Descartes idea of efficient causation is worth taking a look at. Mental circumstance can be traced to brain state but any change in mental circumstance will change brain state. So mental circumstance is driving brain state. It's a difficult idea to explain. Anyone, please take a try at it if you can do better or explain if you think it's something else.

Another related issue is holding true or false ideas.
My view is that it's very possible to hold false ideas without it being the fault of brain biology.
Some could wrongly take the position that false ideas can be traced to failed brain biology.
In practice failing brain biology.and holding false ideas have very different characteristics.

I might be drifting away from physicalism but if you take physicalism as the basis for what exists then these side issues follow.

Here are some highlights on Wayfarer's book reference that I liked:

From Descartes...explanation at the neurophysiological level will be in terms of efficient causation.

Once the Cartesian paradigm took hold, it fell to neuroscientists to work out its implications at the experimental level.

The book is Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Bennett, Hacker, 2003

The review looked good.

I'm someone who avoids the word metaphysical.
Maybe I don't use it enough to be comfortable with it. It seems more of a word for academics and like you say might be a negative to some.

Also, I focus on just certain areas of philosophy and try to have a general background.

I always thought Shannon Information was a poor choice of a word. It's a technical specialty that's made a huge impact but isn't good science or philosophy just because of that.

I might sometimes look like I'm defending physicalism or be some how attached to it but I'm not. It just gets us to the point where we do what we do with our brains which really is the interesting part. And not just in philosophy.

Since our brains/minds seem to be capable of believing anything, true or false, having some grounding in the physical basis might keep us from getting off track.

Your number 5 reference (just above here) is interesting. Information, the word, seems to have morphed and diverged a huge amount since it's origin.

Common usage now seems to be an abstraction that has no physical basis so I think the original meaning is more true to physicalism. And the ancient philosophers wouldn't have had the word or the current ideas of what information is. I just think its current usages (the word information) conflict and cause confusion

Thanks for bringing that up. For me, it is relevant to physicalism.

When two clocks tick at different rates due to STR it doesn't mean the accumulating difference is moving one or the other outside the physical present. From their relative positions they always are in the present. How is presentism lost in any way? Are you mistaking STR with time travel?

There is a lot to this....

In the physical world we should use presentism

The physical world is the basis for our mental worlds.

In our mental worlds we should use eternalism. (Or growing block if needed).

Philosophy isn't always clear or you have to look closely to see what applies and context.

Okay I did a little deeper look into what you are saying. A Google search says STR and presentism are incompatible. So you have company.

What I'm seeing is a complete ignorance of the past and future existing as physically present brain state. They just haven't developed their philosophy enough. Past and future existing as brain state in the physical present is compatible with presentism. So I'm sticking with what I wrote earlier.

Are you saying STR and growing block theory are compatible? No they are not. Whoever was arguing that was wrong. Seems like you left out a lot of context just to give a quote.

Presentism works for relativity as I understand it.
What am I denying?

The only thing I can think of is different rates of time passage measured by two clocks. It's still a physical present anywhere.

Arguments for physicalism you mentioned....

What works for me is setting things into a universal form like this:

Physical brain; (mental content)
Physical brain; (time perception)
Physical brain; (thought)
Physical brain; (knowledge)
Physical brain; (mathematics)

On and on.
It recurs often enough that we should expect it to be a universal form of our mental worlds.

It's also useful to understand information physically exists in this form

So information is physical brain; (mental content)

That's my view of how physicalism deals with information being physically based.

I should correct your grammar.
Yesterday the mountains were as physical as they are today.
Isn't that the correct grammar?
Interesting that you used are instead of were.

Okay, that's basically what I think.
Could I say a property of physical matter is its physical presence? I'm just getting lost in the words.

I'd say your/our/my perception of historical fact is valid. The nature of physical matter is its physical presence. We rely too much on a mental picture of time that isn't a physical reality

We can imagine time lines in our brains but we can't physically get out of the present. Two things are at play, the mental and the physical.

We have direct access to the present.

It would be the easiest to defend.

How do you prove past or future matter exist.

And their origin is in your brain not a physical observation.

Okay.
Presentism,
Growing block,
And eternalism.

Are those the choices?
Presentism works.

I don't think our best physics even addresses the other two. Is it in the math or something?

Can anyone show something that is not based on physical matter?

I could give time perception, past and future that don't exist in physical matter but that resolves itself as mental content (brain based and physical) that only exists in the physical present.

There is no good argument for Budweiser. Unless we want to say that reality is one and that everything has both a Michelob and a Budweiser aspect to that. The primacy of Budweiser is possible but still inferior to the primacy of Michelob.

Did that make sense to you?

You got me thinking about what time is.
For our brains we might have a special case because we perceive events and construct time lines. Past, present and future with the present being physical. That's my generalization of how we perceive time. It might not be the case physically. Matter doesn't flash in or out of existence based on clock time. Look at anything of matter and it has a stability and presence that doesn't come from a timeline or follow a clock. So look out as far as you can and as closely as you can and that might give you the best understanding of what physical matter is.

Of course for us we remember things in story form, events, calendar and clock time. If you think of a time line you have the past to the left, the physical present in the middle (an instant) and the future to the right. I think most people view past and future as physically non-existent but maybe that is my bias.

I think, for myself, I use different models of time based on the context and even can consider time as not a real thing....more a view that it is forever the physical present.

Just what the physics profession thinks is the state of physical matter. I think quantum physics says matter exists in a somewhat fuzzy present 'moment'.

You are missing the fundamentals. Or I think you are. Not going to argue with you.

Well I didn't sign up either. It has its uses though.

I'm lost. How does the past physically exist?
Just a word problem?
Past tense sort of existence?

By a moment of time do you mean a duration of time?
To me a moment could be an instant or a duration. An instant can physically exist but a duration is more of a mental construct.

Also from a physicalist perspective the past and future don't physically exist. I use past and future as known non-physicals. I think it's an argument that supports physicalism because brain state existing in the physical present can support the ideas of past and future .

I'm still working on understanding your argument. Not saying you are wrong.

A duration of time physically would be a sequence of physical instants. Not off limits or anything.

I liked the video.
My perspective is that computers use something like the definition of Shannon information and our brains use a type of information connected with our consciousness. So that was why I commented.

Haha....the term hand waving will come up but what is the alternative? Another kind of hand waving probably.

You mentioned causal tendencies. I don't have any idea how it's done but we can do a black box sort of observation and say a physical brain can do it. So I don't think it's an exception to physicalism.
Some might quivel.

... causal correlates, abilities, tendencies...

Good point. I've noticed that. We shouldn't assume everyone has the same abilities. Like some people don't know left or right or compass directions ever.

I can give a simple mental example of something brains can do in a different way than computers do.

Imagine a sphere in front of you (tennis ball size) at arms length. Now bisect it vertically and examine the two halves.

Can you do that? Easy right. The way your brain does it is nothing like a computer operates.

Maybe we are thinking about the same thing.

I'm a ways back on your dominoes video and am wondering if it could be misleading on how computation is done. I agree dominoes can do it like computers. Possibly based on the Turing machine principal (but I have forgotten all the details of that). But I don't think human brains are doing the same thing. Brains actually use consciousness to do math that isn't present in computers. My sense is that brains really do contain and manipulate 'non-physicals' but computers do it mechanically and have no awareness. Two very different processes.

Now I remember...Turing machine is a punch tape that goes back and forth reading and writing but the principal is that one type of mechanical computer can mimic another type.

And humans don't have a fixed method of doing the math and first tries are trial and error.

I'm just really curious if anyone else thinks there is some discrepancy. Or is it just that brains are so advanced the consciousness developed at high levels of complexity.

Looks like you are active here but relatively new.
This information question is nothing but trouble...round and round stuff much worse than this thread.

Just encoded physical matter that will be decoded by the receiver.

I was wondering what your view of information is.
This is actually a good example of where physicalism and reductionism used as tools can keep you out of trouble.

So a principal of physicalism is that everything can be reduced to physical matter and you just questioned how information can be physical. Anyone who projects information as something existing outside of brains is going to run into trouble here. Physical signals with information piggybacking along for the ride.

The better view is information exists as brain state which is reduced to physical matter and communication is possible by physical signals. No brain external information.

I think on your very, very long post you went off the rails in your very first paragraph.

A physical object is always going to be primary and it's definition will be secondary. If there is any ambiguity about what the parameters of the physical object are they should be resolved by setting parameters on the physical object.

If the definition of the word you are using doesn't match the physical object.then you are using the wrong word.

Just a thought, but to get away from physicalism, think of how a few calories of energy in your brain can direct millions, billions or trillions of calories in the physical environment. Seems like getting away from the nuts and bolts of physicalism is where the action is.

Sounds like something I would say.
I remember you warning about reductionism and I take that seriously. Actually, how we mentally interact with matter is what seems the most interesting to me. And for some it's the person to person thing so some of that also but I tend to be more physically oriented.

frank asked at the beginning of this if physicalism could be the grounding to your thinking on philosophy. I think for me that is the case. We can go on and on about physicalism but eventually it's good to move on with an understanding of what our basic grounding is.

Generally, I like physicalism, but I think you miss a lot by stopping at reductionism. Maybe physicalism just gets us to our mental worlds and then we can move on from there

I was trying to be clear that I think everything is based on the physical. There is the question of what non-physicals are. They come up often.

So when non-physicals come up you can observe they are always in the form of mental content so obviously not entirely non-physical but just as a mental abstraction (and our physical brains support that). I would classify that as physicalist because everything is accounted for based on physical matter.

I kind of agree.
I sometimes slip and use the term non-physical.
What I mean and how someone else might interpret it could be different. Mental subject matter might be better words. It explains how things that cannot physically exist can exist in a brain state. The way brains handle the number pi for example. And endless other things.

The big picture is that mental content has the ability to drive physical matter, which is a special case in a universe of physical matter.