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 was inherent in the emerging world prior to about 300,000 years ago. Therefore, in lieu of conscious atoms, I focus on causal Energy, not inert Matter*1, as one form of the general power-to-transform that drives the process of Evolution. 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. But this forum is a Moot Court. :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.

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? — Wayfarer

I don't insist you depend on science, but rather that you develop and utilize hypotheses with some epistemic justification in mind. For example, if you were to suggest that a thought were an ontological primitive - you'd need consider how you would eventually justify the claim. One way to do that would be to work toward a more complete, coherent metaphysical theory that includes that hypothesis.

You're not doing that here. It's reasonable to point to the gaps in our scientific understanding of the physical processes involved with reasoning. Kudos for not using this as a basis for an argument from ignorance against physicalism, at least not in this post. I assume it's obvious to you that physicalism isn't falsified by gaps in our scientific knowledge.

The model and the actual mechanism aren’t the same kind of thing. — Wayfarer

Yes, and this point is not really powerful because when you try to make separate them out cleanly... you simply can't. Physics is meaningless without math. The position you are attacking doesn't recognize the distinction you're making. Someone who is a physicalist and appealing to explanatory reductionism to physics and similar things is appealing to these abstract mathematical tools as descriptions. You can't articulate anything about anything without them; people are going to acknowledge that what constitutes their intellectual paradigm is descriptions, tools and constructs that they use to model what they experience. Acknowledging that doesn't invalidate their position. Stripping naturalism of math or any other descriptive tool is meaningless, and the efficacy of naturalism or physicalism would be in terms of those very tools. They are part of the identity, the explanatory power, the meaning of reduction. You can't tease them apart.

The fact that we use constructed tools to describe things and the idea of foundationalism or pulling a paradigm up by its own bootstraps has no consequence on whether that paradigm is explanatorily effective; the paradigm just needs to be successful at predicting or modelling what we see, at least in principle. And the plausibility of this latter point leads to the chain of reasoning that physics describes the behavior of chemical systems which mediates the behavior of brains which mediates all our intelligent reasoning and logical behavior. We can describe this behavior in terms of the mathematics of inference just like we use various mathematical tools for describing things, and really there is no fundamental difference between the kind of math that describes how neurons or brains can perform certain tasks compared to math used in areas of physics, especially statistical physics, or other fields like economics.

We can have different levels of explanation using different tools, but they then also do something like supervene on each other in principle. I think in fairness, this "in principle" thing is an assumption when met with the incompleteness of science; but at the same time, there is no obviously convincing knock down argument against it especially considering that incompleteness doesn't mean completely uneffective. The only proper motivation against it imo is the irreducibility of experience but my take on that doesn't really threaten the "something like supervenience" concept I am talking about.

All you've done is to to reify an abstraction ("logic") and assert that this reification cannot be reduced to "physical forces" — Relativist

The position you are attacking doesn't recognize the distinction you're making. — Apustimelogist

It is based on your not recognising a fundamental distinction going back to David Hume. There is a fundamental philosophical distinction between physical causation and logical necessity. Physical causation is that in which every sequence in a causal chain can be described in physical terms - gravity, energy, combustion, reaction, and so on.

Logical necessity, on the other hand, describes the relationship between statements or propositions, not events in time. It is that in which the conclusion is guaranteed or required to be true if the premises are true, based solely on the rules of logic and the definitions of the terms used. It operates in the realm of thought and abstract structures, not physical interaction. The connection is necessary (non-contingent): it holds true in all possible worlds where the definitions and laws of logic remain consistent.

The philosophical implication is that while physical causes explain physical events and processes, logical necessity defines the rules for how we can reason and establishes unavoidable truths (like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event.

This is not a reification. To reify is to make a concrete thing out of an abstraction. It is not reifying logic to correctly identify it.

That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept. — Relativist

1. If language mirrors only the contingent physical process rather than the necessary logical content (the final, valid definition), the statement equates the psychological fact of concept acquisition with the logical structure of the concept itself.

2. To treat a brain state as having meaning (as representing a proposition) or logical order (as representing a valid step in an argument) is to already inject a non-physical, intentional, or normative element into the physical description to assign semantic content to to a physical state.

Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes. — Edward Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism 1

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims — Relativist

Only in your own mind.

The philosophical implication is that while physical causes explain physical events and processes, logical necessity defines the rules for how we can reason and establishes unavoidable truths (like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event. — Wayfarer

Sure, but logic is semantics - it is not some aspect of the world. It applies to statements, not to things. Truths are statements that correspond to reality, These "defined rules for how we reason" consist of applying precise definitions to certain words.

1. If language mirrors only the contingent physical process rather than the necessary logical content (the final, valid definition), the statement equates the psychological fact of concept acquisition with the logical structure of the concept itself. — Wayfarer

It is not the case that language mirrors "only the contingent physical process". I said it mirrors the mental processes. The concept of "true" seems perfectly straightforward - a recognition that a statement corresponds to (say) what is perceived, vs a statement that does not.

It's notable that I countered 100% of your claims — Relativist
Only in your own mind. — Wayfarer

Of course! But you haven't rebutted my counters in your responses. Mostly, your objections reflect either: a misunderstanding of physicalism (e.g. conflating with science), a lack of imagination (failing to figure out a physicalist account might address your issue), or an attempt to judge it from an incompatible framework (e.g.the way you treat abstractions). When I've addressed these, you do not respond directly, then you sometimes repeat the countered claim in different words. So that's why I feel I've countered your claims. Here's the latest example in which you seem to have overlooked or misunderstood what I was saying about "meaning":

To treat a brain state as having meaning (as representing a proposition) or logical order (as representing a valid step in an argument) is to already inject a non-physical, intentional, or normative element into the physical description to assign semantic content to to a physical state. — Wayfarer

A brain state does not have meaning. I never claimed it did. Here's what I said:

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 realizable). — Relativist

You might have asked for clarification or pushed back, but instead you made a claim that was nowhere close to what I'd said.

Truths are statements that correspond to reality, These "defined rules for how we reason" consist of applying precise definitions to certain words. ....The concept of "true" seems perfectly straightforward - a recognition that a statement corresponds to (say) what is perceived, vs a statement that does not. — Relativist

Please notice what you are glossing over or assuming in saying this. Philosophers have spent millenia puzzling about the relationships between mind, world and meaning, here you present it as if it is all straightforward, that all of this can simply be assumed. Which is naive realism in a nutshell.

"Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognizing it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object."

Kant, 1801. The Jasche Logic, in Lectures on Logic

"Although it seems ... obvious to say, "Truth is correspondence of thought (belief, proposition) to what is actually the case", such an assertion nevertheless involves a metaphysical assumption - that there is a fact, object, or state of affairs, independent of our knowledge to which our knowledge corresponds. "How, on your principles, could you know you have a true proposition?" ... or ... "How can you use your definition of truth, it being the correspondence between a judgment and its object, as a criterion of truth? How can you know when such correspondence actually holds?" I cannot step outside my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it."

Hospers, J.; An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, p116.

Mostly, your objections reflect either: a misunderstanding of physicalism (e.g. conflating with science), a lack of imagination (failing to figure out a physicalist account might address your issue), or an attempt to judge it from an incompatible framework (e.g.the way you treat abstractions). When I've addressed these, you do not respond directly, — Relativist

My argument is that physicalist philosophy of mind conflates physical causation with logical necessity. If you don't grasp that argument, you can't pose a counter.

A brain state does not have meaning. I never claimed it did. — Relativist

You said:

That language mirrors the mental processes involved with defining/learning the concept — Relativist

Are these 'mental processes' physical in nature? If they are, they can be described in terms of brain states. If they're not, then they're not physical, and you're no longer defending physicalism.

As for your 'pain' example:

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). — Relativist

It is an extremely basic account which attempts to equate intentional language with physical stimulus and response. A dog will yelp if it stands on a hot coal, but a dog yelp is not a word. And regardless, it fails to come to grips with the point about 'multiple realisability', against which it was made.

Hillary Putnam’s original point about multiple realisability is that a mental state like pain can be realised in many different physical ways. Different types of creatures could all feel pain, even though their nervous systems might be nothing alike; and even within one person, the neural pattern associated with “pain” can vary enormously depending on context, learning, or injury (including even psychosomatic pain). So there is no single physical configuration that corresponds with pain. And because the same mental state can be realised by indefinitely many different physical structures, the mental state cannot be identical with a physical state. (Hilary Putnam, “Psychological Predicates” (1967))

This allegory can be extended. The fact that a single meaning can be encoded in any number of radically different physical forms shows that meaning is not identical with those forms. You can express the same thought as spoken sound waves, as ink marks on paper, as binary code, as Braille dots, or as neural activity — and despite the heterogeniety of the media and symbolic form, the meaning is preserved. If meaning were nothing but its physical instantiation, then changing the physical medium would change the meaning.

'Pain' is also utterly inadequate as an example, because it completely fails to come to terms with the intentional and semantic structure of language.

Physical causation is that in which every sequence in a causal chain can be described in physical terms - gravity, energy, combustion, reaction, and so on. — Wayfarer

Using abstract objects of math, just like how describing what neurons do uses abstract formal language of math that cannot be idenitified as objects fixed in space-and-time, but instead emergent abstractions nonetheless used to describe physical events at various levels of abstraction from particle physics to cosmology, chemistry, physiology, ecology, economics, social science, sports science.

(like 2+2=4 or geometric axioms) that hold regardless of any physical event. — Wayfarer

And is exactly the language usex to describe physical events.

a mental state like pain can be realised in many different physical ways. — Wayfarer

There is no point here unless you can give an example of where these things are not being realized by physical systems. This kind of thing isn't interesting because its a generic feature of complex systems. Like the physical description of waves is multiply realizable because analogous wave descriptions exist for many different media. Biological anatomy is multiply realizable because animals can do things like fly in many different ways. Im sure there are countless examples of emergent physical patterns realizable by different media. This is not interesting. What is interesting is the idea of stuff in this universe fundamentally instantiated in and realized by something that is not physical. Like mental substance.

There is no point here unless you can give an example of where these things are not being realized by physical systems. — Apustimelogist

Well, I could say pure mathematics. That’s the obvious case where what is grasped is not “realised” by a physical system in the way you mean. Nevertheless, we can be wrong about a mathematical result, so there is something to be wrong about. But the reason you don’t see the force of such examples is that materialism doesn’t allow you to see it. If you begin with the axiom that only what is physically instantiated can be real, then of course logical necessity will appear to you as just another contingent pattern — “the way things work,” nothing more.

So when you say the examples I’m giving are “not interesting,” that simply means you’re not seeing the point — and you’re not seeing it because the philosophical framework you’re committed to screens the distinction out in advance. A view that cannot recognise the difference between physical causation and logical necessity will always brush the issue aside, because it has no conceptual space for reason as anything other than physical. So of course anything that doesn’t fit into that particular Procrustean bed is dismissed as “not interesting" (speaking of "patterns"....)

This isn’t my invention. The distinction has deep roots in the history of philosophy. And speaking of pure maths, see for example this Aeon essay: The Patterns of Reality. It makes exactly the point I’m pressing: logical necessity isn’t a physical process. Physical causation is contingent; logical relations hold by necessity. The two belong to different orders — and treating one as the other is precisely the category mistake that materialism cannot see.

Philosophy is in large part learning to look at your spectacles rather than just through them. You’re reasoning about this right now, and reasoning is more than, or other than, a physical process. Of course you need a healthy brain to think logically, but the law of the excluded middle didn’t come into existence when brains evolved, and it doesn’t disappear when a brain dies. Logical necessity doesn’t depend on neural tissue — neural tissue depends on logic to be intelligible.

Please notice what you are glossing over or assuming in saying this. Philosophers have spent millenia puzzling about the relationships between mind, world and meaning, here you present it as if it is all straightforward, that all of this can simply be assumed. Which is naive realism in a nutshell. — Wayfarer

Your response expresses a judgement, but fails to specify what you think I failed to do. Your burden is to show that some aspect of mental processing cannot possibly be grounded in the physical. In this instance, you were suggesting that logical reasoning cannot be accounted for under physicalism. I was merely explaining why I think it can. If you think this inadequate, then explain what you think I've overlooked. If there's insufficient detail, I can explain a bit more deeply.

My argument is that physicalist philosophy of mind conflates physical causation with logical necessity. — Wayfarer

You didn't give an argument, you simply noted that physical causation and logical necessity are different, and that you apparently assume that a physical mind could only "reason" in a manner that is directly attributable to physical cause/effect. THAT is naive.

Computers can do logic. They don't do it the same way humans do, but it nevertheless proves that physical processes CAN do logic. One important distinction between humans and computers is that the statements that we apply logic to, have meaning to us. I outlined a physicalist account of meaning. I also noted that logic is nothing more than semantics, and that fact also pertains to meaning.

So what is it, exactly, that you think cannot possibly be accounted for physically?

As for your 'pain' example...It is an extremely basic account which attempts to equate intentional language with physical stimulus and response. A dog will yelp if it stands on a hot coal, but a dog yelp is not a word. And regardless, it fails to come to grips with the point about 'multiple realisability', against which it was made. — Wayfarer

What I was trying to get across is that meaning is grounded in our interactions with the world (and in our physical structure). In this case, the true meaning of pain is the unpleasant sensation. Attaching a word to it seems trivial to account for physically (relating memory of a sound sequence to a memory of a sensation).

I addressed multiple realizabilty by pointing you at another post I made that described criterial causation (a physical process) to account for mental causation. I suggest that mental causation is the key, because it entails functionalism: it is the function of a mental state that matters, not the physical manifestation of that functional state.

You have previously acknowledged that memories depend on the physical brain, as evidenced by memory loss due to disease and trauma to the brain. Surely you don't think that 2 people with a shared experience have their memories manifested identically in their respective brains. They wouldn't need to- they just need to provide the same functionality (e.g. recall of images, events, sounds...).

because the same mental state can be realised by indefinitely many different physical structures, the mental state cannot be identical with a physical state — Wayfarer

Non-sequitur. A mental state is a functional state; any physical structure that produces the same function can therefore produce that mental state.

Pain' is also utterly inadequate as an example, because it completely fails to come to terms with the intentional and semantic structure of language. — Wayfarer

Invariably, I address a specific issue you bring up, you fail to acknowledge that I addressed it, and bring up a related issue outside the scope of what I was addressing.

In this case, I was simply giving an example of how meaning is attached to experience, in this case: a sensory experience. In this particular case, pain is clearly linked to intentional behavior: it's an experience to be avoided.

Meaning and intentionality are generally considered the more challenging to account for. Semantic structure seems trivial, because it's simply something that is learned.

You are both describing a philosophical zombie, or a highly advanced AI robot. Neither are alive, or conscious.
Where in materialism is this gap addressed? (Other than reverting to the observation that materialism like science is only descriptive).

There is one universe where all events and things we see occur in physical space-time. We can have descriptions, explanations of structure at various levels of abstraction about what we see, but they are all instantiated by and inferred by brains which are things in physical space-time. There is a distinction between what those things are about in terms of what we see out in the world, and how they are instantiated. Maths is not about brains, it is about abstract structure inferred in what we see in the world, the rules of math are about that abstract structure; that does not mean that how we use maths and the reason we are able to do math is not instantiated in brains. Logical necessity is not about neural tissue, it is part of abilities to talk about abstract structure we see in the world. But this does not mean that this ability and why it comes about, how it works, is not instantiated by, realized by neural tissue and physical stuff using descriptions which themselves invoke different levels of explanation and abstraction. In this way a physicalist can accomodate the "non-physical" nature of logic whilst maintaining a view where all events in the world are still essentially and fundamentally supervening, or something like that, on physical descriptions which themselves are articulated in exactly the same "non-physical" structures you are talking about.

You are both describing a philosophical zombie, — Punshhh

I've been discussing the role of feelings - the qualia that zombies lack. My position is that this is the only serious problem for physicalism, but also that it doesn't falsify it.

I'm aware of 2 ways feelings can be accounted for:
1) illusionism - this means feelings are not directly physical because they exist exclusively in the mind- a mental construction. It depends only on mental causation (which I've defended). It also accounts for the action of pain-relievers, which mask the pain by interfering the brain's construction of the sensation.

2) Feelings are due to some aspect of the world that has not been identified through science, and may never be. This is open-ended; it could be one or more properties or things.

Why should anyone consider these? Every theory of mind has some problem, such as the interaction problem of dualism. Physicalism is the theory that is most consistent with everything we do know through science about the mind-body relationship. More significantly: physicalism is consistent with everything else we know about the world - outside of minds.