Sure it's an irrational leap. What's irrational in world..., until there are answer's to Existential questions rationality remains a mystery.

Thanks for your reply by the way!

This analysis was phenomenological, historical, experimental, mathematical, sociological, and clinical all at the same time. Scientists reason like this. You're just inventing easily refutable bogeymen. — fdrake

I'm not really addressing what social scientists do, or how science on that level operates. I studied and greatly enjoyed anthropology, and I've also got a lot out of sociology of religion - Weber and Peter Berger, and so on. I'm talking about a specific claim, which is reductionism in philosophy, the same subject that Nagel has dealt with across his books. You actually don't show a lot of interest in that subject, or knowledge of it. Perhaps you ought to have a read of his Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. Like many of his writings on this subject, it is especially useful because he's not himself in the least religious, but has a detached understanding of the issue.

You actually don't show a lot of interest in that subject, or knowledge of it. — Wayfarer

Does anyone who disagrees with you?

Just as an possible way of approaching this problem, can you name, and outline the argument of, an author who you think is interested in the subject, does have some knowledge and understanding of it, yet still disagrees with your position?

Does anyone who disagrees with you? — Isaac

It's not that I think everyone else is wrong'. There are genuinely very few people on here whose interests converge with mine, and when I try to explain it, the discussion goes off on a tangent.

That point we were discussing earlier about 'meaning and matter' - you dismissed that with 'oh well, that's just subjective, it doesn't mean anything'. There are books about the subject, it's basic to semiotics and biosemiotics, so if someone just breezes in and dismisses it, it's like what's the point of trying to pursue it?

I've read a lot of fdrake's posts, and he's a mod here, always impartial, balanced and fair, but from what he writes, his background and interest is engineering and science, not philosophy per se. That is not a pejorative. I have utmost respect for science and engineering. And I don't consider myself an expert in the subject of philosophy either, but I think I have an insight into some specific topics and ideas which lead into a genuine understanding of transcendental philosophy. But what it takes to understand that is a particular mode or kind of understanding which is vastly different to modern thought, and besides most people are inclined to think that 'the transcendent' is a byword for nonsense. So not only do they not understand it, they're hostile towards it.

So, this style of philosophy I'm pursuing is in some respects 'religious', and that pushes buttons for a lot of people. Often they don't even consciously understand that, it just works that way. Sometimes I refer to Pierre Hadot, a French scholar of philosophy:

Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. ....

For Hadot, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things.

IETP

So, it's not as if I'm saying that you're wrong, or fdrake is wrong - I'm trying to get in synch with a way of being that is radically different from modern culture. In some ways it appears reactionary, even. From that perspective, a lot of 'modern thought' is mistaken.

The philosophers I now have most respect for are Thomists. But of course, most of them are Catholic, and even though I'm very drawn to their intellectual principles, I could never convert to Catholicism, or even Christianity, I don't think.

Anyway - the upshot is, I'm naturally sceptical of the mainstream secular-scientific attitude, which is basically the Western intellectual heritage, sans belief in God. But take out belief in God, and then 'things fall apart'; there's literally no reason for anything to exist. If you look at the nonsense that's going in theoretical physics, it's quite feasible that much of it is a complete dead-end. But I don't want to evangalise 'belief in God' - I'm trying to understand what's behind it all, where that belief originates, because I'm sure it originates in something real, but something very difficult to realise and understand.

Sorry for the rant. I'm supposed to be meditating.

Let's not forget that every scientific observation is also someone personal experience. Then entire displine is formed in the aggregate of our personal experiences.

What limit seems meaningless to science and what Wayfarer seems concerned about holding is some notion of consciousness which is beyond experience. A consciousness which is not any instance of first person experience, but some notion of a necessary type which makes our experiences possible.

This does not make sense. If consciousness is a necessary type, it has no counterfactual. In this situation we have no context to claim a juxtaposition of the presence or absence of consciousness. This consciousness would be necessary and couldn't be any sort of account of instances which come in and out of being.

If consciousness is a necessary type, it has no counterfactual. In this situation we have no context to claim a juxtaposition of the presence or absence of consciousness. This consciousness would be necessary and couldn't be any sort of account of instances which come in and out of being. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think this is an interesting kind of... inverse, maybe?... of my view on supernaturalism. The way I would define "natural", everything is necessarily natural, so the very concept of anything supernatural is simply incoherent.

Although, I suppose it's also very similar to my view on phenomenal consciousness, and why I think access consciousness is the more interesting and useful concept. I'm a panpsychist about phenomenal consciousness, and that doesn't mean very much to me -- it just means that whatever metaphysical stuff is going on such that I have a first-person experience, that kind of thing doesn't magically appear at some point in my development, it's also going on in all the stuff I'm made of and the stuff that's made of and so on down to the quarks and such, and then everything else built out of those has that stuff going on too, which makes that kind of stuff-going-on not really of much interest because it doesn't differentiate between me and, say, a rock, or a wisp of cloud. The interesting stuff that can be used to differentiate things is functionality, which is what varies between me and rocks and clouds and so on. A rock may have a "first-person experience", but like its behavior, it's not a very interesting one, because both experience and behavior vary with function, as function is literally the map from one to the other, and rocks have a very uninteresting function.

A consciousness which is not any instance of first person experience, but some notion of a necessary type which makes our experiences possible. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yeah, I don't think that makes sense, either. What makes experiences possible, where we're talking about the first-person, phenomenal/subjective flow of data, is simply that it's a way that brains can work. Maybe it's a way some other things can work, too, but at the moment we don't know whether that's the case.

I think this is an interesting kind of... inverse, maybe?... of my view on supernaturalism. The way I would define "natural", everything is necessarily natural, so the very concept of anything supernatural is simply incoherent. — Pfhorrest

On the one hand I agree with you, but I think that these two distinctions make sense:

(1) Natural/artificial, or natural/made by persons, which is self-explanatory

and

(2) Natural/supernatural, where "supernatural" is simply denoting unusual, perhaps very rare and difficult-to-experience phenomena that we presently have no plausible natural explanation for. So "supernatural" would be relative to common, educated (mostly scientific) epistemological beliefs, and by its nature, it would be more dubious than natural phenomena until better-confirmed.

Frankly, theists seem stuck in a frame of mind I just lack the capacity to grasp, mostly that of ego and extreme fear. — Swan

Fortunately this is a philosophy forum, so this psychological issue will never arise.

Fortunately this is a philosophy forum, so this psychological issue will never arise. — bert1

I think @Swan's observation pertains to the realm of "human nature", which is indeed very much a topic discussed in philosophy.

I think Swan's observation pertains to the realm of "human nature", which is indeed very much a topic discussed in philosophy. — god must be atheist

Maybe. Human nature, definitely. Human failings as causes of philosophical error seems like an unproductive irrelevance to me.

I'm not really addressing what social scientists do — Wayfarer

You are not addressing it, yes, you are bracketing it as if it's irrelevant. I don't believe it is as you emphasise:

I'm talking about a specific claim, which is reductionism in philosophy, — Wayfarer

an importance of non-reduction. Which I do too, inappropriate reductionism is self harm using Occam's Razor; sometimes scientists and philosophers within domains; like physicists and philosophers of physics; take the conceptual grammars they work with as a given and apply them inappropriately. You don't need to care about the movement of atoms in people's bodies to make a good account of political power structures, or the neural representation mechanisms of syllogisms to understand maths. We agree strongly that framing; questioning styles; need to be tailored to and by the studied topic.

Reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible, important how questions; like "mental states supervene on neural states", or "chemical properties supervene on quantum dynamics"; the how is bracketed, as if it was of no relevance for the domain (just picking on supervenience because it's something I've been thinking about recently).

You seem to state that reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible questions in general which are relevant fo their studied topics; and with that I agree entirely. But I can agree entirely with you here because you're painting with far too broad a brush.

I regard science as 'reductionist' insofar as it reduces the scope of discourse exclusively to the objective domain. — Wayfarer

I gave you an example of non-reductionist scientific work, bridging neuroscience, evolution, sociology and clinical psychology (and explaining/gesturing towards why it was non reductionist). It analysed first person reports, states of feeling and their patterns; how patterns between these different ontological registers intermingle (brain hormones + feelings + socialisation); and a clinical upshot of this. Science need not be reductionist, and need not generate reductionist worldviews. You surely agree with this if you:

Like, I don't deny *any* of the facts of evolution or cosmology or any of the other sciences - to me, the question is about meaning and interpretation. — Wayfarer

expressly don't deny any of it, and if your worldview is consistent with it, then - what? But your beliefs evidently do impinge upon these domains since:

(you) question the notion that mind is a product of evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

On the one hand you want to reserve an isolated realm for your philosophical speculation; rendering it out of the reach of science. On the other, you want to project the impact of your speculation back into the scientific domains!

I don't trust this.

and besides most people are inclined to think that 'the transcendent' is a byword for nonsense — Wayfarer

It's not a byword for nonsense; transcendence - when juxtaposed or contrasted with immanence, elevated above it - is a machine for making nonsense. Simultaneously a concept and a trauma of reason.

Maybe. Human nature, definitely. Human failings as causes of philosophical error seems like an unproductive irrelevance to me. — bert1

Human error is part of human nature, you're right. But @Swan was talking about a feature of human nature that we must observe, not imitate.

Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why?

You say that some errors lead to unporductive irrelevances to you. To me it appears very much like you only declare them irrelevant because you are uncomfortable with the fear that they may be true. So you attempt to throw them out. But that's not very philosophical of you... it is a psychological effect you are displaying.

So much for human nature at this point.

"mental states supervene on neural states" — fdrake

I've never taken supervenience to be reductive. It's a statement about a relation between two different things which is agnostic about that relation being identity. Reductionism is an identity relation.

I'm not sure if I am a wanker or a cunt.

I gave you an example of non-reductionist scientific work, bridging neuroscience, evolution, sociology and clinical psychology (and explaining/gesturing towards why it was non reductionist). It analysed first person reports, states of feeling and their patterns; how patterns between these different ontological registers intermingle (brain hormones + feelings + socialisation); and a clinical upshot of this. Science need not be reductionist, and need not generate reductionist worldviews. — fdrake

Not sure if I understand you, I probably don't. Anyway, can you give an example of a non-reductionist explanation of one thing in terms of something else? I mean, all explanations are in terms of something else, otherwise they'd be circular.

EDIT: I guess I'm asking the question, is non-reductive science ever explanatory? Maybe explanation is not science's only role, perhaps it's even a minor role.

Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why? — god must be atheist

Because this is a philosophy forum, and I'm a cunt. And I don't want people to keep pointing out that I'm a cunt when I'm trying to discuss philosophy. I come here to get away from my cuntishness, not have it shitted into my face by a high pressure rectum.

EDIT: I don't mean to suggest you in particular are a high pressure rectum. I mean it in a more generalised way.

You say that some errors lead to unporductive irrelevances to you. To me it appears very much like you only declare them irrelevant because you are uncomfortable with the fear that they may be true. So you attempt to throw them out. But that's not very philosophical of you... it is a psychological effect you are displaying. — god must be atheist

I mean that philosophical positions are untrue not by virtue of why they come about (the genetic fallacy) by virtue of their (lack of) coherence or correspondence with reality, or something like that. Therefore going on about why, psychologically, someone believes such and such is not philosophy.

On the one hand I agree with you, but I think that these two distinctions make sense:

(1) Natural/artificial, or natural/made by persons, which is self-explanatory

and

(2) Natural/supernatural, where "supernatural" is simply denoting unusual, perhaps very rare and difficult-to-experience phenomena that we presently have no plausible natural explanation for. So "supernatural" would be relative to common, educated (mostly scientific) epistemological beliefs, and by its nature, it would be more dubious than natural phenomena until better-confirmed. — Terrapin Station

I agree that the first distinction is a useful one to make, but thought it was so self-explanatory as not to be worth mentioning. For the latter distinction, I would instead use the terms "normal"/"paranormal". Calling weird unexplained stuff "supernatural" suggests that it is somehow transcendent of the world that is amenable to having science done to it, but calling it "paranormal" is pretty much just calling it "weird", which is fine, nature is full of weird stuff, and we'll do science to it until it doesn't seem weird anymore.

You seem to state that reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible questions in general which are relevant fo their studied topics; and with that I agree entirely. But I can agree entirely with you here because you're painting with far too broad a brush. — fdrake

Look at it like this: that the general acceptance of evolutionary theory carries with it - or may carry with it - philosophical implications that can be drawn, over and above those that are strictly speaking inherent in that discipline. And those are intrinsically reductionist. Specifically, in the realm of philosophical anthropology, what is (hu)man? The accepted wisdom is: a species of hominid. Which immediately locates human life within the horizons of biology; basically treats humans as no different in kind to animals and implicitly endorses a form of utilitarian ethos i.e. everything in service to the goal of propagation of the genome.

The suggestion that humans are different in kind to animals is extremely unpopular - it is allegedly associated with the Christian kind of 'chauvinism' which sees humans as 'lording it' over the animal kingdom. And for modern naturalism 'kinship with nature' and 'naturalness' are kinds of talismans for a dimly-remembered 'state of grace' rather like that enjoyed by Rousseau's 'noble savage'

But what this altogether occludes or conceals, is the possibility that the human really does embody spiritual intelligences or potentialities that are completely out of scope for biology as such. Alfred Russel Wallace certainly thought so:

We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man's body may have been developed from that of a lower animal form under the law of natural selection; but it also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit. — Wallace

....but then, he was increasingly dismissed as a Victorian spiritualist crank on exactly these grounds; Darwin's hard-headed materialism, borne of the 'Scottish Enlightenment', is far more in keeping with the zeitgeist.

Earlier in this discussion, I tried to make the point that the origins of humanism (i.e. Renaissance humanism) was dissident from Catholicism, but was not materialist in orientation, drawing on all kinds of philosophies such as neoplatonism, hermeticism and so on. I idly googled 'Mirandola apotheosis' (in reference to Pico Della Mirandola, one of the geniuses of Renaissance humanism.) It pulled up a page on Mirandola's commentary in 'mystical union in the Kabalah'. And I believe that some form of 'unio mystica' is both fundamental and exclusive to human kind and that it's an aspect of what 'sapience' refers to.

It's not a byword for nonsense; transcendence - when juxtaposed or contrasted with immanence, elevated above it - is a machine for making nonsense. — fdrake

So, 'meta-nonsense'? As it happens, the juxtaposition of 'transcendent' and 'immanent' is derived from theology, but then you've already said that theology is nonsense. I think you've made your feelings clear on the matter.

On the one hand you want to reserve an isolated realm for your philosophical speculation; rendering it out of the reach of science. On the other, you want to project the impact of your speculation back into the scientific domains! — fdrake

Misunderstood, again. I am not anti-science, I believe in scientific progress and liberal democracy. But I question the secular~scientific Enlightenment worldview that is generally associated with it. I like Steve Pinker - really do! - but he's a crap philosopher.

< note to self >

Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why?
— god must be atheist

Because this is a philosophy forum, and I'm a cunt. And I don't want people to keep pointing out that I'm a cunt when I'm trying to discuss philosophy. I come here to get away from my cuntishness, not have it shitted into my face by a high pressure rectum. — bert1

:rofl: :party: :clap:

Whatever. I'm no philosopher, not an abstract thinker as a rule or psychologist. My IQ has been formally clocked at a solid 120 on a good day. Anything else is going over my head, and it's time I fill in shit with nonsense.

Philosophy is about talking out of your ass if you're one of the average bunch. So that's all my post was. Philosophizing me talking out of my ass about psychology was the whole point, so served it's purpose.

This is why people hate folks in intellectual forms. Because they talk of their ass - make stuff up, make things abstract or whatever. That is the beauty of it. Descartes, Kant, etc were some that talked out of his ass for pages straight. Many philosophers are frustrated with themselves, for talking out of their own ass. There is no fun in intellectualizing if you are talking out of your ass. IF you are on a philosophy forum, and NOT talking out of your ass, I question why you are here ...

When I don't feel like talking out of my ass, I go back to my actual area of study. You still have to ass-talk, but it has to be glossed up better.

Some social work student I witnessed get his degree 40 years ago (we co-habited during school year in a rooming house) said the same thing about sociology as what you just said about philosophy.

To me philosophy is solid. People can talk about anything; then it's their job to defend their stances. It's like defending a thesis every day on the forums. It's my entertainment, as much as an ego trip... sometimes I mix the two up. I did not get far in the education system, due to a huge deficit in ability to pay attention on an ongoing basis. It takes too much out of me. That's why philosophy is my cup of tea: it takes very little input to generate a lot of output.

Which is precisely, like you said, talking out of one's ass.

The accepted wisdom is: a species of hominid. Which immediately locates human life within the horizons of biology; basically treats humans as no different in kind to animals and implicitly endorses a form of utilitarian ethos i.e. everything in service to the goal of propagation of the genome. — Wayfarer

You're speaking like the classification of humans as a hominid is an arbitrary one. As if the grouping of organisms into families is not evidence based.

Homo sapiens < Homo < Hominidae < Primates < Mammals < Animals < Eukaryotes.

(there are other steps involved too)

Eukaryotes - organisms with at least one complex cell (we had to look, then called it a thing).
Animals - organisms with many complex cells with certain structures (different metabolisms, animals move, etc), they consist of eukaryotic cells.
Mammals - animals with a certain temperature regulation mechanism, male/female sex, females do childbearing, have fur or hair, boobs.
Primates - mammals that have hands, feet.
Hominidae - primates with complex cognition.
Humans - hominidae that are us.

(there's more detail)

Life is grouped into these categories by looking for presence/absence of attributes, how cells function etc; demonstrable similarities and differences in form and function; physical and genetic characteristics. The morphology and genetics can be checked; and it is checked.

The same kind of reasoning that makes primates mammals; all primates have mammalian temperature regulation mechanisms, the reproductive stuff works much the same; makes humans hominidae; great anatomical similarity with each other, complex cognition.

You can believe all this without believing in the selfish gene; or placing the genome as the causal nexus of all evolutionary action (the central dogma) - epigenetics is a thing, there are heritable changes that do not involve changes in DNA. Hell, you could believe in the central dogma and the selfish gene and still not instrumentalise reason. These are conceptually independent, but not ideologically-politically independent. So:

None of this has commited anybody, ever, to the worst excesses of dehumanising instrumental rationality. What does make people commit to the worst excesses of instrumental rationality is the ideological climate they live in. I broadly agree with the critique of enlightenment instrumental rationality put forward by Adorno and Horkheimer:

In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. — Dialectic of Enlightenment

You're targeting a relatively small part of the picture; science; when you should be picking on what makes us instrumentalise the world; education, politics.

The disenchanted life is still worth living.

In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. — Dialectic of Enlightenment

Do you have a page number on this quote? Thanks.

The Concept of Enlightenment 21

Thanks.

You're speaking like the classification of humans as a hominid is an arbitrary one. As if the grouping of organisms into families is not evidence based. — fdrake

Of course it's evidence-based. That is not at issue, nor why I made a point of it.

You're targeting a relatively small part of the picture; science; when you should be picking on what makes us instrumentalise the world; education, politics. — fdrake

I'll see your Adorno and raise you a Horkheimer:

The idea inherent in all idealistic metaphysics–that the world is in some sense a product of the mind–is thus turned into its opposite: the mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, according to popular Darwinism, nature does not need philosophy to speak for her: nature, a powerful and venerable deity, is ruler rather than ruled. Darwinism ultimately comes to the aid of rebellious nature in undermining any doctrine, theological or philosophical, that regards nature itself as expressing a truth that reason must try to recognize. The equating of reason with nature, by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a typical fallacy of the era of rationalization. Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering. Without committing the fallacy of equating nature and reason, mankind must try to reconcile the two.

In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy. — The Eclipse of Reason

My bolds.

You know you don’t have to be confined to the false dichotomy of either the mental reducing to the material or vice versa? Back in college I found myself persuaded both by functionalist-physicalist philosophy of mind and by something in the area of Berkelian idealism, and from that apparent paradox of mind reducing to matter AND matter reducing to mind eventually settled on a kind of neutral monism, a physicalist phenomenalism, an empirical realism, where everything is made up equivalently of energy or information as its fundamental substrate, and particulars are differentiated by their functions, mapping energy or information in to energy or information out, mapping “experience” to “behavior” (where every experience is in turn OF its object’s behavior), in a way that trivially grants everything “mind” in the sense of just having an input to its function, while still meaningfully differentiating actual human minds from rocks and such by way of differences in their functions. Yet it’s still completely physicalist, empiricist, and independent of any kind of theism.

Of course it's evidence-based. That is not at issue, nor why I made a point of it. — Wayfarer

I just wonder why you'd reject that homo sapiens (and our minds) are descended from our homo ancestors (and their minds), when you're so happy to accept all the facts of evolution... one more is hardly a violence against your worldview, no? You're rejecting a framing of the facts, rather than the facts, right?

Humans are great apes. Our cognitive and affective processes and their supporting neural and bodily architectures have great ape homologues. These are facts. They should be as surprising as human digestive tracts behaving in much the same way as chimp ones. Or humans and chimps consisting of complex cells with similar internal structures.

I appreciate the quote; but I want to just put it here that a return to mysticism was never on the table for the committed materialist we're both quoting. He wanted to implode the institutional prejudices associated with reason with better reasoning rather than spiritualist or religious claptrap; the better angels of our nature removed all further need for their namesake.

:up: