”The physical world is more "natural" than...what? Human-constructed architecture and pavement?” — Michael Ossipoff
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The natural world excludes spiritual reality

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I don’t know exactly what you mean by spiritual reality, or whether you believe that it’s something that there really is, or just something that other people believe in. But, whatever it is, you seem to be saying that it’s unnatural in some sense.
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I don’t have an argument with your statement that spiritual reality is unnatural, because I don’t know what you mean by spiritual reality.
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, which, while real, is not measurable.

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So then, is it that anything that isn’t measureable (physical)? is unnatural? So you’d say that God (hypothetically, if you don’t believe there’s God) isn’t natural? …and that abstract-implications, even they’re the structural basis of the describable world, are unnatural?
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I’m just saying that I don’t what Materialists mean by “the natural world”. Yes, you’ve explained it, and I’m not asking for additional explanation.
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I also object to naturalists' use of "supernatural" as a term of derision.

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Then we agree on that.
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God is, as Aristotle saw, the logical completion of our investigation of nature.
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Then we agree on that too, if, by “nature” you mean the physical and describable metaphysical realms.
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Well, I don’t entirely agree, because you’re talking about evidence (defined by Merriam-Webster as “outward sign”). Yes there’s outward sign to justify Theism, but there are also discussions that more directly justify faith, aside from outward sign. I define faith as “trust without or aside from outward sign”. There are discussions that justify faith.

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But, if you’re not a Materialist (“Naturalist”), then I’d suggest ditching Materialist language like “nature” and “the natural world”.
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”You mentioned the objective side, but it's there only by inference from our subjective experience.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I disagree. We experience the objects of the lived world. We do not infer them.

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You experience them, and then you infer objective existence for them. We experience the things, but the objective existence is only an inference.
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Locke was wrong is saying we only know our own ideas. Rather ideas are acts by which we may know objects.

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But don’t you see that that claim about an objectively-existent physical world is what you’re arguing for? You can’t use it as an argument for itself. What I quoted directly above is just a restatement of your claim about an objectively-existent physical universe.
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(My idea <apple> is just me thinking of apples.) When I an aware of an apple, I do not first know I have the concept <apple>, and then infer that there is an apple causing that idea.
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Rather I know the physical apple and then, in a second movement of thought, infer that my means of knowing the apple is the idea <apple>.

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Of course you know about apples because you’ve experienced them. No one denies that. Your life-experience story’s one requirement is consistency, because there are no mutually-inconsistent or mutually-contradictory facts. Apples are among the things and events that are in your self-consistent hypothetical life-experience-story.
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The things and events of your experience (including your experiences about evidence of past events) must be consistent with you being here, in this life. That means that, for one thing, there must be, in your experience-story, edible things, such as apples. If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things
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This is typical of the confusion between formal and instrument signs that permeates modern philosophy. Ideas are formal signs -- their only reality, the only thing they do, is signify. Text, smoke and road signs are instrumental signs.

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No doubt infinitely-many terminologies are possible. I don’t disagree with them, but I don’t use all of them.
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They have a primary reality of their own

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Again, that’s just a re-statement of the position that you’re arguing for. So you can’t use it as an argument for that position.
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”there are physicists who are taking physicalism down by saying that the notion of an objective physical world has gone the way of phlogiston.” — Michael Ossipoff
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And, as I have pointed out, they are confusing objective measurability with having a determinate value.

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I was just quoting those physicists. I wouldn’t presume to correct them regarding their specialty. …but that’s what you’re doing. Physics, quantum-physics in particular, is their specialty, their field. …not yours or mine. We can quote them, we can even disagree with them philosophically, but we can’t correct them about their physics.
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Anyway, after I post this reply, I’m going to immediately-subsequently post a copied-and-pasted definition and description of my Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics.
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In that post, I’ll ask you a few questions about what you mean by this physical world’s objective existence and reality, over and above what my metaphysics says.
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But here’s something that I can ask you now:
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In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”?
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”Of course that statement quoted from Kim is true. It's true, and it doesn't contradict Subjective Idealism or Theism.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, it is false. I did not say that previously, but it is false. If I ask why the end caught the pass and follow the sequence of events back in time, I come to the quarterback's decision to throw the pass to that end rather than another receiver. That decision is an intentional, not a physical act.

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It doesn’t contravene physical law. The quarterback is a physical, biologically-orignated, purposefully-responsive device.
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In this physical world, there’s no contravention of physical law. Sometimes there are observations that conflict with known physical law, but there’s been a tendency for new physics to eventually explain such observations.
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Yes, we have words for events that result from a choice made by an animal. You’ve been using some such terms that aren’t in ordinary popular usage, and I have no objection to that. But it doesn’t mean that there’s contravention of physical law.
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Subjective Idealism and Theism are logical distinct positions.

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No one’s denying that Idealism and Theism don’t mean the same thing, or that they’re positions distinct from eachother. But they aren’t incompatible with eachother.
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Theism isn’t really about logic. There are discussions that tell reasons for Theism, and there are discussions that directly justify faith, without regard to indirect reasons based on results. I define faith as trust without evidence (which Merriam-Webster defines as “an outward sign”, a concise way of saying what I mean by evidence).
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But none of those discussion are about logic or proof. Theism isn’t that kind of a topic.
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I am a philosophical theist. I am no sort of idealist.

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Then, you must be a Materialist or a Dualist. I don’t think you can be a Theist and a Materialist, so doesn’t that make you a Dualist?
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As for myself, I’m a Theist and a Subjective Idealist.
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”In fact, I take it a bit farther, and point say it about metaphysics as well as physical events and causes. Substiture "describable metaphysics" for "physical states", "physical events" and "physical causes".” — Michael Ossipoff
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I'm unsure what you are saying here. To me, metaphysics is the science of being as being, and so deals with all reality.

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No, because I said, “Substitute “describable metaphysics”…”
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Describable metaphysics only discusses the describable. I don’t claim that all of Reality is describable.
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Obviously, any causal relations are contained within reality.

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Yes, because Reality is all that is.
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(…not to be confused with physical reality or describable reality, for which I don’t capitalize “reality”.)
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”We're physical. We're physical animals in a physical world. In other words, our hypothetical life-experience-story is the story of the experience of a physical animal in a physical world.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I agree that we are natural beings…

I translate that as “physical beings”.
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…, but I think it is important to distinguish physical and intentional operations (aka "spiritual" operations).

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Of course. Our ordinary language often distinguishes events without animal-agency, and events with animal-agency (events that happened due to a choice made by an animal).
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You can use, for that distinction, terms that aren’t in ordinary popular usage, and I have no objection to that.
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As Brentano pointed out, intentional operations have an intrinsic "aboutness" that is not required to specify physical operations (even though physical operations are ordered to ends).

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Bretano would have to be a bit more specific. Most likely he isn’t saying anything that I’d disagree with if I knew what he meant. But he might be saying something about a distinction of his that I don’t make, &/or he might be talking about some issue that I haven’t talked about. In either of those cases, I still don’t disagree with him.
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In philosophy, of course it’s possible for different academic philosophers to be using new terms of theirs to talk about things that others of us, including other academic philosophers, aren’t talking about. …possible for different philosophers to be talking about different things that might have nothing to do with what others are talking about.
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Of course academic philosophers make use of that technique to the hilt. (You know, “Publish Or Perish”)
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Of course I don’t disagree with such statements.
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Michael Ossipoff

9/29/18
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First two premises that we all agree on:
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1. We find ourselves in the experience of a life in which we’re physical animals in a physical universe.
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2. Uncontroversially, there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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I claim no other “reality” or “existence” for them.
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By “implication”, I mean the implying of one proposition by another. By “abstract implication”, I mean the implication of one hypothetical proposition by another hypothetical proposition.
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So there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Among that infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems, there’s one that, with suitable naming of its things and propositions, fits the description of your experience in this life.
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I call that your “hypothetical life-experience-story”. As a hypothetical logical system, it timelessly is/was there, in the limited sense that I said that there are abstract implications.
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There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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Just as I claim no “existence” or “reality” for abstract implications, so I claim no “existence” or “reality” for the complex systems of them, including your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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Each of the infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things is quite entirely separate, independent and isolated from anything else in the describable realm, including the other such logical systems.
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Each neither has nor needs any reality or existence in any context other than its own local inter-referring context.
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Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication.
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“There’s a traffic-roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine.”
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“If you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter, there, a traffic-roundabout.”
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Every “fact” in this physical world can be regarded as a proposition that is at least part of the antecedent of some implications, and is the consequent of other implications.
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For example:
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A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical hypothesis, theory or law) together comprise the antecedent of a hypothetical implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms.
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Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”.
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We’re used to declarative, indicative, grammar because it’s convenient. But conditional grammar adequately describes our physical world. We tend to unduly believe our grammar.
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You, as the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story, are complementary with your experiences and surroundings in that story. You and they comprise the two complementary parts of that hypothetical story.
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By definition that story is about your experience. It’s for you, and you’re central to it. It wouldn’t be an experience-story without you. So I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it.
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That’s why I say that you’re the reason why you’re in a life. It has nothing to do with your parents, who were only part of the overall physical mechanism in the context of this physical world. Of course consistency in your story requires that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the origin of the physical animal that you are.
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Among the infinity of hypothetical life-experience-stories, there timelessly is one with you as protagonist. That protagonist, with his inclinations and predispositions, his “Will to Life”, is why you’re in a life.
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The requirement for an experience-story is that it be consistent. …because there are no such things as inconsistent facts, even abstract ones.
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Obviously a person’s experience isn’t just about logic and mathematics. But your story’s requirement for consistency requires that the physical events and things in the physical world that you experience are consistent. That inevitably brings logic into your story.
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And of course, if you closely examine the physical world and is workings, then the mathematical relations in the physical world will be part of your experience. …as they also are when you read about what physicists have found by such close examinations of sthe physical world and its workings.
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There have been times when new physical observations seemed inconsistent with existing physical laws. Again and again, newly discovered physical laws showed a consistent system of which the previously seemingly-inconsistent observations are part. But of course there remain physical observations that still aren’t explained by currently-known physical law. Previous experience suggests that those observations, too, at least potentially, will be encompassed by new physics.
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Likely, physical explanations consisting of physical things and laws that, themselves, will later be explained by newly-discovered physical things and laws, will be an endless open-ended process…at least until such time as, maybe, further examination will be thwarted by inaccessibly small regions, large regions, or high energies. …even though that open-ended explanation is there in principle.
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Question time:
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1. If you think that this physical world is other than, or more than, what I’ve described it as—If you believe that this physical universe is “objectively existent” or “objectively real” or “actual” or “substantial” or “substantive” in a way that the physical world as I’ve described it…
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…(as the setting of your hypothetical life-experience story, which is a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions)…
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…isnt, then what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”?
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2. In what context, other than its own, or the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to be real &/or existent?
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These discussions always end with the other person not answering these questions.
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Michael Ossipoff

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I don’t have an argument with your statement that spiritual reality is unnatural, because I don’t know what you mean by spiritual reality. — Michael Ossipoff

It is not relevant to our present discussion, but by "spiritual" here I mean a reality with no intrinsic dependence on matter.

, which, while real, is not measurable.
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So then, is it that anything that isn’t measureable (physical)? is unnatural? So you’d say that God (hypothetically, if you don’t believe there’s God) isn’t natural? …and that abstract-implications, even they’re the structural basis of the describable world, are unnatural? — Michael Ossipoff

All I am saying is that many things can be real (and natural) without being measurable. Qualia, intentions and the laws of nature are a few examples God is a special case. God is inseparable from nature, but not part of nature because nature is ontologically finite, and God is not. So, God is operative in nature, and natural in that sense, but not natural in the sense of being part of nature. Abstractions are human thoughts and so quite natural, though immaterial.

Please note that I am not a materialist. I think that there are intrinsically immaterial realities, such as God, with no dependence on material reality.

Yes there’s outward sign to justify Theism, but there are also discussions that more directly justify faith, aside from outward sign. I define faith as “trust without or aside from outward sign”. There are discussions that justify faith. — Michael Ossipoff

Just to be clear, I distinguish faith and reason, and see philosophy as dealing with what can be known by reason independently of faith.

At the same time, I think faith is real, have reflected a great deal about, it, grace, inspiration and related topics. While I would be glad to share my thoughts on these matters, I consider these reflections part of Sacred (as opposed to Natural) Theology and not part of philosophy. So, yes, I think that we can be aware of the presence of God within, but I don't think that is grist for the philosophical mill.

But, if you’re not a Materialist (“Naturalist”), then I’d suggest ditching Materialist language like “nature” and “the natural world”. — Michael Ossipoff

I see no reason to forget about nature and the natural world. While they are not the whole of reality, they are certainly an important part of it. If one is interested in knowing God, much can be learned from studying his handiwork.

You experience them, and then you infer objective existence for them. — Michael Ossipoff

No. That is not it as all. Think about how inference works. It does not create new information. It makes new connections between old information. So, If the object's existence was not already immanent in my experience, no amount of inference could inform me it exists. The very fact that the object is acting to inform me shows that it exists. How it informs me is a partial revelation of what it is -- a thing that can inform me in this way.

Experiencing is entering into a subject-object relation. Without an object, such a relation is impossible. I, as subject, bring awareness to the table. The object brings an intelligibility that will become the contents of my consciousness when I am aware of it. My being informed by the object is identically the object informing me. This Identity prevents any separation of subject and object. So there is no need to bridge a gap by some inference.

There may be incidental inference. I may decide that this object is like others I've experienced and infer properties I'm not experiencing, but filling-in gaps is not the subject-object relation of experience. It is a separate, second movement of thought.

But don’t you see that that claim about an objectively-existent physical world is what you’re arguing for? You can’t use it as an argument for itself. — Michael Ossipoff

Every line of argument needs unproven premises; however, "unproven" does not have to mean "unknown." As I have just explained, there is no separation between me being informed by the object, and the object informing me. Experience provides us with our known, but unproven premises. The analysis of experience does not prove it, but it does remove rational grounds for doubt. The lack of dynamical separation between object informing and the subject being informed removes any need for mediation or inference.

Apples are among the things and events that are in your self-consistent hypothetical life-experience-story. — Michael Ossipoff

There is no hypothesis. Hypotheses bridge ignorance. I have no need for such a bridge when apples act to inform me whenever I encounter them.

If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things — Michael Ossipoff

This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience? It is perfectly self-consistent to be a being without need of food.

No doubt infinitely-many terminologies are possible. I don’t disagree with them, but I don’t use all of them. — Michael Ossipoff

My point is not terminological, but epistemological. Saying that we only know our ideas is simply wrong -- and wrong precisely because it confuses signs that must be known in themselves before they can signify with ideas that have no reality beyond signifying.

quantum-physics in particular, is their specialty, their field. …not yours — Michael Ossipoff

Actually, I have a doctorate in theoretical physics and continue to work on its foundations -- specifically the foundations of quantum theory.

In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”? — Michael Ossipoff

I know it is objective in all contexts.

It doesn’t contravene physical law. The quarterback is a physical, biologically-orignated, purposefully-responsive device. — Michael Ossipoff

There is no reason to think the quaterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature and many reasons to think it does.

In this physical world, there’s no contravention of physical law. — Michael Ossipoff

Thank you for sharing your faith in physics. Do you have an argument to back it up?

No one’s denying that Idealism and Theism don’t mean the same thing, or that they’re positions distinct from eachother. But they aren’t incompatible with eachother. — Michael Ossipoff

Agreed.

I am a philosophical theist. I am no sort of idealist.

Then, you must be a Materialist or a Dualist. I don’t think you can be a Theist and a Materialist, so doesn’t that make you a Dualist? — Michael Ossipoff

I could not possibly be a theist and a materialist. As It happens, I am not a substance dualist either. I am a moderate realist who thinks that there are physical and and intentional acts by substances that are ostensible unities.

Describable metaphysics only discusses the describable. I don’t claim that all of Reality is describable. — Michael Ossipoff

Certainly God is not.

I agree that we are natural beings…

I translate that as “physical beings”. — Michael Ossipoff

We are physical and intentional beings.

Standard quantum mechanics says that while observations may be random, systems that are unobserved develop in an entirely deterministic way. — Dfpolis

What about infinite degrees of freedom, or treating a photon as an observer? Do you subscribe to MWI or believe the wavefunction collapses?

Continuous waves have infinite degrees of freedom, at least in the abstract.

I have not heard of treating a photon as an observer.

No, I think the MWI is based on an error (thinking the bulk matter of the brain is subject to linear dynamics, just like quanta in isolation).

Yes, I think the wave function collapses because detectors are made of bulk matter and buk matter has nonlinear dynamics that cannot support super positions.

There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story. — Michael Ossipoff

I think this requires argument. You need to say why some propositions only are hypothetical, and what it is to be true. If you refuse to specify what you mean by truth, then how can anyone know if they agree or disagree with you?

Also, why do you refrain from saying what experience exists? What do you man by "existing"?

Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication — Michael Ossipoff

More fundamentally, it corresponds to a possible human experience. I only "encounter" the roundabout because I experience it. This makes experience fundamental.

A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms. — Michael Ossipoff

What if the axioms are false? How would we know they are true or false?

Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”. — Michael Ossipoff

Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

We’re used to declarative, indicative, grammar because it’s convenient. But conditional grammar adequately describes our physical world. We tend to unduly believe our grammar. — Michael Ossipoff

We use such grammar because it expresses what we actually think. Your conjecture that life is hypothetical is not what most people actually think. So, the burden is on you to convince us that what we think is wrong.

I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it. — Michael Ossipoff

How would you describe consciousness? (I do not mean the contents of consciousness, but that which makes us aware of those contents.)

Of course consistency in your story requires that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the origin of the physical animal that you are. — Michael Ossipoff

I think it would be consistent, but false, to say I had no parents. It is only because we know what is true from experience that we know (not hypothesize) that we have parents.

I am happy to answer your questions.

what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”? — Michael Ossipoff

By existent, I mean able to act in any way. Objects (potentially or actually) are one pole of the subject- object relation we call knowing. To be an object is to be able to inform a subject -- in other words, to be intelligible. To be a subject is to be able to be aware of intelligibility.

A substance is an ostensible unity. As such, it has various notes of intelligibility that we can predicate of it.

Actual means operative -- able to act at the present time. It is opposed to potential, which means immanent, but not yet operative. It is also opposed to fictional, which means that the corresponding idea has a sense or meaning, but no operative referent.

2. In what context, other than its own, or the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to be real &/or existent? — Michael Ossipoff

It is not a matter of my wanting or believing that the physical universe is operative. I am directly aware that it operates on me to inform me that it is and what it is -- whether I want it to or not, and whether I choose to believe it or not. So, its reality is not context dependent.

(This is just a brief preliminary reply. I'll be replying to both of your recent posts}.

"A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms." — Michael Ossipoff


What if the axioms are false? How would we know they are true or false? — Dfpolis

When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions...

...I should add that there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true.

" Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”". — Michael Ossipoff



Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

You mean other than because you live in one?

You don't really have whole lot of choice in the matter right now.

Anyway, of course there isn't any time other than in the physical worlds.

(As I said, I'll be replying to your two recent posts today.)

Michael Ossipoff

When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions... — Michael Ossipoff

This is not a complete sentence. You may wish to edit it.

I will note for the present that Godel has shown that claims of consistency for arithmetic. and systems that can be arithmetically represented, cannot be proven. So, you philosophy has a very shaky foundation if it is based on the assumption of self-consistency. By way of contrast, the consistency of realism is based on the fact that one cannot instantiate a contradiction. So, as long as we abstract our principles from reality, they are guaranteed to be self-consistent.

Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

You mean other than because you live in one? — Michael Ossipoff

I live in a world that is actual, not hypothetical. I know it is actual because it acts to inform me. By way of contrast, I am the one informing hypothetical worlds.

I look forward to your fuller response.

”So then, is it that anything that isn’t measureable (physical)? is unnatural? So you’d say that God (hypothetically, if you don’t believe there’s God) isn’t natural? …and that abstract-implications, even they’re the structural basis of the describable world, are unnatural?” — Michael Ossipoff
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All I am saying is that many things can be real (and natural) without being measurable. Qualia, intentions and the laws of nature are a few examples God is a special case. God is inseparable from nature, but not part of nature because nature is ontologically finite, and God is not. So, God is operative in nature, and natural in that sense, but not natural in the sense of being part of nature.

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Well, I don’t know what it means to say that God isn’t natural, but we can agree to disagree about that.
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But of course it’s just that we don’t mean the same thing by “natural”. I don’t know what you mean by it. But, as I said, there’s no need to use Materialist (“Naturalist”) terminology. You aren’t a “Naturalist”, are you?
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“Natural”, “natural world” and “nature” have big definitional ambiguity. That’s why I don’t use, or recommend the use of, those words. But of course they’re really popular with Materialists.
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Abstractions are human thoughts and so quite natural, though immaterial.

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Please note that I am not a materialist. I think that there are intrinsically immaterial realities, such as God, with no dependence on material reality.

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Agreed.
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”Yes there’s outward sign to justify Theism, but there are also discussions that more directly justify faith, aside from outward sign. I define faith as “trust without or aside from outward sign”. There are discussions that justify faith.” — Michael Ossipoff
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At the same time, I think faith is real, have reflected a great deal about, it, grace, inspiration and related topics. While I would be glad to share my thoughts on these matters, I consider these reflections part of Sacred (as opposed to Natural) Theology and not part of philosophy. So, yes, I think that we can be aware of the presence of God within, but I don't think that is grist for the philosophical mill.

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Yes, I don’t regard it as a matter of assertion, argument, debate or proof.
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”But, if you’re not a Materialist (“Naturalist”), then I’d suggest ditching Materialist language like “nature” and “the natural world”.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I see no reason to forget about nature and the natural world.

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I merely suggest that words like “nature” and “the natural world” aren’t clearly defined. It would be better say “this physical universe”, if that’s what you mean.
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Your use of Materialist language is why I thought you were a Materialist.
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[/i]”You experience them, and then you infer objective existence for them.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]

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No. That is not it as all. Think about how inference works. It does not create new information. It makes new connections between old information. So, If the object's existence was not already immanent in my experience, no amount of inference could inform me it exists.

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Right, your inference is about the nature of what you experience. …an inference that this physical world that you experience has objective existence (whatever that would mean).
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The very fact that the object is acting to inform me shows that it exists.

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…in the context of your life, your life-experience story. Of course.
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How it informs me is a partial revelation of what it is -- a thing that can inform me in this way.

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Experiencing is entering into a subject-object relation. Without an object, such a relation is impossible. I, as subject, bring awareness to the table. The object brings an intelligibility that will become the contents of my consciousness when I am aware of it. My being informed by the object is identically the object informing me. This Identity prevents any separation of subject and object. So there is no need to bridge a gap by some inference.

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You, an experiencer, a protagonist, and your surroundings that you experience, are a complementary pair, in your hypothetical life-experience story, a complex logical system.
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”Apples are among the things and events that are in your self-consistent hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff
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There is no hypothesis. Hypotheses bridge ignorance.

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The physical world is as it was taught to us in pre-secondary-school science-courses.
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…including what I said about our being biologically-originated purposefully-responsive devices.
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I meant no disparagement of what we are, when I described us in that way. It’s just that the physical world, including us animals, is basically as it was taught to us.
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But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact.
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There’s a metaphysics that doesn’t have or need a brute-fact. I’ve been describing and proposing it in these forums.
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I recognize that intuition rebels against a suggestion that all that’s describable is just hypothetical. But there’s no physics-experiment that can establish otherwise. There’s no reason to believe that your experience isn’t a hypothetical story.
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You comment on that metaphysics in your subsequent post, and I’ll reply to it after posting this reply.
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…have no need for such a bridge when apples act to inform me whenever I encounter them.

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You encounter them in your experience-story. You aren’t a Materialist, but, like the Materialists, you want to believe in the solid fundamental objective existence of this physical world, whatever that would mean.
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I emphasize that I, as a Theist, don’t have any quarrel with a Theist. My quarrel is with Materialists and aggressive Atheists. We don’t agree on describable metaphysics, but, because you’re a Theist, I don’t have a significant quarrel with you.
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The fundamentally, objectively, existent physical world that you claim, amounts to positing a brute-fact.
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Just as the formation of the galaxies and this solar-system, and of the Earth, and the evolution of our species, didn’t need contravention of physical law, so likewise, I don’t think that God needed the use of a brute-fact to make there be the describable metaphysical world, or this physical universe, which is part of it.
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In fact:
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It’s my impression, largely from metaphysics, that Reality, what-is, is good. …and that there’s good intent behind what-is. …and that Reality is benevolence itself.
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But that doesn’t necessarily mean that God is responsible for there being the describable metaphysical world. That sounds like an oversimplification of something unknowable. I don’t claim to know the relation between Reality as a whole, and the describable metaphysical world of hypothetical propositions and abstract implications.
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The Good Intent regarding what there is could be taken to imply that that Benevolence made there be the describable world of abstract implications, but that sounds to me like an oversimplification of a matter that I don’t claim to know about.
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Couldn’t the abstract logical systems, including the one that’s an experience-story with you as protagonist, just inevitably spontaneously be (in whatever sense they are), even though Reality is Good Intent?
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Because you’re the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story, it can be said that you’re spontaneously in a life because of yourself. … though Benevolence is the character and nature of Reality, and, in fact, is Reality itself.
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(I don’t say all this in the aggressive-Atheists’ argument -threads, because, there, it would amount to arguing about a matter that I don’t regard as a matter for assertion, argument, debate, or proof.)
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”If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things” — Michael Ossipoff
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This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience?

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You aren’t an anti-evolutionist, are you?
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How could there be animals that wouldn’t need food? Even if they got their energy as solar energy, where would they get the material that is needed for growth and reproduction? Material taken in and used by animals is called “food”.
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It is perfectly self-consistent to be a being without need of food.

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How would such an animal grow and reproduce without taking-in material?
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”No doubt infinitely-many terminologies are possible. I don’t disagree with them, but I don’t use all of them.” — Michael Ossipoff
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My point is not terminological, but epistemological. Saying that we only know our ideas is simply wrong

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I said that our experience is the basis of what we know about our surroundings. You’re making inferences, assumptions, about the nature of your surroundings.
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-- and wrong precisely because it confuses signs that must be known in themselves before they can signify with ideas that have no reality beyond signifying.

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I don’t know the meaning of that terminology. I haven’t read the author that you’ve referred to.
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In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”? — Michael Ossipoff

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I know it is objective in all contexts.

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…such as…?
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”It doesn’t contravene physical law. The quarterback is a physical, biologically-orignated, purposefully-responsive device.”— Michael Ossipoff
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There is no reason to think the quarterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature [physics?] and many reasons to think it does.

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Name one.
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Each of us, as an animal in this physical world, is part of this physical world, and thereby inevitably influences it. Each of us influences this physical world. …but not by changing its physical laws.
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”In this physical world, there’s no contravention of physical law.” — Michael Ossipoff
Thank you for sharing your faith in physics.

You’re welcome.
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There have observations that were contrary to physical understanding at the time of the observations, but, typically, new physics encompassed those observations.
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The relation between the energy and wavelength of black-body radiation; the result of the Michaelson-Morely experiment; the seemingly anomalous component of the rotation-of-apsides of the orbit of the planet Mercury are a few examples. Those seeming anomalies were explained by subsequent physics. Now there’s the acceleration of the recessional speed of distant galaxies that calls for explanation. The progress of physics has been like that.
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When there’s a seeming contravention of physical law, it’s likely due to the incompleteness of current physics.
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Do you have an argument to back it up?

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See above. I don’t know what there is to “back up” about physics, other than that it’s been useful in describing the relations among the things and events of the physical world.
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Next I’ll reply to your subsequent post.

(...after a brief reply to something that you've just now posted.)
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Michael Ossipoff

”When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions... “— Michael Ossipoff
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This is not a complete sentence.

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Of course not. That’s why it ends in an ellipsis (“…”) instead of in a period.
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But:
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“When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions...

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...I should add that there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true.”
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…is a complete sentence.
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Jamming those clauses together wouldn’t have helped clarity.
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I will note for the present that Godel has shown that claims of consistency for arithmetic. and systems that can be arithmetically represented, cannot be proven.

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Godel showed that, in any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic, there are true propositions that can’t be proven.
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He didn’t show that there are mutually-inconsistent, mutually-contradictory, facts; or that there are propositions that are both true and false.
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So, your philosophy has a very shaky foundation if it is based on the assumption of self-consistency.

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See above. Your life-experience story is self-consistent because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false.
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By way of contrast, the consistency of realism is based on the fact that one cannot instantiate a contradiction.

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I didn’t say that Realism is inconsistent. But your experience is subjective, and is described by a subjective experience-story, and not by an objective world-story.
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Not only can one not physically instantiate a contradiction, but there can’t even be mutually-contradictory facts. It would be meaningless, tautologically self-contradictory, to speak of them.
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So, as long as we abstract our principles from reality, they are guaranteed to be self-consistent.

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Say it how you want, but logic is only part of Reality.
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But I think we agree that your experience can’t be inconsistent.

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”Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?”

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”You mean other than because you live in one?” — Michael Ossipoff
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I live in a world that is actual

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Of course, if we use the following useful definition of “actual”:
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“Consisting of, or part of, the physical world in which the speaker resides.”
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If you mean something else by “actual”, then I invite you to say what else you mean by it.
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, not hypothetical.

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You say that, and it’s the prevailing belief. But, as I’ve been saying, there’s no physics-experiment that can establish, or even imply or suggest, that this physical world is other than the setting for your hypothetical life-exeperience-story, consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston.
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I know it is actual because it acts to inform me.

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Of course…in your experience-story.
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Next, I’ll reply to your posting in which you comment on my metaphysics (the posting that immediately preceded the posting that I’m replying to now).
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Michael Ossipoff

I don’t know what it means to say that God isn’t natural — Michael Ossipoff

It means that God, while operative in nature, transcends nature, and so is not a part of nature.

But of course it’s just that we don’t mean the same thing by “natural”. I don’t know what you mean by it. — Michael Ossipoff

By "nature" I mean all physically observable existents and their dynamics -- and as I said before, by an "existent," I mean anything that can act in any way. By "dynamics" I mean the principles guiding observable change.

While I am not a naturalist, I see no need to avoid an well-defined terminology. It is a type of genetic fallacy because it may have originated with some group with whom we may disagree. Nonetheless, I do not thnk that most of the language I use with respect to physical reality so originates.

Right, your inference is about the nature of what you experience. …an inference that this physical world that you experience has objective existence (whatever that would mean).. — Michael Ossipoff

I have said what it means to exist -- it is the ability to act in any way. So, whatever exists with respect to anything, exists simpliciter. I think we have exhausted the topic of "inferring" reality. You have not responded to the points I have made, so there is no point in my repeating them.

It’s just that the physical world, including us animals, is basically as it was taught to us. — Michael Ossipoff

Exactly, and truth is the adequacy of what we think to what is. Case closed.

But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't even know why you are saying this. I see the physical universe as contingent at every point of space-time and so in need of a concurrent explanation. Further, I see the line of concurrent explanation terminating in a necessary, self-explaining being, commonly called God. So, I see no brute facts, and consider the very concept of a brute fact antithetical to science. Please do not persist in giving a false account of my position.

I recognize that intuition rebels against a suggestion that all that’s describable is just hypothetical. But there’s no physics-experiment that can establish otherwise — Michael Ossipoff

I didn't think you were a logical positivist or a physicalist. We both know that physics is not the only approach to truth. I have explained why there is no dynamic separation between subjects and their objects and how experience links them by a partial identity. You have chosen not to dispute my analysis.

It’s my impression, largely from metaphysics, that Reality, what-is, is good. …and that there’s good intent behind what-is. …and that Reality is benevolence itself. — Michael Ossipoff

I am happy to agree with you here.

”If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things” — Michael Ossipoff
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This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience?

You aren’t an anti-evolutionist, are you? — Michael Ossipoff

I accept the science of evolution while rejecting the naturalist spin on evolution as an example of order emerging from mindless randomness. That is not the point. Evolution is known by reflecting on our experience of reality. As you think experience does not give us reality, you have no reason to believe that we are animals, let alone evolved animals.

How would such an animal grow and reproduce without taking-in material? — Michael Ossipoff

How do you know any of this, except by experience? Besides, if your life is one hypothetical story, and mine quite another, there is no reason for us to have any common experience or share any common knowledge or beliefs. What makes it possible for us to communicate is that we share the same objective reality. Absent that, why should we have any common ground?

You’re making inferences, assumptions, about the nature of your surroundings — Michael Ossipoff

Of course I am, but their existence and their capacity to inform me are not among my inferences.

I don’t know the meaning of that terminology. I haven’t read the author that you’ve referred to. — Michael Ossipoff

That is why I explained the difference to you. Ideas do not need to be know before they can signify. Other kinds of signs do. Since we do not first know we have an idea of x, we can't infer the existence of x from "I have an idea of x." Instead it works the other way. We know x (by experience) and then infer that to know x I must have an idea of x. If you want a reference, look at Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic.

In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”? — Michael Ossipoff
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I know it is objective in all contexts.

.…such as…? — Michael Ossipoff

In the context of the lived world, science, philosophy, theology, human relations, morality, etc, etc."

There is no reason to think the quarterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature [physics?] and many reasons to think it does.
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Name one. — Michael Ossipoff

1. Physical acts are consequent on intentional commitments. If physics applied invariantly, what we thought could not result in physical effects.
2. The causal invariant in intentional actions is the goal (which is intentional) not a physical trajectory. When I decide to go to the store, I may envision a path, but if the preplanned path is blocked, I will find another to attain my goal. Mechanism is backward looking, teleology forward looking. So, my goal rather than my physical trajectory determines by motion.
3. It has been experimentally confirmed, beyond a statistical doubt, that human intentional can modify "random" physical processes.
4. On the other side, as I have argued in many posts on this forum, the fundamental abstraction of physics limits is realm of application to purely physical objects -- excluding any operations of the intending subject. So, we have no reason to expect that human acts of will are adequately described by physics.

Each of us influences this physical world. …but not by changing its physical laws. — Michael Ossipoff

This is self-contradictory. If the laws are unmodified by human action, the state of the world before we are conceived, together with the laws of nature, determine all future states. If future states are fully determined before we exist, we can have no influence on them

I don’t know what there is to “back up” about physics, other than that it’s been useful in describing the relations among the things and events of the physical world. — Michael Ossipoff

What needs justification is the application of physics outside of its verified realm of application, viz. its application to human intentionality. Physics has nothing to say about meaning or intent because they are not part of its ontology. (By the ontology of physics I mean the things it deals with such as space, time, mass, fields and dynamical laws.)

I still do not know what you mean by "describable" in "describable metaphysics."

there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true. — Michael Ossipoff

Then there is no point in proceeding, as I am engaged in the search for truth. I have no interest in hypotheticals that explain posits that might not even be true to begin with.

I will note for the present that Godel has shown that claims of consistency for arithmetic. and systems that can be arithmetically represented, cannot be proven.

Godel showed that, in any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic, there are true propositions that can’t be proven. — Michael Ossipoff

He showed many things. The inability to prove consistency is one of them. It ended Hilbert's program of deriving math from logic. The inability to prove consistency means that there is no justification for assuming your hypothetical life stories are consistent. If they can be inconsistent, why should I give them any credence?

Your life-experience story is self-consistent because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false — Michael Ossipoff

Wy point is this is an unjustified faith claim. Perhaps part of my Hypothetical Life Story (HLS) assumes I did something that violates the laws of physics (which you think is impossible). For example, in my HLS, I may have made a decision which I think was free and you think is precluded by the laws of physics. Wouldn't that be an implicit contradiction for you? Or in my HLS I visit a glacier that should not have existed given how global warming works in my HLS. You see, contradictions need not be blatant, they can be subtle. So, it is important to have some justification for thinking that a HLS is self-consistent. As a result of Godel's work there can be none.

I didn’t say that Realism is inconsistent. But your experience is subjective, ... — Michael Ossipoff

My point is not that realism is consistent, but that there is an ontological justification for its consistency, while there is none for your HLSs.

As for subjectivity, all knowledge is both subjective and objective. There is no knowing without both a knowing subject and a known object. I am happy to agree that experience is subjective because that is not an argument against it also being objective.

But I think we agree that your experience can’t be inconsistent. — Michael Ossipoff

Good. But, why do you think this? I think it's consistent because I see it as an experience of being. What do you think is the reason for its consistency?

I live in a world that is actual

Of course, if we use the following useful definition of “actual”:
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“Consisting of, or part of, the physical world in which the speaker resides.” — Michael Ossipoff

Or if we say that something is actual if it can act in any way. In either case, I do not live in a world that does not exist -- as you suggested.

That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston. — Michael Ossipoff

Faraday was a great physicist, but that did not qualify him as a philosopher. Mathematics is an abstraction that cannot be applied unless there is something beyond itself to apply it to. It is what the abstract relations describe (that in which they are instantiated) that Faraday forgot.

I know it is actual because it acts to inform me.

Of course…in your experience-story. — Michael Ossipoff

I do not disown my experience, but I'm making two additional points (1) In acting to inform me, objects act and so meet the condition to exist simpliciter, (2) if we did not share common experiences, we could not communicate.

“There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
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I think this requires argument.

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Well, when I say that there’s no reason to believe something, then the burden is on someone who disagrees, to produce a reason to believe it.
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You need to say why some propositions only are hypothetical

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The hypothetical propositions that I speak of when describing my metaphysics are hypothetical because they’re about hypothetical things (…with no reason to believe that any of those things exist or are real). Also, the propositions are hypothetical because I make no claim that any of them are true. In fact, I suggest that none of them are true. The things are hypothetical because I make no claim that any of them exist or are real (...whatever that would mean).
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If none of the propositions are true, and none of the things that the propositions are about are real or existent, then what is true about the logical system that I describe? The abstract implications are true. The truth of an implication doesn’t require that its antecedent or consequent proposition be true.
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(But actually, it’s a bit sloppy and circular for me to speak of an implication (an implying of one proposition by another, and a fact, by virtue of being a state-of-affairs or a relation among things) as true, because I define truth value as a property of propositions, not of facts. By my definition of “proposition”, a proposition is true if and only if it’s a fact.)
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An implication says only that if one proposition were true, the other would be true. That doesn’t say anything about whether any of them really are true.
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, and what it is to be true.
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If you refuse to specify what you mean by truth…

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I mean what we all mean by “true”. Here’s a way to say it: A proposition is true if it’s a fact—a state-of-affairs or a relation among things.
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Truth is the property of having a truth value of “True”.
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Things are what are describable and can be referred to.
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A fact is a state-of-affairs or a relation among things.
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A proposition is a thing that has a property called a truth-value (which can consist of True or False), and has a truth-value of True if and only if it is a fact.
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(You could call it a “false proposition”, a proposition with a truth-value of “False,” if it purports to be, but isn’t a fact, as defined above.)
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I never meant to imply that my meaning for “truth” or “true” was any different from how others here mean those words.
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, then how can anyone know if they agree or disagree with you?

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If I’d been using a nonstandard meaning, I’d have said so.
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Also, why do you refrain from saying what experience exists?

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See directly below:
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What do you mean by "existing"?

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I don’t mean anything by it. The only time I use the word “exist” or “real” is when I say that I don’t claim that abstract implications are real or existent.
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I say that there are abstract implications only in the limited sense that we can mention and refer to them.
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I make no claim that anything in the describable realm is real or existent.
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(What’s the describable realm? It’s the set of all that can be described. That includes this physical world.)
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”Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication” — Michael Ossipoff
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More fundamentally, it corresponds to a possible human experience.

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That’s right. Exactly. Experience is what’s fundamental in these stories. Your HLES (Hypothetical Life Experience-Story) is about your experience. It’s for you. The only way logic enters into it is via the fact that your HLES must be consistent, because there are no such things as mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false.
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But yes, as you said, experience is what it’s about.
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I only "encounter" the roundabout because I experience it. This makes experience fundamental.

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Exactly.
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A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms. — Michael Ossipoff
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What if the axioms are false? How would we know they are true or false?

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The theorems using them are valid whether the axioms are true or not, just as the abstract implications that I refer to are genuine facts whether or not any of their antecedents are true. What does it mean for a mathematical axiom to be true? Only that it makes useful to us, whatever kind of mathematics it’s about (arithmetic of real numbers or positive-integers, or practical plane-geometry, or some operation on some group, etc.)…only that it makes that kind of mathematics useful to represent or describe what we want it to represent or describe.
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In that sense, we could call an axiom “false” if the use of it results in a mathematics that doesn’t represent or describe what we want it to represent or describe.
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”Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”. “ — Michael Ossipoff
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Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

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I answered that in my “brief preliminary reply”. You’re in a life in this physical world, and so right now you don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter.
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And people at this forum are here because they’re interested in philosophy.
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”We’re used to declarative, indicative, grammar because it’s convenient. But conditional grammar adequately describes our physical world. We tend to unduly believe our grammar.”— Michael Ossipoff
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We use such grammar because it expresses what we actually think. Your conjecture that life is hypothetical is not what most people actually think.

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Yes, I recognize that. I’m suggesting that the metaphysical basis for our life and physical surroundings is a lot more tenuous than most people at these forums think.
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But no, it isn’t a conjecture. I merely stated that the uncontroversial fact that there are those abstract implications (in the sense that we can mention and refer to them), and complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and that one such system inevitably, with suitable naming of its propositions and things, has the same description as the physical world of your experience--and that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is more than or other than the setting for your hypothetical life-experience story. For example, there’s no physics experiment that can prove, establish, imply or suggest that.
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Declarative, indicative grammar is undeniably useful in communication. As I said, there’s a tendency to too readily believe our grammar.
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So, the burden is on you to convince us that what we think is wrong.

Well, as I’ve said, if I say that there’s no reason to believe something, and someone else says there is, then the burden is on him, to produce a reason to believe it.
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My way of trying to convince you is by asking you questions about what you mean, when you express disbelief, or advocate a different metaphysics.
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But, even if I can’t convince people, I’m interested in how they answer the questions.
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”I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it.” — Michael Ossipoff
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How would you describe consciousness? (I do not mean the contents of consciousness, but that which makes us aware of those contents.)

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By it, I’m referring to the experiencer, the protagonist, of a hypothetical life experience story (HLES). We’re central and primary to our HLES.
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”Of course consistency in your story requires that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the origin of the physical animal that you are.’ — Michael Ossipoff
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I think it would be consistent, but false, to say I had no parents. It is only because we know what is true from experience that we know (not hypothesize) that we have parents.

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Yes, our parents are part of the physical mechanism that our experience-story must include evidence of, in order to be consistent with our own presence in this physical universe.
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…in keeping with the HLES’s only requirement: Consistency.

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I am happy to answer your questions.
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”what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”?” — Michael Ossipoff
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By existent, I mean able to act in any way.

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Alright, then the physical world, even as I describe it, as the setting of your hypothetical experience-story, is existent by your definition, because it acts, in your experience-story.
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Objects (potentially or actually) are one pole of the subject- object relation we call knowing. To be an object is to be able to inform a subject -- in other words, to be intelligible. To be a subject is to be able to be aware of intelligibility.

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That sounds similar to what I said, when I said that you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts of your experience-story.
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Actual means operative -- able to act at the present time.

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Then the physical world as I describe it, as the setting of your hypothetical experience-story, is actual by your definition, because it operates, in your experience-story.
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And so existence and actuality don’t distinguish your physical world from the hypothetical one that I describe.
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It is opposed to potential, which means immanent, but not yet operative. It is also opposed to fictional, which means that the corresponding idea has a sense or meaning, but no operative referent.

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But now maybe you’re saying that your physical world is different from what I describe, by your physical world being not-merely-potential, and not-fictional.
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But then you’ve just substituted those terms for “actual”, and I again ask you what you mean by them.
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What does it mean to say that this physical world, as you believe it to be, is more-than-potential and not-fictional?
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As for “fictional”, the abstract implications that I spoke of aren’t fictional. As I said, there are those, in the sense that they can be mentioned and referred to.
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You seem to be saying that your physical world is more than the one that I describe, by being more than the one that I describe.
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”2. In what context, other than its own, or the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to be real &/or existent?” — Michael Ossipoff
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It is not a matter of my wanting or believing that the physical universe is operative. I am directly aware that it operates on me to inform me that it is and what it is -- whether I want it to or not, and whether I choose to believe it or not.

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Of course. It does all that in your experience-story. None of that is inconsistent with it being the setting of your experience-story, and none of that says anything about the objective reality or existence (whatever that would mean) of that system.

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So, its reality is not context dependent.

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What you said directly above amounts to saying that you experience this physical world. Of course you do, but that’s consistent with it being the setting for your experience-story. But its objective reality or existence (reality or existence in a larger context that bestows objective existence or reality), or else its status as the ultimate-reality, you have yet to establish or specify.
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And, as is becoming evident now, “reality” and “existence” aren’t really so easy to define.
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I emphasize that, as I said, few here agree that life and the physical world have the tenuous metaphysical basis that I describe. I don’t say that you should agree. I don’t mean to badger you about it or criticize you if you don’t agree. I’m merely answering questions about my position.
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(Actually, a participant here called Litewave has said things that agree with the metaphysics that I describe.)
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Michael Ossipoff

This is just a brief preliminary reply that I'd like to post now, before I answer the rest of this post (I'm answering your posts in chronological order, roughly one per day>

"That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston." — Michael Ossipoff

Faraday was a great physicist, but that did not qualify him as a philosopher. Mathematics is an abstraction that cannot be applied unless there is something beyond itself to apply it to. It is what the abstract relations describe (that in which they are instantiated) that Faraday forgot. — Dfpolis

No, Faraday was well aware of that assumption. He pointed out that it is without evidentiary support.

Michael Ossipoff

But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff


I don't even know why you are saying this. I see the physical universe as contingent at every point of space-time and so in need of a concurrent explanation. Further, I see the line of concurrent explanation terminating in a necessary, self-explaining being, commonly called God. So, I see no brute facts, and consider the very concept of a brute fact antithetical to science. Please do not persist in giving a false account of my position. — Dfpolis

Sorry. I didn't mean that.

I didn't mean to say that you believe that this physical universe is a brute-fact. I just meant that you're saying that, as seen from within the describable world, it looks like a brute-fact. In other words, you're saying that this physical universe, an object in the describable realm, has no explanation within the describable realm, and can only be explained from outside the describable realm.

I claim that the describable realm is, with respect to its own terms, self-explanatory. Just as physics explains the relations among physical things, so likewise, describable metaphysics explains the describable realm. The whole describable realm is self-explanatory and self-consistent. It's about itself.

Yes, the describable realm isn't all of Reality. I've suggested that Reality is Benevolence itself. The describable realm is obviously part of Reality, and I think we'd agree that it's something of a lower subset of Reality.

But it's a subset that, as property of what it is and how it works, is self-generating as seen from within it (as a hypothetical experience-story, governed by a requirement for self-consistence, whch implies abstract implications and complex systems of them).. That isn't inconsistent with my suggestion that Reality is Benevolence.

It goes without saying that I don't claim to know the "how" of that Benevolence, or what or how is the influence of Reality on us in the describable realm. That it isn't explainable or knowable. It's meaningless to speak of the "how" of influence other than within the describable realm. Reality just isn't knowable.

To be continued...

Michael Ossipoff

”Right, your inference is about the nature of what you experience. …an inference that this physical world that you experience has objective existence (whatever that would mean).” — Michael Ossipoff
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I have said what it means to exist -- it is the ability to act in any way. So, whatever exists with respect to anything, exists simpliciter. I think we have exhausted the topic of "inferring" reality. You have not responded to the points I have made, so there is no point in my repeating them.

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I’ve answered them, but maybe I haven’t answered them clearly enough. So let me make another try:
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Your life-experience-story is the story of the experiences in your life. In that experience-story, you experience things that act. You experience things that act on you and inform you. That’s the nature of your experience-story.
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The fact that you experience those things doesn’t mean that they have some kind of intrinsic independent reality or existence (whatever that would mean) other than in the context of your life-experience-story.
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”But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I don't even know why you are saying this. I see the physical universe as contingent at every point of space-time and so in need of a concurrent explanation. Further, I see the line of concurrent explanation terminating in a necessary, self-explaining being, commonly called God. So, I see no brute facts, and consider the very concept of a brute fact antithetical to science. Please do not persist in giving a false account of my position.

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This was the topic about which I answered in my “brief preliminary reply”.
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"I recognize that intuition rebels against a suggestion that all that’s describable is just hypothetical. But there’s no physics-experiment that can establish otherwise" — Michael Ossipoff
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I didn't think you were a logical positivist or a physicalist. We both know that physics is not the only approach to truth. I have explained why there is no dynamic separation between subjects and their objects and how experience links them by a partial identity. You have chosen not to dispute my analysis.

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…because I’ve agreed with it. What you’re saying sounds like what I say, when I say that, your experience-story consists of two mutually-complementary parts: You the protagonist and experiencer, and your surroundings that you experience.
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”If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things” — Michael Ossipoff
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This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience?
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You’re right—Only by experience.
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Undeniably. And our experience must be consistent. Maybe you could devise a consistent physical world in which animals can grow without taking in material, and act without receiving energy. But for us to be able to do those things would not be consistent with the other physics that our physicists have reported observing.
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In other words, our experience is not of, and would be inconsistent with, our not needing to take in any sort of material from our environment.
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It sounds like there isn’t any disagreement there.
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As you think experience does not give us reality…

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There’s no reason to believe that the physical world that we experience has its own intrinsic, objective, absolute reality (whatever that would mean). But of course there’s the reality ( with lower-case “r”) of our experience and our physical world. Our life and world are quite real in their own contexts.
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, you have no reason to believe that we are animals, let alone evolved animals.

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In our experience-story, of course we are. All the evidence in that consistent story indicates that.
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How would such an animal grow and reproduce without taking-in material? — Michael Ossipoff
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if your life is one hypothetical story, and mine quite another, there is no reason for us to have any common experience or share any common knowledge or beliefs. What makes it possible for us to communicate is that we share the same objective reality.

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Not so.
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Your being in this physical world requires for, consistency, that there be a physical mechanism for your physical origination. That mechanism consists of there being a species on this planet, of which you’re a member. …implying that there will be other members of that species on the planet. So there’s no reason to be surprised that there are other people, basically similar to you, and sharing your world.
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”You’re making inferences, assumptions, about the nature of your surroundings” — Michael Ossipoff
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Of course I am, but their existence and their capacity to inform me are not among my inferences.

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That’s right. Your inference is from the ability of things in your experience story to inform you. …something not at all inconsistent with an experience-story.
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”I don’t know the meaning of that terminology. I haven’t read the author that you’ve referred to.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Ideas do not need to be know before they can signify. Other kinds of signs do. Since we do not first know we have an idea of x, we can't infer the existence of x from "I have an idea of x." Instead it works the other way. We know x (by experience) and then infer that to know x I must have an idea of x. If you want a reference, look at Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic.

I don’t know about ideas knowing and signifying, or about inferring x from an idea of x. On such matters, I’ll defer to Henry Veatch.
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But, as I said, consistency is the requirement for your experience-story, because there can be no such things as mutually inconsistent facts. In the story, something comes into our experience. Subsequent experience won’t prove inconsistent with it, do that one requirement of an experience-story.
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I don’t disagree with what Veatch is saying, at least that I’m aware of.
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There is no reason to think the quarterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature [physics?] and many reasons to think it does.

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Name one.

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1. Physical acts are consequent on intentional commitments. If physics applied invariantly, what we thought could not result in physical effects.
2. The causal invariant in intentional actions is the goal (which is intentional) not a physical trajectory. When I decide to go to the store, I may envision a path, but if the preplanned path is blocked, I will find another to attain my goal. Mechanism is backward looking, teleology forward looking. So, my goal rather than my physical trajectory determines by motion.
3. It has been experimentally confirmed, beyond a statistical doubt, that human intentional can modify "random" physical processes.
4. On the other side, as I have argued in many posts on this forum, the fundamental abstraction of physics limits is realm of application to purely physical objects -- excluding any operations of the intending subject. So, we have no reason to expect that human acts of will are adequately described by physics.

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What we choose to do is the result of our preferences and our surroundings. The same can be said of a Roomba, if you substitute “programming” for “preferences”.
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We’re physical animals, purposefully-responsive devices, with built-in purposes and inclinations, and acquired purposes resulting from those built-in purposes and inclinations and our experiences of our surroundings. Our choices result from those purposes and inclinations, and from our surroundings.
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You don’t have “free will”. Your choices are made for you by your preferences and your surroundings. Your job is merely to judge what choice will best serve those preferences, based on your surroundings.
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But you can and do affect this physical world, by virtue of being part of it.
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..and that doesn’t entail any violation of, or changing of, physical laws.
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If the laws are unmodified by human action, the state of the world before we are conceived, together with the laws of nature, determine all future states.

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No, because of QM’s indeterminacy.
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But that’s beside the point. My answer to your objection is as written directly above in this post.
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But yes, our choices are determined by our preferences and our surroundings, as I described directly above.
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”I don’t know what there is to “back up” about physics, other than that it’s been useful in describing the relations among the things and events of the physical world.” — Michael Ossipoff
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What needs justification is the application of physics outside of its verified realm of application, viz. its application to human intentionality.

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Humans are animals, physical, biologically-originated, purposefully-responsive devices.
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Physics has nothing to say about meaning or intent because they are not part of its ontology. (By the ontology of physics I mean the things it deals with such as space, time, mass, fields and dynamical laws.)

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…which apply to the things and events in this physical world, including animals and other purposefully-responsive devices.
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I’m not saying that physics can tell us what kind of candy-bar you’re going to buy tomorrow. Not in practice, at least. But it’s known (and we all knew it when taught it in pre-secondary-school, though many philosophers seem to have forgotten it) that the operation of animals, as purposefully-responsive devices, is physically-explained.
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I still do not know what you mean by "describable" in "describable metaphysics."

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Nothing exotic or surprising. Just “able to be described”.
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We’ve agreed that not all is describable. Surely we agree that some things are, such as this physical world and the relations among its things and events.
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When I say “metaphysics”, I mean the metaphysics of things that are describable. Some people want “metaphysics” to have a much broader, much more ambitious meaning. I feel that that’s overambitious for philosophy. But, because some people want “metaphysics” to have that broader meaning, not limited to what’s describable, so I speak of “describable metaphysics”, or “the metaphysics of the describable.”
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Michael Ossipoff

”there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Then there is no point in proceeding, as I am engaged in the search for truth. I have no interest in hypotheticals that explain posits that might not even be true to begin with.

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But I suggest that an intrinsically, independently existent physical world is fiction, not truth.
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Then what’s true about this physical world, and the describable realm in general? The abstract-implications are facts. That’s something factual. If labeled as propositions, they’d be true propositions. That’s where there’s objective metaphysical truth in the describable realm.
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I’m not picking on you or singling you out. The Materialists, too, want to believe in an objective, intrinsic, independent “existence” and “reality” (whatever that would mean) for this physical world. I suggest that this physical world’s metaphysical basis is much more tenuous. …different from what we traditionally have been taught to assume.
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This isn’t physics. It’s metaphysics. Don’t expect or assume concrete, objective, intrinsic, independent “existence” and “reality” for the things of the physical world, just because, as animals, we’re designed to deal with the physical world rather than investigate metaphysics. We still have to deal with it, of course, but we don’t have to believe the traditional notion of it.
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Even in physics, there have been times when fact is drastically different from previous assumption (relativity & QM, for example). Why expect metaphysics to be more tradition-adhering?
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”Godel showed that, in any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic, there are true propositions that can’t be proven.” — Michael Ossipoff
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He showed many things. The inability to prove consistency is one of them.

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Consistency doesn’t even need proving. It’s a tautology, a truism.
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“A proposition can’t be both true and false” can be worded as:
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“A proposition isn’t be true if it’s not true.”
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That’s a tautology.
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I don’t know what Godel proved, other than that any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic has true but unprovable propositions. But he certainly didn’t prove that consistency is unprovable (except maybe in the sense that tautologies don’t need any proof).
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Obviously it can’t be proven that future physics observations will be consistent with today’s known physics. In fact it’s pretty much a sure thing that it won’t.
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Is that the kind of consistency that he was referring? …or just the possible existence of true but unprovable propositions in any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic?
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In any case, whether or not you agree that logical systems have to be consistent, you’ll agree that they have to be at least as consistent as a person’s life-experience has to be. And, if so, even if you’re right about consistency being unprovable, that doesn’t count against Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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Your life-experience story is self-consistent because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false” — Michael Ossipoff
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My point is this is an unjustified faith claim. Perhaps part of my Hypothetical Life Experience Story (HLES) assumes I did something that violates the laws of physics (which you think is impossible).

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If there’s a seeming violation of the laws of physics, if there’s a violation of today’s laws of physics, then they aren’t laws of physics anymore. Usually, when that happens, subsequent physics will explain and encompass those previously seemingly anomalous observations.
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For example, that was the case with the relation between black-body radiations wavelength and energy; the result of the Michaelson-Morely experiment; an the seemingly anomalous component of the rotation-of-apsides of the orbit of the planet Mercury.
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For example, in my HLS, I may have made a decision which I think was free and you think is precluded by the laws of physics.

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No, I don’t know of decisions that are precluded by the laws of physics. …unless you’re talking about a decision that required information not available to you. Say you found out via clairavoyance that there’s a 20-dollar bill on your roof, and so you decide to go up and retrieve it. If there’s no bill there, there certainly was no violation of laws of physics. If there’s a bill there, but your clairavoyant believe that it was there was entirely coincidental with its being there, then that, too isn’t a violation of laws of physics.
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If that happened, no one can prove that your accurate clairavoyance wasn’t a coincidence, so no one can prove that laws of physics weren’t violated.
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Now, suppose that you proved that you can reliably tell what number someone has written on a paper that you haven’t been shown, or that you can reliably predict every Lotto number?
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That would be more convincing, especially as your uninterrupted series of successes increases.
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Does that prove that the laws of physics have been violated? No, not even then. It just means that the laws of physics weren’t what physicists thought that they were, and that they need updating, as has so often been the case in the past.
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Wouldn't that be an implicit contradiction for you?

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No, for the above-stated reasons.
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Or in my HLES I visit a glacier that should not have existed given how global warming works in my HLS.

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Several possible explanations:
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1. A climate-theory needs revision. That would be very unlikely to require revision of a law of physics. (Of course you could conceivably observe something that would require revision of a physical law.)
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2. Your memory of that experience is mistaken. It’s known that memory isn’t entirely reliable. Ask crime-witnesses.
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3. You hallucinated.
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4. There was some sort of mirage.
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I and some other people saw a tall white cliff, across a bay. …where there is no cliff. We were observing a superior-mirage of the white beach, caused by a temperature-inversion.
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So, it is important to have some justification for thinking that a HLS is self-consistent.

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The justification is that “A proposition that’s not true isn’t true” is a tautology, and needs no proof.
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As a result of Godel's work there can be none.

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See above.
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I didn’t say that Realism is inconsistent. But your experience is subjective, …” — Michael Ossipoff

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My point is not that realism is consistent, but that there is an ontological justification for its consistency, while there is none for your HLESs.

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There’s the logical justification that I’ve describe above.
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As for subjectivity, all knowledge is both subjective and objective.

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There’s nothing about experience that would be inconstant with the objects of your physical experience not having an intrinsic, independent objective concrete “existence”, whatever that would mean (I try to always qualify my use of “existence” in that way.).
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Faraday, Tippler and Tegmark said the same thing.
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There is no knowing without both a knowing subject and a known object.

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Of course. Your experience of the objects in your experience isn’t at all inconsistent with it all being a hypothetical experience-story, such as I’ve described.
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I am happy to agree that experience is subjective because that is not an argument against it also being objective.

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Of course it isn’t. Parsimony is an argument against an independently, intrinsically, objectively and concretely existent physical world.
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We’ve discussed how I don’t claim that you postulate a brute-fact, but your metaphysics says that there can be an apparent brute-fact in the describable realm…something in the describable realm (like a physical universe) that has no explanation or reason within the describable realm.
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But there’s a metaphysics that doesn’t require such a thing.
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I asked you some questions about what you mean by “real”, “existent”, etc. If you’re sure that you’re satisfied with your answers, then alright.
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”But I think we agree that your experience can’t be inconsistent.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i
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Good. But, why do you think this?

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Because “There can’t be a true and false proposition” means:
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“A proposition that’s not true isn’t true”
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…and that’s a tautology, and, as such, doesn’t need any proof.
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I think it's consistent because I see it as an experience of being. What do you think is the reason for its consistency?

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See above.
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I live in a world that is actual

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Of course. That’s a truism, by the way I define “actual”:
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“ Part of, or consisting of, the physical universe in which the speaker resides.”
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If you mean something else by “actual”, then of course my question is ‘What do you mean by “actual”.

If you’ve already answered that question, and if you’re really sure that you’re satisfied with your answer, then alright.

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Of course, if we use the following useful definition of “actual”:
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“Consisting of, or part of, the physical world in which the speaker resides.” “ — Michael Ossipoff


Or if we say that something is actual if it can act in any way.

Sure, and, by that definition, everything you experience is actual, because, in your HLEF, it acts on you in some way.

It all comes down to the matter of parsimony that I discussed above, and the matter of whether you’re completely sure that you’re satisfied with your answers to my questions.

I’ve been emphasizing that I can’t prove that the universe in which we reside isn’t your independently, intrinsically, objectively existent physical universe. I merely point out that it’s a metaphysical brute-fact in the sense that you’re positing something that can’t be explained within describable metaphysiscs. (I realize that what you posit isn’t a true brute-fact, without any explanation at all. –just not within describable metaphysics.
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In either case, I do not live in a world that does not exist -- as you suggested.

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I don’t make assertions using the word “exist”.
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I merely assert that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world has “existence” different from that of abstract-implications. There’s no physics experiment that can prove, establish, suggest or imply that it does.
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You can say that this physical universe exists, because it can act on you and inform you (which it would be able to do, as part of your hypothetical experience-story), but that’s an unsupported theory, and an unparsimonious one.
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”That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Faraday was a great physicist, but that did not qualify him as a philosopher. Mathematics is an abstraction that cannot be applied unless there is something beyond itself to apply it to. It is what the abstract relations describe (that in which they are instantiated) that Faraday forgot.

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As I answered in my “brief preliminary reply”, Faraday was well aware of that assumption, and he pointed out that there’s no reason to believe it.
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”I know it is actual because it acts to inform me.”—dfopolis

”Of course…in your experience-story. “— Michael Ossipoff
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I do not disown my experience

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I didn’t mean to suggest that you should. It’s valid, as experience.
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, but I'm making two additional points (1) In acting to inform me, objects act and so meet the condition to exist simpliciter,

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Of course, and objects in your dream act on you in a dream, and, in the dream one often believes in the objective realtywhat seems to be happening, and the intrinsic, independent objective existence of the objects in the dream.
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I don’t deny that objects of this physical world act on you in your experience-story. And yes, of course they exist in the context of that story.
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(2) if we did not share common experiences, we could not communicate.

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Of course your experience of being in a physical world requires, for consistency, some mechanism for your physical origination in that physical world. In this case, that’s achieved by parents. …and, more broadly,by there being a species to which you belong. Of course there must be other members of that species, and of course they experience the same physical world that you experience, since they, like you, are part of that world.
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Among the infinity of HLEFs, there’s inevitably one for every one of the characters in your HLEF. But you don’t experience or directly-know their experience, of course. They’re there because, the consistency of your experience-story requires other members of your species to inhabit the planet on which you reside.
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Michael Ossipoff

“There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
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I think this requires argument.
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Well, when I say that there’s no reason to believe something, then the burden is on someone who disagrees, to produce a reason to believe it. — Michael Ossipoff

Despite the negative phrasing, you are claiming "your life and experience are ... your hypothetical life-experience-story." By refusing to provide an argument in support of this peculiar view, you leave the impression that you have none.

On the realist side, I have provided a number of arguments that you have chosen not to respond to. So, There is no point in continuing to discuss a position that has no support with a person who will not respond to counter arguments.

”There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff
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”I think this requires argument.”
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”Well, when I say that there’s no reason to believe something, then the burden is on someone who disagrees, to produce a reason to believe it.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Despite the negative phrasing, you are claiming "your life and experience are ... your hypothetical life-experience-story."

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…only as wording for describing the metaphysics. I repeatedly emphasize that I can’t prove that it isn’t as Dfopolis says, or as Materialists say.
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I avoid claims or assertions that can’t be proved.
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That’s why merely I said “There’s no reason to believe [otherwise]”. That’s why I’ve repeated, so many, many times, that I can’t prove that Dfopolis’s objectively, intrinsically existent universe doesn’t exist, whatever that would mean. ...but that, if it did, it would be a fact in the describable-realm that isn’t explainable within the describable realm. …something that my metaphysics doesn’t posit.
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By refusing to provide an argument in support of this peculiar view, you leave the impression that you have none.

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I’ve cited parsimony.
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But I’ve repeatedly admitted that I can’t prove that it isn’t the way that Dfopolis or the Materialists say it is.
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On the realist side, I have provided a number of arguments that you have chosen not to respond to.

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On the contrary, I’ve replied inline, point-by-point, to every word that Dfopolis has said in this discussion. I’ve patiently continued replying to various of his arguments when they’ve been endlessly-repeated.
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So, There is no point in continuing to discuss a position that has no support with a person who will not respond to counter arguments.

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See above. I’ve patiently replied point-by-point to everything Dfopolis has being saying, and have patiently replied to much of it every time Dfopolis repeated it.
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But, very well, this conversation is concluded, with genuine finality, by agreement.
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…though I’ll finish replying to Dfopolis’s comments that I haven’t answered yet.
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I’m sorry that Dfopolis is so defensive and anger-filled.
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Michael Ossipoff