Practicing mathematicians pay virtually no attention to this philosophical discussion. — jgill

And thus you are a dearly valuable exception to the rank and file establishment.

Tosh. Kant detested materialism, as do I. — Wayfarer

So, you detest materialism? Post herein a picture of your right index finger after you’ve chopped it off.

Pure math has connection to the natural world only as indecipherable signification representing thermodynamic equilibrium.

Since mathematicians only use pure math for investigation of the ground rules concerning applied math, pure math is merely higher-order applied math.
— ucarr

Mysteries never cease :roll: — jgill

Thank-you for your time, attention and commentary. Its not easy to get them from authentic experts. I like having the attention of important people. What you say in your below quote is what I attempted to say in my above quote. One salient difference is the absence of arrogance and pretension, hallmarks of my statement. I was trying to characterize pure math in total isolation, whereas you nuanced the separation of pure and applied math with anecdotes from your professional experience. Your nuanced separation speaks to my theme: math applies well to the natural world because it’s of the natural world. It’s of the mind a well; It’s not simply of just one or the other. However, in my opinion, it is more at discovery than at invention.

The distinction between pure and applied math is somewhat vague, one reason being that pure math may become applied math at times. A researcher in applied math could be working on a math scheme to solve a particular problem, like calculating the stresses on a modern fighter plane during sharp turns. Or, he could be pursuing a topic purely for its own sake, curious about what comes next - and then finds someone has used his results in an applied manner.

This happened to me. My interests are always in "pure" math (complex analysis) and I published a paper in 1991, I think, with no thoughts of it ever being "useful", only to find my principle result was employed in a multiple author sociology paper about decision making in a group. Of course, the author who cited and used my result paid no attention to the details. — jgill

Not uncoupled from the material world' does not mean 'material in nature' — Wayfarer

Percept + concept = complex materialism. As with complex numbers, there is a real part and another type of part. In the case of materialism, the other type of part is non-local materialism: collection across time-interval-positive of a set of conditionally connected members reified into a gestalt, with gestalt in this context being a synonym for concept.

A particle moves through space; some formulae do a good job of describing that movement and even predicting how it might go. But the particle and its movement are clearly prior. Mathematics, then, would seem to be derive from the world, the world in every sense prior. — tim wood

:up:

Speak! Without antecedent, existential fact, science and math can’t even get started.

In what sense is pure maths concerned with physical objects?
28 minutes ago — Wayfarer

Since mathematicians only use pure math for investigation of the ground rules concerning applied math, pure math is merely higher-order applied math and thus it is not uncoupled from the natural world. — ucarr

It has to be, since mathematical concepts are more general than physical entities, which only exist at a given coordinate in space. Mathematical truths whoever enjoy far greater comprehensivity. — Hallucinogen

Quantum computing has something contrary to say about the last part of your claim.

I don't presuppose the existence of "physical minds" — Hallucinogen

If mind emerges from brain, then no brain, no mind. Yes, mind is independent of brain as mind, but the absential materialism of mind is its constraints upon dynamical, material processes. Again, no dynamical, material processes, no mind. Functional mind that has impact upon existentiality, meaning and usefulness is never uncoupled from the physicality of the natural world.

What a priori axioms does physics possess? — Hallucinogen

What a priori reason is practiced by brain in a vat never in contact with the world?

Any that math possesses supports my position. — Hallucinogen

Math, like brain in a vat without the worldly mediation of conscious human, can only instantiate the circularity of thing-in-itself, and that without cognition. Pure math has connection to the natural world only as indecipherable signification representing thermodynamic equilibrium.

Since mathematicians only use pure math for investigation of the ground rules concerning applied math, pure math is merely higher-order applied math and thus it is not uncoupled from the natural world.

Suppose the Riemann hypothesis finds its solution in pure math. So, pure math establishes that all primes calculable by the zeta function locate themselves on the critical line of the complex number plane.

Now let’s blink out the natural world of physics, thus leaving us with pure math with no physical referents, no matter how far down the line you evaluate. What are we left with? A system of interrelated signs with meaning and use resting upon nothing but the conventions implied by the system of signs itself, as established by the precedent, again, of the system itself.

What do we have? An endless loop of circular reasoning with no other meaning than its circularity. That’s why I say math is a physical property of the natural world. Only there does number possess existentiality, meaning and usefulness.

don't follow your line of questioning, ucarr. What's your point? — 180 Proof

Suppose the Riemann hypothesis finds its solution in pure math. There it’s established all primes calculable by the zeta function locate themselves on the critical line of the complex number plane.

Now let’s blink out the natural world of physics. Pure math has no physical referents, no matter how far down the line you evaluate. What do we have? We have a system of signs denoting numerical relationships resting upon only the conventions of the signs themselves. The precedent for these conventions is, again, the signs themselves. This is a closed loop of circular reasoning grounded in nothing but its own circularity. This is why I say number is a physically real property of the natural world. Only there does math possess existentiality, meaning and usefulness.
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As I read your lineout, I feel need to defend starting point of analysis as arbitrary because axioms, the necessary starting point of the scientific method, are pre-analytic, and thus arbitrary. Your no-beginning postulate necessitates arbitrary points of departure within its domain.

You seem to be backing up your line out with the claim maps, unlike their referents, have logical antecedents that constrain the methodology of their construction and thus the scope of their content. This ranges out ultimately to your separation of signs from their referents. I’m opposing this because my physicalist argument thoroughly entangles sign with referent so that maps do forever approach their referent terrain. There is no merger however.

The physicality of words and numbers makes them approach being bi-conditional with their physical referents.

All of this is to say, within a realm unbounded, finite and without beginning, everything is a map to another thing.

Your bifurcation of sign/referent is harder than mine.

We do not know. — JuanZu

If I have 5 oranges in one basket and I have 5 apples in another basket… — JuanZu

If this is something you cannot know, then your argument above has no grounding in fact and therefore no logically attainable truth content, only blind guesswork. On that basis, why should I accept it?

My 'anti-platonist pragmatics' (finitism?) comes to this: pure mathematics is mostly invented (re: pattern-making) and applied mathematics is mostly discovered (re: pattern-matching) — 180 Proof

Pattern-making in total abstraction from physical reference, beyond convention established by precedent, tells you what?

…every physical fact depends on facts about this mathematical structure, but not vice versa. — Hallucinogen

So, pure math includes relationships without reference to physical things inhabiting the natural world. This is an intriguing argument for idealism. What do math theoreticians say about the physical mind’s ability to cognize these supposed ideals-in-themselves?

Do you believe math is metaphysically prior to physics? If so, what say you about the fact that math, like physics, possesses pre-analytical axioms? (They’re solely existential.). Also, what say you about math axioms being incomplete? (If they’re incomplete, they’re not ideals.)

If apples and oranges have intrinsic physical properties then the number (if it is different from numbered things to avoid breaking with the principle of identity) does not participate in those physical intrisic properties either. Therefore, the number is not something physical and is extrinsic to intrinsic physical things which are numbered — JuanZu

Assuming you possess proper vision, have you ever been unable to distinguish five oranges from two oranges?

It is also necessary to define what you mean by a physical thing. — JuanZu

Physical: anything subject to the spacetime warpage of gravitational fields.

f I have 5 oranges in one basket and I have 5 apples in another basket, the 5 does not seem to participate in Appleness nor the orangeness. So the number is not the same as numbered things. — JuanZu

You say number stands apart from apples and oranges . When we look at number five apart from them, we know nothing about their number. How do you know both have number five?

If it were the same (or if the number is an intrinsic property of numbered things), we would have to say that 5 apples are 5 oranges and vice-versa (or that 5 apples have the property of been 5 oranges and vice-versa) breaking the identity principle. — “JuanZu

Since number five, in abstraction, tells us nothing about apples, oranges or any other physically real thing, that tells us pure math, in order to be physically real and thus inhere within particular, physical things, and thus be existentially significant, meaningful and useful, must evaluate down to physical particulars. Universals are emergent from particulars, but they are not existentially meaningful in abstraction.

…requires an arbitrary starting point re: sequential processes. It can be considered a “working” starting point, but there’s no logical — 180 Proof

Why do you line out “an arbitrary starting point for a sequential process”?

A starting point not logically necessary = a starting point arbitrary. Agree or disagree?

Logic is rooted in sequentiality, thus arbitrary starting points, such as the axioms of the scientific method, being pre-sequential, are also pre-logical. Agree or disagree?

Axioms have no logical support. Agree or disagree?

Referents without beginnings have models without beginnings. This is a simplification of saying: Referents without beginnings have models no less arbitrary than themselves. Agree or disagree?

…we ought not mistake the maps we make for the territory itself? — 180 Proof

You’re citing the sign/referent relationship?

"Must be"? Why must there be? If you look closely enough, you will find the imperative securely rooted in your need for one, in the (your, and mine too) logic of the thing. But logic is descriptive and only seems to be prescriptive. That, or show, extra-logic, how and why it must be. — tim wood

The idea here is that with any and all experiences of sentient existence, the sentient being must make a start, i.e., embark upon their personal history. Making a start and making a starting count are one and the same. This isn’t the logic of the starting; there can be no logic of the starting as there is, as yet, no logic. Starting is pre-analytic, thus pre-logical. Starting with an arbitrary start_starting count is an existential necessity that has no logical support. This is evidenced by the scientific method: science starts with an arbitrary starting point, the axiom.

This is a continuation of the first part of my OP.

Conclusion: number-as-property, being essential and physically real, and being tied inextricably to material objects, is discovered. They are not purely conceptual objects, accessible to the mind only.

Numbers are discovered, not invented. Numerical properties and numerical relationships likewise are discovered, not invented.

The number zero shows how emptiness is permeated by these same numerical relationships, so existence presupposes number-as-property.

If number-as-property is physical and essential, then there is an answer to an important question: How can mental “objects” have causal effects upon the physics of the natural world? The answer is numbers.

This is the necessary conclusion of both the number-idealist and the number-realist.

Example: Civil engineering demonstrates idealist control of the physical if you’re a number idealist: The building of a suspension bridge across a body of water as, say, San Francisco’s Golden State Bridge, demonstrates numbers manipulated to specifications required for a stable road across a bay. How ideal number shakes hand with real object remains to be explained.

If, on the other hand, you’re a number-realist, then you understand there’s no unexplainable interface of ideal and real in the design and build of a suspension bridge. Numbers, like the bridge itself, are physically_materially real. The two are integrated and holistically consistent.

Is this a correct paraphrase of your response to Philosophim’s thesis: spacetime, an unbounded, finite, beginning-less phenomenon, requires an arbitrary starting point re: sequential processes. It can be considered a “working” starting point, but there’s no logical necessity guiding the choice of a particular starting point.

Why include me in your reply to Gnomon? — 180 Proof

In my post to Gnomon, I'm continuing our debate about his interpretation of $e=mc^2$and, additionally, his application of his interpretation to his arguments supporting his EnFormAction proposition. I think it's fundamentally wrong because he has m = matter instead of m = mass, the correct equivalence.

I was interested in your post because it lays down some foundational definitions of physicalism as you see it. (In another minute, I'm going to ask you some questions in reaction to your postulations. This is for clarification of my understanding.)

I'm thinking what you have to say is germane to our debate. He has EnFormAction covering a wide terrain including: material, spiritual and undefined. Much of what he's claiming as metaphysical_spiritual I'm claiming as physical.

Also, I've been criticizing him from the standpoint of execution of his argumentation. I've characterized it as being slapdash and error-laden. Your execution of argumentation, meticulous, precise and funded by in-depth research, stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from his and, for that matter, from mine as well until very recently.

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...the abstraction, or concept, of "consciousness" ...a self-reflexive activity — 180 Proof

If firstly we picture Einstein sitting at his desk writing out the equations for special relativity, and then secondly we read his paper published in 1905, can we next conjoin these two events via memory to the effect that we can claim them public and therefore physical?

...because by definition consciousness is excluded from this paradigm. — Unknown

This is a claim made by Wayfarer?

Physicalism only excludes non-physical concepts from modeling (i.e. explaining) how observable states-of-affairs transform into one another. In this way "the paradigm" is epistemologically modest, or deflationary, limiting its inquiries to only that which can be publicly observed – accounted for – in order to minimize as much as possible the distorting biases (e.g. wishful / magical thinking, superstitions, prejudices, authority, etc) of folk psychology/semantics. — 180 Proof

You're saying physicalism is rooted in the scientific method's demand that scientifically measurable things be public?

We physicalists do not "exclude consciousness" (i.e. first-person experience) but rather conceive of it as a metacognitive function – e.g. phenomenal self-modeling – of organisms continuously interacting with and adapting to each other and their common environment. — 180 Proof

Is metacognitive, within your context, higher-order cognition, i.e., cognition of cognition?

Might selfhood entail a three-tiered hierarchy of cognition: empirical cognition (seeing the world directly); analytical cognition (elaborating the grammar and syntax of the seen world); hyper-cognition (seeing your seeing of your seeing of the world).

Actually, I didn't comment on the visibility of Mass & C. But, for the record, all of the equation's elements are imaginary & invisible abstractions. And none of them is tangible Matter, although Mass is a numerical measurement (mentalization) of Matter, a concept, not an object. So, I don't know how you decided that the invisibility of of numerical concepts contradicts my description of Einstein's equation, in which I referred to Matter, not Mass, as "tangible". Does any of that "matter" to you? :joke: — Gnomon

I call EnFormAction a "shapeshifter", because like physical energy, it can transform into a variety of manifestations. The most famous example is Einstein's E=MC^2 equation of invisible Energy and tangible Matter and a non-dimensional number. They are different expressions of the same essential substance. — Gnomon

Here's why I read your examination of Einstein's equation as commentary on the invisibility of m and $c^2$:

Einstein's E=MC^2 equation of invisible Energy; this is your description of the left side of the equal sign: (one term) E = energy (characterized by you as invisible).

and tangible Matter and a non-dimensional number.; this is your description of the right side of the equal sign: ( two terms) M = mass (characterized by you as tangible matter) and $c^2$ = the velocity-of-light$^2$ (characterized by you as a non-dimensional number).

Tangible = perceptible by touch, so tangible matter is stuff that can be picked up and handled. Your mistake: M = matter; no, M = mass.

You say:

Mass is a numerical measurement (mentalization) of Matter, a concept, not an object. — Gnomon

The signs denoting measurements of mass are abstractions, and the meaning of these measurements are concepts, but the referent for this signification and conceptualization of its meaning is physical reality. The material reality of mass is experienced whenever a weightlifter attempts to lift a three-hundred pound barbell. The barbell's disinclination to move is not visible.

Regarding C = velocity-of-light$^2$, light, being a physical phenomenon, has a constant velocity, another physical phenomenon. C = velocity-of-light$^2$, being a sign, arguably has no expanded spatial dimensions. However, the subject of importance here is the referent of the sign, the velocity of light squared. Being physical, it is spatially three-dimensional, not non-dimensional.

You talk about the abstractions that populate $e=mc^2$. Yes, they're abstractions not simply tangible, but questions about the ontic status of signs and their relationship to their physcial_phenomenal antecedents lies within the domain of linguistics. The framing context for your description of $e=mc^2$ is Enformaction, a proposition within your theoretical philosophy as based upon physics. Herein you're talking physics, not linguistics. Argumentation about the immateriality of signs is irrelevant within your context.

I call EnFormAction a "shapeshifter", because like physical energy, it can transform into a variety of manifestations...They are different expressions of the same essential substance. — Gnomon

This is where you're heading with your examination of $e=mc^2$. You seem to be claiming Enformaction is a substance that is the material platform for energy, mass and the velocity of light.

You bite off a big challenge. The ontic status of energy not being well understood, its conceptualization remains largely undefined.

...I'm always looking up words, the definitions of which often lead me to other words I have to look up, — Patterner

...we might say, snowflakes, in general, have a design, and each one has its own unique design. — Patterner

...is that the kind of thing you’re talking about? — Patterner

A pattern, when it's catchy, presents itself a thing worth keeping. I delight in sweet melodies arising from ingenious tunes. Might your experience of music resemble this?

A world without patterns is not something I wish to experience, too much like trudging Dresden after the Allied bombing.

I suppose we can say ideas are a type of pattern; they're the type favored by the mind.

I'm guessing now and then you marvel at the creativity of a clever idea. A familiar example is a good joke. When a good joke is current and passing word-of-mouth like wildfire, we catch glimpse of many minds joining together like kindling.

How about a choice piece of hot 'n juicy gossip? That brings us together like a gaggle of squawking busybodies, right?

Yes. We're all immersed in a world of patterns.

We grew within the universe, which has consistent principles, and are made of the universe's materials, which are subject to those principles. Is there a reason to think an intelligence that developed in such a way would not be able to recognize these principles? — Patterner

I agree with your first sentence and I believe it to be a sufficient explanation of our recognition of order within the matter_energy realm.

What is the relationship between numbers and order? To what degree can you have one without three other? To what degree are they not the same thing? — Patterner

I believe the number line is sine qua non to both math and order. The positions along the number line and their relationships are why math is the language of the ordering of spacetime phenomena. A number is a number line. A position along the number line is just an idealization about the ultimate compactness of a dimensionless point.

Is a random number sequence an instance of numbers separated from order? Even in this instance, the numbers still map to the number line. Furthermore, this question dovetails into the difficult question whether we can rationalize outside of order. A requisite for postulating about numbers, a rational entity, depends on numbers being coupled with order. Rationalizing outside of order also raises a difficult question about whether intelligibility can exist separate from order. You explanation for how humans internalized the consistent principles of the universe places heavy reliance upon intelligibility. How could humans recognize scientific truths without being engulfed within an environment essentially ordered?

I want you to give more thought to your decision to sign off from all discussions of design. Principles, being organizing, foundational truths, have an intimate relationship with design. If I'm not mistaken, you embrace them as essential components of metaphysics. How could organizing principles, acting in the role of designers, not be involved in the high ordering of atoms? As you say, the universe's materials are subject to the universal principles.

No. I did not, and do not, declare the order is designed. — Patterner

Again, I did not, and do not, acknowledge design. — Patterner

No, I did not, and do not, describe cosmic mind. — Patterner

Yes. The order pre-existed the life that arose within it. — Patterner

What I mean is, will thinking that objects 'possess an inherent attribute that can be labeled "number"' lead to a dead end? Will thinking it is not an attribute of objects, but of the universe's order, that we are recognizing lead to a dead end? After all, we might approach things differently, depending on which we take as our starting point. — Patterner

You have raised the central question: Where is the starting point of order? If we can accept, within the confines of our discussion here, that number is the peerless marker of position and therefore of order, then we can acknowledge that there's presently toleration of the notion number and order are discovered not invented.

A second, central question: How did number and order pre-dating humans get internalized within the human understanding? This form of the question evaluates down to: Where is the starting point for order and design for humans? Is it the human hand suggesting to the inquisitive mind of its possessor that two fingers not looking like five fingers is both meaningful and useful? Is it, instead, the abstract mind of humans navigating the environment via notions of number relations abstracted from counting fingers? Is number an attribute of material objects, or is it an incorporeal abstraction confined to the realm of cognition?

A third, central question: does the biconditional operator in logic link number with order? If N = number and O = order finds true expression as n ⟺ o, then finding the start of one entails finding the start of the other.

I’ve already given my answer: both claims about number are true. Counting fingers is no less essentially mathematical than perceiving the obscurities of pure math. This is so because the foundation of math cognition is its necessary antecedent: counting fingers. As justification, I cite Aristotle’s Agent Intellect (human) meets intelligibility (material object first, then both material and cognitive objects).

Patterner, by implication, agrees with the equivalence of the two modes of discovery with his response to my question:

Do you believe a brain confined to a vat will eventually start counting? — ucarr

Certainly not. I don't believe a human could come to any intelligence or consciousness under those circumstances. I believe sensory input is essential. — Patterner

Now we come to the hotly controversial topic of design and its location within the cosmic history.
If it’s possible to pinpoint the advent of design within the phenomenal universe, where in the timeline of events does it lie?

Firstly, let’s consider a fourth central question: If O = order and D = design finds true expression as o ⟺ d, then finding one entails finding the other.

If there’s a hierarchy, it might be number, order, design.

Most importantly, if the two biconditionals are true, then we have a triad.

Can we make a theoretical placement of the triad of number_order_design within the infinitesimal interval of time following the Big Bang?

If we answer is “yes,” all we’re doing is tracking the start of the triad as natural phenomena.

If super-hot plasma is the first form of the material universe during inflation post-Big Bang, then we can infer its ontic status as pre-cursor to the formation of elemental atoms. With atoms clearly, we have number and order, whether as independent, unobserved entities, or as entities contingent upon observation. You ask what agent could act as observer in the micro-seconds following inflation? The question must be raised during the early expansion of the universe because the reflexivity of end-oriented consciousness, per our discovery-rather-than-invention thesis, requires a pre-cursor no less than does the triad. Remember, when I claim the early universe knew itself, even if only pre-cursively, I’m claiming nothing in scope beyond the phenomenal universe.

To summarize, we have a defensible argument to the effect that the triad of number_order_design was extant from the start of the universe because the highly ordered status of the atom and its sub-atomics must be assumed as prior to all assemblages thereof.

The universe is consistent. Laws of physics, mathematics, and whatever else, are the same everywhere...If they were not, we would have chaos, and I doubt life would have arisen at all. — Patterner

You argue that our phenomenal universe of forces and material objects has an innate order founded upon principles likewise innate. You go on to declare that life wouldn't be possible without the designed and pervasive order of the universe as its ground. You present a picture of naturally ordered life arising from pre-existing order.

We evolved, and exist, in this universe, with its consistent principles. Meaning they are within us. I think counting is our recognition of these attributes, these consistent principles, of the universe. It makes sense that we recognize the principles of our own existence when we see them outside of ourselves. — Patterner

You acknowledge designed order is imbibed into human genome from the forces and materials from which it has arisen. This is your description of cosmic mind meeting human mind. The human mind, once attaining to the requisite cognitive prowess, recognizes essential attributes of order of the surrounding creation. So, order, and number, the peerless marker of position and therefore of order, are discovered within the natural world. You don't believe numbers are a human invention:

Do you believe a brain confined to a vat will eventually start counting? — ucarr

Certainly not. I don't believe a human could come to any intelligence or consciousness under those circumstances. I believe sensory input is essential. — Patterner

You make it clear human mind and the innate order of the natural world are an interface, a complex surface interwoven from the coming-together of the two conversationalists. You answer the question: Why do two fingers look different from five fingers? It is because Aristotle was right and Descartes was wrong: human learns from natural world as part of an Aristotelian Duet wherein Agent Intellect meets intelligibility.

Do you believe a brain confined to a vat will eventually start counting?

Question - Are not both mass and the speed of light invisible? — ucarr

Yes, both are numbers quantifying qualities (properties). Properties (attributes) are rationally inferrable, but not sensibly visible. Why do you ask? :nerd: — Gnomon

I call EnFormAction a "shapeshifter", because like physical energy, it can transform into a variety of manifestations. The most famous example is Einstein's E=MC^2 equation of invisible Energy and tangible Matter and a non-dimensional number. — Gnomon

You have described Einstein's equation as an expression of three states of being: a) invisible; b) tangible; c) non-dimensional. On one side of the equation you have the invisible state; on the other side of the equation you have mass and the speed of light as tangible matter. You agree that mass and the speed of light, contrary to your description of $e=mc^2$, possess invisibility.

I was not familiar with the term "unary", and I still don't how it is different from "Unitary" or "Holism". — Gnomon

With "unary" I'm trying to express my take on physicalism in a math context wherein one continuum, the real number line, expresses one mode of existence, physical. The real number continuum is, by my language, equated with a unary math operation such as $√X$. So, the real numbers measure along one mode, the continuum of the physical. Let me add that, in my view, numbers, like the environment in which they have meaning, are physical.

If numbers are not precisely physical, then they're a good candidate for the bridge between the material and immaterial worlds. Such a bridge function, in my opinion, doesn't refute my unary physicalism notion because two worlds that can be bridged are situated within Deacon's hierarchy of higher-order dynamisms: thermo, morpho, teleo. The debate between material/immaterial, as clarified by Deacon, comes to a crux at the notion of emergent properties of matter, such that the emergent properties, while dependent upon the lower substrates, operate under different parameters. This radical difference, as in the cases of numbers and mind, gives the appearance of an immaterial world, but its really the cause of emergent components of the physical world.

Absential materialism, as taken directly from the work of Deacon, names dynamic, physical processes that function on the basis of what's not contained in spacetime. The big picture starting to emerge from the hierarchy of physical dynamisms is how constraints compel dynamisms to do work ordering the necessary absences that teleodynamically organize toward the end-directed dynamisms essential to life, sentience and consciousness. Teleodynamically organized, end-directed work tilts the mind away from immediately tangible cause/effect relationships via a dynamism of emergent functions that operate within empirical experience as if they're invisible agents from another, non-sensory realm.

Please remember that I have no formal training in academic Philosophy. — Gnomon

No need to cop a plea. Your understanding of the science is equal (if not superior) to mine. I, like you, and most people, have a checkered academic grounding.

Scientific method = experiment/verification methodology: measurable, repeatable, public.

Ontic grammar = the ground rules governing the content, nature and scope of existence (metaphysics).

Question : Does your commitment to immaterial reality contain a moral component?

If you will, let your responses marinate in the following sallies:

• Intangibles offer cold comfort for flesh ‘n blood mortals.
• Perishable things physical possess the sweet touch of certain presence.
• After ascension, no saint has ever given comfort to mortal infant in distress. Mother’s arms, pock-marked though they be with sin, better quell the cutting slashes of earthly woes than all equations combined.
• Eternity, known only by grasp of mind, is but faint medicine for wounds of the flesh.
• No one denies the road from the physical to the mental lies tortured with complexity.

I hope that my philosophy is compatible with Kant's 'copernican revolution', which is that 'things conform to thoughts, thoughts don't conform to things' — Wayfarer

Kant's maxim is one of your foundational premises.

In the middle of the night, en route to the loo, you stub your toe on the bedpost. This is an instance of you directing the world to crush your flesh and you directing yourself to scream appropriately?

It is precisely that conception of the world as separate from the self that I am calling into question. The subjective and objective are, as it were, co-arising and mutually conditioning - there is no self without world, and no world without self. — Wayfarer

Question - How does the self as subject-only have presence within a phenomenal world populated by objects?

Question - How does your project to promote the merger of self and world proceed simultaneous with asserting the subject-only mind?

Notice that the realist objection to this argument is invariably along the lines that 'the world must exist anyway, regardless of any observing mind'. But say that this statement always includes an implicit perspective even while conceiving of a world in the absence of an observer. Without a perspective or scale, nothing meaningful can be said or thought about what exists. — Wayfarer

Your two quotes in bold comprise in tandem a position antagonistic to your subject-only mind. By your own values, you tilt towards a complex surface in spacetime converging the subject/object duet.

You then, however, shoot yourself in the foot with your immaterial, subject-only mind. Is it not the epitome of anti-philosophy? Consider the maxim that the examined life is the central aim of philosophy. Well, what does the examining and, most important, what object is central to its examination? If you and your subject-only life are one and the same, how can you practice philosophy?

I don't understand your characterization of "multi-mode" vs "unitary". I call EnFormAction a "shapeshifter", because like physical energy, it can transform into a variety of manifestations. The most famous example is Einstein's E=MC^2 equation of invisible Energy and tangible Matter and a non-dimensional number. They are different expressions of the same essential substance. — Gnomon

Question - Are not both mass and the speed of light invisible?

But my thesis goes even further to postulate that several "modes" or phases of unitary EFA are : Energy, Matter, and Mind. I also apply that notion of transformation to the common-but-mysterious physical Phase Transitions, such as plasma-water-steam-ice. In terms of Deacon's triad, EFA serves the causal functions of Thermodynamic, Morpheodynamic, and Teleonomic. — Gnomon

If I remember correctly, you deem both mind and consciousness as being immaterial.

My notion of unary physicalism, like your EnFormAction, encompasses the four phase states you name and furthermore, I currently speculate it also encompasses mind and consciousness via absential materialism, a label that I use to name Deacon's hierarchy of dynamisms: thermo, morpho and teleo.

You take the position material and immaterial entities are encompassed by one essential substance; I think causal information is how you name it. In distinction from you, I speculate about all entities being material, even highly-ordered, emergent properties such as sentience and consciousness.

My single-axis notion, inspired by Deacon, centers on a continuum of upwardly evolving dynamisms.

Might it be correct to say your theory encompasses a system that, going forward from antiquity, encompasses both scientific method and ontic grammar.

Maybe we can say of the two narratives that one is unary and the other holistic.

Your language paints a picture of a man who knows himself. Since, as you say,

...the mind is never an object of perception... — Wayfarer

and also as you say,

It is never appears to us as object, but as us, as the subject. — Wayfarer

the reader knows, from your two statements, that, in your understanding, your mind is your self. So, if you know yourself, because you perceive yourself, then you both perceive and know your mind. I don't expect to find we disagree on what I've claimed so far. We disagree whether the situation of you knowing yourself as mind involves your mind in the position of object. Your mind knows objectivity, so it also knows conceptually the objects that populate categorical objectivity. Since the mind is, by definition, a processor that deals in concept processing, and metaphor is a concept, then we know that mind dealing in metaphor is not metaphorical but literal if, as you claim, mind is only conceptual.

I want you to respond to the specifics of my argument: a concept processor processing concepts (such as metaphor) is not a figurative action; it is a literal action. In light of this, the mind examining itself is not an action done in a metaphorical sense. If it were the case that the latter holds, that would be higher-order metaphor, i.e. metaphor of metaphor.

We can speak of the mind as object in a metaphorical sense, i.e. 'as an object of enquiry', but it is not an object of perception in the sense that objects are. There is no thing called 'mind'. I can think about my thinking, but the act of thought is not itself an object, for the stated reason, that a hand cannot grasp itself. And 'grasping' here is a pretty exact analogy - the mind 'grasps' ideas in an analogously similar way a hand grasps an object but ideas are not physical. — Wayfarer

You're attempting to use "metaphor" as an escape clause liberating you from the self-contradiction inundating your denial. Your bigger problem is that you're caught in a rook's forking attack - to use a chess metaphor - if you avoid acknowledging the mind can be an object, in so doing, you lose the war because you position yourself as a Binary Existence Idealist: there is the phenomenal world of objects and, in a parallel world, there is the pure subjectivity of mind. This scheme doesn't even work in terms of the realm of Platonic ideals because its parallelism precludes the intersection of ideal model and imperfect copy central to Platonism.

Try to do anything cognitive without spatial and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover you cannot.
— ucarr

I see you make no comment on this statement. Is it because commentary would necessitate your acknowledgement not doing cognition is physical? Such acknowledgement lands you squarely within mind/body dualism — ucarr

In this statement, I made an error. I have corrected the error, a negation, by lining it through.

I sense in your analysis the inability to conceive of an 'immaterial thing or substance'. But note here I'm not claiming there is any such thing. The 'nonmaterial component' Pinter refers to is not something that exists objectively, rather it is in the operation of observing mind - which we ourselves can never be outside of, or apart from. — Wayfarer

You raise and important point here. The distinction you point out is helpful to my understanding and I appreciate your sharing of it. This configuration of cognitive operations is complicated and interesting. I think an exhaustive examination is beyond my ability. Let me attempt making some claims.

If observing mind holds a concept of objects and, moreover, holds capacity to perceive particular objects conceptually, and if, as you imply, there are no extant immaterial objects that can be perceived conceptually, then you negate, by implication, the objective world of immaterial objects as perceived by observing mind. This categorical negation carries two competing implications: 1) conceptual mind exists in isolation, perceiving nothing or 2) conceptual mind fabricates imaginary conceptual objects perceived via solipsistic dreaming.

If observing mind does perceive conceptual objects not fabricated as imaginary objects perceived via solipsistic dreaming, then observing mind literally perceives conceptual objects via physical processing within the brain. This must be true because we know the conceptual contents of observing mind are funded by the physical processing of the brain.

I want you to respond to the specifics of my argument: cognition by the observing mind, which is tied to the physical processing of the brain, is both literal and physical.

You claim we can never be outside of our subject-only mind. An essential attribute of observing mind is self-awareness. Sentient beings survive threats to life via feedback looping memory circuits monitoring their body's interactions with the environment. This is self-awareness. Self-awareness cannot exist without the observing mind being subjectively aware of itself as object. Likewise, sentient being cannot be aware of another sentient being without observing mind being subjectively aware of its objective self in society with the other. If it were not subjectively aware of its objective self, it would not be able to differentiate itself from the world. This subjective awareness of the objective self is literal, not figurative. When another being strikes you in the face with its fist, the pain you experience is literal, not figurative.

The pink elephant in the room of this discussion is the complex surface. It is a cognitive processor that links self and world via mind. It is cognitive processing rooted in the physical, as consciousness is physical.

It seems to be a physical circumstance were non-physicals can exist in an identifiable physical form. If non-physicals are showing up you should observe they always can be mapped to a physical brain in location and time. — Mark Nyquist

Well said. This conveys, in a nutshell, something akin to the essence of what I been arguing regarding the scope of physicality and its extension into phenomena that some, in my opinion, erroneously label categorical immateriality.

Yes. If we map the so-called immaterial ideas back to the empirical navigations of humans through our phenomenal world, en route to their ideas, we find that linkage only seems to disappear because the interval of time extends cognitive discovery across different positions upon the landscape that are not all simple, line-of-sight configurations. Knowing a green-shirt clad golfing tourist lost on Street A and, remembering a throng of green-shirt clad golfing tourists on Street B, fuels the mind, thus allowing it to make the inference the solitary tourist is a member of the throng but now separated from them and lost.
We call this abstract thinking but, as you say, it can be mapped back to empirical experience remembered and thus, abstract thinking is still an empirical thing, albeit a multi-part thing.

I've been saying math started when humans caught onto patterns based on numbers of physical things. Fingers, being a permanent and handy instance of countable things, launched human understanding of number. Two fingers look different from five fingers. Hah! Now we've started the process. Why do two fingers look different from five fingers? Is it not because fingers, and the like, possess an inherent attribute that can be labeled "number?" Different numbers of the same things look different because things possess the attribute called "number." When their number differs, they, as a group, differ. Indeed, if your piggy bank suddenly becomes possessed of fewer gold coins than yesterday, you become emotionally charged up by the numerical attribute of things.

Firstly, your piece on the onticity of numbers has been very helpful to me. Thanks for doing the work and then offering it up to me on a silver platter.

...the mind is never an object of perception... — Wayfarer

Is not "mind" the overarching subject of our HPoC discussion?

...it is 'the unknown knower' to draw on a phrase expressed in Indian philosophy. — Wayfarer

This to me sounds like Aristotle.

It is never appears to us as object, but as us, as the subject. — Wayfarer

Are you perhaps getting your bearings twisted within the hall of mirrors? If the mind appears to us, then it's the object of our perception, is it not? One of the tricks of the mind is that it is, subjectively, the object of its self-perception. WRT the subject/object pairing, the disjunction operator is a semi-permeable membrane in both directions.

this essay (Nature of Number) takes for granted the division of mind (‘in here’) and world (‘out there’) as being, to all intents, separate realities. And that itself is a metaphysical construction!
— ucarr

Nowhere do I say that - that is your interpretive paradigm. — Wayfarer

I offer my public apology for anything I've attributed to you erroneously. Misquoting someone is a serious violation of that person's rights. I always try to be correct with my quotations. I do claim, however, that these words appear in your Medium article, The Nature of Number. Are they in there because you're quoting someone else?

Furthermore, no. It's not my interpretive paradigm. In fact, I'm on the other side of the aisle. My foundational premise says material and immaterial are two positions along the physicalist continuum.

Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.

This is the theoretical zeitgeist post quantum mechanics.

Try to do anything cognitive without special and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover you cannot. — ucarr

I see you make no comment on this statement. Is it because commentary would necessitate your acknowledgement doing cognition is not physical, which acknowledgement lands you squarely within mind/body dualism?

And by the way, doesn't

...the mind is never an object of perception... — Wayfarer

land you in the same location? If the mind is only subject, then clearly it's categorically isolated from a phenomenal world filled with objects.

what kind of existence do they [numbers] have? Mathematical platonists say that numbers are real independently of whether anyone perceives them or not, 'in the same sense', said Frege, 'just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets'. But although they're independent of any particular mind, they can only be grasped by a mind. So they are 'intelligible objects', bearing in mind that 'object' is used in a metaphorical sense of 'the object of thought'. That is the sense in which there is an 'intelligible realm' that doesn't exist on the level of sensory perception (per Plato's analogy of the divided line) but is real in a noetic or intellectual sense. — Wayfarer

My ascription to you of mind body dualism I further propound by reference to the above quote as evidence. Firstly, it's funny that you make a case for mind as an isolate and pure subject by explaining how the mind "grasps" something, a physical action of the hand.

We can't get out of the physicality of verbal language, and numerical language (math) possesses unreasonable effectiveness in the natural sciences because it too is physical.

Is it not the case the main reason you claim non-binary ideation for yourself is because you do, in fact, believe the phenomenal universe is a derivation and sub-set of immaterial mind?

Math may have beginning because we noticed repeatable patterns in material objects. But math is not a material object. The mathematical writings in book or on computer screens are material things, but they are not math. They are how we share mathematical ideas. — Patterner

What you claim has the strong fragrance of the welcome familiar and the commonplace good, both backed by seeming rigorous logic. Let's say out in the field I come upon a gathering of stones (perhaps another Stonehenge in the making) and set about counting them, just for heck sake. So, I'm counting stones. Counting things is doing math. Seeing the stones does more than facilitate their counting; it affords it. The stones, therefore, participate in the counting action. Stones herein cannot be reasonably considered mathematical with regards to number?

As for counting things unseen, what trenchman can unsee the missing fingers of his dead comrade?

• "Who says the countin' of gold coins is not properly mathematical? The blighter who stole me gold coins in the dark of night? I say, after a couple of pints, I can't even take me rest in yonder gutter without gettin' rolled. Bollocks!"

Nothing is ‘ ultimately material’. No material ultimate has been discovered, despite the construction of the most complex apparatus in the history of science. The standard model of physics is itself a mathematical construction. — Wayfarer

I’m thinking math began when cave people looking at their fingers started seeing repeatable patterns.

Since matter is neither created nor destroyed, why do folks think tangible stuff is perishable? Why should not the label instead be reconfigurable?

I suspect you’ll blow off the above as anecdotal fluff, so let me follow with my best attempt to ask probing questions.

Do you hold a metaphysical commitment to the claim the phenomenal world is undergirded by an immaterially extant realm ultimately real albeit undetectable to the senses?

If so, can you elaborate some essential attributes of this immaterially extant ground of existence?

How would you manage your commitment if it turns out that the intellect and its perceptions are another sensory faculty? The argument here is that if consciousness is physical, then its perceptions must likewise be physical. For example: we know spacetime is physical. It follows then that anything existing in time, as in the case of thought, holds possession of time duration. Finally, therefore, thoughts, being always time-positive, are physical.

Conversely, if consciousness and its perceptions are immaterial, then how explain the intersection of the material and the immaterial? Is there a bizarre, transitional realm, neither material nor immaterial? How might the boundaries between these realms be measured? Does impossibility of measurement raise doubts about their existence?

Since matter_energy is neither created nor destroyed, it follows that they, like immaterial reality, having no origin, have no beginning. This makes them co-eternals. If so, how is it that immateriality logically priority to materiality?

My hypothesis claims that If spirituality is higher-order thermodynamics (teleodynamics), then matter/energy are two positions on one continuum. I call spirit absential materialism.

In your article in Medium, you say,

• we must already have ‘the idea of equals’
  
• It is the innate capacity which provides us the ability to make such judgements
  
• Science sees the Universe through...mathematical hypotheses
  
• the grasp of abstract relations and qualities, are quite literally the ligatures of reason
  
• But even though they’re real (mathematical hypotheses), they are not ‘out there somewhere’.
  
• this essay...takes for granted the division of mind (‘in here’) and world (‘out there’) as being, to all intents, separate realities. And that itself is a metaphysical construction!
  
• Charles Pinter’s book, Mind and the Cosmic Order provides considerable evidence for
• the kind of scientifically-informed idealism that I’m wishing to elaborate in my essays.
  
• This implies reality can propagate without a location in space, i.e., that immaterial reality has no whereness…

How do humans access knowledge of real things not located anywhere? This question is important because it implies that cognition, no less than sensory perception, must have a spacetime location. Try to think about anything without spatial and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover language cannot proceed meaningfully without them. Try to do anything cognitive without special and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover you cannot.

In closing, I ask, is it reasonable to label your metaphysical commitment as Existence Dualism (physical objects extant as real material things; ideas extant as abstract immaterial things)?

I know that materialism rendered a holy of holies becomes a death trap. At the other end of the spectrum, skittering around, spewing glib, scientific catchphrases scintillating with the current cachet in smartypants verbiage becomes another death trap.
— ucarr
Is that your disdainful view of philosophical speculation? :cool: — Gnomon

No. Im sufficiently repentant to know I've got no cause for being disdainful about anything.

When the Enlightenment gave birth to Empirical Science, it threw-out the philosophical baby with the bath-water. The Materialism and Scientism found on this forum are the off-spring of that "disjunction" between Ideal & Real worldviews. EFA is, in part, an attempt to heal the rift between the science of Matter, and the science of Mind. :smile: — Gnomon

Holism is one of your main themes?

What are some specific ways materialism reasons erroneously when arriving at its reductionism?

Both Math and Language are theoretical in conception (principles), but practical in application (details). :nerd: — Gnomon

Theoretical Philosophy is the study of the principles for human knowledge, the development of the sciences and the basis for scientific knowledge, the principles of thought, argumentation and communication, metaphysics and the history of the subject itself. — Gnomon

Since you cite this quote from Lund University, I assume it speaks for you. Is it your understanding principles, by definition, are theoretical and therefore subject to revision?

I'm not sure I buy your distinction between theoretical philosophy on the one hand and math and language on the other because, to my understanding, the latter are no less subject to revision than the former. As a matter of fact, language is an obvious example of applied principles subject to frequent updating as evidenced by the topicality of the vernacular. Take for example, ending sentences with a preposition. That used to be a no-no. Nowadays it's the speaker's decision.

Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science
Science is about contingent facts or truths; philosophy is often about that but is also about necessary truths (if they exist) — Gnomon

Since scientific theory, by definition - and also by methodological principle - always expresses itself tentatively, its tentativeness, being necessary (albeit somewhat paradoxically), is not contingent.

Obversely, since theoretical philosophy, by definition – and also by methodological principle – always expresses itself universally, its universality, being theoretical (albeit somewhat paradoxically), is not necessary.

So, scientific theory and theoretical philosophy have common ground in their management of the contingent/necessary disjunction operator; their approaches to it from opposite poles is therefore a trivial difference.

Employing the above symmetry, I proceed to claiming the conceptual distinctions between science and philosophy are trivial with one exception: the phenomenal.

I’m now inclined to think the crux of the mind/body problem is the question of the scope of perception_cognition by the senses or through immediate experience.

I suspect the possible mistake of reductive materialism is its belief material/immaterial are necessarily parallel categories.

My materialist mode of inquiry, theory and hypothesis impel me towards a bold speculation: as science progresses, it subsumes more and more of the claims traditionally ascribed to immaterial spirit. Talking fancy, the ne plus ultra for this line of reasoning is to claim God, the supposed immaterial spirit, exists as an existentially real, physical being. To be sure, God’s physicality effects a cosmic scale perturbation of the human scale of empirical experience. The job of science, being physicalist, therefore entails reconciling the human scale of empirical experience with God’s cosmic scale of empirical experience along the continuum of the phenomenal universe.

What’s important for Enformaction is that it not distort the degree to which its multi-mode holism differs from my unary physical holism. The difference is small, not large. The former parallels material/undefined/immaterial whereas the latter subsumes these three categories.

...arithmetical objects, rules of logic, conventions, scientific laws. All of these are arguably real, but not existent as phenomena... — Wayfarer

The practice of reasoning by humans, being phenomenal, accommodates direct observation via the senses. Call to mind Rodin's Thinker. A child stands before the statue observing it. Probably the child doesn't know specifically what they're observing, but nonetheless they're observing it.

The products of reason are, ultimately, material. At issue is the phenomenon of comprehension. Comprehension of the products of reason: arithmetical objects, rules of logic, conventions, scientific laws et al, requires navigation of a multi-part, empirical journey of discovery.

Consider a priori discovery:

• One morning exiting the bakery shop I see a tour bus populated with male riders dressed in green blazers. A couple of green blazers are outside the bus swinging their golf clubs. There's an ad on the side of the bus: Scotland Golf Vacations. I tip my hat to the green blazers as on weekends I'm coming along with my driver swings very nicely. "You guys are so lucky." I say to them. They come back to me saying, "Yeah!. We're off to St. Andrews Old Course." Next moment, on a lark, I decide to take an alternate route home. Suddenly I see a solitary, bewildered green blazer looking all about nervously while licking his lemon gelato. I quickly think to myself: green blazer, lost golfing tourist, supply directions. "Going to play some links at St. Andrews Old Course?" I say to him. His eyes brighten with hope as he exclaims, "Yes! Where is ---" "The bus? Just over on the adjacent street. Go round that next bend and you can't miss it."

Our human presumption is that a dog, first seeing the busload of green blazers on one street and then seeing a solitary blazer on the adjacent street, can't reason through transitive logic: all nearby golfing tourists heading for links at St. Andrews Old Course wear green blazers ⟹ lost man wears green blazer⟹ lost man a golfing tourist heading for links at St. Andrews Old Course.

When we look at the conclusions of reason through the abstractions of head trips, they seem to be intangibles lying beyond the senses, but really, they're multi-part empirical experiences stretched across a positive time interval.

Using our memory, we join together the multiple parts of our empirical experiences upon the scaffold of transitive logic. Consequently, the products of reason arise from empirical experiences articulated.

...our culture is deeply committed to the notion that what is real exists in time and space - out there, somewhere, potentially experienceable... — Wayfarer

And perhaps you're saying things exist that are experienceable not in the conventionally empirical sense, but rather in the cognizable sense.

I don't think Wayfarer thinks numbers exist in his brain — RogueAI

For the very simple reason that is numbers are real, but not material... — Wayfarer

In the above statement, Wayfarer didn't have numbers in his brain, but rather had them nested in Plato's Realm of Ideals, which his brain had nested in itself as an image having Plato's Realm of Ideals...

The above series, like Borges' map of the landscape that keeps elaborating itself until the elaboration merges with the referent, elaborates, eventually, its simulations back to the thing itself?

Does anybody have some ground rules for things real but not material? Why is the stuff of a number, as when you gaze at two equisitely cut diamonds, less material in its dazzlement of your eyes than that sweet smile from your bestie upon seeing you at the train station?

So, you are you convinced that when you look at a pair of diamonds encased in the platinum ring encircling your beloved's finger, no part of that crushed carbon attaches to the number two floating around immaterially within your brain? — ucarr

That really is a nonsensical question. — Wayfarer

If you're willing to elaborate, please do so.