With respect to mentality, isn't it more reasonable to claim that, when we have an explanatory theory, whatever it is, mentality will be subject to physical laws just like everything else? — tom

Neuronal and mental activities have mutual effects, but are incommensurable because physiological activity is a correlate, not a cause, of mental activity.

In addition to the two previously mentioned, you would probably need to include at least Thermodynamics.

Is the notion that certain systems may be subject to laws, but not explicable by them so difficult to grasp?

In addition to the two previously mentioned, you would probably need to include at least Thermodynamics.

Is the notion that certain systems may be subject to laws, but not explicable by them so difficult to grasp? — tom

Sorry, my question wasn't worded well. What I meant to ask is; what does it mean for a thing to be a law of physics? Is a law of physics just whatever all things are subject to? That's the second horn of Hempel's dilemma, and makes for physicalism to be circular and vacuous. Is a law of physics just whatever is part of current physical theories? That's the first horn of Hempel's dilemma, and makes for physicalism to be known to be false as it is known that current physical theories are not a Theory of Everything.

Neuronal and mental activities have mutual effects, but are incommensurable because physiological activity is a correlate, not a cause, of mental activity. — Galuchat

Mutual effects, which aren't causal? What is that?

Mutual effects, which aren't causal? What is that? — tom

Correlation.
If it makes you feel better, substitute "dependence" for "effects".

They have no extra-mental existence. We apply those concepts to extra-mental things. — numberjohnny5

If numbers, shapes and ideas have no extra-mental existence then what are the "extra-mental things" "we apply those concepts to"?

Correlation.
If it makes you feel better, substitute "dependence" for "effects". — Galuchat

If I depend on someone for food does this not imply that they bring about (cause) the conditions in which I am fed? I can't see what correlation has to do with it.

Saying that there are physical things and nonphysical things isn't Dualism if you acknowledge that the "physical" things are just an aspect or description of more fundamental nonphysical things (such as a system of abstract logical facts).

Our physical universe is explainable as a system of inter-referring inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. ...one of infinitely-many such systems. There' s no reason to believe that it's other than that.

It's unprovable and indeterminable whether or not the Materialist's objectively-existent physical world superfluously exists alongside, and duplicates, that system of abstract facts. A claim that it does would be an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition, positing a brute-fact.

Michael Ossipoff

If numbers, shapes and ideas have no extra-mental existence then what are the "extra-mental things" "we apply those concepts to"? — Janus

Features of experience. We employ abstract concepts to classify, organise, structure, associate etc. to features of reality for various purposes.

If I depend on someone for food does this not imply that they bring about (cause) the conditions in which I am fed? I can't see what correlation has to do with it. — Janus

Then you should probably read this article.

Do you define features of experience as extra-mental then?

That article deals with the notions of correlation and dependence as they are understood in statistics. They are not relevant to this discussion as far as I can tell.

If you are trying to make a Humean point that causality is not observed but inferred, and only correlations are observed; then that is a whole other argument that would also seem to be irrelevant to what is being discussed.

So the whole universe is an abstraction your view? I don't think that standpoint is going to be of much help.

Do you define features of experience as extra-mental then? — Janus

Yes, although I realise "features of experience" isn't so clear. Just to clarify, by "features of experience" I mean features/properties of the environment (which are extra-mental) that we experience via our biological apparatus. (Although we could more broadly say we experience relating/applying abstract concepts to other abstract concepts in our minds as a sort of "inner" experience. But ultimately, my point is that abstract concepts such as "number" do not exist extra-mentally.)

Seems to me the physical vs non physical question is a product of the philosophical heritage of object-subject dualism, a world 'out there' split off from and making contact with a subject. Heidegger has been mentioned here. In addition to phenomenology you could add Rorty's linguistic pragmatism as well as the poststruxturalists. Their various arguments abandon talk of subjects encountering objects( even if those objects are only ever understood via concepts, and never directly apperceived unmediated ). Instead , they begin from the idea of experience as an indissociable interaction. No Cartesian subject assimilating data, but a
person as already environment interaction. From this vantage, both the idea of the physical and that of the mental are confused notions.

That article deals with the notions of correlation and dependence as they are understood in statistics. They are not relevant to this discussion as far as I can tell. — Janus

Why am I not surprised?

I don't know. Why?

OK, I certainly agree that abstract concepts do not exist extra-mentally. But the problem seems to be that, for example, numbers are independent of any particular mind. Does that mean they are independent of all minds, or independent of the totality of minds? If so, then does that "independence" constitute some kind of existence or being or reality? If we answer in the affirmative, then should we call that existence or being or reality physical or non-physical. If non-physical, then mental? But if mental, then numbers are not independent of mind, not "extra-mental".

I tend to think the whole distinction between mental and physical ( beyond its ordinary commonsense applications) is fatally flawed; so I am not. like you, a physicalist, and nor am I an idealist. I understand no logical or ontological priority between the physical and the mental.

So the whole universe is an abstraction your view? I don't think that standpoint is going to be of much help. — Janus

What were you wanting it to help with?

It's helpful as an explanation. ...an explanation that doesn't make any assumptions or posit any brute-facts.

In fact, not only is it explanatory--It's inevitable fact.

As a system of inter-referring inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals, the metaphysics that I described doesn't say anything that anyone would disagree with. Which part of it do you disagree with?

So it's a completely uncontroversial metaphysics.

Maybe I should add a little detail:

A set of hypothetical physical-quantity variable-values, and a physical law, consisting of a hypothetical relation between those values, are parts of the "if " premise of an if-then fact.

...except that one of those variable-values can be taken as the "then" conclusion of that if-then fact.

A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose "if " premise includes (but needn't be limited to) a set of mathematical axioms (algebraic or geometric).

A physical system is an inter-referring system of such abstract facts. As I said, there's no reason to believe that our physical universe is other than that.

But the if-then facts needn't only be mathematical. If there's a traffic roundabout at the corner of 34th & Vine, then it's also a fact that, if you go to 34th & Vine, you'll encounter a traffic roundabout.

Any fact about our physical universe corresponds to an if-then fact.

We're used to declarative grammar because it's convenient. But I suggest that we're unduly believing our grammar. Conditional grammar is all that's needed to describe our physical world.

Instead of one world of "is", there are infinitely-many worlds of "if".

I mentioned physical laws because, when we more closely examine the physical world, that's what we find evidence for. ...then that's the form taken by our experience of the physical world.

Michael Ossipoff

I'm sorry to say none of this makes any sense to me Michael. I've tried a few times to understand your metaphysics and failed every time. Perhaps I'm simply not intelligent enough for the task. :)

You could deal with mathematical operations the way Lakoff and Johnson do in 'The Embodied Mind'. Rather than extra-mental platonic essences, they are linguistic propositions that evolved as metaphors taken from our physical interactions with the world.

Yes, then we would still say they are not physical as such, according to the ordinary definitions of 'physical', but are also not something beyond or 'over and above' the physical world.

On the other hand, if we say that some future, "ideal" physics is what is meant, then the claim is rather empty, for we have no idea of what this means. The "ideal" physics may even come to define what we think of as mental as part of the physical world. In effect, physicalism by this second account becomes the circular claim that all phenomena are explicable in terms of physics because physics properly defined is whatever explains all phenomena.

Yeah, this seems to be a statement of the typical physicalist's metaphysical position. "Anything which is real is physical because physics attempts to understand everything."

The question to be asked of those physicalists, is why does physics fail in its attempts to understand everything.

I'm sorry to say none of this makes any sense to me Michael. I've tried a few times to understand your metaphysics and failed every time. Perhaps I'm simply not intelligent enough for the task. :) — Janus

Yes. In fact it's worse than that. You aren't even able to say which statement, word, term or phrase you don't understand the meaning of.

Michael Ossipoff

No I can understand the words and phrases; it is how they are all meant to hang together to support your conclusions that I don't get. In any case it's off-topic as far as I can tell.

We don't have to resort to imagining an ideal physics. We could instead imagine the possibilities of an embrace by physicists of arguments by scientists like Lee Smolen and Ilya Prigogone that the currently accepted physical description of reality is hampered by its reliance on a static model that sees time as a superfluous construct.
Making time central to physics and reenvisioming it as a science of evolutionary process unites it with living processes and points the way to an eventual conciliation with the new mind models. Such models dissolve the divide between the strictly physical and the mental by seeing self-organizing informational processes as fundamental.

No I can understand the words and phrases; it how they all hang together to support your conclusions that I don't get — Janus

Then that's different. It isn't that you don't understand what I said. It's that you think that I said something that I didn't support.

...but you regrettably are unable to specify which conclusion(s), in particular, it was :D

That's ok, but of course I can't be expected to answer a disagreement with an unspecified statement or conclusion.

. In any case it's off-topic as far as I can tell.

"What does it mean to say that something is physical or not?"

You asked about the matter of physical and nonphysical things. I answered that it's possible to explain "physical things" by nonphysical things. (Not unheard of with Idealisms :D). I mentioned that as part of my answer to your comment about whether saying that there are physical things and nonphysical things implies Dualism--a matter that you'd brought up.

Michael Ossipoff

We don't have to resort to imagining an ideal physics. We could instead imagine the possibilities of an embrace by physicists of arguments by scientists like Lee Smolen and Ilya Prigogone that the currently accepted physical description of reality is hampered by its reliance on a static model that sees time as a superfluous construct. — Joshs

If time is something real as Lee Smolin suggests in Time Reborn, how could time be something physical? Imagine space for example. If "space" were something real it would be nothing, how could that be physical? If it's not nothing, then it is described in terms other than "space" and is not really space.

We are bound to end up in some circular set of definitions. As Allan Munn puts it in his amazing physics exposition book "From Nought to Relativity":
"A dictionary definition is an analytic reduction of some not understood complex concept to more fundamental ones that are assumed to be so basically simple that they are well known to everybody."
These "simple" ideas, are only said to be simple because of the ease of access one has to them, not because they are easy to define. Time, space, objects (physical) - are such "simple" ideas.
Our integrated experience of these concepts shapes our feeling towards what this or that concept is, at least when we call upon our selves to define said concept.
Circular definitions are a problem philosophers face, but an inescapable one. As Munn himself demonstrates, if you go far enough, you will always be using terms you´ve used before, to define the term you are yet to fully define.
Circular definitions may be a solution towards making a world picture that holds itself together. It might be strange for us to fathom, but what is, is, and that is that. Is there an actual logical objection to this?

(Y)