Is a physical mental state a contradiction? To truly argue that, you would need to provide your understanding of the word "physical." — Uber

It might not be a contradiction, but it probably is a mistake. There appears to be no sense in which any particular physical state is necessarily associated with any particular, or indeed any mental state. We know this because all computationally universal devices are equivalent, thus there is no correlation between physical and computational states.

Wayfarer:

Let's be clear about the subject of the debate. The subject of the debate is whether the argument from reason is sound and logically valid. The argument states that naturalism is self-refuting because it pretends to be a rational belief about the world but then suggests that everything comes down to irrational causes, including the formation of beliefs themselves. Thus naturalism implies that belief in naturalism is irrational. This is the short version, obviously, but it's good to remember what we are actually discussing, and not what you think we are discussing. So the conclusion at stake is: naturalism is a self-defeating belief. Everything outside of that is all premises, and that's where the real debate lies.

If you follow your own argument closely, you will find that it's a total mess. You tell us that reason has to be what we use to determine objectivity. Reason is prior to any objective process. So then: how do we know that reason is prior to objectivity? Did you not use an objective process to determine that reason is prior to objectivity? If you didn't, then how is your conclusion objective? This seems to imply that reason is totally different from objectivity. In other words, naturalism is not a reasonable belief, but it can still be an objective one! Maybe you should concretely define these terms if you want this argument to actually make sense. That includes terms like "capacity for abstraction." You have basically thrown out a million different phrases in this post that all just amount to, "the capabilities of the brain." This point matters because you seem to be making the same mistake as Lewis, using a kind of theoretical (read: BS) definition of reason that does not apply to how human beings actually think.

Interesting tidbit to remember here: even if you fully accept the argument from reason, it does not mean that naturalism is false. It just means that it's not a rational belief. But it could still be true for other reasons. Plenty of irrational and unjustified beliefs can be true, and often are.

How can the information be the same while the material representation differs?

By not mixing up terms and equivocating. The information is stored as neural memory in the brain. The information is not the same thing as its material representation. The reason why we know you are talking about a bridge when you write "bridge" or a cake when you show us a picture of a cake is because prior experiences have primed our brains to make certain associations between symbols and physical objects. Take your recipe for a chocolate cake. Write it on a piece of paper using a language we both know. Write it on a stone tablet using symbols we know. Write it on a ship using sketch figures we both know. In all cases, the way I know you are talking about a chocolate cake is because presumably we got together beforehand and discussed what these symbols mean, and how or where they will be written. That information is then stored in our neural memories and every time you send me a chocolate recipe in a different medium I immediately know what you mean...because the sight of the recipe activates the relevant parts of my memory. Suppose you're the only one involved in this scenario, and you write down the recipe in three different codes, each on a different medium. Nothing fundamentally changes. Now the information only exists in your particular brain, but it's still physical.

This extends to logic and math as well. On a structuralist account, logical and mathematical objects make sense in relation to their larger structures. What are the structures and where do they exist? Ontologically, they are organized memory states in the brain. So when a mathematician needs to use ZFC set theory for something, he or she can recall the axioms just like that, because they are deeply embedded in the brain (presumably really well after years of neural networks related to math forming and growing). "But Uber, if logic exists in the brain, how can it be universally true?" Again, depends on your theory of truth! Under the correspondence theory, logical statements are said to capture something intrinsic about material reality, and that's what makes them true. But it does not follow that logical statements exist everywhere like causal danglers, with no one to think of them, make sense of them, or write them down. Is this psychologism? No because I am arguing that mathematical and logical objects do have objective value in relation to their wider systems. And these relations are useful because they can correspond to physical interactions in material reality. Indeed, the relations themselves emerged out of our examination of and interaction with material reality.

One can provide a sensible definition of physical things without worrying about the wavefunction and the measurement problem. Here is one candidate: a physical thing is any system subject to energetic constraints. These constraints could be conservation interactions for macroscopic systems, uncertainty principles for quantum systems (which covers any and all scenarios, regardless of whether the wavefunction actually exists or whether it's a mathematical construct), or any other constraint on how much energy a system can have or share with other systems. What is energy? They teach the kids that it's the ability to do mechanical work, but that ignores all other kinds of energy (heat, radiation, etc). The simplest and yet most universal definition of energy is this: different states of motion. This is the fundamental feature of all that exists. Over 90% of the mass-energy of a proton is fluctuating quantum fields; the rest is in the gluons, also furiously moving around. Thus a physical thing is anything that has constrained states of motion. Particles? Check? Fields? Check. Consciousness? Absolutely check. Try starving yourself and see how much rational thinking you can pull off.

Questions you might have:

1) Where do the constraints come from?

In the quantum case we don't always know, but it doesn't affect the reliability of my definition. All we need to be sure of is that these constraints are empirically valid, and the uncertainty principle most certainly is! Thank you 1000 experiments in quantum physics.

2) What is doing the moving?

If energy is motion, then we should want to know what's doing the moving. But having this knowledge also doesn't affect the definition. Let's say it's a car. Is the motion of the car somehow constrained? Absolutely yes. Let's say it's the sequence of thoughts inside your brain as you're reading this. Is the motion of the neurons in your brain constrained? Absolutely yes. The emergent consious states in your brain? Absolutely yes. If you seriously believe your ability to think has no constraints whatsoever, then see above. Or try to compute 3473.262427 x 2728292.9263 instantly without a calculator. Or try to think of fifty different and fully formed sentences in two seconds (fully formed and different, not vague notions or the same thing repeated!).

Thus I've done what few people in this forum seemed to have any interest in doing: provide a general definition of physical stuff that at the same time demarcates naturalism from supernaturalism. Clearly God should not be energetically constrained! And the soul can apparently survive for eternity after death. So, very much a reasonable dividing line between the two realms.

Science and philosophy have more overlap than you believe. I reject the subtle implication that philosophy only cares about the human condition. That narrows philosophy too much. As a matter of practice, philosophers also study the wider state of the world and try to make sense of it.

Your admission that science is rational contradicts your line of reasoning above. For how can science be rational when it tries to search for irrational causes? That would imply that all scientific beliefs are irrational. Suppose I tried to understand a disease in natural terms or tried to explain a weird sound in natural terms. My belief that the sound has a natural cause should be irrational, because it was produced by irrational causes. Same for the disease. On this silly argument, all of science is irrational, not just ontological naturalism.

Thus I've done what few people in this forum seemed to have any interest in doing: provide a general definition of physical stuff that at the same time demarcates naturalism from supernaturalism. Clearly God should not be energetically constrained! And the soul can apparently survive for eternity after death. So, very much a reasonable dividing line between the two realms.

This is interesting. Have you read Hart's The Engines of the Soul? He supports Cartesian dualism and does so along with the incorporation of the idea that the relation between mind and body is to be modelled in terms of energy transference and (by implication) constraint. So, if Hart is right (and of course I'm not saying he is) energy conservation won't demarcate the material from the mental. I suppose it might still allow for some sense of demarcating the physical, but from what? The abstract maybe, but we can do that with just the idea that the physical is whatever has spatiotemporal location can't we?

any particular physical state is necessarily associated with any particular mental state

You don't need necessary connections. The basic idea behind most of cognitive neuroscience these days is the functionalist one that what a mental state is can be defined in terms of what typically causes it and what it typically causes. We then make the assumption that that particular, abstractly defined causal role is, as a matter of contingent fact, performed by the brain (or the brain + other parts of the body and even, if you want to go externalist, + parts of the environment). What I see Anil Seth and his ilk as doing is working in the context of that kind of view of the mind - they are just using technological advances to push the investigation further on from the general handwaving you used to get in functionalist theories of mind.

A problem with the view that the physical is whatever has spatiotemporal location is that physicists increasingly believe time and space are themselves emergent properties of quantum entanglement. So my definition covers those systems too (ie. the things that give rise to space and time).

I have no problem saying that brain states and conscious states have different physical properties. That's the central message of modern condensed matter theory: reality has different physical orders, phases, etc. But if they are energetically constrained, they are physical by definition.

Thus I've done what few people in this forum seemed to have any interest in doing: provide a general definition of physical stuff that at the same time demarcates naturalism from supernaturalism. Clearly God should not be energetically constrained! And the soul can apparently survive for eternity after death. So, very much a reasonable dividing line between the two realms. — Uber

Absolutely. Monism doesn't preclude the possibility of a spiritual realm.

The basic idea behind most of cognitive neuroscience these days is the functionalist one that what a mental state is can be defined in terms of what typically causes it and what it typically causes. — jkg20

But since we know that completely different and unrelated physical states give rise to identical mental states, then cataloging human physical states cannot take us anywhere to solving the hard problem.

A problem with the view that the physical is whatever has spatiotemporal location is that physicists increasingly believe time and space are themselves emergent properties of quantum entanglement. So my definition covers those systems too (ie. the things that give rise to space and time). — Uber

Not sure there are any viable theories of an emergent space.

Ah, I kind of agree with that. I think functionalists would tend, however, to say that ultimately there simply is no hard problem in the sense that we're talking about. A thoroughgoing functionalist will presumably hold to the idea that to give a full account of what a mental state is just is to give its entire functional role (of course, that would be a theoretical ideal, in scientific practice we could get by with something less than the ideal in order to identify which mental states we were investigating) - there's nothing left over after we do that, that needs explaining (including qualia or whatever your prefered term happens to be). We then, as neuroscientists, move on to how those functional roles are actually manifested in human biology (since our interests are pragmatic) and we see what useful stuff we can come up with with curing blindness/epilepsy etc etc.
That might be a less grandiose project than Seth and co claim they are engaged in, but as far as I can tell that is the most that they can be engaged in or as scientists would want to be engaged in.

Not sure there are any viable theories of an emergent space.

Yep, but if or when there are, they will be physical and treat of physical events which are not spatiotemporal, so @Uber is right that his idea of the physical in terms of energy constraints is more inclusive than mine in terms of spatiotemporal locations. Of course, if one day physics drops the notion of energy, seeing even energy as an emergent feature of something else then things become more complicated. Of course, I'm probably making a mistake there in even treating energy as a kind of stuff, I've heard some physicists compare it to an accounting device that just has to turn out to be balanced when calculations are made.

Yep, but if or when there are, they will be physical and treat of physical events which are not spatiotemporal, so Uber is right that his idea of the physical in terms of energy constraints is more inclusive than mine in terms of spatiotemporal locations. — jkg20

Well, the total energy of the Universe is zero. So much for energy constraints

That's an interpretation of GR among some physicists. Lawrence Krauss frequently mentions it. Sean Carroll has mentioned variations of the same idea. It may be right. Even if you believe that claim, it still provides a constraint: zero. That limits the amount of matter and radiation that can be generated in the Universe, because it must always cancel out the negative potential energy associated with gravity. So energy is still constrained even in this scenario. You cannot have more positive energy in matter and radiation than negative potential energy in gravitation, assuming the zero-energy hypothesis is true. Seems like about one of the most powerful constraints one can imagine, if not the most powerful.

Physics does not make any sense unless energy is subject to constraints. This is more of an issue for the philosophers to debate. As in, what are constraints? Where do they come from? And so on.

Why do you have to operate outside of reason in order to show that reason is amenable to a naturalistic treatment? There seems to be no obvious contradiction in supposing that we can use the tools of reason to investigate what reason is and how it surfaced. — MetaphysicsNow

Because of the 'postulate of objectivity' that is basic in natural philosophy. This says something like that knowledge can only be obtained of mind-independent objects - by the analysis of what is objectively existent or real. It falls out of the paradigm of naturalism generally - the distinction, or the 'split', between observer and observed, the scientist and the thing being analysed. From the beginning of modern science, 'reason' is presumed to be something internal to the workings of the mind. And where is 'mind' in the modern scientific view? It's an epiphenomenon, or emergent phenomenon, of the (physical) brain. The mind is therefore generally is regarded as an aspect of the subjective order.

So in order to investigate how reason arises in the brain, we have to examine the workings of the brain; understanding the mechanism of reason, turns out to require an immense knowledge of the massive complexities of neuroscience. But, I'm saying that even to do neuroscience, we're constantly invoking and relying on the very thing we're wanting to explain, because whenever we assert that 'this data means that...' then we're already employing the tools of rational inference. And then when you do that, ask yourself whether what has been demonstrated with respect to the 'nature of reason' resides in the data, or is it inferred in the mind of the observing scientist (and yourself, when you understand what it means?) In order to 'see the nature of reason' you yourself must be a rational being; you can't see it from some point outside of it.

This is why I'm saying that reason can't be understood as a physical (or neuro-physiological) process. And this is basically one of the transcendental arguments, descended from Kant - that reason transcends natural science, because the natural sciences presume and are required to use reason to even frame the question or investigate anything whatever. But, the way modern science developed, from the early modern period, the constructive role of reason in the formulation of hypotheses is forgotten or neglected. That is one of the main points of the CPR as I understand it ('things conforming to thoughts'.)

Kant understood that both everyday life and scientific knowledge rests on, and is made orderly, by some very basic assumptions that aren't self-evident but can't be entirely justified by empirical observations. For instance, we assume that the physical world will conform to mathematical principles. Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason that our belief that 'every event has a cause' is such an assumption; perhaps, also, our belief that effects follow necessarily from their causes; but many today reject his classification of such claims as “synthetic a priori.” Regardless of whether one agrees with Kant's account of what these assumptions are, his justification of them is thoroughly modern since it is essentially pragmatic. They make science possible. More generally, they make the world knowable. Kant in fact argues that in their absence our experience from one moment to the next would not be the coherent and intelligible stream that it is.

Kant claims that nothing in our experience is just “given” to us in a pure form unadulterated by the way we think. Our cognitive apparatus is always both receptive and active. Variations on this theme have become commonplace in modern philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics. What we call “facts” or “data” are theory-laden or concept-laden. Hegel, Nietzsche, Sellars, and Kuhn are among those who have developed this insight. Some, like Hilary Putnam, take it further, arguing that so-called facts are value-laden since how we apply concepts like causality reflects our interests. As William James famously remarked, “the trail of the human serpent is over everything.” 1

As I quoted from Jacques Maritain previously, the sense are 'permeated by reason'. So you can't put reason aside and study it from the outside as a natural phenomena - it is always assumed by the act of rational analysis. (This is also the basic approach of Husserl's critique of Naturalism. If you can get hold of Dermot Moran's Routledge Reader in Phenomenology, it's laid out succinctly.) As someone else recently quoted here, 'facts' are like ships in bottles -carefully constructed so as to appear that nobody put them there.

Because I associate "mental representation" with semantics, and "material representation" with physical signs, I would re-phrase your conclusion as follows:

The signs (in this case, recipes and specifications encoded in different languages, i.e., physical information) are completely different, but their associated semantic information is the same. — Galuchat

Right - I'd go along with that. It still enables me to make the point that the signs and what they convey are of a different order. Whenever we read anything, we're interpolating, interpreting, inferring - that alone is the capability of the rational mind. (Of course we can now build instruments that do likewise, but they're creations of, and extensions of, that same mind.)

Monism doesn't preclude the possibility of a spiritual realm. — Galuchat

I would have thought any monism would preclude the possibility of separate realms.

Anil Seth's predictive theory of consciousness addresses the major points that you raised. He literally sees the brain as a biochemical prediction machine. — Uber

'Materialist predicts eventual success of materialism'.

. Reason is prior to any objective process. So then: how do we know that reason is prior to objectivity? Did you not use an objective process to determine that reason is prior to objectivity? — Uber

No, because the postulates of pure mathematics are true prior to any objective validation. It only becomes a matter for empirical validation when it's applied to the sensory domain. But we know the truths of reason intuitively and without reference to anything whatever. When we know a concept, that knowledge is not reliant on sensory experience, or any experience.

Of course, knowledge proceeds step-wise, creating postulates, making predictions, testing them out, going back and re-thinking. Nothing I've said undermines that. What I'm saying is that, science itself relies on reasoning, some component of which is always implicit, internal to thought, pre-conscious etc. This is one of the main findings of philosophy of science, Kuhn, Polanyi, and the like.

Interesting tidbit to remember here: even if you fully accept the argument from reason, it does not mean that naturalism is false. It just means that it's not a rational belief. But it could still be true. Plenty of irrational and unjustified beliefs can be true, and often are. — Uber

Naturalism isn't necessarily false - what is at issue is whether naturalism explains the nature of reason, if the faculty of reason is within scope for naturalism and natural sciences. My argument is simply that reason precedes science, in the sense that, for there to be a natural philosophy or science at all, then from the very outset, principles have to be elucidated, axioms discovered, inferences made. So reason is epistemologically prior to naturalism, in the sense that it already must be operating for naturalism to get out of bed. But that has been lost sight of, or forgotten.

That is why, every such argument ultimately appeals to neo-darwinian materialism. It thinks that it has an 'in-principle' account of how the brain evolved which underlies the various forms of naturalised epistemology and physicalist theories of mind. And that is what is being called to question: because I don't accept that the nature of reason is ultimately a matter of biology. That is not to say that evolutionary biology can't study the stages by which h. sapiens evolved to the point of being able to use reason and language; but I take issue with the idea that these faculties can therefore be understood through the lens of biology or even modern science, insofar as it holds to a materialist paradigm.

By not mixing up terms and equivocating. The information is stored as neural memory in the brain. — Uber

But it's not established. That all relies on the 'computational' model of consciousness, which is itself subject to much dispute. As I replied to MN above, even to determine the sense in which information is 'in' the brain, involves an equivocation between form, structure and meaning.

This point matters because you seem to be making the same mistake as Lewis, using a kind of theoretical (read: BS) definition of reason that does not apply to how human beings actually think. — Uber

This point matters, because it indicates that you haven't understood the argument, and of course have no real interest in so doing, any more than I would have an interest in a materialist philosophy of mind.

And the quotation I provided from Lloyd Gerson argues that, if materialism were true, you couldn't think. I wonder if you see the point of that argument?

I reject the subtle implication that philosophy only cares about the human condition. That narrows philosophy too much. As a matter of practice, philosophers also study the wider state of the world and try to make sense of it. — Uber

Not 'philosophy only cares'; 'only philosophy cares'. I said the difference between science and philosophy is that the latter is concerned with qualitative questions, with the domain of meaning and value - precisely those qualities materialists never tire of informing us are completely absent from the 'real universe' (as if this amounts to a triumph of secular humanism.)

Thus a physical thing is anything that has constrained states of motion. — Uber

That is as nice a summary as any.

But to build on that, I would generalise it to "constraints on instability or uncertainty" so as to better pick up an information theoretic perspective on the physics, as well as make a clearer connection to the science of life and mind.

The problem with materialism was that it reduced an Aristotelian naturalism - the full four causes kind - to just bottom-up construction. Nature became a cause and effect tale of material/efficient causation. The physical was defined by what was atomistic, mechanical, local, deterministic, monadic, etc.

But a full four causes physicalism would include the idea of causation via top-down constraints. That is, formal and final cause as well. And a constraints-based metaphysics indeed goes further in making constraints primary. The structure is what produces the material contents. The constraints are the global limits that produce the locally individuated features - the particles, the events, the excitations, the degrees of freedom, or however else we are currently conceiving of the material/efficient causes of Being.

Even Newtonian physics depended on global constraints in the form of laws, global symmetries or boundary conditions. And now - through the information theoretic turn of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics - constraints are being explicitly modelled as "material objects" like event horizons or holographic bounds. There are exact mathematical relations emerging between spatiotemporal extent and the number of local degrees of freedom that such a volume can contain.

So spacetime as a container, and states of motion or action as the contents, have a constant balance. They are two faces of the same coin. And we see all that coming together nicely now in a general shift to an entropy-based accounting system that unifies all our descriptions of nature.

The best general theories of brain function are the ones that emphasise a global minimisation of system uncertainty. The brain is a "machine" that learns to predict the future by minimising its uncertainty about what is likely to be the case.

And the cosmos is also a "machine" that has constructed itself by thermalising away its quantum uncertainty as much as possible. At its Heat Death, its states of motion will be as minimal as could be imagined. All that will be left is a homogenous sizzle of blackbody radiation emitted by cosmological event horizons.

So in dealing with the OP, I am saying that physicalism has been through its arch-materialist phase and is coming back around to a grander constraints-based physics that incorporates an appropriate understanding of top-down formal/final causation. We are cashing out naturalism as it was originally envisaged. Reality is the emergent thing of an intelligible structure imposed on brute uncertainty.

Which makes it as much mind-like as matter-like in our physicalist descriptions.

So, your question ("So how can the information be the same as the material representation?") doesn't make sense to me. — Galuchat

I'll try again. Take 'some item of information' - I gave two examples. That information can be reproduced exactly, down to the last detail, in completely different physical forms. It can be represented in binary code, carved in stone, written on paper. Every representation is different. But the information that it represents is identical. So - what is different, and what stays the same? Of course, because you and I are capable of learning languages and codes, then it seems a pretty trivial question, but I think it says something interesting.

If I define "object" as "actuality", can noumena be called mental objects? I agree that "mind" per se, does not exist, however; as a mass noun, it is the label we attach to the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by an organism which produce its behaviour. So, calling it simply 'that which grasps meaning' is a gross oversimplification (which we can explore in greater detail if you like). — Galuchat

The reason I wanted to say mind is what 'grasps meaning' is so as to stress its non-objective nature. I'm not saying that it's all there is to it, or that it can't be elaborated - but to differentiate it from the sense of 'res cogitans' as a 'thinking thing'.

The reason I wanted to say mind is what 'grasps meaning' — Wayfarer

Note how you are privileging perception over action. You are defining the dichotomy of subjective~objective in terms of an observer standing apart from the observable. So there is a representational paradigm at work here. And that is where the anti-naturalistic dualism stems from - this built-in sense that the mind stands apart from the world.

So your language assumes its premises.

Pragmatism and semiotics were the effort to naturalise "the mind" by switching to an embodied and enactive description of the essential relation. Meaning becomes use, as they say. We don't just grasp meaning. We exist as useful habits of interpretation. We know what to do when faced with a world composed of marks or signs.

You are thinking always from the point of view of the observer who stands outside nature. Your ontology is based on a transcending disconnect between the perceiving self and the actual world.

But a proper naturalist sees consciousness in terms of habits of interpretance, embodied actions. The self and its world (or umwelt) emerge as triadic relation. That is the way to bridge a dualistic disconnect.

I suppose there is an issue about burden of proof here. The anti-naturalist seems to think that it is for the naturalist to show that his/her position is not self-refuting in some way, whilst the naturalist seems to think that it is for the anti-naturalist to show that it is self-refuting. I've not seen an argument to show who really has the burden of proof here. — MetaphysicsNow

I would say there is no burden of proof because there simply is no proof either way. Naturalism and ant-naturalism are just the dialectical poles that present two possible, or imaginable, perspectives. They involve entirely different presuppositions, and when one tries to refute the other they always seem to do so tendentiously, that is, using their own, instead of their opponent's, presuppositions, to impute a purported contradiction in the other's position.

These kinds of arguments that endlessly talk past one another are unproductive and boring

Naturalism and ant-naturalism are just the dialectical poles that present two possible, or imaginable, perspectives. — Janus

Or instead, dialectics is itself dichotomous in a fashion that sometimes you have a unitary dichotomy - one in which the two poles are simply opposite ways of saying the same essential thing - and sometimes they are the "other" thing of two actually opposing generalisations.

Once a generality is itself made particular in this fashion - a choice of two generalities - then the either/or of the LEM does apply. So supernaturalists can be wrong in arguing transcendence over immanence, duality over unity. :)

I don't think it can ever be absolutely definitive, but I think this approach can at least put to rest the interminable controversy over whether ontological priority belongs to mind or to matter, and it leaves the way open for more interesting investigations.

So supernaturalists can be wrong in arguing transcendence over immanence, duality over unity. :) — apokrisis

True, but in a like sense naturalists could also be wrong in arguing immanence over transcendence or unity over duality (or plurality), since just as there is no transcendence without immanence and no plurality without unity, there is no immanence without transcendence or unity without plurality.

So...Hegelian sublation?

Note how you are privileging perception over action. You are defining the dichotomy of subjective~objective in terms of an observer standing apart from the observable. So there is a representational paradigm at work here. And that is where the anti-naturalistic dualism stems from - this built-in sense that the mind stands apart from the world. — apokrisis

Not in the least. The mind doesn't ultimately stand apart from the world - the mind and the world are not finally able to be separated. We receive a constant flux of sensations and impressions (as per empiricism) but these are continually organised by the interpretive and synthetic activities of the mind (per Kant). But together, this all comprises the 'umwelt' or 'lebenwelt' - as you say further down. My criticism is directed at the view that 'the mind' is able to be understood as a process that is inherent (for example) the brain - I am trying to articulate the role of 'objectification' in naturalising epistemology.

I am saying that reason is always involved in this activity as a constituent of the process of cognition. How could it not be? That is how discursive thinking operates. So it can't be understood solely in neurobiological terms, as it 'transcends objectification'. That is why I am saying that Uber's response must always be question-begging i.e. assuming what it needs to prove in such statements as:

What are the structures and where do they exist? Ontologically, they are organized memory states in the brain. — Uber

the information only exists in your particular brain, but it's still physical. — Uber

And the way I'm trying to do that, is by arguing that abstractions, numbers, the rules of logic, and so forth, cannot be understood as physical - that they are solely intelligible, i.e. exist only as objects of thought, but are real. And that, hence, there are real things, that are not physical (using the words 'things' and 'objects of thought' as analogies, as they're not actually 'things' or 'objects'.)

You are thinking always from the point of view of the observer who stands outside nature. Your ontology is based on a transcending disconnect between the perceiving self and the actual world. — apokrisis

I am saying that the naive scientific attitude is that there is an observer apart from the thing observed. Is that not the case? And isn't it the case that it was the 'observer problem' that came up in the early twentieth century that challenged that understanding?

a proper naturalist sees consciousness in terms of habits of interpretance, embodied actions. The self and its world (or umwelt) emerge as triadic relation. That is the way to bridge a dualistic disconnect. — apokrisis

Well, what you're describing as 'a proper naturalism' might not be the mainstream view, which I think is considerably more 'mechanistic' than yours.

But is 'bridging the dualistic disconnect' a matter for naturalism at all? Where does that fit into the picture of natural science?

But a full four causes physicalism would include the idea of causation via top-down constraints. That is, formal and final cause as well. — apokrisis

You keep saying this, but what does it mean, in practice? Where does intention or intentionality enter the picture? Is that part of the schema at the outset, or does it only arise at the point where there are conscious agents?

Interesting tidbit to remember here: even if you fully accept the argument from reason, it does not mean that naturalism is false. It just means that it's not a rational belief. But it could still be true for other reasons. Plenty of irrational and unjustified beliefs can be true, and often are. — Uber

This is a contradiction: if a belief is "true for reasons" then it is (potentially at least, even if those 'reasons' are unknown at present) a rational belief.

I can't see anything in what you say here that would support a non-prejudicial conclusion that reason is, in any way, either prior to, or separate from, material existence. Perhaps I missed it: if you could summarize...?

I wasn't really focusing on the burden of proof question. The problem there is that naturalism takes on that burden as epistemically foundational - nature is defined in terms of the observable. And supernaturalism has a history of equivocating.

Either it presents "evidence" (like the existence of miracles), or it argues from "reason" (the need for a first cause, a prime mover), or it argues from one of the supposed failures of naturalism (an inability to explain freewill, goodness, whatever).

So the dichotomy there is that naturalists expect empirical validation, supernaturalists show they aren't that bothered.

...but I think this approach can at least put to rest the interminable controversy over whether ontological priority belongs to mind or to matter, and leaves the way open for more interesting investigations. — Janus

So are we agreeing that a semiotic naturalism has the advantage of being triadic and so able to include both matter and mind in its one scheme?

True, but in a like sense naturalists could also be wrong in arguing immanence over transcendence or unity over duality (or plurality), since just as there is no transcendence without immanence and no plurality without unity, there is no immanence without transcendence or unity without plurality.

So...Hegelian sublation? — Janus

Peircean semiosis is better as it resolves itself into a hierarchical relation - global constraints of local freedoms.

So an Aristotelian/Peircean naturalist could not be wrong as they are arguing for a transcendence that is "merely" the kind of transcendence that is a development of hierarchical complexity. And with complexity comes a greater degree of locally meaningful individuation or plurality.

So immanence goes with emergence. A system that is closed for causation and yet also capable of open-ended complexification ... at least up until the time it runs out of sustaining resources. (ie: It is, in the end, a system closed for causation.)

Transcendence generally tries to deny that thesis so it presents a genuinely opposed ontology. Although of course - like Hegel, like NaturPhilosophie, or even Peirce in his cranky old age - theism can try to work its way back to an immanent ontology, one where the divine is self-causing.

But still, equivocation has to be in operation. My brand of naturalism says that "the mind" is a complex particular rather than a simple general. That is why it sits within the world as modelled by physicalism. Physicalism can understand what that means.

A naturalism that wants to embrace the supernatural elements of the "spiritual" or the "divine" have to talk about those as simple generals - basic universal essences or substances. So in that way, a (super)naturalism could be distinguished still from a physicalist naturalism based on semiotics, pragmatism, information theory and complexity theory.

Immanence is the claim that reality is self-organising or bootstrapping. And science is cashing that out in terms of models that work.

Theists can also be attracted to immanence as the rationally best ontological story in being a causally closed ontological story. But then the other half of that - the empirical evidence - is at best equivocated. Well also, the theoretical half is equivocal as it lacks the necessary mathematical framing. There aren't the definite ideas to be definitely tested.

One can provide a sensible definition of physical things without worrying about the wavefunction and the measurement problem. Here is one candidate: a physical thing is any system subject to energetic constraints. These constraints could be conservation interactions for macroscopic systems, uncertainty principles for quantum systems (which covers any and all scenarios, regardless of whether the wavefunction actually exists or whether it's a mathematical construct), or any other constraint on how much energy a system can have or share with other systems. What is energy? They teach the kids that it's the ability to do mechanical work, but that ignores all other kinds of energy (heat, radiation, etc). The simplest and yet most universal definition of energy is this: different states of motion. This is the fundamental feature of all that exists. Over 90% of the mass-energy of a proton is fluctuating quantum fields; the rest is in the gluons, also furiously moving around. Thus a physical thing is anything that has constrained states of motion. Particles? Check? Fields? Check. Consciousness? Absolutely check. Try starving yourself and see how much rational thinking you can pull off.

Questions you might have:

1) Where do the constraints come from?

In the quantum case we don't always know, but it doesn't affect the reliability of my definition. All we need to be sure of is that these constraints are empirically valid, and the uncertainty principle most certainly is! Thank you 1000 experiments in quantum physics.

2) What is doing the moving?

If energy is motion, then we should want to know what's doing the moving. But having this knowledge also doesn't affect the definition. Let's say it's a car. Is the motion of the car somehow constrained? Absolutely yes. Let's say it's the sequence of thoughts inside your brain as you're reading this. Is the motion of the neurons in your brain constrained? Absolutely yes. The emergent consious states in your brain? Absolutely yes. If you seriously believe your ability to think has no constraints whatsoever, then see above. Or try to compute 3473.262427 x 2728292.9263 instantly without a calculator. Or try to think of fifty different and fully formed sentences in two seconds (fully formed and different, not vague notions or the same thing repeated!).

Thus I've done what few people in this forum seemed to have any interest in doing: provide a general definition of physical stuff that at the same time demarcates naturalism from supernaturalism. Clearly God should not be energetically constrained! And the soul can apparently survive for eternity after death. So, very much a reasonable dividing line between the two realms. — Uber

Your definition of "physical" is missing something, Uber. It is missing a clear definition or explanation of "constraint". It relies on "constraint" as a crucial term, but what "constraint" means is left vague. If the physical is that which is constrained, then a "constraint" in the context of your definition, must be non-physical. Does that make sense to you, that a constraint could be non-physical? The instances of constraints which I come across in my life, other than the exertion of will power, which is more properly called "restraint", all seem to be physical constraints. So how does it makes sense to class "constraint" as non-physical?

All we need to be sure of is that these constraints are empirically valid, and the uncertainty principle most certainly is! Thank you 1000 experiments in quantum physics. — Uber

See, look here, you talk about the uncertainty "principle" as if it were a constraint. But a principle does not act to constrain. Isn't a "constraint" supposed to constrain something?

I am saying that reason is always involved in this activity as a constituent of the process of cognition. How could it not be? That is how discursive thinking operates. So it can't be understood as the attribute of the brain as it transcends such objectification. — Wayfarer

Well induction or generalisation may be fundamental to all animal cognition, but deduction would seem to be something secondary that it rather special to linguistically and culturally constrained cognition. It is a further habit that us humans learn to apply and so not fundamental to the mind, or consciousness, itself.

It is an attribute of humans being language-using socialised creatures living in a modern world, post the Ancient Greek development as rationalisation as a general population skill. It is part of the brain's evolutionary wiring only in the sense that the brain has become more hierarchically organised in a fashion that action and behaviour can be constrained in a "deductive" way. The higher brain can form the general goals and leave it to a cascade of increasingly more specified habits to execute the particular actions need to achieve those goals.

But running a hierarchy of control from the top-down - reversing inductive learning to produce retroductive sensorimotor predictions - is still different from the brain implementing the laws of thought. Those are the product of cultural learning.

And that is important to any notion of subjectivity. Culture and language are the constraints that produce that kind of human psychology - the one with a private sense of self. Humans learn to feel like perceiving essences standing apart from an objective world as part of what it means to be a (modern) human.

I am saying that the naive scientific attitude is that there is an observer apart from the thing observed. Is that not the case? And isn't it the case that it was the 'observer problem' that came up in the early twentieth century that challenged that understanding? — Wayfarer

I agree there. That was what reductionism was about.

Well, what you're describing as 'a proper naturalism' might not be the mainstream view, which I think is considerably more 'mechanistic' than yours. — Wayfarer

Again true. I'm not mainstream I guess. :)

You keep saying this, but what does it mean, in practice? Where does intention or intentionality enter the picture? Is that part of the schema at the outset, or does it only arise at the point where there are conscious agents? — Wayfarer

Naturalism would recognise finality as something that is itself dichotomised. There is the most general kind of finality - the kind of universal tendency encoded in the second law of thermodynamics in particular. And then there is the highly complex kind of finality which it the intentional and autonomous type of being enjoyed by humans as linguist/social creatures.

So for the project of naturalism to be successful, it would have to be able to see how these two poles of finality are essentially the same while also being essentially different.

A tendency and a purpose are the same in that a system has to be guided by an idea that works. Given a presumption that chance, chaos or instability is fundamental, Being can only persist if it is functional, or tellic. It has to be a structure "wanting" to rebuild itself continually.

But a tendency and a purpose are different - as different as they can be - in that the Cosmos could only reflect the most generic of all purposes (to exist by encoding whatever tendency leads to persistence), and the Mind would be an expression of the most subjective or self-interested kind of goals and purposes (as they are the levels of goal or purpose that subserve the persistence of a complex and individual selfhood).

Let me address Wayfarer first and then I will get to some of the others. There's a lot going on in this thread right now and it's not easy to cover everything.

There is no such thing as the 'principle of objectivity' in naturalism. This is another one of your fantasies that you've created to attack a strawman version of naturalism. You mention that, under naturalism, knowledge of the external world only arises from the "analysis" of what is objectively real, but you do not say what you mean by "analysis," which is a key concept that decides whether this argument succeeds or fails. If I open my eyes and see, I have gained visual knowledge and information about the world, but I did not need any rational analysis to do so. To the extent that the external world is knowable to the brain, it's only because the latter is dynamically coupled to that world. The brain continuously interacts with the world through the exchange of energy and the processing of sensory data. It is through this dynamical interaction that brain activity comes to better understand and approximate the properties of material reality, both by learning and inventing new symbols, ideas, "abstractions," which reside in the brain itself, and by developing a perceptual and predictive apparatus.

I asked you to provide a concrete definition of reason and you didn't, but it's no longer necessary at this point. It's clear you think reason is the mystical power that gives the mind its amazing abilities, and as such cannot possibly be understood within the realm of science. You have artificially constructed reason in a way that it can never be explained. I understand your futile argument perfectly well. The intellectual methods of science being used to explain reason rely on that very reason in order to do the explanation, so they can't ever really explain reason. What actually deflates your bubble is that I fundamentally disagree with this nonsense. Your conception of reason bears no relation to reality. In reality, reason is a feature of human thought, and it arises in dramatically different ways under different conditions.

When using ground-consequent relations, it may emerge as a series of steps and calculations in neural memory that combine to reach a particular conclusion. As David Johnson pointed out in the article, these steps are themselves the products of subconscious mental states that operate in the background, only for the conscious mind to later come along and say, "look how smart I was all along." When it's Magnus Carlsen making a chess move, the conclusion may come to him instantly in an easy position, without the use of any intermediary steps or logical relations. In chess this phenomenon is known as chunking, a way the brain organizes information about a similar class of positions. After you've played thousands of games, the brain has learned both to instantly recognize certain positions and how to respond to them. When asked to recall the answer to an easy trivia question, the brain can almost instantly search its memory bank and yield the answer. This is how reason works in reality. Most of the time brain activity does not even bother going through ground-consequent relations. Of course you will say these are just specific inferences, not acts of reason. But only because you have an unfounded conception of what reason represents. And we haven't even gotten to the times when humans are irrational, when they totally flout logical relations and careful thinking. You know, like the way you're doing in this debate, eminently proving how reason is lacking in some more than others.

Here you go again with the postulates of mathematics. We live in a world where mathematical claims cannot all be reduced to pure logic, which is why mathematicians often fight about what fundamental axioms can be used and which ones should be tossed aside. I'm sorry, does that sound like objective validation impinging on the heavenly perfection of pure math? The horror! You may be further horrified to know that mathematicians throughout history have relied on objective inference to decide which axioms and assumptions are logically fundamental. The axiom of infinity had to be included in axiomatic set theory because they needed a way to justify the infinities of calculus and previously existing branches of mathematics. But wait there's more: the very introduction of infinity into calculus came as a result of trying to accurately solve and model problems in classical mechanics. Now that's objective inference leading the development of logic and reason!

Saying reason is required for naturalism to "get out of bed" is tantamount to saying, "our mental faculties need to function well in order for us to investigate the world." But what determines whether they function well is precisely their interaction with the world. Yeah, lots of things are being lost sight of in this debate.

Stating that information, in the context of your examples, resides in the memory systems of the brain is just stating an objective fact. So in every case you can imagine, the way we know what you "mean" is through our brain recalling a shared system of communication. Thus information is both physical stuff in the brain and physical stuff in the way we represent it on each and every medium.

Philosophy is concerned about many different profound concepts. Truth, meaning, value, knowledge, and existence, to name a few. Do you understand that at least some of these can overlap with science? Or are you repeating with philosophy what you have already done with reason: defining it in a ridiculous way that fits your preconceptions of the world?

By the way, I am still waiting for the dualists to address the epistemological problem. The silence is deafening.

naturalism takes on that burden as epistemically foundational - nature is defined in terms of the observable. And supernaturalism has a history of equivocating. — apokrisis

I don't have much sympathy for supernaturalism, or the notion of absolute transcendence. But I also don't define nature entirely in terms of the observable. I'm open to the numinous, but I draw no conclusions about its metaphysical import.

A system that is closed for causation and yet also capable of open-ended complexification ... at least up until the time it runs out of sustaining resources. (ie: It is, in the end, a system closed for causation.) — apokrisis

I make no judgement about whether the system (nature) as we know it is "causally closed". If there are dimensions of nature inaccessible to the senses I can't see how they would count as "supernatural", though.

All great points. I identified some of these problems myself when I asked where do constraints come from and mentioned how in many cases we don't know. In some cases, certain constraints can be explained in terms of other constraints. For example, a limited version of the conservation of energy can be derived from Newton's third law. More general versions in classical physics can be derived through Noether's theorem, which relates continuous symmetries to conservation laws. But I admit that the idea needs more work and would be happy if you offered some suggestions to improve it.

In a general sense, I guess what I'm trying to do is put motion front and center, and then explain that things in the world can't just exist in any state of motion they like. The very concept is a bit tough for me to put into words. When I talk about actual constraints in physics, I can easily express them as equations or something to that effect. But I would want to avoid saying something like physical things are subject to equations that constrain energy, for the reasons you highlighted.

I could make things very metaphysically lean by saying something like this: physical things are just finite states of motion (ie. basically finite energy). And then when asked to explain what this means in the context of physics, I could delve into equations of constraint and things like that. Thoughts?

And I would like everyone to remember the obvious (something often lost in philosophical debate): we are in a thread called the "non-physical." There's no way to even begin making sense of that unless we make some sort of sense of what's physical. And if the ultimate answer is "there's no way in hell to make sense of either one," then we are in a pretty terrible situation where hardly anything meaningful can be said about pretty much everything that is currently under discussion. It would all be a bunch of random people on the Internet talking past each other. It should be our group project to first come up with a good definition of physical. Doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough.

And I would like everyone to remember the obvious (something often lost in philosophical debate): we are in a thread called the "non-physical." There's no way to even begin making sense of that unless we make some sort of sense of what's physical. And if the ultimate answer is "there's no way in hell to make sense of either one," then we are in a pretty terrible situation where hardly anything meaningful can be said about pretty much everything that is currently under discussion. It would all be a bunch of random people on the Internet talking past each other. It should be our group project to first come up with a good definition of physical. Doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. — Uber

I can see no issue with defining as physical, everything that is subject to the laws of physics. And no, that isn't circular, because we know what the laws of physics are, to very high accuracy.

Non-physical things then have to be those entities that are not subject to the laws of physics. These will include such things as the necessary truths of mathematics and logic.

Slightly murkier ground might be things such as information, which I'm going to suggest is non-physical. While the medium in which the information is instantiated is subject to the laws of physics, the information itself is not. Information can easily be copied from one medium to another, using a variety of encodings. The physical instantiation can be quite different, but the information is still the same. Also, let's not forget that information is defined counter-factually.

If information is non-physical, then algorithms must be, and by extension, the running of these algorithms on a computer. This seems wrong, because the computation consumes resources, and we are all too familiar with the heat noise and light emitted by computers, and the electricity bill. Even so, I think we are making the mistake of identifying the instantiation with the abstraction. Abstractions are non-physical.