethics' is being exactly like medicine. So, we act wrongly and we are held accountable and get punished in order to 'get well' later on. I guess that upo to a certain point I agree. In fact, I am ok with the classical 'virtue ethics' where good act are good because they fulfill our nature. So, in a sense, yes, I agree to treat ethics in a medicinal way. But, as always with analogies, we also have to avoid to take them too far. When we do wrong it is not that we were coerced by internal or external constraints to act in that way. We are influenced by those constraints, but there is a 'window' of freedom that we can't ignore and that 'window' is what makes 'accountability', 'culpability', 'moral responsability' meaningful.
So, yeah, I guess that my view is that compatibilism gets something right but can't tell the whole story.

Also, if we were not free, I even doubt we could consider ourselves as distinct beings from the 'rest of the universe'.

Bell didn’t prove anything. — Wayfarer

This is the part I missed all this time, that the proof structure was there to prove that quantum theory is correct if these experiments could be verified, but the experimental backing was not yet there. Thank you so much for this. It will help prevent me from spouting further nonsense about this subject.

Apparently there was a laundry list of things to verify, which began in the 70's and was completed by the guys winning the prize 3 years ago.

Realism neglects the role of the mind in this process. — Wayfarer

Yes. If that sort of mind plays a role, it makes its own predictions, different than the ones made by quantum theory.

Realism already necessarily rejects locality, which allows action from outside, but even nonlocal QM allows nonlocal information transfer, and mind playing a role requires that, no?

- - - - -

Do you think there was a mind involved that created the electricity? Do you think that if your power was out, you could walk over to your computer, type a message, and it would appear on the internet? — Philosophim

You've apparently not read much of the thread. Not suggesting any of that. Not even the idealists suggest that.

Pick something you believe doesn't exist. Why do you believe it doesn't exist? What is your criteria for deciding one way or the other? I ask because the criteria specified is most often based on observation, making it observer dependent.

There is often a confusion between "What we know" and "What is".

Almost everything is 'what we believe'. Much of what claim to be known is just beliefs. I'm fine with that. I'm not asking if we know reality is mind dependent. I'm seeing if the beliefs are really what they claim to be.

What we know is clear: There is a world independent of our own minds.

That is a fantastic example of a belief. Plenty of self-consistent views deny this. I personally would say that a world external to myself is perceived. That much makes it relation with an observer. It does not imply that said world exists, unless 'exist' is defined as that relation (which is often how I use the word).

The mind or brain integrates all of that data with our remembered world-model to construct a panoramic vision we know as 'the world' (panorama literally meaning 'seeing all'). Without that conscious and unconscious process of data reception and synthesis, there would be no world to see. — Wayfarer

I think the realist position (and not just the direct realist position) is that there would still be the world (quantum definition of the word), relative to something measuring it (a rock say), but yea, all that synthesis that the human mind does is absent, so it would be far more 'the world in itself' and not as we think of it. Time for instance would not be something that flows. Rocks have no need to create that fabrication.

I chose rock and not apple because an apple is definitely a product of perception. The think would not exist without perception since it's design/purpose is to be perceived.

It's not something infants see; they have to learn how to see it, an act which takes the first few years of life.

Most of it seems learned by the time the baby is perhaps hours old. They've done experiments with say depth perception and aversion to heights, to newborns opening eyes for the first time. Plenty is built in an not just learned.

- - - -

I can think of an alternative [to determinism/randomness] but I can't formulate it mathematically and I can't think of how to make a scientific test that can be used to falsify the idea. — boundless

Tell me. It not being mathematical is also great because it challenges something like MUH. And there's no falsification test for the random/determined issue either.

If emprical data can't be trusted, what even is the point to do science?

Which is why BiV, superdeterminism, and say Boltzmann Brains all need to be kept in mind, but are not in any way theories, lacking any evidence whatsoever.

We generally do not held accountable people if they could not act otherwise — boundless

So some societies operate, but such societies are quite capable of rendering such judgement using deterministic methods. And yes, I think morals are relative to a specific society. A person by himself cannot be immoral except perhaps to his own arbitrary standards.

But if one that dies of starvation didn't have the possibility to act otherwise can we held that person accountable?

I don't hold the person accountable, nature does. One has an obligation to not starve. Death is the unavoidable punishment, and only that death potential make eating an obligation and not just one more choice.

An you do have the opportunity to act otherwise. Brains were evolved to make better choices, which wouldn't work at all if there were to choices available. Determinism shouldn't be confused with compulsion as it often is in these discussions.

If you think determinism has any relevance to accountability, how is any alternative (randomness say)
any better? I cannot think of a moral choice where randomness would yield a better selection.
I don't think there's any relevance at all, so the question is moot to me.

A general rule would be good. But how can one work that out without looking at specific cases? Rule first is just wild guessing. — Ludwig V

It isn't wild guessing since the rule needs to be consistent with what we do observe, and the opinions of most people don't meet that criteria, per the OP.

The unicorn, as a specific case, should of course be 'I don't know'. So an educated estimate might be in order, which is not wild guess. How about a 4 dimensional rock? That's not going to be part of 'the universe', so either you pick a rule that says it doesn't exist, or pick one that doesn't confine existence to 'the universe', or perhaps, 'the universe now'. Once we have a rule, we analyze it for mind dependence, and per my argument, anything that mentions 'the universe' is probably going to be mind dependent, unless one defines universe far more broadly with 'all that exists', in which case one is left wondering if we're part of that. I am at least. Most use a definition that includes one's self.

I would have probably classified moon, unicorn, and thermostat in the same category of either 2: Part of this universe, or 3, relational. — noAxioms

I don't understand how 2 or 3 applies to all three and I don't see how that classification tells me anything about their mind-indendence.

2 is 'part of the universe'. You probably put the moon and thermostat in the universe. I consider the universe to be sufficiently large to leave little probability of the absence of a unicorn anywhere. Hence same classification. 3 is trickier since it needs to relate to me, so perhaps the unicorn isn't close enough to do that.

As for mind-dependence, we call our universe 'the universe', making it privileged because we see it. That makes it a pretty observer dependent definition of existence. 3 is not observer dependent, but depends on causal relationships. Existence is thus only meaningful within structures that have them.

That's not quite what I meant. I have no idea what spacetime would look like and even less idea what a picture of spacetime would look like.

Internet is full of them. OK, so you don't have a physics background. Makes it harder to discuss relativity and quantum implications to this topic.

It only becomes a contradiction if you claim the existence of misunderstanding, and also claim the lack of existence of anything. — noAxioms

Which is precisely what you did, on both counts, affirming the LNC violation you asked for. — Mww

You'll have to point out where I did any such thing.