It's odd that you rule out the possibility I'm right. — Relativist

It's not a personal issue. It is physicalism that I'm critical of, not you in particular. See response above.

I wasn’t expecting a response, and a well-spoken one at that. So…thanks.

I’ll address just this one item, the rest being uncontentious other than relevant particulars:

The issue is that nothing tells you about or can articulate an "intrinsic" nature of things. — Apustimelogist

I understand nature of things to mean real material things. Even so, I’m of the opinion metaphysics can articulate the intrinsic nature of me, whether or not the mere satisfaction I get from it reflects the truth.

I agree explanations don’t come for free, and I think the fundamental restriction is the human intellect itself. We are, after all is said and done, at the mercy of ourselves.

I don’t believe it, it’s just my preferred explanation*, I don’t hold beliefs. Yes, I am familiar with the interaction problem.
I don’t see it as dualism, although it conforms largely with what is understood as dualism. I see the problems around dualism as a human construct. So where one thinks of substance dualism, for example, I don’t see these as fundamentally different substances, just differing kinds of substance. I entertain both idealistic and materialist ideologies, both atheistic and religious. I don’t see all these divisions as problematic, but rather divisions we have created. That what people think about and talk about are narratives based on an incomplete understanding of our world, coloured by the human condition.That what we don’t know likely vastly outnumbers what we do know. That we really have no idea about existence, because our narratives are developed solely around what we do in the world we were born into. That the basis of the existence we experience is entirely unknown. This is evidenced in the dilemmas any attempt to determine, or understand what existence, or our existence in this world, we come up against.

Surely given the advances in scientific research and human intellect, we would have discovered, or understood existence by know. But we haven’t, maybe we are no further forward in this understanding than prehistoric people. Are we missing something?

More generally, this directly relates to "free will". Physicalism entails compatibilism: any choice you make will be the product of deterministic forces, a set beliefs (dispositions) that are weighed by the mental machinery, and can only produce one specific result. In hindsight, it only SEEMS like a different could have been made. In actuality, no other choice could have been made, given the set of dispositions that existed when the choice was made. So the collective set of dispositions necessarily leads to whatever choice that is actually taken. — Relativist

:100:

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts. You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts.

:up: :up:

I’m not anti-physicalism, I just don’t see aspects of being in the same way. I won’t comment on what Wayfarer is saying about this, as I will almost certainly misrepresent him and confuse, or derail the discussion.

You seemed to answer my question about p zombies in your reply to Mww. What I’m saying about p zombies is that the physicalist account of the our world with conscious beings in is identical to what a p zombie universe would be like if described by a neutral observer. The p zombie would be processing information and internal mental states just as described by physicalism when physicalism is describing conscious beings. The only difference is that it would not be conscious. Absolutely everything else would be identical.

You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts. — 180 Proof

Well spotted, 180! And the only fact that the physicalist doesn't come to terms with, is the reality of her own existenz. But, I get it, people need something to hang on to.

There's nothing in what I say that is 'anti-science' or 'opposed to science'. The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems.

that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true. — Wayfarer
I see no reason to believe that. Perhaps you are working with a redundant model of material as 'mindless substance'. If material in all its forms were nothing but mindless substance, then of course it would follow by mere definition that conscious material is impossible. But that is specifically the "question-begging presumption" I was referring to. — Janus

may be simply implying --- based on absence of {empirical or theoretical} evidence to the contrary --- that massive space-occupying Matter*1 --- what we normally mean by the word --- does not have the "right stuff" [necessary qualities or capabilities or potential] to produce weightless spaceless shapeless Mental Phenomena such as verbal communication of ideas. Yet staunch (anti-spiritual) Materialists*2 insist that Matter must possess the potential for Mind. And I provisionally agree, but it's a "question-begging presumption" --- a philosophical hypothesis --- lacking step-by-step evidence or theory of how mundane lumpish matter became Mindful*3. Without an account of the steps & stages of that fortuitous emergence, it's a circular argument. So, the key question here is : what is the "right stuff" for evolving living & thinking Matter?

I too presume that Mind naturally evolved from non-conscious physical predecessors. But I've never seen any scientific evidence or theory that describe, step-by-step, how that transformation could have happened. Moreover, I don't accept that hypothetical-quark-composed Matter was the "fundamental" element of evolution. Instead, as Einstein concluded, time-causing Energy was the primal force behind space-time & evolution, that eventually shape-shifted into various change-causing agents (Gravity, Nuclear Forces, Thermal Energy, Electromagnetic Fields, etc). So, it seems obvious that whatever Causal Principle (possessing the right stuff) produced the Big Bang beginning and subsequent space-time evolution, could-and-did eventually cause Life & Mind processes to emerge. Unfortunately, details of the necessary critical intermediate stages (non-linear Phase Transitions*4) have not yet been documented.

So I'm guessing that the non-sentient precursor of Mental Processes (e.g. linguistic) was more likely the non-spatial, massless stuff of Causation : Energy in all its forms. E=MC^2 has no place for matter. Even Mass is a mathematical measurement of resistance to Force, and C is a mathematical constant, not a measurement of a material object. Therefore, I agree with both Wayfarer and his Materialist critics, but with a twist : massless, spaceless Energy is capable of transforming into both Matter and Mind. But Mind (consciousness) is not a "separate, non-physical entity"*2, it's an active meta-physical brain Process, with no mass or inertia. :nerd:


PS___ This is not a "redundant" model of Matter, but a novel cosmic perspective on the evolution of Mind. Do we want to debate whether Causation has the right-stuff to create linguistic (knowable) noumena within a world of material (observable events & properties) phenomena?


*1. What is Matter? :
In physics, matter is any substance that has mass and occupies space (volume). It is the physical material that makes up the universe and can be found in various states, or phases, such as solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. All matter is ultimately composed of elementary particles like quarks and leptons, which form protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn form atoms.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+is+matter+in+physics

*2. Materialism is a philosophical view that posits that physical matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states, can be explained by material interactions. In this view, the mind is not a separate, non-physical entity but rather a product of brain processes, and reality is governed by natural, physical laws. This can also refer to a value system that prioritizes material possessions, but in philosophy, it refers to the belief that the physical world is all that exists.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=materialism+philosophy

*3. Ideonomy: A Science of Ideas :
The foundational insight of ideonomy is that ideas are part of the natural world. Just as humans are part of the natural world, the thoughts and ideas generated by human minds are also natural phenomena. Accordingly, we should expect there to be underlying laws or patterns in ideas, the same way we observe laws that govern other natural phenomena. While most phenomena in our universe are examined through a scientific lens, ideas are often treated as magic. Ideonomy aims to remedy this.
https://gracekind.net/writing/ideonomy/intro/
Note --- This is not an actual physical science, but merely a recent instance of a long history of philosophical proposals to combine the tools of concrete Empiricism with those of abstract Reason, in order to put the observing Mind under the microscope, so to speak. For the near future, any "hard" evidence turned-up may be watered-down with imagination & interpretation, as usual with any novel views of reality, such as Quantum Theory.

*4. Phase transition : The process where a substance abruptly changes from one state of matter to another, like a solid turning into a liquid or a liquid into a gas.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=phase+transition
Note --- The "abrupt" change is also non-analytical, so intermediate steps --- the mechanism --- between states are unknown.

That comment of Janus was in response to a gloss of the Platonist scholar Lloyd Gerson, which in turn was a gloss on Aristotle 'D'Anima' ('On the Soul'). It is a very specific argument, that it is the ability of intellect (nous) to grasp forms (universals) that makes communication possible, in that they provide us with a stock of general concepts, which materialism denies (as materialism is generally nominalist.)

Anyway, I'm offsite until 1 December I have some other writing to work on. Chat then.