Tell me, then, why was 'Everettian QM' referred to as 'the many worlds' intepretation? The Wikipedia entry on the subject (and it seems adequately footnoted and referenced) states: — Wayfarer

Wikipedia, the font of all that is true. Well, try this Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Pay particular attention to "Level III" multiverse.

No one complains that our infinite universe subject to the Bekenstein Bound implies a multiverse of identical and near-identical copies of ourselves. No one complains about inflationary theory being impossible because it implies a multiverse.

No one complains when Susskind and Bouso and others identify Level III and Level I as the same thing. Yet, apoplexy ensues when the only multiverse we have evidence for is mentioned. Bizarre!

Thanks. I have just been perusing the reviews of the former, and I find this paragraph in the Notre Dame review:

Chapter 1 ("First-Person Thoughts") outlines the structure of Rödl's theory of self-consciousness and self-reference as I just outlined it. Chapters 2 ("Action and the First Person") and 3 ("Belief and the First Person") explain the relation of first-person thought to spontaneous knowledge of oneself in action and belief, respectively. Chapter 4 ("Reason, Freedom and True Materialism") argues that the theory of self-consciousness thus laid out is also a theory of reason, and moreover a materialist theory in the spirit of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach.

I am perturbed by the reference to materialism. I think I understand that Marx's interpretation of materialism is historical and economic, but I'm afraid I always tend to see materialism as being the prime philosophical adversary. Elsewhere, his books are referred to as an effort to re-vitalise the German idealist tradition. So I'm a bit nonplussed by that.

You must be thinking about Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. — Pierre-Normand

The Myth of the Given is the one essay I have read, albeit, probably not very well or deeply.

No one complains that our infinite universe subject to the Bekenstein Bound implies a multiverse of identical and near-identical copies of ourselves. No one complains about inflationary theory being impossible because it implies a multiverse. — tom

I am not complaining about those, because I have not the least idea what they mean, nor do I particularly care to find out. After all, this is a philosophy forum, it is not actually Physics Forum.

But in any case, the other wikipedia article, on multiverses, Level III, casts no light whatever. It still maintains there are indeed dopelgangers and multiple worlds. And Tegmark's books on the multiverse are routinely criticized by reviewers for verging on science fantasy.

There is no measurement problem in realist no-collapse QM. — tom

Even in no-collapse intepretations, there is a process of decoherence into "coherent histories" (analogous to the "worlds" of the many world interpretation) that takes place. Coherent histories are correlated to (or "relative to") the macroscopic states of measurement apparatuses, or of the embodied human observers themselves who actively single our aspects of the world to observe, and who don't conceive of themselves as sorts of queer superposed Schrödinger cats). This is what "relative state" refers to in Everett's "relative-state formulation of QM".

So, in all the common interpretations of QM, including "no-collapse" interpretations, there always is a tacit reference to measurement operations, and the choice of the setup of a macroscopic measurement apparatus always refers back to the interests of the human beings who are performing the measurement. The processes of either "decoherence", or "collapse" of the wave function, (or of "projection" of the state vector), amount exactly to the same thing from the point of view of human observers. In order to escape this essentially perspectival human predicament, and ignore the measurement problem, you have to label all of empirically observable reality an illusion and proclaim the mathematical abstraction represented by the Schrödinger wave function of the whole universe "reality". "Reality," as you conceive of it, is beyond the reach of observation, or of our own empirical concepts.

I am not complaining about those, because I have not the least idea what they mean, nor do I particularly care to find out. After all, this is a philosophy forum, it is not actually Physics Forum. — Wayfarer

Then why do you care about Everettian quantum mechanics?

But in any case, the other wikipedia article, on multiverses, Level III, casts no light whatever. It still maintains there are indeed dopelgangers and multiple worlds. And Tegmark's books on the multiverse are routinely criticized by reviewers for verging on science fantasy. — Wayfarer

Tegmark did not invent the Level I multiverse, he just gave it a catchy name. If our consensus model of cosmology is true - i.e. Lamda-CDM, then there are an infinite number of exact copies of you at mean separation of ~10^10^115 metres.

Tegmark did not invent the Level II multiverse, he just gave it a catchy name. According to the consensus theory of the creation of our universe, inflation is an eternal process giving rise to an infinite number of universes - i.e. a multiverse.

Tegmark did not invent the Level III multiverse, he just gave it a catchy name. This is the quantum multiverse, the only multiverse for which we have any evidence. It adds no complexity to Levels I and II.

The "multiverse interpretation" of QM was an idea that came to light from several researchers at about the same time. Most notably Susskind and Bousso explored the idea and published a paper on it. These are serious big names in physics, as big as you get! The idea has since expanded into the slogan ER = EPR. A very big idea, informing a great deal of research. Quantum entanglement and wormholes could be the same thing!

And Tegmark's books on the multiverse are routinely criticized by reviewers for verging on science fantasy. — Wayfarer

Tegmark made a list. Don't be too harsh!

I am perturbed by the reference to materialism. I think I understand that Marx's interpretation of materialism is historical and economic, but I'm afraid I always tend to see materialism as being the prime philosophical adversary. Elsewhere, his books are referred to as an effort to re-vitalise the German idealist tradition. So I'm a bit nonplussed by that. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't make too much of that. This surprising gloss that Rödl has chosen to put on his project makes him no more of a materialist than Aristotle already was. Rödl's work "naturalizes" Kant, in a sense, through displaying how human beings, who are finite and essentially embodied substances, (in Aristotle's sense), and hence "material", can nevertheless gain a priori knowledge of the form of their own intellects in virtue of them already embodying this form as a rational capacity (rather than gaining knowledge of it empirically, which would be a sort of psychologism). Also, there is no mention of Marx or of materialism in Categories of the Temporal (and only a passing reference in just one chapter of Self-Consciousness).

Let me also reference this excellent albeit very short review of Categories of the Temporal by Aloisia Moser. (This is a direct link to the pdf file)

So, in all the common interpretations of QM, including "no-collapse" interpretations, there always is a tacit reference to measurement operations, and the choice of the setup of a macroscopic measurement apparatus always refers back to the interests of the human beings who are performing the measurement. The processes of either "decoherence", or "collapse" of the wave function, (or of "projection" of the state vector), amount exactly to the same thing from the point of view of human observers. — Pierre-Normand

Yep. Decoherence - at the level of heuristic principle - says all the troubling indeterminacy disapears in the bulk behaviour. So that probabilistic view gives us an informal account of collapse that fits the world we see.

Of course, the existing quantum formalism doesn't itself contain a model of "the observer" that would allow us to place the collapse to classical observables at some specific scale of being. But then either one thinks that is the job of a better future model - which seems the metaphysically reasonable choice. Or one can go crazy with the metaphysics and say every possible world in fact exists - a "solution" which still does not say anything useful about how world-lines now branch rather than collapse.

So the main reason for supporting MWI is that it is ... so outrageous. It appeals because it is "following the science to its logical conclusion" in a way that also can be used to shock and awe ordinary folk. Scientism in other words.

Then why do you care about Everettian quantum mechanics? — tom

The ideas of physics obviously have philosophical implications; many worlds and multiverses (and yes, I know they're different kinds of ideas) are nowadays influential, and, I think, maybe they're profoundly misleading. I know there's a lot of research being undertaken on the basis of such ideas, but I think a more austere and authentic science wouldn't become beguiled by them.

I wouldn't make too much of that — Pierre-Normand

Thank you. I shall definitely look into that book.

The Myth of the Given is the one essay I have read, albeit, probably not very well or deeply. — Wayfarer

I was unaware that Sellars had written an essay with that title. Are you sure? John McDowell wrote Avoiding the Myth of the Given a few years back...

I thought AaronR lead a discussion of it on the old forum. I thought it was his most famous piece but I'm not well informed about his work. It may not be called that but the phrase is associated with him.

From Wikipedia

'Sellars' most famous work is the lengthy and difficult paper, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956).[6] In it, he criticises the view that knowledge of what we perceive can be independent of the conceptual processes which result in perception. He named this "The Myth of the Given," attributing it to phenomenology and sense-data theories of knowledge.'

Which was what I meant in respect of Agustino's post.

Yes, knowledge in the sense Sellar's means is always already in "conceptual shape". This doesn't change the fact that 'things' are known non-conceptually. But this latter kind of direct knowledge is ineffable and anything we say based on it cannot be an item of propositional knowledge justified by that form of knowing. The 'feeling' of the knowing may only be evoked in artworks, music, poetry or the language of mysticism.

That's because those concepts, as used by Kant to investigate into the grounding of empirical knowledge, are revealed to be tied up with the concept of an enduring substance and such a formal concept doesn't fall under the purview of physical law. — Pierre-Normand

I don't think I would agree with this statement, specifically the part about enduring substance not falling under the purview of physical law. I think that Newton's first law, sometimes called the law of inertia, provides the formal concept of enduring substance. I admit that this law takes enduring substance for granted, but that's what laws of physics do, they take for granted what the law states. What this laws says, is that any substance will continue to exist, exactly as it has, in the past, unless acted upon by a force. So what this law does is describe enduring substance, as that which continues to exist as it has, in the past, unless it is acted upon.

I don't think I would agree with this statement, specifically the part about enduring substance not falling under the purview of physical law. I think that Newton's first law, sometimes called the law of inertia, provides the formal concept of enduring substance. I admit that this law takes enduring substance for granted, but that's what laws of physics do, they take for granted what the law states. What this laws says, is that any substance will continue to exist, exactly as it has, in the past, unless acted upon by a force. So what this law does is describe enduring substance, as that which continues to exist as it has, in the past, unless it is acted upon. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is a very specific sort of substance that strictly obeys Newton's first (or second) law. It's a substance that is either defined as the mereological sum of its material parts, or that consists in an essentially indivisible mass. Substances that can survives the loss of some of their massive parts, or maintain their identities though the accretion of new massive parts, such as plants, animals, most artifacts, and celestial bodies, don't strictly obey Newton's laws of motion precisely because of the principle of conservation of momentum (which is a consequence of those strict laws). Those laws only strictly apply to physical "matter", things that have invariant mass. When an ordinary substance gains or loses parts, conservation of momentum only applies to the unchanging mereological sum of this substance and of the parts that it either lost or gained.

What the laws of physics are quite silent about -- and this was my main point -- are the principles that govern the conditions of persistence and individuation of ordinary empirical substances. This falls under the purview of irreducibly "higher-level" laws (such as the laws of biology) or depends on human conventions possibly tied up with specific pragmatic interests, in the case of artifacts, or some combination high level-laws and conventions in the case of objects that fall under semi-technical concepts such as planets, mountains, etc.

It is a very specific sort of substance that strictly obeys Newton's first (or second) law. It's a substance that is either defined as the mereological sum of its material parts, or that consists in an essentially indivisible mass — Pierre-Normand

I think there's a bit of equivocation going on here. It think that Newtonian physics only deals with mass, not 'substance' in the formal sense, the meaning of which you so ably set forth in your earlier response to me; in fact it's this very point which differentiates modern physics from its Aristotelean precedents. Whereas the formal idea of substance is concerned with identity, physics generally has no concern with the nature of the identity of the substance it is measuring at all; I expect if you asked a physicist about the 'nature of substance' she would reply 'that is something you need to ask a chemist about, dear chap'.

Yes, knowledge in the sense Sellar's means is always already in "conceptual shape". This doesn't change the fact that 'things' are known non-conceptually — John

Every time I come home, I hang the car keys on the top hook. That doesn't change the fact that sometimes I hang them on the bottom hook.

Every time I come home, I hang the car keys on the top hook. That doesn't change the fact that sometimes I hang them on the bottom hook. — Wayfarer

And yet it is not Christmas...
:s

Sorry. That was my lame attempt at trying to convey that I thought that the two sentences I was commenting on contradicted each other.

No worries, but if you think I have contradicted myself then evidently you don't allow for the possibility of any kind of direct knowing. Presumably this would mean either that animals cannot know anything, or that they can conceptualize or that things themselves are in conceptual shape independently of their being perceived.. If either of the latter two obtain then conceptualization cannot be dependent on linguistic capacities.

I think there's a bit of equivocation going on here. It think that Newtonian physics only deals with mass, not 'substance' in the formal sense, the sense of which you so ably set forth in your earlier response to me; in fact it's this very point which differentiates modern physics from its Aristotelean precedents. — Wayfarer

The difference may cut even deeper if, as Aaron R mentioned in another thread, true Aristotelian substances are unities of matter and form, of dunamis and energeia. In that case, the only true substances are living organisms, and also, arguably, pure chemicals or chemical elements (as argued by Aryeh Kosman in The Activity of Being: An Essay in Aristotle's Ontology). Artifacts and non-living objects like stones and mountains are substances only by analogy. (The unity of their material parts is accidental according to scholastic metaphysics). This definition, though, may be a bit too narrow for purpose of Kantian epistemology. Kant's category of substance has wider extension. If we thus broaden the strict Aristotelian concept to encompass any enduring object ("continuant") then we lose the intimate unity of matter and form but we get a formal concept of substance more suited for analyzing the variegated ontologies of the "special sciences" (and our empirical cognition of their objects) and of the many areas of the human world.

What classical mechanics typically deals with are such things as idealized point particles, rigid bodies, homogeneous incompressible fluids and unbreakable ropes. Real objects that approximate the behavior of those things (gas molecules, liquid water, billard balls, levers, planets, etc.), considered over short enough time frames and gentle enough mutual interactions, can be considered the "substances" of classical mechanics -- a science not concerned about attributes of "form" other than mass, geometrical shape, and the object's powers to exert Newtonian forces on one another (or to generate force fields). The massive objects that thus approximately obey the laws of classical mechanics, and considered merely as such, still have individuation and persistance conditions, albeit trivial ones (since they don't undergo generation, corruption or mereological variations). They are re-identifiable enduring objects and Kant's arguments in his Analogies of Experience speak to our concepts of them (among very many other concepts that are alien to physics proper). They also have specific powers. They are typical substances in the broad sense of contemporary analytic metaphysics (Peter Strawson, David Wiggins, ...) that owes as much to Kant as it owes to Aristotle.

evidently you don't allow for the possibility of any kind of direct knowing. Presumably this would mean either that animals cannot know anything... — John

I think 'animal knowing' can generally be subsumed under the heading of 'stimulus and response'. When you say 'direct knowing', then there's the 'myth of the given' again - you assume that the objects of sense - that which is 'given' - are simply real, or that they have an inherent reality, which philosophers then speak about. But what that doesn't come to terms with is the way in which sense experience is incorporated and interpreted by the human, or the sense in which knowledge is constituted by the activities of the perceiving intellect.

Note this passage from a review, by a theologian, of Lawrence Krauss' 'Universe from Nothing':

In terms theologian Bernard Lonergan develops in his major work Insight, Krauss is caught in a notion of reality as "already-out-there-now," a reality conditioned by space and time. Lonergan refers to this conception of reality as based on an "animal" knowing, on extroverted, biologically-dominated consciousness. Lonergan distinguishes this from a truly human knowing based on intelligence and reason, arguing that many philosophical difficulties arise because of a failure to distinguish between these two forms of knowing.

(Remainder here.)

true Aristotelian substances are unities of matter and form, of dunamis and energeia. In that case, the only true substances are living organisms — Pierre-Normand

Right! Because the Aristotelean term for 'substance' was originally 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'being' than to what we now designate as 'substance'; and only beings are 'bearers of predicates', or 'subjects', per se - '[primary] substance is that which is always subject, never predicate'. So this enables a distinction between the nature of 'beings' and 'objects', which I think has been subsequently lost or forgotten.

I think 'animal knowing' can generally be subsumed under the heading of 'stimulus and response'. — Wayfarer

Right, so you think of animals as Descartes did; as machines? When I refer to "direct knowing" I am not thinking primarily of what is known by the senses at all, although this kind of 'knowing' may be evoked by artworks, music or poetry; which obviously would be impossible to experience without functioning senses. The term could also apply to the 'knowledge' which is supposed by some to be had by mystics and prophets.

I haven't been speaking at all about the purported reality of objects of the senses; I have no idea where you got that idea. Perhaps read a little more closely?

Thanks, but I'm not familiar with the Krauss book, so the review doesn't mean much to me.

Right! Because the Aristotelean term for 'substance' was originally 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'being' than to what we now designate as 'substance'; and only beings are 'bearers of predicates', or 'subjects', per se - '[primary] substance is that which is always subject, never predicate'. So this enables a distinction between the nature of 'beings' and 'objects', which I think has been subsequently lost or forgotten. — Wayfarer

Yes, living things, for Aristotle, are the paradigms of substance in the strongest sense. They display a unity of mater and form in the sense that their identifiable proper parts only are active qua essentially being parts of those beings (i.e. having as their proper function to sustain the characteristic activity of the substance they are a part of). The human heart is essentially a part of a human being, and so is human blood, human bone tissue, etc. This is why the elements also are considered to be primary substances according to Aristotle, for there is no part of fire that isn't essentially fire (according the the ancient Greek conception of fire as one among four elements, of course). Still, my point was that under this construal, artifacts, stones and planets also are primary "beings", i.e. primary bearers of high-level predicates that only apply to beings of that kind. It just so happens that they are imperfect substances, in a sense, since their matter is imperfectly united with their form. Their overarching forms (i.e. their essential qualities or functions) only partially inform the structure of their parts, and those parts thus retain a unity of form that is alien to the substances they are constituents of. For instance, a chair can be made made of wooden planks that retain their identities as wooden planks while they merely (and accidentally) lay a hand, as it were, to enabling the characteristic function of the chair (and thus, also, enable its existence qua functional artifact) while they are well fitted parts of it.

But my main point was that Kant is justified in using his category of substance with the broader extension (to encompass "imperfect substances") since it functions as a necessary formal principle of the intellect that allows us to gain empirical knowledge of all sorts of material "beings" (e.g. boats, planets, rocks) other than just living organisms or chemical elements. My main aim in bringing those metaphysical considerations to bear on the present discussion was to show why and how our conception of "planets" (a "sortal concept", which is a concept of a "substance" in the broader, imperfect sense) still must be presupposed to be operative in the asking of the question regarding the existence of the Earth in the distant past. It is this concept of a planet, incorporating the understanding of its specific mode of existence, that determines the truth conditions of the intelligible claim about the past existence of the object, regardless of the fact that the bits of rock and magma that make up the planet may have a somewhat "accidental" (imperfect) unity from a scholastic point of view.

The difference may cut even deeper if, as Aaron R mentioned in another thread, true Aristotelian substances are unities of matter and form, of dunamis and energeia. In that case, the only true substances are living organisms, and also, arguably, pure chemicals or chemical elements (as argued by Aryeh Kosman in The Activity of Being: An Essay in Aristotle's Ontology). Artifacts and non-living objects like stones and mountains are substances only by analogy. — Pierre-Normand

According to Aristotelian physics, any object, living or inanimate, is a unity of matter and form. Aristotle finds it necessary to assume this duality in order to account for the existence of "change". When a thing changes, it in some ways stays the same (remains the same thing, only changed), yet in another way it must change. What remains the same, persists despite the change, is the matter, what changes is the form. The assumption of matter is necessary to account for the potential for change, and the assumption of form is necessary to account for actual change. So all changing things must consist of both matter and form to account for the fact that something always persists through a change, yet something always changes, otherwise it is not a "change".

In his biology he describes a special type of form called the soul. Living bodies have a soul, and in the case of a living body, this form, the soul, is prior to any form that the material body may have. So the soul is defined as the first actuality of a body having the potential for life. This is somewhat ambiguous, but in Neo-Platonism, the form of any body is prior to the material existence of that body.

It is a very specific sort of substance that strictly obeys Newton's first (or second) law. It's a substance that is either defined as the mereological sum of its material parts, or that consists in an essentially indivisible mass. Substances that can survives the loss of some of their massive parts, or maintain their identities though the accretion of new massive parts, such as plants, animals, most artifacts, and celestial bodies, don't strictly obey Newton's laws of motion precisely because of the principle of conservation of momentum (which is a consequence of those strict laws). Those laws only strictly apply to physical "matter", things that have invariant mass. When an ordinary substance gains or loses parts, conservation of momentum only applies to the unchanging mereological sum of this substance and of the parts that it either lost or gained. — Pierre-Normand

I would not agree that it is necessary for "substance" to be defined as indivisible, or the sum of its material parts, in order for substance to obey Newton's first law. This law is not concerned with division, it provides no principles for division or unity of parts. The existence of parts is irrelevant to Newton's first. To account for division we need to describe individual parts each as separate substances, each having matter and form then. So division is a case of one substance, having matter and form, becoming a number of substances, each having matter and form. If we assume that division is a "change", then we need to account for the persistence of matter, as the thing which stays "the same", through the change, and this is the conservation of mass. In more modern physics, conservation of mass is replaced with conservation of energy, so that energy replaces Aritotelian matter, as the thing which persists, stays the same through the change. Also though, we need to account for a type of mathematical difference, one form becomes numerous forms.

But the point is, that division is not covered by Newton's first law. Persistence is covered, but division is not. So if we want to describe division under the terms of Newton's first, the single object, matter with form, moving as a unity of substance, under Newton's first law, must be defined as a number of objects, each, with its own matter and form. This allows each of the parts to move in different directions. So it's not the case that "substance" would be defined in a different way, it continues to be defined as a unity of matter and form, but it is the case that the object is described in a different way. So Newton's first would still apply in both cases. In one way the object would be described as a single substance, and in the second it would be a group, a number, of substances.

Since the description of the object is the form of the object, then the two descriptions are logically not descriptions of the same object. In one case, there are a number of objects, and in the other there is a single object. There is an inherent incompatibility between these, such that it is incorrect to say that they are two different descriptions of the same object. They are not, they are only the same to the extent of an assumed material equivalency. They have distinct forms, which makes them distinct objects, but we assume that it is the same matter. Such an assumption is a falsity, because the same matter cannot have, at the same time, different forms.

You're overlooking the very act of measurement itself. Most of what you say about 'what already exists' is, I think, the subject of the criticism by Sellars in his essay 'the myth of the given'. You presume that we can compare 'models' with 'reality itself', as if you can rise totally above the act of knowing, and know what it is you don't actually know. Then, by claiming you know 'reality', you say that what we think we know is 'a model'. You're not seeing your own sleight-of-hand here. — Wayfarer

I honestly can't follow what you mean here, nor what this has to do with "The Myth of the Given"...

Even is no-collapse intepretations, there is a process of decoherence into "coherent histories" (analogous to the "worlds" of the many world interpretation) that takes place. — Pierre-Normand

If you are going to quote, then the name is "Consistent Histories" or "Decoherent Histories". The first is explicitly epistemic, the second equivocates. The formalisms are however used in Unitary QM.

Coherent histories are correlated to (or "relative to") the macroscopic states of measurement apparatuses, or of the embodied human observers themselves who actively single our aspects of the world to observe, and who don't conceive of themselves as sorts of queer superposed Schrödinger cats). This is what "relative state" refers to in Everett's "relative-state formulation of QM". — Pierre-Normand

It might be worth pointing out that "coherence" is precisely what decoherence destroys. Anyway, I think you have Decoherent histories a bit wrong. They are for closed systems, and don't tell you which one occurred, rather give, under certain consistency conditions, a probability space for the course-grained histories. Of course the major difference between Everett and Decoherent Histories is that Everett regards the histories as real.

As for relative states, I think you've got that the wrong way round. It is the observer who is put into a state relative to each of the outcomes of a measurement. One counterpart is put into the state of having measured up etc.

Right, so you think of animals as Descartes did; as machines? — John

No - I believe animals are beings, but that they are not rational beings, and in this context it's a significant distinction. (I think that was an egregious error of Descartes, by the way.)

Regarding the nature of knowledge: In the Platonic dialogues, there are many (often inconclusive) discussions of what constitutes 'true knowledge'. I think their perspective is nearer that of the Upanishads, i.e. 'true knowledge' is liberative - the 'ordinary person' (the hoi polloi) are trapped in the 'cave of ignorance', the philosopher/sage has risen to the 'vision of the One' (resemblances between Platonic and Hindu philosophy are the subject of McEvilly's The Shape of Ancient Thought). I think the original intent of philosophy was much more radical than what we now understand it to be. It was 'religious' but not in the way we take 'religion' to now mean; not in the sense of accepting dogmatic truths of faith, but of calling into question our innate sense of what is real.

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not ntended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. He even seems to have suffered from a version of the more characteristically Judaeo-Christian conviction that we are all miserable sinners, and to have hoped for some form of redemption from philosophy. — Thomas Nagel

Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament

(Subsequently, Aristotle shifted the focus of the debate away from his teacher's mysticism and towards the empirical, that arguably being part of the process by which this kind of sensibility was lost or attenuated. [It's also significant that Platonic epistemology plays a much larger role in Eastern Orthodox than Catholic philosophy.] Subsequently, the distinction between reality and appearance, then became the distinction between the 'real world' of physics - which is still the basic motive behind Sean Carroll's naturalism - and the world of 'the mind' which is only of derivative or secondary value.)

I honestly can't follow what you mean here, nor what this has to do with "The Myth of the Given"... — Agustino

At various points in your preceding posts, you refer to 'reality as it is', 'independently of models'. But, that presumes you can know 'reality as it is', when that is precisely what is at issue.

For example:

There can be no sensation without time - so not only is time something that structures sensation, time is also something which makes sensation itself possible. — Agustino

Measurement is simply comparing one aspect of reality with another — Agustino

That is just a mental model, not reality itself. — Agustino

I daily experience my mind being dependent on the world. — Agustino

I think these kinds of intuitions is what the 'myth of the given' is criticising. It is the belief that knowledge has a dimension which is given or self-evident, which philosophy then elaborates on, when in fact, critical philosophy is questioning the very thing which you're taking to be self-evident.

It was 'religious' but not in the way we take 'religion' to now mean; not in the sense of accepting dogmatic truths of faith, but of calling into question our innate sense of what is real. — Wayfarer

OK, but I wasn't referring at all to "accepting dogmatic truths of faith". If we "call into question what is real" and come to know something other than what is 'normally' considered to be real; what is known to us via the senses (which pretty much defines the ordinary sense of 'real'), what kind of knowledge do you think that could be other than the kind of direct intuitive knowledge I was earlier referring to?

what kind of knowledge do you think that could be other than the kind of direct intuitive knowledge I was earlier referring to? — John

You mean this post?

When I refer to "direct knowing" I am not thinking primarily of what is known by the senses at all, although this kind of 'knowing' may be evoked by artworks, music or poetry; which obviously would be impossible to experience without functioning senses. The term could also apply to the 'knowledge' which is supposed by some to be had by mystics and prophets. — John

It's a bit sketchy. Perhaps you might elaborate.

I'd say that there are (at least) two senses of 'knowing'. There is the everyday sense of the knowledge involved in perception, where we can talk about what we know of the empirical world. All knowledge in the conventional sense is of this inter-subjective kind.

Then there is the direct knowing of things by familiarity. I know a song, or a friend's face. I think this is basically a knowing which cannot be conceptually articulated. A dog has heaps of knowledge of this kind. You might call it aesthetic knowledge (in the broadest sense captured negatively by the term 'anaesthetic'); it is a knowledge of direct awareness; it is the knowledge that is left over after everything that can be articulated as knowledge is exhausted.

I think this is basically the same as aesthetic knowledge in the narrower sense, when we know beauty or harmony, for example, or in the moral sense, when we know goodness, or in the religious sense when we know God, or in the 'Zen' sense of 'being enlightened'. This knowing of the 'familiarity' kind cannot be, to the great frustration of many philosophers, inter-subjectively corroborated, but it is not through any lack of trying; in fact philosophers are often very stubborn, and so I doubt the attempt will ever be entirely abandoned.

I think metaphysics is firmly in the latter character of knowing. An inter-subjectively corroborate-able (horrible word but I could not think of any other) metaphysics seems to be simply impossible to achieve. People follow their metaphysical intuitions or else some authority (which really amounts to other's intuitions as canonized); there is no possibility of evidence or logical proof when it comes to metaphysics.

Of the traditional two senses of knowing: knowing that and knowing how, I would say the latter is a kind of 'knowledge by familiarity'. To anticipate an objection; it is not being denied that when people know how to do things, that that fact cannot be inter-subjectively corroborated. It is just that knowing how and knowing by familiarity are knowings of the mind/body and of the feelings, and what exactly is known, and more especially how it is known, cannot be precisely articulated, or in some cases cannot be articulated at all.

I think these kinds of intuitions is what the 'myth of the given' is criticising. It is the belief that knowledge has a dimension which is given or self-evident, which philosophy then elaborates on, when in fact, critical philosophy is questioning the very thing which you're taking to be self-evident. — Wayfarer

I think this is the issue which we approached with Pierre-Normand, concerning the notion of "enduring substance". Pierre mentioned that the concept of enduring substance doesn't enter the purview of the laws of physics. But I think this notion is inherent within such laws, essential to them, as the "given", which validates these laws.

Any law of physics assumes that what has been the case in the past, will continue to be the case, in the future. We make an inductive statement, of what has been, according to observation, and this statement acts as a law. The law contains predictive power according to the fact that what has been in the past, will continue to be so, in the future. So for example, I can state as a law, "the clear sky is blue". This is derived from past observations, and it holds predictive power about how things will be tomorrow, the clear sky will be blue, according to the principle that what has been the case in the past, will continue to be the case in the future. That principle is what is taken for granted, as given.

This is the essence of "enduring substance". What has been the case in the past, will continue to be the case in the future. It is what the laws of physics take for granted, as "the given". When we question this "given", we question the very nature of time itself. Why does reality appear to be like this, and how does this relate to the appearance of free will?