I agree that there are philosophical "domains" that go beyond the self-imposed limits of Objective Physical Science. — Gnomon

I don't say they "go beyond" but just that they are different domains of inquiry.

Beyond their mapping of neural coordinates of consciousness though, modern psychology tells us nothing about how a blob of matter can produce sentience & awareness & opinions — Gnomon

The brain is not a "blob of matter" so your question is moot. You seem to be thinking in terms of some obsolete paradigm.

Thank you for that careful analysis. The comment about 'being ignored' was in response to posts by several contributors who predicted that I would ignore one entry challenging one of my responses, which I did not, and which was repeated even after I had responded. (I try and respond to challenges although it's inevitable there's going to be some 'talking past one another' going on considering the subject matter.)

Given that the world represents the manifold of all possible material things, those material things are necessarily presupposed if consciousness is claimed to be inseparable from them. One cannot deny that which he has already presupposed as necessary. From which follows denial of materialism as such, is self-contradictory given from its being the ground for the composition of the world of material things consciousness is said to be inseparable from. — Mww

The 'inseperability of self and world' is an underlying theme that I have been exploring through various perspectives. The original intuition behind it was the sense that reality itself is not something we're outside of or apart from. This insight was a consequence of having been immersed in the study of the perennial philosophies and the 'unitive vision' that they refer to in their different ways. At the time I was reading the American Transcendentalists ("The act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson). This gave me an awareness that the sense we usually have of being separate egos in a material world is actually a culturally-conditioned state of being. (This will be generally stereotyped as being 'religious'.)

….if materialism were true with respect to linguistic communication, — Mww

Lloyd Gerson's point was made in respect of Aristotle. The section quoted was about Aristotle's hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism. According to Aristotelian philosophy, the form (idea, principle) of a particular thing is what the intellect knows, which makes it possible to say 'this particular is X'. The senses receive the material impression while the intellect receives the form. It is precisely that ability that underwrites reason, the faculty that differentiates humans from other animals. This is what Gerson was glossing when he said 'you could not think if materialism were true' - because rational thought relies on the abiility to grasp universal concepts and thereby understand what things are. (Aristotelianism has generally fallen out of favour in modern philosophy, although it still has plenty of defenders.)

:up:

Not according to Edward Feser, it isn't. — Wayfarer

His FRAMING of universals isn't consistent with physicalism. The issue would be: what facts of the world are explainable with one's definition, and which one's aren't. A physicalist definition covers the facts adequately.

Armstrong is not a realist about universals in the classical sense at all. — Wayfarer

Irrelevant, if all facts are adequately accounted for.

You have made the false claim that I defer to science, but I see you deferring to ancient philosophy, as if that makes it somehow authoritative. You're free to embrace what they said, but you'll need do defend it - I won't accept an argument from authority.

It was, "what justified beliefs does it lead to?"
— Relativist

The justified belief that knowledge cannot be solely objective — Wayfarer

The law of noncontradiction is objective fact. Your assertion could apply to a posterior beliefs, and the logical consequence is that we have no a posteriori knowledge - because it's logically possible for it to be false. One can also arrive at that conclusion by considering Gettier problems. This is why I stress justified belief, rather than knowledge.

If an insight leads to a dead-end,
— Relativist

Then it's not an insight. But the fact that someone doesn't recognise an insight doesn't mean it's a dead end. — Wayfarer

Consider me guilty of not recognizing this alleged insight on my own, but also recognize that I'm asking you to point out what I'm overlooking. I get it, that it entails the fact that our perspectives are inescapably subjective, but I arrived at that conclusion on my own without this alleged insight. What you call a "mind-created world" I have called a "paradigm".

the relationship 'north of'. It doesn't exist in the same sense that Edinburgh and London exist, — Wayfarer

It's semantics, describing an actual physical relation in terms relative to a cartological convention. It is a fact that Edinburgh and London have a specific, spatial relation to each other that is ontological.

the whole idea of existence depends on the mind's ability to grasp these intelligible relations — Wayfarer

The IDEA of existence depends on our cognitive abilities, but given that we have this ability, it is reasonable (justified) to believe this idea represents an aspect of the world.

This is important, don't brush it aside.The reason it's not noticed is because we rely on the mind's ability to discern these relationships, without which we wouldn't be able to form an idea of the world. So that's the sense in which the world is 'mind-dependent' - not going in or out of existence, depending on whether you yourself see it, but because the whole idea of existence depends on the mind's ability to grasp these intelligible relations (which is elaborated in The Mind Created World op). Which we don't see because (as Russell says) they don't exist, they're not 'out there somewhere'. If there's a single insight that empiricism cannot grasp, it is this one and dare I say the apparent inability to grasp it, is an illustrative example. — Wayfarer

You should stop referring to the world as "mind-independent", because you know it isn't. You make it clear in that op that you're referring to the fact that it is our mental view of the world that is mind-dependent. When described correctly, it seems less profound: a product of the mind is mind-dependent.

But I think you're trying to argue that there's something magical about the fact that our minds can do what they do (where "magical"= not even possibly a consequence of material processes.) This is where your focus should be, and what you should try and make the case for. If you have a case to make, don't repeat Feser's approach of framing the issues in immaterial terms. Consider the mistake you made when you suggested that a thought might be a primitive: you hadn't considered that thoughts entail processes. IMO, the best physicalist accounts of all things mental are based on processes, not objects (and not static brain states). Concepts are not objects, they entail a sequence of thoughts and draw on memories. Consider a concept that can be described verbally: this act of description could be parallel to the mental processes involved when we formulate or utilize the concept. You don't seem to have considered this.

I think you're trying to argue that there's something magical about the fact that our minds can do what they do (where "magical"= not even possibly a consequence of material processes.) — Relativist

Not magical—just not the same kind of thing. My point is that the capacity to grasp reasons, recognise valid versus invalid inferences, and understand causal relations as relations is categorically different from the physical processes described by neuroscience. Physical causation can explain correlations and mechanisms, but it cannot be the normativity involved in reasoning.

That’s why I say neural states aren’t the “basis” of mental causation in the way you’re implying: whatever neural states enable reasoning, the content and validity of inferences aren’t reducible to their physical description. They belong to a different explanatory order.

Physicalism, naturalism, and materialism generally seek to naturalise cognition in terms of evolutionary theory and neuroscience. Which is OK as far as the science is concerned, but there's an implicit conviction, again. that science provides the court of adjutication for philosophy. What it actually does is change the terms in which philosophical questions should be asked and answered, so that they conform to what can be defended as scientifically respectable.

Furthermore even if human reason is not magical, it is extraordinarily uncanny. To think these 'featherless bipeds' descended from homonim species that evolved capturing prey on the savanahs over thousands of millenia are now able to weigh and measure the Universe.

Consider a concept that can be described verbally: this act of description could be parallel to the mental processes involved when we formulate or utilize the concept. You don't seem to have considered this. — Relativist

I have indeed considered it, and this is precisely where the argument from multiple realisability bites. Even if you can verbally describe a concept, the physical or neural realisation of that concept can vary enormously. This isn’t an incidental feature — it’s structurally unavoidable.

A single sentence can be expressed in English, Mandarin, Braille, Morse code, binary, or handwritten symbols, and the meaning is preserved across all of these radically different physical forms. That shows that meaning is not identical with any one physical instantiation.

Neuroscience faces the same issue. During the “Decade of the Brain,” researchers tried to identify specific, repeatable neural signatures for learning new concepts or words. What they found were broad regional activations but no consistent, fine-grained neural pattern that maps onto a specific meaning. That’s exactly what multiple realisability predicts: the same semantic content can be realised in indefinitely many different neural configurations.

So the fact that we can describe a concept verbally doesn’t help your claim — it actually illustrates why semantics and reasoning can’t be reduced to any one class of physical patterns. The level of explanation is simply different.

And this is precisely where the significance of universals shows up. Feser says 'A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.' Russell: 'if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them.'

The whole basis of language and abstraction is clearly reliant on these cognitive processes which are unique (at least in the way that humans are able to use them). So I'm arguing that trying to account for them in physical terms is categorically mistaken.

In short, physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former.

Of the large number of possibilities which one could theoretically come up they can be arranged into two groups, those where there is a mental origin, or ones where there is a non mental, or physical, origin. These categories are derived from the two things we know for sure about our being, 1, that we are, have, a living mind and 2, there is a physical world that we find ourselves in. If you can provide an alternative to these two, I would like to know. — Punshhh

And yet, some people seriously entertain solipsism and idealism - because they are not provably impossible. This is the sort of thing I'm complaining about. I'm fine with the focus you suggest.

When it comes to philosophical enquiry into our existence, philosophy is mute, blind, it can’t answer the question. — Punshhh

This tells me you are not a theist. Philosophically minded theists often think they can "prove" God's existence through philosophical analysis. Debating these issues is what drew me to learn a bit about philosophy.

I’m not going to talk for Wayfarer, but the impression I had was that the philosophical interpretation of the physical world (including our scientific findings) is what he takes issue with. — Punshhh

Actually, he accepts science. His focus seems to be philosophy of mind. He takes issue with materialist theory of mind. Issues SHOULD be taken with it, but I object to declaring materialism (in general) false on the basis of the explanatory gap, while meanwhile taking flights of fancy (mere possibilities) seriously.

This seems like a lot (and, I do not mean this disparagingly. I'd not have seen this until this ninth page) of back-and-forward to simply say

"Wayf doesn't accept that conscious activity can be reduced to neural correlates"

Nothing profound or wrong going on there. Maybe the gripe is with people who seem to think materialism is provable. That seems to me, demonstrably not the case (and perhaps, demonstrably not possible). But that doesn't actually make it untrue. Its awkward.

But I don't see anyone being unnecessarily defensive about it. Seems a run-of-the mill Phil of Mind disagreement.

I don't say they "go beyond" but just that they are different domains of inquiry. — Janus

So, you are saying they are parallel domains --- empirical vs speculative --- not one above another? That's OK. I was not implying any heavenly domain for philosophy, but merely that it is not bound by the necessity for material evidence. In that sense, philosophers are free to "go beyond" the physical limits of Science, in order to explore the metaphysical (immaterial) aspects of the Cosmos. :smile:

The brain is not a "blob of matter" so your question is moot. You seem to be thinking in terms of some obsolete paradigm. — Janus

Apparently you took my metaphorical figure-of-speech as a literal physical description of the brain. I am familiar with some cutting-edge theories of mind, that blur the borders between physics & metaphysics, and Idealism & Realism. But most still insist that Consciousness is inherent in Matter, not an add-on.

I agree, except that I reserve the term "Consciousness" for homo sapiens with big complex neural systems. It's a product of long evolution, and only the potential for C is inherent in the emerging world. Therefore, in lieu of conscious atoms, I focus on causal Energy, not inert Matter*1, as one form of the general power-to-transform. Gravity & Forces are other forms of EnFormAction. Hence, EFA, not dumb Matter, is the precursor of the process of subjective Awareness. Anyway, all discussions of Ideas & Opinions are Moot. :nerd:


*1. The statement that "matter is energy locked into form" is a popular, but oversimplified, way of describing a core concept from Einstein's theory of relativity. A more precise understanding is that matter and energy are two forms of the same fundamental thing, and can be converted into one another, as described by the famous equation \(E=mc^{2}\). This equation shows that mass (a measure of matter) is a form of concentrated energy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=matter+is+energy+locked+into+form
Note --- That fundamental "thing" is what my philosophical thesis calls EnFormAction. It's a portmanteau coinage, so you won't find that term in a textbook of Physics or Psychology. But it's all natural, no spooky spiritual intervention necessary.

Thank you for that careful analysis. — Wayfarer

Ehhhhh….I would never be so presumptuous to hint you needed support. Or even wanted any. It’s just that when they line up against a metaphysical paradigm, without comprehending its depth, or misunderstanding the implications of an otherwise simple proposition, or purely rational concept….

But yeah, on the other hand, if you can’t wrap that paradigm in weights and measures, it ain’t worth a piss hole in the snow, right? And yet, no science (for which weights and measures are mandatory) is ever done that isn’t first thought (for which there are no weights and measures at all).

Anyway….ever onward.

I always value your contributions.

there's an implicit conviction, again. that science provides the court of adjutication for philosophy. — Wayfarer

You're reading that into it. Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins have said something along these lines, but they aren't philosophers. I have not asked for defenses on empirical (or scientific) grounds. I've asked for any kind of justification.

the capacity to grasp reasons, recognise valid versus invalid inferences, and understand causal relations as relations is categorically different from the physical processes described by neuroscience. — Wayfarer

Sure, it's categorically different - but this doesn't entail an immaterial ontological grounding. Process is categorically different from existents, but grounded in the physical.

Physicalism, naturalism, and materialism generally seek to naturalise cognition in terms of evolutionary theory and neuroscience. — Wayfarer

You're conflating the philosophy with the science. Science indeed fails to account for all aspects of mind, but science is limited to what humans have figured out. Philosophical materialism/physicalism is broader - it's as free of the human limitations of scientific investigation as any metaphysical theory. It is limited only by what can be deemed material/physical.

even if human reason is not magical, it is extraordinarily uncanny. To think these 'featherless bipeds' descended from homonim species that evolved capturing prey on the savanahs over thousands of millenia are now able to weigh and measure the Universe. — Wayfarer

Sure, it's extraordinary (given our limited knowledge of the steps and the mechanisms), but this is insuffficient grounds to conclude there was anything unnatural involved. There's much we don't know, may never know. This doesn't mean we should emulate our ancient ancestors and assume supernatural forces are involved.

I have indeed considered it, and this is precisely where the argument from multiple realisability bites. Even if you can verbally describe a concept, the physical or neural realisation of that concept can vary enormously. This isn’t an incidental feature — it’s structurally unavoidable.

A single sentence can be expressed in English, Mandarin, Braille, Morse code, binary, or handwritten symbols, and the meaning is preserved across all of these radically different physical forms. That shows that meaning is not identical with any one physical instantiation. — Wayfarer

All languages are descended from a common, early langauge. But more significantly, they are all grounded in our common structure (sensory/cognitive/emotional/hormonal...). Meaning entails some connection to our instinctual reactions to elements in the world and within ourselves. You and I both feel pain when we grab a hot pan. We cognitively relate the word "pain" to this sensation, so it's irrelevant that our respective neural connections aren't physically identical (i.e. the "meaning" is multiply realizeable).

So the fact that we can describe a concept verbally doesn’t help your claim — it actually illustrates why semantics and reasoning can’t be reduced to any one class of physical patterns. The level of explanation is simply different. — Wayfarer

Strawman. It's irrelevant that the relevant connections can be realized in multiple physical ways.

And this is precisely where the significance of universals shows up. Feser says 'A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.' — Wayfarer

Sure, mental objects are private. But we have nearly identical capacities to recognize patterns, and to apply words to these patterns, and thus to communicate with each other about them. Our respective mental images of the world have a lot in common because our neurological structures have a lot in common. Plus, the patterns are REAL! Humans have developed concepts and language to refer to them. This doesn't imply the mental objects have objective existence; it just means there are real patterns that we can name, describe, and learn to idealize.

physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former. — Wayfarer

Non sequitur. Peter Tse proposed a neurological model he calls "criterial causation", that would account for mental causation with multilple physical realizability. I discussed it in this post.

Tse's model may be wrong (it's not verified science), but it shows you're wrong to say "the latter can't be reduced to the former. It indeed can.

"Wayf doesn't accept that conscious activity can be reduced to neural correlates"

Nothing profound or wrong going on there. Maybe the gripe is with people who seem to think materialism is provable. That seems to me, demonstrably not the case (and perhaps, demonstrably not possible). But that doesn't actually make it untrue. Its awkward. — AmadeusD

I beg to differ. The position that "conscious activity cannot be reduced to neural correlates" is a strong claim- it implies impossibility. My position is that there's no basis to claim it's impossible ("not impossible" is a modest claim).

I would certainly not claim that "materialism is provable", but I believe I can provide a reasonable justification to believe in materialism. In brief: as a metaphysical theory, it is a Inference to Best Explanations for all available facts about the world. Every known phenomenon is consistent with it, and it most parsimoniously accounts for these facts. One could reject this, on the subjective grounds that we know too little to draw a conclusion, but I don't think there's a defeater.

In short, physical processes are governed by causal relationships; reasoning is governed by norms of validity. The latter can't be reduced to the former. — Wayfarer

This distinction doesn't make sense because people use formal models of reasoning to understand what the brain does and then map aspects of that to physical architecture. So when it comes to computational neuroscience, these two things you say are irreconcilable are actually inextricably entwined.

This distinction doesn't make sense because people use formal models of reasoning to understand what the brain does and then map aspects of that to physical architectur — Apustimelogist

The point is that norms of reasoning and causal processes belong to different explanatory orders. Physical processes unfold according to causes; reasoning unfolds according to grounds—the logical relations that make an inference valid or invalid.

A neuroscientist can (and must) use modus ponens, reductio, probabilistic inference, and mathematical formalism to interpret data. But the validity of those inferences isn’t something that can be read off an fMRI scan. You can’t derive logical necessity from neural activation patterns.

So yes, of course cognitive scientists model reasoning, and of course they look for neural implementation of various inferential capacities. But that research presupposes the very norms it’s trying to naturalise. You can’t turn around and say the norms just are the neural activity that was used to investigate them. This is the vicious circularity that haunts neurological reductionism.

We're going in circles here. Bottom line: logic is not physical nor can be reduced to physical forces and categories, but I'm not going to press the point further. We've been arguing since Nov 5th 2024 - I remember the date, because it was the eve of the US Presidential Election, I see no purpose being served by continuing.

But that research presupposes the very norms it’s trying to naturalise. — Wayfarer

The point is that you can't separate them. Neuroscientists conceptualize and model brains in terms of statistical learning and inference. What you are saying is like claiming that physics is unsuccessful because you can't pull math out of 'physical stuff' by its bootstraps. But the physics to some extent is the maths, the maths is the description of the physics. Similarly, a complete neurobiological description of what brains do, how they do it and how people behave cannot be divorced from the math, or models of statistical learning and inference. They go hand-in-hand with the "naturalised" explanation. No one is trying to "derive logical necessity from neural activation patterns"; the caricature of naive reductionism you attack is not probably not very common at all.

I agree that in practice you can’t do neuroscience without maths, models of inference, and all the conceptual tools scientists rely upon. But that’s a point about method, not about ontology (i.e. what are the constituents of the neural systems).

The distinction I’m making is simply this:

Causal processes refer to neural and biochemical reactions

Normative relations refer to what makes causal inferences valid.

They belong to different explanatory levels.

A neuroscientist can model the brain as performing Bayesian updating, but the validity of Bayesian reasoning isn’t something you find by examining neural tissue. The neural story explains how we are able to reason (at least to some extent, although the detail is elusive); the logical story explains whether the reasoning is correct. These are not competing explanations — they are explanations of different kinds.

It’s the same with physics and mathematics. Physics relies on mathematics completely, but the maths isn’t identical to the objects being described. A differential equation can describe a falling apple, but the apple isn’t made of equations. Using inferential models to study the brain doesn’t make inference itself a neural process any more than aircraft wings “do calculus” because their behaviour can be simulated mathematically on a computer. The model and the actual mechanism aren’t the same kind of thing.

So my point isn’t that neuroscience is “unsuccessful,” nor that anyone is trying to derive axiom-systems from fMRI scans. It’s just that the norms scientists rely on to build their models — validity, consistency, justification — don’t themselves show up as physical properties. They’re the standards that are used to interpret the physical data in the first place.

That’s all I mean by saying the two can be separated conceptually. “Irreducible” doesn’t mean “supernatural” — it just means that different kinds of explanation are in play. And it's not a 'caricature', rather, a valid distinction between two kinds or levels of discourse.

On further thought, as you often say that I'm engaging in speculation or unthethered philosophizing uninformed by science, could you point exactly to where I'm doing that?

And yet, some people seriously entertain solipsism and idealism - because they are not provably impossible. This is the sort of thing I'm complaining about. I'm fine with the focus you suggest.

I wouldn’t group idealism in with solipsism. The later is illogical, whereas I can see a strong case for idealism. I think you should revise what you mean by provably impossible, there aren’t really any philosophies which are provably impossible.

This tells me you are not a theist. Philosophically minded theists often think they can "prove" God's existence through philosophical analysis.

I am, loosely a deist, a positive(theistic) leaning agnostic. For me mysticism is more important than theology. I am more interested in what we don’t know, than what we do know (something that can easily be accessed when required), that insight can be made through a realisation of what we don’t know. I realise that we can’t prove God’s existence, or to put it more strongly, if he/she were to appear before us, we could still not prove it, or demonstrate it.

Debating these issues is what drew me to learn a bit about philosophy.

I spent years debating with materialists and skeptics on the JREF forum before coming here. Lots of fun (and trolls).

Actually, he accepts science.

I should have been more precise, I should have written; (including the philosophical interpretation of our scientific findings) in brackets, rather than; (including our scientific findings).

but I object to declaring materialism (in general) false on the basis of the explanatory gap, while meanwhile taking flights of fancy (mere possibilities) seriously.

He’s not declaring materialism false, but rather its philosophical conclusions about the explanatory gap. They are not flights of fancy, it is genuine philosophy. As I say, I can see a case for idealism.

Of course I accept science, you'd have to be a fool not to. What I don't accept is the attempt to subject philosophical questions to scientific criteria. Of course, that doesn't imply that one's philosphical principles can contravene those criteria, but that science can't be called on to provide the criteria by which philosophical principles should be assessed.

Here's an example of what I regard as an innappropriate appeal to science.



I think this is plainly wrong, as a matter of principle. Not because there is some mysterious thing called 'mind' which somehow always escapes scientific analysis, but because the mind is never an object of analysis in the same way that the objects of science are. It is, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, not something - but also not nothing. How this eludes so many people continues to surprise me.

I think this is plainly wrong, as a matter of principle. Not because there is some mysterious thing called 'mind' which somehow always escapes scientific analysis, but because the mind is never an object of analysis in the same way that the objects of science are. How this eludes so many people continues to surprise me.

Yes, it is surprising. There seems to be a leap made wherein the mind is seen as the one remaining anomaly not fully explained by biology and is seen as something which will be fully explained soon enough. So why continue with this notion that it is somehow different. This amounts to a bracketing out process.

t
We're going in circles here. Bottom line: logic is not physical nor can be reduced to physical forces and categories, but I'm not going to press the point further. We've been arguing since Nov 5th 2024 - I remember the date, because it was the eve of the US Presidential Election, I see no purpose being served by continuing. — Wayfarer

You have established that you have no rational basis to claim physicalism is falsfied. All you've done is to to reify an abstraction ("logic") and assert that this reification cannot be reduced to "physical forces".

The APPLICATION of logic entails process. Computers operate by applying logic, and this demonstrates that APPLYING logic is consistent with physicalism.

As I previously discussed, the abstract concept "logic" is describable in language. That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept. When we use the word ("logic") we are drawing on the memory of those mental processes by which we mentally connected the word to the concept.

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims, and of course - you don't see it, and instead dismissively assert that we're going around in circles. We go in circles because your thinking about these issues is within the framework of your own internalized paradigm (your personal, subjective "mind-dependent world"). You are essentially attempting to falsify the physicalist paradigm on the basis that it's inconsistent with your own. You have not, and cannot, falsify physicalism this way. And in case you forgot, this is the burden you gave yourself - that you could show physicalism cannot be true. I don't expect a reply, but I do suggest that you accept the fact that you cannot actually falsify it or at least that you cease asserting that you can. You don't need to falsify it to reject it. Both acceptance and rejection of a "theory of mind" paradigm entails subjective judgement, and since I understand this, I would never suggest one is irrational for disagreeing with my judgement.