how does this "absential materialism" metaphysically differ from Democritean-Epicurean atomism (i.e. swirling atoms in void)? — 180 Proof

Classical atomism is monist – atoms are aspects (à la density differentials) of void, not separable from, or transcendent of, void – so no "dualism" — 180 Proof

How do Democritus, Epicurus and you define void?

…how does this "absential materialism" metaphysically differ from Democritean-Epicurean atomism (i.e. swirling atoms in void)? — 180 Proof

There is no binary of material/immaterial. Instead, there are only material processes moving upwards along a continuum of higher-order, dynamical systems.

In consequence, the grammar of these materialist processes is, morphologically speaking, monist, not dualist.

Is this the way forward in philosophy - to create new expressions or words, then debate them? Actually, it resembles math in this respect, other than math defines the expression clearly. — jgill

Philosophy should meet the same standard of clarity met by math.

But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in i — Wayfarer

Your question is important — ucarr

Does it have an answer? — Wayfarer

From my limited reading of Deacon I don't recall ever mentioning that phrase. Nor do I think he describes his work as materialist, rather as challenging the materialist paradigm, but within a broader naturalist framework. In other words, a form of extended naturalism. — Wayfarer

Are you saying the natural world stands some degree apart from material things?

Are you acknowledging the immaterial realm is a part of the natural world and therefore is not supernatural?

Are you aligning the immaterial world with top-down causation?

In terms of constraints in physics, these can ultimately be traced back to the fundamental cosmic constraints associated with the cosmological anthropic principle, without which complex matter and living organisms could not have formed. — Wayfarer

Are you claiming the fundamental cosmic constraints exemplify immaterial causation?

Are you saying the natural world emerged from immaterial causation?

Let's just call Absential Materialism a "novel pairing" with seemingly paradoxical implications. It's oxymoronic only in contrast to Materialism as here & now Realism. — Gnomon

Good.

my main interest is in the "bridge" of which you speak. — Gnomon

My metaphor of the bridge is meant to express the theme of unification across upwardly evolving dynamical systems essential to upwardly evolving life forms. Establishing linkage between the levels of end-directed behavior aimed at maintaining the far-from-equilibrium metabolic processes is the central goal.

This bridging over the material/immaterial duality strives to render it inconclusive.

…Absence/Void is the not-yet-real pool-of-Potential from which Actual material things and immaterial properties may Emerge. — Gnomon

If Absence/Void is active and causal, as in the case of grounding emergent material things, then its energetic_material, not absential. The absential gaps are due to constraints imposed by dynamic metabolics upon the universal, thermo-dynamical tendency towards equilibrium and inaction. Life arises from dynamic metabolics that constrain the tendency towards equilibrium on behalf of far-from-equilibrium, vital organisms.

Highly ordered material things, such as living organisms, don’t arise from a void. Instead, they arise from a thermo-dynamic equilibrium constrained upwardly towards ever-more complex
and individualized states of being.

I notice that you spell "intentional" with an "e", as I do in my own thesis, following Deacon. — Gnomon

Ententional: A generic adjective coined in this book for describing all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achieve something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value. — Terrence W. Deacon

Deacon’s term encompasses an array of attributes associated with cerebration within a set of end-directed processes.

Absence may play the role of causal Energy… — Gnomon

Energy, even as a waveform, is a presence.

But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in it? — Wayfarer

Your question is important because absential materialism has a knack for looking like immaterialism without being such. In a parallel manner, the moon’s gravitational field looks as if it has no presence on earth. This appearance is dispelled by understanding earth’s ocean tides are much affected by the moon’s gravitational, action-at-a-distance influence upon the ocean tides and thus upon the weather.

I read it as suggesting that reality is exhaustively characterized by manifestations of matter and the absence of matter, eschewing the idea of anything transcendent of matter. Matter is able to manifest its own absence, a material absence that matters. not an unknowable immaterial presence. Makes sense to me. — Janus

Yes. Deacon goes into great detail with his elaborations of the multi-step ladder of dynamical processes that progressively organize what we see in nature, including the mind and the thinking of humans. As the dynamical processes become end-directed, they create strategic constraints that compel emergent properties to organize around what is not yet but will be. In so doing, these emergent properties operate within boundaries radically different from their substrates. These radical differences in boundaries give rise to radical differences in functions. The upshot is the appearance of causal forces divorced from material things. Although functionally independent from their material substrates, they are, in fact, still rooted in them as emergent properties.

I assume the paradoxical & oxymoronic term is of your own coinage. — Gnomon

Yes, the pairing of the adjective with the noun is my own doing. Deacon’s use of absential as an adjective in Incomplete Nature introduced me to the adjective form of “absent.” For this reason, I don’t think my pairing rises to the level of a new coinage. More importantly, I’m inclined away from characterizing the pairing as oxymoronic. I see the main thrust of the pairing as an expression of the bridge across the matter/immaterial divide. Mind entails a non-local materialism that should not be confused with immateriality. Paradoxicality lays too much stress upon an undecidable material status.

…I'd appreciate an abbreviated definition of "absential materialism" that distinguishes it from "immaterialism", and identifies why the term is needed for philosophical intercourse. — Gnomon

Here’s how I say it in terse language:

The human individual is the exemplar of absential materialism: what is not yet but will be. This is the heart of an enduring self who lives via enactment of intentions. Selfhood wraps itself around the nullity, or absence, of about-ness, which is the set of individual intentions. — ucarr

Thinking in abstraction from immediate sensory interaction with environment is ententional behavior towards a future and desired state of being; here I try to express as Deacon might do. The non-locality of ententional mind is not transcendence of our natural world of material_physical things. Instead, it is gravitational manipulation of spatio_temporally extended material things.

Consciousness, as I understand it, concerns itself with action-at-a-distance design of desired future states of being as mediated by gravitational fields. It confers onto organized mind an interior/exterior interface, or complex surface that multiplexes the location of conscious beings. As I say above, we humans are mostly local and locatable, but not entirely so.

When we walk about, does our consciousness travel with us? Yes and no.

I can't understand his mathematically-based arguments, and a lot of what he says is over my head. — Wayfarer

My understanding of Penrose, as influenced by Gödel, says that Incompleteness Theorem tells the mathematician that math proofs exemplify the consistency achievable within math-as-language morphology (math grammar), but that such internal consistency is not the whole story. Since a foundational set of axioms for a particular math will generate equations unprovable by their axioms, beyond consistent morphology, there lies the experience of understanding these changes of form by a person. Even in the face of math proofs there is judgment of computational consistency not itself computational. Generalizing from this insight, there is a consistent POV that is concerned with the aboutness of things rooted in the absence of its own aboutness.

I don’t yet, however, go so far as to totally deny all objectivity of the self. This I say because, obviously, the self is aware of itself.

What do you make of this?

Boxers, like debaters, engage in a battle. When the bell rings, signaling the start of a new round, the fighters leave their corners and enter into the middle of the ring. The new round commences shortly thereafter and the punches start flying.

Debaters, using words instead of fists, throw punches by asking questions. When the battle is engaged, the questions start flying.

If, on the other hand, only one of the fighters enters into the middle of the ring and just stands there awaiting engagement with the other boxer until, finally, it’s clear the other boxer will not leave his corner, it’s universally understood that that fighter has conceded the fight.

I’ve answered your questions over and over. As a recent example, I’ve responded to your citation of Hume with a quote from him that supports my position. As another recent example, when you attempted to distance concept from impression, I cited a dictionary definition that establishes their similarity along the axis of non-physicality, a central element within our battle.

You, however, have lately been refusing to answer my questions. You’re like a boxer who refuses to leave his corner to engage with the other boxer.

Your avoidance began with this question:

Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head? — ucarr

You’ve avoided it three times. You’re still talking, still asking questions, but you’re doing this over in your own corner, where the fight cannot continue.

The correct impression in husband’s head is either damaged or destroyed. Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head? — ucarr

——————————————————————————————————————————————

You’re claiming numbers and their relations are understandable a priori, regardless of age, situation, and personal experience?

Do you, or anyone you know of, have knowledge of a human society that does no counting of material things whatsoever?

Do you, or anyone you know of, have knowledge of a human society with children who can’t see the difference between one lollipop and two lollipops? — ucarr

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. — https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki

Number has both mentality and physicality. — IP060903

.

In your opinion, do these two attributes of number bind abstract numbers to physical things and physical things to abstract numbers?

The correct impression in husband’s head is either damaged or destroyed. Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head? — ucarr

——————————————————————————————————————————

Well, the idea of the statue is from the external object, and the idea of number is from the mental concept, so you are talking about totally different ideas in nature... — Corvus

Impression - an especially marked and often favorable influence or effect on feeling, sense, or mind. — Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

Regarding the statue as impression from the external object and number as impression from a concept, are they both non-physical contents of the mind?

Humean impressions are not associated with knowledge, judgement or concepts. They are passions, emotions and feelings viz. sensations in nature. — Corvus

Have you directly observed passions, emotions, feelings, and sensations? Mind you, this question is very specific. I’m not asking if you’ve directly observed humans (or other animals) experiencing passions, emotions, feelings, and sensations. I’m asking if you’ve directly observed passions, emotions, feelings and sensations divorced from humans (or other animals) experiencing them?

…you can have an idea of a number without having to see any external objects… — Corvus

You’re claiming numbers and their relations are understandable a priori, regardless of age, situation, and personal experience?

Do you, or anyone you know of, have knowledge of a human society that does no counting of material things whatsoever?

Do you, or anyone you know of, have knowledge of a human society with children who can’t see the difference between one lollipop and two lollipops?

We have been talking about the nature of numbers. — Corvus

We have different mental impressions in our heads. This variety includes: grocery list items, images of statues observed, numbers learned in grammar school now being used to count grocery list items.

Do you acknowledge that in order to check the truth content of the husband’s first mental impression of the statue, he had to return to the site and try to verify or revise that first impression — ucarr

Of course, you need to go back and see the statue to confirm what it is. Therefore it proves, even of your memory is unreliable, things exist as they are, be it physical or mental. Just because your memory is unreliable doesn't mean that mental objects become physical. Even if you memory becomes bad, numbers are concepts in the mind. — Corvus

We’ve been talking about mental objects. This category includes numbers as well as other mental objects as, for example, the memory of the statue.

Of course, you need to go back and see the statue to confirm what it is… — Corvus

The correct impression in husband’s head is either damaged or destroyed. Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head? — ucarr

Because someone died, or someone's head gone off doesn't mean numbers turn to physical or disappear into non-existence. — Corvus

The correct impression in husband’s head is either damaged or destroyed. Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head? — ucarr

Do you acknowledge that in order to check the truth content of the husband’s first mental impression of the statue, he had to return to the site and try to verify or revise that first impression? — ucarr

Of course, you need to go back and see the statue to confirm what it is. Therefore it proves, even of your memory is unreliable, things exist as they are, be it physical or mental. Just because your memory is unreliable doesn't mean that mental objects become physical. Even if you memory becomes bad, numbers are concepts in the mind. — Corvus

During the week following the husband’s discovery about the statue, he goes out walking and steps onto a patch of ice hidden under snow. He takes a hard fall and hits his head on the pavement. That night in his hospital room, his wife, visiting him, cheers him up with stories. At one point, she asks him if he remembers telling her about the statue of “George Washington” in the town square. She uses a mocking tone while speaking the name of George Washington and laughs, expecting hubby to laugh along with her little joke about his mistake. The husband, instead of laughing, doubles down on his claim that, indeed, the statue in the square depicts George Washington. At this point, the wife’s smile is overtaken by a sad expression as she realizes the head injury must’ve destroyed his correct impression of the statue. All that remains now is his earlier, incorrect impression.

The correct impression in husband’s head is either damaged or destroyed. Does this correct version of his impression, that was previously operational within his head, but now is not, still exist somewhere outside of his head?

It is like saying your eyesight got bad, and cannot see the road, therefore the road doesn't exist. — Corvus

You say this is bad logic because the road is there whether the eyes see it or not.

One day at the dinner table a husband tells his wife that afternoon he saw a statue of George Washington. Your wife tells him he’s wrong. “The statue you saw at the location you gave is a statue of Thomas Jefferson,” she says. Next day he returns to the location and, going much closer to it than on the previous day, he sees that, indeed, it’s a statue of Thomas Jefferson.

Do you acknowledge that in order to check the truth content of the husband’s first mental impression of the statue, he had to return to the site and try to verify or revise that first impression?

Yes, I was trying to say to you that numbers exist as concepts, whether one remembers them or not. The road exists in front of you, whether you see it, or not — Corvus

Don’t confuse number-signs with physical number as countable-things-in-the-world. I’ve never denied what you claim here about number-signs. But even with number-signs, the issue of ontic status is debatable.

If you think numbers existed as concepts before the Big Bang, then you’re attaching yourself to Cartesian Dualism. This attachment parallels claiming God existed before the Big Bang.

You’re positing two worlds, one physical, one non-physical. If non-physical numbers have a relationship to the physical things they describe, but are not themselves physical, then you, like Descartes, have to explain how non-physical numbers have any practical relationship to the physical world.

How do non-physical numbers attach themselves to the physical brain in your head? You will say you have a mind that’s not physical. I then ask you how your non-physical mind attaches itself to your brain. This conversation has always been about how concepts, supposedly non-physical, connect with the physical humans who create and propagate them.

Now we arrive at my premise that the mind is an emergent, cognitive operator ultimately rooted in the physical. This means, specifically, that numbers, which are of the mind, likewise are, ultimately, part of a complex of physical world_brain_emergent mind. — ucarr

I’ve already presented this explanation in our dialog more than two times.

How do you uncouple seeing the road from the road's existence as a thing-in-itself? — Corvus

You don’t. This has been my point all along.

Saying memory can be unreliable therefore numbers are physical is a poor logic… It is like saying your eyesight got bad, and cannot see the road, therefore the road doesn't exist. — Corvus

You say above it’s poor logic to claim “My eyesight is bad and I cannot see the road; therefore, the road doesn’t exist.” I agree this is bad logic because of the objectivist assumption the road is there whether one sees it or not.* A central implication of this assumption is that the truth content of eyesight depends upon what is really there that it sees. This, in turn, implies eyesight, which is perception of the mind, depends on the physical things populating the natural world. Now we arrive at my premise that the mind is an emergent, cognitive operator ultimately rooted in the physical. This means, specifically, that numbers, which are of the mind, likewise are, ultimately, part of a complex of physical world_brain_emergent mind.

*An unseen road might be quantum mechanically uncertain, but that uncertainty is collapsible.

What branch of Logic is this? — Corvus

If you don’t know the five logical operators, then you need to open a book of logic for beginners. That’s the book I’m studying.

Degrading memory exemplifies a breakdown in the conjunctive logical operation connecting experience of the environment to mind. This relationship lies at the center of my claim abstract math calculations of the mind are tied to experience of the environment. Were they not, the fitness of memory would not affect abstract thought. This applies no less to higher orders of abstract thought because all its levels, ultimately, reduce to experience of the environment. Mind is emergent from environment, but the two remain coupled. — ucarr

What do you mean by this? Could you please rephrase it? — Corvus

At the bank, when the teller pays out thirty dollars cash to you from your account, you get pieces of paper with numbers on them. The pieces of paper, by themselves, have no value. In the bank at Fort Knox, the U.S. gold reserve holds thirty dollars that back the value of your paper money in the form of pieces of gold, which, by definition, hold monetary value intrinsically. This is a conjunctive relationship between paper money and gold with respect to monetary value.

In a parallel relationship, when your math teacher solves an equation on the blackboard, s/he’s paying out math information to you just as the bank teller pays out paper money to you. Just as the gold in Fort Knox, by conjunction with the paper money, gives it value, the natural world of material things, by conjunction with the number signs on the blackboard, gives them value. The mind perceives countable material things in the natural world and, through the process of abstraction, a process that composites multiple experiences linked by a theme into one representative abstraction, links number signs with the property of being countable, an intrinsic property of material things.

Break this connection and number signs, like paper monies, lose their value. Just as gold funds the value of paper money, material things fund the value of number signs. For this reason, I claim number is a physical property of the natural world. Numbers, then, are, ultimately, physical.

To quickly note the relevance here, I basically determine that the core foundation of knowledge is our ability to 'discretely experience'. Discrete is to take many and make it one. I believe it is the origin of math. Of course, though we can create a discrete identity, it must be applied to reality for confirmation. Thus while we can construct discrete abstracts or 'ones' in our head, to test the accuracy of this measure it must be applied outside of ourselves. — Philosophim

Yes. I agree with the points you make here.

After reading your Knowledge and induction within your self-context and some of your interactions with Bob Ross, I’m willing to venture a tentative overview of a key part of your thesis. Your hierarchy of induction, which has four levels: probability, possibility, plausibility, and irrational induction, serves as a guide for passage from Distinctive Knowledge to Applicable Knowledge. Let me begin by saying these four levels, that progressively move further away from knowledge, respectively, are a quartet of inductions already known to the general public superficially. Therefore, your work details these four general precepts with a schematic overview and a collection of algorithms for rigorous calculations. Through use of your guide, members of the public can do more precise assessments of truth content at each level.

On a speculative basis, I’m wondering if your scheme can be used with logical truth tables towards rigorous assessments at each of the four levels.

Note - This note is, admittedly, a somewhat fanciful suggestion: in order to keep your quartet alliterative, consider replacing your last level, “irrational induction,” with “pretension.”

Numbers are…purely mental…they are universal. — Corvus

Numbers are universal? There’s a reason why teaching math to elementary students usually involves the use of material things that can be counted like, for example, wooden blocks. Without use of countable things named in the counting process, many elementary students, when shown equations on a blackboard, would see nothing but meaningless chalk scribbles.

If numbers were material and physical, then your numbers and mine would be different and contingent, which would make the universally necessary concepts and knowledge (Mathematics, Geometry etc) impossible. — Corvus

You imply there are no logical relations between material things. The sum of my car parked on the street next to yours is no less calculable than one equation solved in our heads, respectively.

Now, to this you will say, but counting the cars is a mental operation that is separate from the cars themselves. To this I will say, see my above argument about material-things-in-themselves being sufficient to establish the reality of relationships whereas mental impressions alone are not. The upshot of this has me saying, again, mental activity is emergent from but not ultimately uncoupled from its physical substrate, material things.

Saying memory can be unreliable therefore numbers are physical is a poor logic. — Corvus

I understand logic as an exacting type of continuity; it is continuity that adheres to strict rules of inference as they pertain to conjunction; disjunction; implication, mutual implication and the negation of these logical operations.

Memory is an ability of the brain which is a biological organ. — Corvus

Memory, by definition, is referential to antecedent, empirical experience internalized cognitively. Therefore, the relationship between experience of the environment and its subsequent, memory, directly entails the five logical operations listed above. Degrading memory exemplifies a breakdown in the conjunctive logical operation connecting experience of the environment to mind. This relationship lies at the center of my claim abstract math calculations of the mind are tied to experience of the environment. Were they not, the fitness of memory would not affect abstract thought. This applies no less to higher orders of abstract thought because all its levels, ultimately, reduce to experience of the environment. Mind is emergent from environment, but the two remain coupled.

Of course its capacity can degrade with ageing, and other factors. It is like saying your eyesight got bad, and cannot see the road, therefore the road doesn't exist. — Corvus

You’re uncoupling seeing the road from the road’s existence as a thing-in-itself. Your implicit assumption in lobbing this uncoupling action as a missile attacking my position is that memory of seeing the road internalized is NOT sufficient to establish the REALITY of the road as a thing-in-itself. Believing this, you attack the uncoupling of mental impression from thing-in-itself, with the former being insufficient evidence of the true state of the road as thing-in-itself. Your attack assumes as true what it tries to deny: mental impressions are not categorically separate from their antecedent material objects making up the environment of the natural world. That mental impressions of number as cognitive math in abstraction are not categorically separate from their antecedent material objects making up the environment of the natural world is specifically what I mean when I say number is physical.

:up:

Thanks for the link. I’ll read them and then respond.

Now, for the hard part.

Why do I think mind is never wholly independent from our physical world?

Have I ever been counted as zero, or as two? No. I’ve only been counted as one. I am a one, an individual. My holistic oneness is my state of being. I, along with 7 billion others, am a human one. I count myself, and I am counted by others, as one.

I fight to be counted as one. That’s why, periodically, I go into the ballot box and make my marks on paper in order to be counted as one.

I have a physical life that’s always been counted as one; physical number, counting my wholeness as one, has always been with me.

At the time of my birth, I stretched my lungs and vibrated my chords and cried out as a new one, just ejected into the spectacle of life. A stillborn has no life, and has no number, not even zero.

If we are not born with number, we are not whole and, probably have no life. I say probably because some human individuals are born and do live without essential parts of themselves. However, even the most bereft of the permanently disabled count as a one. There are no partial humans. All humans are whole and complete in their oneness.

Concepts and data can exist without the physical objects purely in the minds. — Corvus

Yes, they can, and they do. However, they do not exist there purely. It is the interweave of world and perceiving mind that fuels experience-based memory, thoughts, understanding, imaginings and ideas.

Do you need the physical reality and objects when you imagine, remember or think about something? — Corvus

Memory and imagination, via the interweave of world and mind, play a game of give-and-take with environment. Ask any courtroom lawyer, or prosecutor, and he/she will tell you about the unrealiability of memory on the part of witnesses. Ask any senior citizen who’s just visited their childhood home after decades absent from it and they’ll tell you about seeing a world smaller than the one they remember.

Not even the young, of sound mind and fit body, are wholly exempt from forgetfulness.

The discipline of psychology can go on and on about the vagaries of human memory under various circumstances.

Mind has a partial, complicated independence vis-a-vis the experiential environment, the bank that funds the cognitive capital that is our consciousness.

My point is that numbers and data are conceptual. — Corvus

Concept - an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances.

With our definition of concept (Webster’s), we have the same relationship as the one obtaining between number-signs and the physical property of number: the physical thing, in this case “particular instances,” is the substrate conferring meaning onto concepts. Example: you have a concept of muscle cars as a potent instrument of seduction by men trying to make time with women. Herein “concept” like “number,” takes it’s meaning from observation of physically real muscle cars seen over the years. Neither “concepts” nor “data,” divorced from physical reality, have any meaning or use.

Given this similarity of “concepts” and “data,” (one is general is focus while the other is more specific in focus) arguing numbers are concepts before their linkage to physical things and data afterwards is both wrong and irrelevant to the crux of my argument: the linkage of physical substrate and numbers (which are concepts) is necessary for the latter to have meaning and use. You argue for the separate reality of numbers. Point to line drawings labeled number-signs to make that claim if you wish; it’s a claim for a reality without meaning or use.

I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of data before such linkage. — ucarr

No. I never said that. You are either misquoting me, or not reading my posts properly. — Corvus

In my statement you don’t see any quotation marks, so that’s evidence I’m not quoting you.

Suppose I change my statement:

I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of concepts before such linkage. — ucarr

If my argument for the similarity of the terms is correct, I don’t need to make any further changes to my above claim.

Before the linkage numbers are concepts. After the linkage, they become data. — Corvus

…my point is that numbers are concepts even after they are linked to the objects. — Corvus

My point is that number-signs, fundamentally distinct from physical number, are concepts only after they’re been cognitively_mnemonically linked to the physics of number. I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of data before such linkage.

Without the necessary cognitve_mnemonic linkage to the physics of number, a natural occurrence, there are, in effect, no such things as meaningful number-signs (what your refer to as numbers), only patterned line drawings, which you can label “numbers,” or whatever you wish to call them.

Let's consider what we think would be required for any existent in the universe to be aware of, or be able to distinguish any other existent. — universeness

Terrence W. Deacon, in his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, does important work towards a physicalist explanation of the mind as emergent property of matter. From the small, limited understanding of his book I’ve been able to glean, the core of his thesis puts the burden of the emergence of physicalism-based consciousness onto a multi-tiered paradigm of dynamical processes, with thermodynamics as the base. From the start, then, Deacon highlights the seminal (pun intended) importance of thermodynamics WRT life. The three-part paradigm links thermodynamic processes to morphodynamic processes and, in turn, these two are linked to teleodynamic processes. This paradigm has for its theme: the appearance of the ententional within nature. The ententional domain includes dynamical processes that are, ultimately, end-directed processes rooted in strategic absences, thus Incomplete Nature. These critical absences are effected by constraints as imposed by each level of dynamical processing. I think, if I’m not mistaken, and I might be, that the critical absences due to critical constraints are part of an encompassing phenomenon Deacon implies with his frequent references to far-from-equilibrium states. The far-from-equilibrium state of being might well be labeled one of the fundamentals of living organisms. One can say maintaining this state of being is what is commonly know as the struggle to survive.

The peculiar feature of mind is its particular method of striving toward the goal of maintaining the contra-grade processes of the major organ systems of living organisms. The end-directedness of mind is rooted in what is not yet but, by design, eventually will be. It is chiefly this feature of mind, I think, that gives the impression mind is not physical. My adjustment, accordingly, features now the notion of complex materialism, an absential phenomenon rooted in the critical constraints of the three-tiered process towards sentience and cognition.

Must all such exercises always land at the problem of hard solipsism? — universeness

Fanfare from the band as complex materialism comes onstage and, in doing so, kicks hard solipsism up into the rafters. Mind is not divorced from the physics of the natural world.

What is needed for such a notion as a quantum fluctuation or a singularity or a god origin? are the two fundamentals required, simply duration and space? and then something must be aware that such has happened so that the notion 'event' can become the next most essential happening. — universeness

You’re in the hunt for naturally occurring abiogenesis. Might the biggest question in science be: by what means the quantum leap from non-life into life?

But isn't the measurement data of the body, the property of the body…? — Corvus

Apparently without intending to, you state my premise exactly.

Again the musical notation on the paper has no meaning until it had been performed by the singer. — Corvus

Here you are expressing my premise again with a more complex model. Music, a complex interweave of numerical values of vibrating strings, exemplifies, more nobly, the physicality of number. The signs on the scoring sheet have physical, vibrating strings as their substrate, giving them meaning and usefulness as data.

Your height, weight, age etc. are not abstractions; they’re represented by abstract signifiers, but the number of your height, for example, remains consistent throughout your adult life. Your and everyone else’s senses will register this consistency, regardless of what the signifiers say on paper. Probably you’re thinking this is an argument for your premise that numbers are a separate reality from the physics of the natural world. If someone changes your height measurement significantly on paper, everyone’s senses will continue to see your same, established height. This is because the ontic meaningfulness of the height measurement signifier is tied directly to the physical number of your height as registered by the senses. Signifiers divorced from their referents are just line drawings on paper faithful to established patterns without meaning or usefulness. When you say data is separate from the physical body, being able to call the patterned line drawings data contradicts your claim the patterned line drawings are a separate reality without physicality. Without their direct connection to physical reality by reference, as mediated by the brain’s memory, the line drawings are NOT data, but rather just patterned line drawings. This difference between meaningless line drawings and data is crucial. The latter can’t exist as we understand and use it without being referenced to the physics of the natural world. Clearly, this means number, as represented by number signs, really is out there. Number, as distinguished from number-sign, is complex (meaning two-part) materialism: pattern recognition of similar things into sets composited into abstract signs as mediated via the memory.

Isn't the measurement of his body just a form of data? Data is not material or physical. Is it? — Corvus

Do music and song have size? Is it a metaphor or what? — Corvus

Your questions are good. They point to my main point in all of my jabbering: number-signs (which are not number, the physical property) attach themselves to physical things. Together, number-signs and their substrates, physical things and physical properties, form something that can be called complex materialism. It has two parts: physical things and number-signs. The latter denote their material substrates in the language games humans must play.

You ask about the singer’s body in my little story. The measurement of his body is data, but that data has no meaning without his body to which it refers.

You ask about the measurement of music. The measurement of music in signs, whether math or verbal, takes its meaning by its attachment to the existential reality of its substrate, the singing man.

What’s the meaning, which is to ask, “What’s the reality,” of musical notation on paper if it doesn’t refer to the singing man, or even to the leaves rustling in the breeze?

Abstractions of the human mind are emergent from the physics of the natural world, but not wholly independent from same.

My original question was, if number is material and physical (as claimed by the OP), then what measurements in size and weights does it have? And what shape and colour does number have for its physical and material existence? — Corvus

Your best friend sings tenor in the church choir. His buddies call him “Golden Pipes.” The women call him “Boy Wonder.” He serenades the sighing of lungs on starry nights.

What size and weight, what shape and color, his tenor voice? The width of his nostrils, the length of his lungs, the breath of his chords, is it? These numbers are sizes of music and song, but one man is he. Oh, glee of sweet nighters.

Number one, our silent partner, never leaves us from cradle to grave.

Hear ye, hear, ye! All y’all students come to order! Professor universeness is in the house! So listen up. Some foundations ‘bout to get laid.
— ucarr

:lol: Not sure if I've just been complimented or insulted. I kinda like it that way. — universeness

I got a little carried away with my vernacular. With the above salutation I’m praising what you posted.

So at the most fundamental level, surely its the ability to differentiate between different objects, attributes, properties, patterns that is the essential ability for a sentient to be able to experience the universe. The quantity of a particular object within a particular volume in spacetime, seems to me secondary to the more fundamental need to be able to differentiate. — universeness

Your supposition about differentiation points our attention to something essential: we gain knowledge of the world through our differentiations separating our experiences of things into their distinctions and, might it be, as I’m thinking right now, that number is a general distinction amongst a welter of more local and specific distinctions, and thus the essential importance of math. I think we can claim generally that all humans of sound mind use math every day as an essential part of their navigation of the world. Distinctions of the senses: color, sound, taste, smell and touch have in common the theme of number running through all of them: how many colors, sounds, tastes, smells and touches is absolutely essential to everyone’s personal history, albeit not necessarily fully cognitively.

Without the contrast of changing stimuli, humans, no matter how rested, fall asleep. Number is essential to those contrast-producing changes.

I’m not ready to claim number is the minimum distinction required for the intelligibility of sensible experience, but you’ve done much to help me advance in that direction.

Perhaps a categorical essence is out of domain, but essential things aren’t.
In this statement, for clarity's sake, I prefer fundamental to your term "essential". — 180 Proof

How are “essential” and “fundamental” distinct? Webster’s Thesaurus lists each word in the other’s list of synonyms.

This raises the question whether metaphysics has any place within a physicalist universe. — ucarr

The doesn't make sense to me because I think of "physicalist universe" itself as a metaphysical construct, that is, merely a speculative supposition – way of observing and describing nature. — 180 Proof

I wonder if you, when talking of metaphysics in the context of this post, refer to the metaphysics of a particular field, physicalism, whereas I, when talking of metaphysics in general, refer to the metaphysics of all fields.

MHO, cosmology (physics) concerns only modelling the development of what we call "the observable universe" and not "beginnings" or "origins" or "essences" of all things (metaphysics). — 180 Proof

In the context of my general usage of metaphysics beyond the metaphysics of a particular field (the latter being the grammar local to that specific field), “beginnings,” “origins,” and “essences” cannot be excluded. When you say:

…I think of "physicalist universe" itself as a metaphysical… way of observing and describing nature. — 180 Proof

You seem to be referencing the particular metaphysics of “physicalism,” not the general metaphysics of ontology.

There is nothing in nature (or in mind) that i refers to, we call it irrational for a reason, and yet, i is the basis of lots of our mathematics. From that it should follow that mathematics is not just about physical things, and thence that either numbers are not real objects or that numbers are real but not physical. — Lionino

Your post is interesting. Let me clarify: that math covers more than the simple physical I don’t deny. Math, like other abstractions represented by signs, has significant, extensive, even complex distinction from the natural world.

As I learn about emergence and emergent properties, I become more inclined to think math is an emergent property, with material objectivity in the role of its substrate. By this claim I mean to say that math as an emergent property, though like a world unto itself with immersive complexity and broadly inclusive parameters radically different from those of the material world, nevertheless falls short of categorical independence from its substrate, the material world.

Abstraction in general I think a phenomenon that can aptly be labeled: complex materialism. Complex materialism involves 3D compositing of serial empirical experiences linked by similarity and theme. The mind takes these strings of remembered experiences and composites them into an abstraction that thematically generalizes their similarities into an abstraction represented by signifiers. This process, if a reality, makes its clear that abstractions have emergence from the material world, but not independence from same.

Note: regarding complex numbers, which have an imaginary part, they, like the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference, express themselves through an unbounded, asymptotic progression. What’s important to note is that no human has directly perceived infinite magnitude. Complex numbers, like irrational numbers, are neither real nor unreal, but rather ontically undecidable. Thus the infinite sets and the imaginary sets don’t work as evidence of math’s categorical independence from the material world.

Thanks for weighing in. I hope you’ll keep doing so.

:up:

I consider methodological physicalism only a paradigm for making/evaluating 'physical models' and interpreting their results, or problematics. — 180 Proof

Methodological, the adjective that attaches to physicalism, tells us your brand of physicalism gets practiced via model making, model evaluating and data crunching? Moreover, it is itself a model for model making?

How do you find countable objects from the object you can't count? — Corvus

Since your question asks about the “object” you can’t count, a word single in number, haven’t you already counted it?

Isomorphism. — JuanZu

It just preserves from one pair to another pair what the eyes perceive. Number signs, in order to be assigned meaning, must first be referenced to something tangible and countable. Counting by number signs arbitrarily assigned to tangible counting sets of things examples tangible things acting as substrates for a math language that only has meaning with reference to tangible things within the natural world. I infer this is what you’re thinking of when you talk of numbered things. The tangible things numbered substantiate in meaning what the signs represent. You can imagine yourself inventing a language that has no tangible referents, but only as an abstraction from your knowledge of numbered things exampling number signs arbitrarily attached to tangible things.

Well, given what I've said independence is real. Otherwise we fall into contradiction and the complete uselessness of mathematics. — JuanZu

I can give you an example of math attached to tangible things and thereby being meaningful and useful: civil engineering.

Give me an example of math independent of tangible things that is meaningful and useful. Pure math investigating foundational math grammar won’t work because that’s higher-order applied math examining math grammar which, in turn, is grounded in tangible things countable.

If the number were not different from the numbered things, it would not be possible to give us two apples after giving us two oranges. Since if the number is not a third with respect to apples and oranges, this number falls into the essence of some of the objects, which would lead to saying that two oranges ARE two apples. Violating identity. — JuanZu

You have a three-year-old. You ask him to go to the big fruit bowl on the table across the room and get you two apples and two oranges. You don’t ask him with words because he’s not good with number signs. Instead, you hold up two fingers and say, “apples.” Next, you hold up two other fingers and say, “oranges.” You don’t think your three-year-old can complete the task without knowing number signs?

If a child cannot distinguish and understand two apples and two oranges without knowing counting numbers, then neither child nor adult could ever see two of each. This is not a description of our daily experience.