To me, that sounds like the ghost in the machine. But if we look closely at how the measuring device works, that fantasy of the ghost in the machine disappears. The measuring device simply interacts, and it does so physically, and that is all there is to it, nothing more.

A question arises: how can the machine provide us with information? For me, if there is no Ghost in the machine the answer no longer lies in how the machine resembles us, but in how we resemble the machine. The machine affects us and informs us, but it no longer informs us in the sense that the machine transmits something (a ghost in the numbers it produces and in how it responds to specific events), but rather it provokes something in us and in our cognitive apparatus.

In other words, instead of embodying our intentions, the machine has an effect on us through physical signs. And these effects on us (knowledge) would not take place if we were not also an apparatus of signs. An ontological continuity between us and the machine is necessary without the need to introduce mysterious intentions into the measuring apparatus; something like an intention is never something that can be proven, and is simply anthropomorphism.

It's not a ghost in the machine. It's ghosts all the way down.

Modern physics doesn't look machine-like, does it? It's extremely strange, abstract and insubstantial. That looks ghostly to me.

And consciousness? What about the experience of consciousness is "mechanical", colors, sounds, smells, thoughts seem to me to be extremely different from a "machine" in any meaningful way this word may be used.

Is this right? I don't know Scholastic philosophy very deeply, but I thought that the concept of intelligibility meant that we can know what is real in the physical world as well. — J

Yes, although "physical" retains its original meaning here in that it is "being qua changing" or "mobile being." This would contain the subject matter of modern physics but is more expansive. A big difference is that it includes final causes and the mutable's relationship to the immutable, the material to the intelligible. The other big difference would be a denial that everything can be reduced to mathematics (mathematical physics) or claims to the "unreality" of non-mathematical properties.

But the basic idea of realism is there. A tree is itself a being. We can know it. A rock has less unity but it's still knowable. Things aren't exhaustively knowable because this would entail knowledge of their entire context and their causes. As Saint Maximus puts it: "For all created things are defined, in their essence and in their way of developing, by their own logoi and by the logoi of the beings that provide their external context. Through these logoi they find their defining limits." To know anything in total one must know everything, which is impossible. This leads to a limited sort of fallibilism.

"Knowledge" of the physical is more expansive than in modern forms of naturalism however. Experiment and observation are important (key elements of the scientific method were developed across this period) but we don't rule out the phenomenological grasp of things and the act of understanding as we might under empiricism.

And lastly, there is no mental/physical dualism. Physicalism is supposed to be a "monism" but in all its forms it struggled with an unresolved dualism. The theory of signs dominant in scholasticism doesn't set up this dichotomy in the same way though.

and ask him whether, when we see an apple, we are seeing something that is really there, more or less as presented to our senses, wouldn't he say yes — J

Yes, the actuality of an apple is in the intervening media, in the senses, and in the intellect, where "in" is used more metaphorically.

But to 's point, the idea of "mind-independent" truths or "mind-independent" values would have been dismissed as nonsense. True and Good are Transcendentals. They don't add anything to being. There is not a thing and then its truth, as if the truth is some sort of additional thing sitting outside the being of the thing (as would be the case in early analytic theories of truth as primarily relating to propositions as abstract objects). True and Good are logical/conceptual distinctions, not real ones. Truth is being as apprehended by the intellect, the mind's grasp of being. Goodness is being qua desirable, from the perspective of appetite (love in the highest sense). A "mind-independent" truth or values would be a contradiction in terms. So too, a "mind-independent being."

To return to Berkeley, I think the loss of these notions (or at least their fidelity) is why Berkeley's invocations of God start to seem ad hoc.



That's a good point. The reduction of mechanism to mathematics itself starts to look more idealist than mechanistic. I would argue that one might consider many forms of ontic structural realism popular among "physicalists" to be a sort of idealism.

That's a good point. The reduction of mechanism to mathematics itself starts to look more idealist than mechanistic. I would argue that one might consider many forms of ontic structural realism popular among "physicalists" to be a sort of idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's exactly right. A lof of these so called "materialists", if you question what it is they believe, end up being very strange materialists, because they have to anchor belief in some extremely abstract mathematical formalisms. How that is related to matter being either dead and stupid or no-nonsense spooky stuff is hard for me to understand.

As if entanglement or non-locality are "no nonsense" or "not spooky". But people like to repeat what they hear.

And consciousness? What about the experience of consciousness is "mechanical", colors, sounds, smells, thoughts seem to me to be extremely different from a "machine" in any meaningful way this word may be used — Manuel

I leave the mystery of consciousness intact. I simply speak of a necessary ontological continuity that is expressed through signs. Colours, sounds and smells are not something that the measuring device perceives consciously. We must think of ourselves in terms of the device and not the other way around, since everything that identifies us as conscious beings is not found in the device except for interaction through physical signs. That is why I think it is wrong to talk about intentions in the apparatus.

The apparatus measures, but not with the intention of measuring. It is characteristic of idealism in quantum physics to introduce mental aspects into the apparatus. But these aspects are nowhere to be found.

We must think of ourselves in terms of the device and not the other way around — JuanZu

Must? Why?

If you want to do science, sure you do experiments, have a theory, see how the numbers work.

If you want to describe a human being, well. I dunno if you can have a theory about a human being, that's complicated, to say the least.

The apparatus measures, but not with the intention of measuring. It is characteristic of idealism in quantum physics to introduce mental aspects into the apparatus. But these aspects are nowhere to be found. — JuanZu

There is nothing in physics which suggest mind. There is nothing is physics which suggest a lack of mind. We don't know enough about the intrinsic nature of physical stuff to say if it is like mind or unlike mind.

Must? Why? — Manuel

Because You interact with the quantum world through the measuring device. But this device has no mental properties. So you have to adapt to the device in order to learn anything about the quantum world. And this adaptation is through signs.

And signs are mechanical?

From the measuring device's side, yes, the signs are material and mechanical. And these signs have effects on us; they create information and knowledge.

We interpret things mechanistically, yes. That doesn't mean that the world is the way we interpret it to be. It isn't. That may be part of the reason we find QM so hard to understand, we don't have the type of intuitions that would help up make sense of the phenomena.

To me, that sounds like the ghost in the machine — JuanZu

I know! That conditions your approach to the issue, where it is something to be avoided at all costs. But that is a consequence of the very 'Cartesian division' that this thread is about. If there is a ghost, it is the ghost of the dualism that radically separates mind and body, matter and meaning, and then seeks what is real only in the measurable.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

For me, if there is no Ghost in the machine the answer no longer lies in how the machine resembles us, but in how we resemble the machine. — JuanZu

And that is the cost — the de-humanisation is the legacy of this division. When you say “the machine provokes a response in us,” you’re still trying to frame the matter purely in terms of physical causation. But signs are not physical things. They are relations, interpretations, meanings — irreducible to mechanism, yet not “ghostly” either. This is precisely the false dichotomy that the ghost of Descartes has saddled us with. The irony is that by trying to exorcise the ghost, we remain haunted by it. The world this ghost inhabits is one in which the entire cosmos is stripped of interiority and meaning, and we ourselves are left as the orphaned offspring of blind physical causes that somehow, against all odds, have given rise to mind.

Nagel describes how the scientific revolution created this austere conception of objectivity by stripping away appearances, meaning, and intention. But there are many emerging alternatives. Biosemiotics, for example, begins from the insight that living systems are already engaged in the interpretation of signs, not merely pushed around by causes. Phenomenology and existentialism seek to restore the first-person perspective that the cartesian divide occludes. Enactivism, likewise, emphasises that cognition is not something injected into an otherwise meaningless world, but a mode of sense-making that arises through our embodied engagement with it. Both perspectives see through the ghost by refusing the dualism itself: the world is neither “mere matter” devoid of meaning, nor a projection of a private subjectivity, but a field of ongoing interactions where significance is intrinsic to life and mind.

I believe Timothy has addressed this adequately in his subsequent post.

To know anything in total one must know everything, which is impossible. This leads to a limited sort of fallibilism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We don't see things as they are in themselves, one might say.

That may be part of the reason we find QM so hard to understand, we don't have the type of intuitions that would help up make sense of the phenomena. — Manuel

I think there are interpretations that make sense of quantum physics Ruth Kastner's transactional interpretation, and The Timeless Wave (especially the section on QBism)

I like QBism too, but I have no way to verify if my intuitions are correct, because I can't do the physics. An interpretation may sound elegant to us, but this doesn't ensure its correctness.

We like Qbism, others may like the Bohmian theory, or Many Worlds and if you accept the view, then you're going to say it's correct. But we need evidence to establish that, which we are lacking.

And that is the cost — the de-humanisation is the legacy of this division. When you say “the machine provokes a response in us,” you’re still trying to frame the matter purely in terms of physical causation. But signs are not physical things. They are relations, interpretations, meanings — irreducible to mechanism, yet not “ghostly” either. This is precisely the false dichotomy that the ghost of Descartes has saddled us with. The irony is that by trying to exorcise the ghost, we remain haunted by it. The world this ghost inhabits is one in which the entire cosmos is stripped of interiority and meaning, and we ourselves are left as the orphaned offspring of blind physical causes that somehow, against all odds, have given rise to mind. — Wayfarer

If you look closely at what I am trying to explain, I do not limit the idea of a sign to mechanism or physicalism. I only limit it to our relationship with the machine. For me, a sign can be mental or material, and it is the bridge I have discovered between the mental and the non-mental. However, the measuring device as a producer of signs does not produce mental signs. The sign simply has the function of 'being in place of'. And of pointing to other signs with which they enter into various relationships. And we are precisely a system of signs, complex but a system of signs.

So this measuring device has effects on us, semiotic effects that respect everything human about us. However, we are not only human, we are also systems of signs and producers of them, we also have something of machines or bodies (transhumanism) and this is what allows us to interact with the device. Why not say that there is something mental in the measuring device? It is a remnant of humanism and anthropomorphism, which for me is outdated and for which we have no proof. But we do have proof of the non-human, the non-mental through the possibility of corporal and operative interaction with the device (otherwise we should manipulate the device only with our minds). That is why it is important to think of the measuring device as something extra-mental.

Yes, it wasn't very well put. I only meant that, in addition to the possible explanations you named, it's also possible that the universality of mystical intuitions is explained by their actually being what they claim to be, namely experiences of God or some transcendent consciousness. — J

That's true it is logically possible―given that no self-contradiction is involved in the idea. The problem is we have no way of determining whether mystical intuitions actually come to us from God or some transcendent consciousness.

This situation opens up the way for faith, as Kant said of his own critical project. Faith should never be conflated with knowledge, though―as I never tire of saying that way lies dogma and fundamentalism.

Unfortunately, some cannot accept that limitation of the human condition and would rather fantasize about there being the possibility of direct knowing of the absolute nature of reality or some such nonsense which simply cannot stand up to scrutiny.

I haven't followed every post between you and Wayfarer today, so I'll just speak for myself. I don't think a statement like "I have had an experience of the Godhead" or "My third eye opened" or "I encountered Jesus and was born again" or any of the countless variants of this should be presumed to be "demonstrably true." Nor are they demonstrably false. It's not clear to me that they can be separated from 3rd-person/objective claims such as "God exists". — J

I'm puzzled by your last sentence here. How can "god exists" be an objective claim if there is no possibility of confirming it such that anyone unbiased would have to acquiesce, or even at the very least the possibility of assessing it against our overall experience in terms of plausibility?

All I can say is, we're left with possible explanations, possible ways of assigning probability values to the statements under discussion. And we'll rate these probabilities differently, based on our own knowledge and experience -- just as we would for any topic that's tough to know about for sure. I see plenty of daylight between "My account of my mystical experience is demonstrably true" and "Here's what I think probably accounts for my experience." The latter seems unexceptionable to me.

I agree of course that subjective elements come into our assessments of metaphysical claims, but I also think that some metaphysical claims are far more consistent and coherent with the human store of knowledge and understanding than others.

Of course it is still up to the individual to make their own assessments. It's like aesthetics in a way―it cannot be definitively demonstrated that Shakespeare's or Dostoevsky's works are finer works of literature than Mills and Boone, or that Jacksons Pollock's 'drip' paintings could not have been executed by a monkey, but...

Why not say that there is something mental in the measuring device? — JuanZu

Sure - as I already said, it’s a product of our design. In other words whatever ‘mentality’ it possesses is ours.

↪J I believe Timothy has addressed this adequately in his subsequent post. — Wayfarer

Yes. Thanks to you both.

It's not clear to me that they can be separated from 3rd-person/objective claims such as "God exists".
— J

I'm puzzled by your last sentence here. How can "god exists" be an objective claim if there is no possibility of confirming it such that anyone unbiased would have to acquiesce, or even at the very least the possibility of assessing it against our overall experience in terms of plausibility? — Janus

Well, you've packed a lot into that question! To begin simply: "God exists" as a proposition is surely meant to state an objective fact, and that's really all I meant. (I'll say something below about why I think it may be inseparable from how we rate the plausibility of accounts of mystical experiences.)

Your further qualifications seem extreme. "No possibility?" John Hick points out that, at the very least, claims about God may be "eschatologically verifiable" -- that is, we may find out when we die (or, of course, we'll cease to exist). On an earthly plane, "have to acquiesce" is surely too strong? I keep trying to make the case for less-than-certain knowledge here. Does a cosmologist "have to acquiesce" that dark energy exists? I don't think so; at the moment, it's the most likely explanation. Could this never be the case with regard to God?

Here's what I think is going on here, and why I said that the question of whether God exists may be inseparable from accounts of mystical experiences: You're starting from the position that a god or cosmic consciousness cannot or absolutely doesn't exist. And from this standpoint, you'd be right to dismiss any arguments from plausibility concerning mystical experiences. You'd say something like this (and tell me if I've got it wrong): "If there could be such a thing as a god, then you could construct some very plausible arguments to account for mystical experiences that way. But that's like constructing an explanation for how and why humans dream by claiming that elves appear when we're asleep and help us do it. That would deserve a hearing, and might even have much to recommend it, except for one problem: there are no elves. So we have to look elsewhere for plausible explanations."

And so with mystical experiences. If an actual divinity of some sort is ruled out beforehand, then of course there is no plausibility to any explanation that uses the notion, nor can the experiences themselves count as evidence for such a being, since we already know there isn't one. Is that more or less your position?

some metaphysical claims are far more consistent and coherent with the human store of knowledge and understanding than others.

Of course it is still up to the individual to make their own assessments. — Janus

I agree with this -- but, while I appreciate your courtesy, aren't you being too accommodating here? If what I wrote above does characterize your position, wouldn't you have to say, "The human store of knowledge includes knowledge that there are no gods, so metaphysical claims to the contrary can never be consistent or coherent"?