What do you mean; an anti-realist in what sense? I don't believe numbers are 'out there' floating about in some 'realm' if that is what you mean. But I do believe natural complexes are real, and that they instantiate number (multiplicity and difference). — Janus

Sure. I should have asked instead "are you an anti-realist with regards to abstract/conceptual objects, like mathematical abstract objects like "numbers...'out there' floating about in some 'realm'".

This is obviously a very complex issue, but one response is to equate numbers with brain processes is a form of category mistake. — Wayfarer

Just to clarify, by "numbers" I take it you mean abstract concepts like "2", equations, and the like?

But the same operations can be outsourced to a variety of different devices, other than brains. — Wayfarer

The materials of "different devices" would not be brains though. That's an important ontological distinction. A calculator or operating system might "deal with" numbers, but in a different way than brains do.

And in studying brains themselves, there are major obstacles in understanding the relationship of neural events and such elements of rational thought as number, logic, language, syntax, and so on. — Wayfarer

We know some of the elements, locations and processes involved with regards to brains processing "number, logic, language, syntax", etc. We don't need to know more than that, in my opinion, in order to realise that brains are different than non-brains processing stuff like numbers, logic, etc.

So saying that 'numbers are dependent on the brain' (which is actually what you have said, not 'mind') doesn't really say anything. — Wayfarer

The mind is identical with the brain, in my view.

It just safely puts the whole issue into the category of 'things we'll figure out when we understand better how the brain works'. — Wayfarer

As I said, there's no need to or no good reason to withold the view that the brain processes stuff like numbers.

Another way I like to think about it is that arithmetic is a system of language (in the broadest sense) in which abstracts like "number" play a part, according to particular axioms. Any abstract number wouldn't make sense without at least some rough axiomatic system. Axiomatic systems are not extra-mental.

Just to clarify, — numberjohnny5

By number, I mean real numbers.

The mind is identical with the brain, in my view. — numberjohnny5

I guessed.

I think it’s a mistake to believe that you can explain numbers and the like. Mathematics is one of the main ways in which explanations can be found for all manner of things - almost anything that can be quantified, really. But explaining number is a notoriously difficult thing to do.

What I don’t think your account allows for, is the ability of mathematical reasoning to predict otherwise unknowable things. I mean, you can’t do that just using language. It’s the fact that mathematical concepts and operations seem to have an uncanny correspondence with nature that gives mathematics what Eugene Wigner called it’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ and predictive ability. There are quite a few examples of discoveries falling out of mathematical physics that were predicted just by the maths - Dirac’s discovery of anti-matter is a classic example, not to mention the many predictions that came out of relativity.

I think it’s a mistake to believe that you can explain numbers and the like. Mathematics is one of the main ways in which explanations can be found for all manner of things - almost anything that can be quantified, really. But explaining number is a notoriously difficult thing to do. — Wayfarer

Well "explanation" is subjective, and individuals have different criteria as to what counts as an explanation. I think that's where some of the dissatisfaction, disagreement, or non-conclusivity comes from.

What I don’t think your account allows for, is the ability of mathematical reasoning to predict otherwise unknowable things. I mean, you can’t do that just using language. It’s the fact that mathematical concepts and operations seem to have an uncanny correspondence with nature that gives mathematics what Eugene Wigner called it’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ and predictive ability. There are quite a few examples of discoveries falling out of mathematical physics that were predicted just by the maths - Dirac’s discovery of anti-matter is a classic example, not to mention the many predictions that came out of relativity — Wayfarer

I'm an anti-realist with regards to mathematical (abstract) objects, but I tend to take an instrumentalist approach to mathematics. So mathematical concepts or theories can be useful in making predictions about phenomena, but that doesn't necessarily mean I make ontological commitments to everything those theories posit.

Maybe at this point we should ask what we want the term 'real' to do for us. And I suppose also the concept 'physical'. Do either of these notions become become disturbed if I bring into the discussion the idea that memory is itself a reconstruction, that there is no such thing as veridical memory, and therefore we do t have access to a trailing order of pasts that we can line up and study?
By this way of thinking our past is actually in front of us in a way not unlike the present. Each past that we recollect is in a sense a fresh past, and points ahead of us. Recall is always for some future-oriented purpose of ours, so it is anticipatory. — Joshs

I agree with this way of describing memory, it is not veridical. But I think we assume that there is something "real" which the memory refers to. And this is how I would define "real", as what we assume as the veridical, the truth, what some call objective reality. In the case of the past, it is what we assume to have occurred regardless of whether or not it was observed, interpreted, or remembered. At the same time though, we must grant some reality to what is referred to in anticipation. I do not think that just because there is an assumed veridical necessity in "what actually happened", and a lack of such necessity in "what will happen", that things of the past can be said to be more real than things of the future. In relation to myself, who is a being at the present, things of the past, and things of the future, appear to be equally unreal; so if I grant to the past, in the form of an assumption, some sort of reality, I have no reason not to assume some sort of reality for the future as well. Therefore I assume that past and future things are equally "real".

But
if memory itself isn't just a veridical
internal carrying of external objects via symbolization, but an inseparable component of a relational complex of the experience of the present, an experience that is at every moment disturbing our sense of past as well as present, then we may want to reimagine physical as more radically relational than traditionally assumed. — Joshs

The meaning of "physical" is much more difficult, because it is as you say, relational. Exactly what is related to what varies greatly depending on usage, and may be quite difficult to understand, especially when the description is mathematical. So let me start with the most simple primitive set of relations, derived from the basic meaning of "physical", which is "of the body". I believe "the body" is a concept derived from relating past points of memory. Past memories indicate that there is something which remains the same, consistent, as time passes. I look around me when I get up in the morning and things are pretty much the same as they were yesterday morning. This consistency of things, which we apprehend by relating past points, is what Aristotle explained in his Physics with the concept of matter.

The existence of matter accounts for things remaining the same as time passes, and it is fundamental to the existence of the body, because the body provides that fundamental unchanging aspect of reality, which we infer is real, from relating the points of past memory. The unchangingness of the body, which is validated by the concept of matter, is taken for granted in Newton's first law of motion. It becomes "inertia". Through this concept, the related points of the past, held by memory and assumed to be supported by the real, are projected into the future, such that the the body is successfully predicted to maintain its course of existence through anticipated points of the future. What Newton states, is that this projection will occur necessarily, unless there is a "force" which interferes.

So we now have a second type of relation, the relation between the body and the force. Notice how the force is what interferes with the temporal consistency assigned to matter. Necessity and normalcy are assigned to the temporal consistency, and this is only broken by the force. The key point in understanding the force, I believe, is that it will only occur at the present. The force acts to break the continuity between the mapped points of the past, and the future projected points. This can only occur at the present. Therefore "the force" is inherently contrary to "the body", and in many ways it would be best to understand "the force" as non-physical.

However, in the study of physics, bodies are described as interacting. They interfere with each other's continued existence in time (inertia) and this must be accounted for. So the temporal existence of a body, its inertia, (its mapped past points), may be converted to force, in order to model its interference with the temporal existence of other bodies. But as described above, there is an inherent incompatibility between the body and the force, so the expressions are in some way incommensurable. The physical "body" is a representation of the continuity derived from the past points of time, the non-physical "force" is the representation of a change assigned to the present moment. That is why there is a significant difference between inertia and momentum, which philosophers need to respect. The difference is acceleration, which is essential to force, but incompatible with inertia.

I sometimes suggest that it would be impossible to prove that a world or a life-experience story is inconsistent, because there could always be some un-discovered physics that will consistently explain something that presently seems inconsistent.
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…as was the case with the black-body wavelength-energy curve, the Michaelson-Morely experiment result, the planet Mercury’s anomalous rotation of apsides, etc.
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And now there’s the apparent acceleration of the recession-speed of the more distant galaxies. Past experience suggests that there’s a system of physics that will make it consistent with currently-known physical facts.
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But say your house is locked and sealed, and you look away from the tv for just a second, and when you look back, there’s a Bengal tiger in the room in front of you. It just appeared in the second during which you looked away. Suppose things like that are happening all the time.
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Arthur Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Sure, but what if blatant inconsistencies like that were happening all the time, in everyday life? …and not just at the frontiers of physics, because there isn’t any evident consistent physics in the first place.
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You’d have no reason to believe that a particular apparent inconsistency will later be shown consistent with previously-known things. The most reasonable presumption would be that the world, or your life-experience , is inconsistent. Of course you could always explain it by hallucination or amnesia, I guess…if you already had some reason to believe that the world is consistent in the first place.
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An organism couldn’t survive in an inconsistent world? Of course it can, in a cartoon for example. The survival of an observer might seem inconsistent with an inconsistent world, but there’d be no reason to expect that consistency either.
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But the world seems consistent. The relatively few seeming inconsistencies have shown a tendency to be explained by new physics.
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So why should the world/experience be so self-consistent?
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That’s why I said that it seems as if logic is in charge of experience.
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I’m going to read more of or about what was said by the authors that you named in your previous post. Maybe I’ll be able to understand the kind of metaphysics that they’re proposing. But it sounds complicated, and a metaphysics that’s more complicated, with unnecessarily-many complicated rules, is harder to justify.
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You seemed to be agreeing with that position that says that logic is secondary to minds.
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But if there’s human-like life on another planet, in this or any universe, then mathematics is the same for them as for us (…though of course they might pursue some different areas of mathematics—in addition to some same ones.).
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Logic too. Those things aren’t subject to the whims of minds.
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…and if that human-like life is reasonably nearby in this universe, then they’ll find the same laws of physics too.
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Anyway, even aside from that, I don’t understand how anyone can say that logic is only the result of minds.
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“If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jabberwockeys are Slithytoves, then all Jabberwockies are brillig.”
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Of course that inevitable if-then fact is true even if neither of its premises is true, and even if there are no Jabberwockeys or Slithytoves.
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It can be shown that if the additive associative axiom of the real numbers (…and of the rationals and the integers) is true, then 2+2=4.
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(…with a reasonable obvious definition of 1, 2, 3 & 4 in terms of the multiplicative identity and addition.)
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That would be true even if there were no sentient beings. Even then it could be said (if there were anyone to say it) that if the additive associative axiom is true, and if there were someone to count, and some objects to count, and, if he put 2 objects next to 2 other objects, then there would be 4 objects together there.
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It’s an inevitable if-then fact.
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It’s evident that this universe’s mathematical physical laws have been operating for billions of years (unchanged, or nearly so, in recent billions of years, in our part of this universe), long before there were any minds. Mathematics is a logical subject. Logic evidently has been valid all that time too.
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Abstract if-then facts don’t, for their validity, need anything external to them. Likewise a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts.
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As I said, among the infinity-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals, there inevitably is one that matches the events and relations of this “physical” universes. There’s no reason to believe that this universe is other than that.
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Materialism, or any other relatively complicated or unexplained metaphysical theory, could of course also obtain, alongside, and duplicating the events and relations of, that logical system, but it would be an unverifiable and unfalsifiable proposition—and , at least in the case of Materialism, a brute-fact.

Our experience is a phenomenon and an inevitable possibility-story within that infinite set of complex logical systems.
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Anyway, I’ll look up those authors you referred to, and their metaphysicses.
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Michael Ossipoff
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To me it's not a question of logical consistency in the formal sense, but of self-consistency, of the relative inferential compatibility of new experience with our system of understanding.
A new event that appears inconsistent with our way of making sense of things will be handled in a number of ways. We can find a way to modify our previous understanding such as to make the challenging event consistent with our values. Or we can try and force the abberant meaning to comply with what we think it should mean. This usually doesn't end well. Or we can be left in a situation of crisis.
When we encounter experience that is wholy outside our ability to make sense of it, to accomdate our system of understanding to make room for it, we simply are unable to assimilate it. Our negative emotions respresent these sorts of transitional phases in our experience, when our world threatens to become chaotic and incoherent. Some psychologies argue that we do incorporate conflicting ideas and then cope with this by hiding from ourselves the internal conflict(cognitive dissonance, Freudian repression).

That doesn't mean that our math is t useful to us, just that there's nothing platonic about it. It's a device like any other we invent.

Personally I don't cling to the idea that number is 'Platonic' or even that it exists independent of mind, I'd agree with you in saying that it is a device of our own invention, and therefore there is nothing overly surprising about it's 'correspondence' to observed truth.
I think it is quite amazing we have developed such an intricate system for modelled understanding and utilised it in the way we have.

Proportion (as opposed to number) describes "a part or share in comparison to a whole", and is the fundamental basis for mathematical relationships.
It doesn't have to be Platonic or absolute, and it's not important that it wouldn't conceptually exist without our minds to process it, because the same can be said of any conceptual thought or even the standard conception of reality we refer to as delineating perceived Truth.
Proportion is a measurable relationship, and number is a means of conceptualising proportion.

Both may be conceptions of the human mind, and therefore contingent upon the mind rather than necessary without it, but dismissing the marvels of human conceptual thought on the grounds that it is merely an insignificant byproduct of our experience is a perspective that heavily overlooks the intrinsic value of conceptual thought as an essential, functional and referable tool that is one of our greatest assets.

Well "explanation" is subjective, and individuals have different criteria as to what counts as an explanation. — numberjohnny5

That's sure a get-out-of-jail-free card, for anything whatever. 'Works for me!'

That's sure a get-out-of-jail-free card, for anything whatever. 'Works for me!' — Wayfarer

First off, it's a fact that "explanations" are subjective. There are no objective criteria for what counts as a correct/incorrect or right/wrong "explanation".

Secondly, it's not simply a dismissive and self-reinforcing belief with regards to explanations serving my (or anyone's) needs, as you seem to believe. For example, it's not as if I haven't been challenged on my views; it's not as if I haven't developed my views that support my explanations. For me, it comes down to whether the reasoning for my views is "good" (which is also subjective). It's not as if you would be excluded/exempt from this fact; in other words, it's not as if you don't think "works for me!" with regards to your "good" reasons and explanations.

First off, it's a fact that "explanations" are subjective. There are no objective criteria for what counts as a correct/incorrect or right/wrong "explanation". — numberjohnny5

I'm sorry, but there are objective criteria regarding what makes a good explanation, and what makes one explanation better than the other. In fact, we have a rather well-developed method for deciding between explanations. It's called science.

Here's the objective criterion as to whether an explanation is good/bad: An explanation is good/bad if it is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.

I'm sorry, but there are objective criteria regarding what makes a good explanation, and what makes one explanation better than the other. In fact, we have a rather well-developed method for deciding between explanations. It's called science.

Here's the objective criterion as to whether an explanation is good/bad: An explanation is good/bad if it is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for. — tom

I agree that criteria can exist objectively in the sense of text or sounds. But the source of the criteria comes from minds. And again, what makes something "good" or "bad" re evaluative claims is subjective. Adhering to "objective criteria" (in the sense that I'm using) doesn't necessarily correlate with the criteria getting ontological facts right. That's why I tend to use an instrumentalist approach, at least with respect to unobservables and strictly mathematical theories.

And again, what makes something "good" or "bad" re evaluative claims is subjective. — numberjohnny5

Sore, you decree this from above, with no explanation. Why not, explanations are totally subjective.

Meanwhile in reality, explanations of a certain broad category may be tested and compared objectively, by experiment. The other class of explanations may be criticised and compared using objective criteria like the one I gave earlier.

Yeah, the question though is whether we ought to allow ourselves to be driven by anything that's not rationally verifiable, whether we should allow ourselves to be moved by imaginary beings, or posited-without-evidence beings, etc., etc.

To some degree it can be a harmless hippy sort of thing, but on the other hand it's also led to a lot of death and suffering in the past (e.g. religious wars, some types of political struggle, etc.).

I don't think it matters provided we don't prescribe for other people our own feelings and the ideas associated with them. To do that is fundamentalism, and it could take the form of scientism or religious bigotry.

Do you really think Buddhist monks or Christian renunciates, Christiam or Muslim moderates are all either maleficent influences or merely "harmless hippies"? If so that would seem somewhat condescending. You may prefer to be motivated only by what is "rationally verifiable" but do you believe you are justified in prescribing that attitude to others.

There's nothing wrong with sharing your ideas with others, or recommending things to them, however bizarre, I think the line to cross would be if you force others to proclaim belief in what you believe - but that's the case whether your ideas are about imaginary entities or real entities.

That sounds fair enough then. :)

Science isn't a method, it's a name for a tradition with a history of changing methods and evolving views of what an object is, how it relates to the scientist attempting to apprehend it , and thus how to achieve objectivity.

Varela was a rare species in the realm of science, someone willing to synthesize ideas from a range of disciplines and push their implications in a revolutionary direction. Varela co-founded the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, aiming at a raproachment between empirical psychology and philosophy.

I know - I thought I detected something similar in your approach.

I agree. I don't think it's contradictory to ground a natural history of mathematical and language structures in evolutionary processes and still insist that by doing so, by explaining the past, we are furthering the development of ideas. I know it's seems paradoxical, but every time we turn our scientific attention to better elucidating the earliest, simplest, most primordial origins of life and culture, we are making use of progressively more advanced tools of conceptualization and measurement. It s not just that our tools become more advanced as we revisit the past, but that those tools are inseparable from the models themselves. So our models of a distant past(cosmological, biological, psychological) make no sense outside of their use for our present purposes. Our ability to understand the past better in an empirical sense is a direct function of our scientific and technological progress, and thus in a real sense that past is always ahead of us.

I looked up the metaphysicses of George Kelly, and of Piaget, but I couldn't find the part where they state what their metaphysicses take as fundamental or primary.

All I could find there were articles about psychology, and educational and theraputic technique.

If you meant that experience is primary, I've agreed that it is, in a meaningful sense, because it's fundamental to our life-experience possibility-stories. Above all, everything is true as we experience it, and our experience is the center sand subject of that possibility-story.

And, as you suggested, what our life-experience story requires is merely that it be self-consistent. But that's logic. The requirement that a proposition not be true and false.. Experience has a logical requirement, and logic has authority over experience.

As we experience a closer study of our physical world, what we experience is physical quantity values and their relations defined by physical laws, in abstract if-then facts--facts that must remain self-consistent and mutually consistent.

I said that the abstract fact "If the additive associative axiom is true, then 2+2=4", and said that that's so even when referring to a world with no conscious inhabitants...if there were people to count things, and things to count. ....or, in that uninhabited world, if wind or erosion caused two rocks to roll down a hill and come to rest next to two other rocks.

Likewise, from our perspective in this world, we can say that the Slithytove & Jabberwockey syllogism is an inevitable abstract fact, in any world, inhabited or not. ...because it doesn't need there to really be any Slithytoves or Jaberwockeys.

...or without a world, because of course it doesn't even need that, for that abstract fact's truth. I emphasized the independence of abstract if-then facts, and systems of them, from any outside context, medium, or permission..

Michael Ossipoff

everything is true as we experience it, — Michael Ossipoff

Where does 'being wrong about something' fit into that?

I sometimes wonder whether that is because it is (perhaps even unconsciously?) felt that their ontological status has some implications for religious belief, and most especially belief in an afterlife. — Janus

Good point. I think it's fair to look toward the realm of values here. What it is to think and feel is already whatever it is to think and feel. The abstract concepts we paste on experience (concepts like experience) do matter to us. But does anyone else feel a distance from the usual metaphysical game of slapping on mere categories? This goes in box A. That goes in box B. This returns to your mention of afterlife. What we want is more life, better life. Maybe we can deny death with the right set of categories. Maybe we'll settle for a sense of righteousness and innocence while we're still here. Maybe we will even settle for the mere hope that eventually humans will live correctly, as we see fit.

Science isn't a method, it's a name for a tradition with a history of changing methods and evolving views of what an object is, how it relates to the scientist attempting to apprehend it , and thus how to achieve objectivity. — Joshs

I refer you to "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper. In that book you will discover why science is precisely a method, and what that method is.

For a concise exposition of the state-of-the-art in our understanding of the scientific method, try this brilliant paper:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02048.pdf

I think the answer to the question of the OP is—trees, houses, cars, animals, people, the stars, the planets, etc..

I mean I think this first answer, this prephilosophical answer, is the right answer.

Why?

Well, what do we mean by “trees, houses….the planets, etc.”?

I think we mean dividedness. Reality divided up into a number of discrete things. To say that you believe that Reality is physical is to say that you believe Reality is divided up into many discrete things.

To say that you believe that Reality is not physical is to say that you believe Reality is not divided up into many discrete things. (Experience for example (subjective experience) is not physical because it is not divided up into discrete things.)

That list, “trees, houses, etc.” is a list of material objects, or bodies, or substances. Physics doesn’t believe in the reality of these things anymore. It believes that Reality, physical reality, is waves and forces and energy in timespace (or something like that).

So believers in the reality of the Physical say that the physical reality they believe in is not discrete substances—but it is still physical.

I disagree. I think physics, howsoever sophisticated it is, still involves physicists pointing to different things, this and that, that is to say to at least two things. They believe (perhaps at bottom) that you can talk about different regions of Reality: that out there, this down here; that to the left, this to the right, etc.. (In so far as physics becomes fuzzier, equivocates about its independence from the mental, says that Time is subjective, that something can be in two places at once, etc., equivocates about dividedness, says that there is also a countervailing physical reality of oneness (such that all the fields and waves of the physical universe are felt, if to an infinitesimally small degree—everywhere)—then it is no longer the Physical.)

Left and Right, Up and Down, In Front and Behind: that’s all you need for dividedness. You just need two things, of which you can say, “This is different from (non-identical to) that”. Doesn’t even matter that they can talk about infinitesimally graded continua (of forces or fields or something), they still have to say “from here to there”. —And there you have it again, two discrete things, two timespace points.

Doesn’t matter how clever they get, how they equivocate, how their answers are lost in impenetrable hieroglyphics or paradox—you will always find this, this division into at least two, right at the base of things.

That’s because, in a Kantian sort of way, it is the form of their supposition. And that supposition is this, at base: there is a scientist and there is a thing he is looking at. That is to say—before any sort of thought about minds or representation or looking or knowing—there are two things, this (whether a mind or an eye or whether just a lump of some kind) — and that.

I am not saying that the basis of dividedness is Subject and Object. I am saying that the basis of dividedness is that there is a thing in a certain place, not a mind, but a brain (or a particular location, if you like, such as say, Paris, or London) and another thing in another place. (That after all is the most significant corollary of the physicalist principle: thoughts happen in places, they are in brains, or they are the whirrings and grindings of brains.)

Substances in space, atoms and the void—that was Materialism. But it wasn’t that people saw material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered weren’t there) and failed to see the forces, waves and fields between those material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered were there): it was all the time merely a representation of a concept of dividedness. You think there are many things. So you make a picture of coloured-in bits and non-coloured in bits.

Why does the physicist think there are two things, Earth, if you like, and a galaxy he is looking at? —Because the ground of everything he is doing is—say—his hope of getting a Nobel prize. That hope he has of getting the Nobel prize, contrasted with his current Reality, of not having the Nobel prize—is the form of Reality that is his heart and blood. And he sees it in every thing he looks at.

It needn’t be the Nobel prize; any hope will do—or any dread. But he always has one or the other. We all do. Hope or Desire contrasted with Dread or Hatred. That is the basis of Dividedness. That is the basis of the Physical: Will.

We are all hoping and dreading all the time, to a greater or lesser degree. That is why we are all incorrigibly, prephilosophically, Physicalists. That is why the casual language of the everyday is physicalist.

Physics doesn’t believe in the reality of these things anymore. It believes that Reality, physical reality, is waves and forces and energy in timespace (or something like that). — Dominic Osborn

I think that this is fundamentally untrue. What is expressed by physicists is the reality of quantum mechanics. And a quantum is inherently a discrete, individual unit. So physical reality as represented by quantum mechanics, is still discrete individual things.

Wave functions and field theories are mathematical (therefore non-physical) principles which are applied toward understanding this physical reality of quantum existence. The quanta of physical reality are then expressed as particles. It is metaphysical speculation, and not physics itself, which assigns reality to the non-physical fields and wave functions, rather than the quanta of physical existence, the particles. What is the case is that the exact nature of the quantum, or particle of existence is not understood, so speculators turn to the mathematical theories rather than the empirical observations, as a more accurate description of what is real.

Perhaps we say that things are immaterial or intangible simply because we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste them. The idea that something is non-physical might mean something quite different; for example that it cannot be understood in terms of physics, even in principle. Is the notion that something is not materials the same as the idea that it is not physical? — Janus

If the immaterial, or non-physical things aren't accessible by the senses, then how is it that we even know about anything non-physical? Our knowledge itself is composed of sensory impressions. Anything we know is something we can see, touch, smell, hear or taste. Even words and numbers are colored shapes, or sounds. We then go about attributing abstract concepts to these visual and auditory symbols, which are also in the form of other visuals, sounds, etc. So it seems that if the non-physical is inaccessible by the senses, then it is similar to saying that the non-physical doesn't exist.

Even better for my theory. Useful info - thanks.

Sore, you decree this from above, with no explanation. Why not, explanations are totally subjective. — tom

If you'd like an explanation just ask. Whether or not you'll accept that explanation is another matter.

Re "you decree this from above", I don't consider my views superior or anything like that. Maybe you think that because my claim seems to challenge or disagree with your views. "Explanations" just seem to be facts in my view though. I'm just stating what my ontological belief is with regards to explanations.

Meanwhile in reality, explanations of a certain broad category may be tested and compared objectively, by experiment. The other class of explanations may be criticised and compared using objective criteria like the one I gave earlier. — tom

How are you using "objective" there? I use it to refer to location: "objective" is everything that is not mental; "subjective" is everything that is mental. Explanations occur in minds; it's not something that non-minds do. Otherwise, you'd have to tell me where we would find explanations that occur in the world that are not mental. The same with "criteria": where in the world do criteria occur/originate from?

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