Essences are everywhere to study in your statement. — Fire Ologist

So essences is just giving definitions.

I think that this is what is going on. But none of that means “there is no such thing as essence.”

And no one, not Aristotle, no one says defining the essence of some thing is easy. Looking for essence is an easy method of saying HOW to say what things are, but there is no need to ever say we’ve ever listed every necessary and sufficient condition essential to some thing (especially if the thing is a physical thing, subject to change). Understanding and saying what is essential is the goal. We can know something essential about some thing in the world, but we have much more to know if we want to say we know the entire essence of that thing.

We all live in the same world of muddle for the senses and use and misuse of language. Essences help us organize it and speak about it. — Fire Ologist

I think my main issue is just that, given how my views toward scientific realism and anti-realism have evolved over time, I just don't see the point of this area. I don't see what it is doing anymore. It just seems like a pointless field of study - trivial, redundant, not informative, not interesting in light of my perspective on the world.

but not seeing the point of an argument is not a rebuttal, and nothing you’ve said indicates that you see the point of the argument. — Wayfarer

I think not seeing the point is a rebuttal. If something doesn' have any interesting consequences then I don't see a reason to uphold it.

Some are saying you call this thing a “cat” and you call that thing a “squid” because people just do. And like things are in flux, what people do is in flux.

Others are saying you call this thing a “cat” because of something about the thing, and you call that thing a “squid” because of something else about that other thing. — Fire Ologist

For me, when we say that people just call things "cat" just "because people do" its alluding to the fact that we are very good at identifying, recognizing, picking out patterns and commonalities in the world, but often this is much more intricate, subtle, flexible than one can possibly articulate. To me, essences just seems like an easy way of being over-reductive about things in the world when often we can't even characterize what we are talking about in a way that is unambiguous, precise, unique, informative enough to deserve the name "essence". The whole thing seems completely redundant. If I want to learn about cats, I will look at the field of biology for facts about cats and all the subtleties which, from where i'm standing, don't seem easily compressed into a simple essence. Essence just seems like unnecessary inflation that has the connotation that there is something more to cats than the underlying physics from which they emerge. There is no homogenous, self-contained entity attached to the word which has "catness" in virtue of itself. "Cat" is more a kind of label to bundle together structures and properties that will often co-occur -but not in any strict, rigid, deterministic way -and to communicate our inherent abilities to identify, distinguish, predict those things. If I want to learn about those things, I can talk to a scientist. Essence is unneeded baggage, vestiges of antiquated world views.

I don't think Its mudslinging because I have made responses to your perspective befote where I have basically said that. I don't think there is any meaningful, actionable content to this mysterious noumenal-phenomrnal divide.

A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. — Ludwig V

Yes, this conception seems to be trivial and have no interesting consequences most of the time which is why I think Wayfarer's crusade is largely vacuous and pointless. If something that we perceive clearly has a consistent mapping to something in the outside world, maintains a certain invariance (or perhaps covariance), then thats something that is genuine information about somrthing that exists independently of our minds.

From my perspective, no one here is saying cats don't exist. But the idea of bundling up the characterization of cats neatly in terms of essences feels ridiculous when if you want to be as veridical and precise as possible about it, cats are clearly emergent structure from impossibly intractable physical processes. Yes, we can obviously identify commonalities, structures, properties, patterns that cohere under the "cat" name we have chosen to use in their vicinity. Is this what you mean by essence? Well it doesn't deserve the name because rarely are things in here either neat or essential, especially not without coarse-graining over very real details and invoking vagueness and fuzzyness into one's characterizations. The whole notion of essence just seems seems either over-reductive or completely redundant in its vagueness. There certainly isn't an essence of cats that wouldn't suffer these criticisms, and there are probably various posaible candidates.

:up: :100:

Good post and article. Simple but effective. Should put the whole thing to bed.

Apparently, there is a field of plant neurobiology, ha!

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2017.0096?__cf_chl_tk=EnNihJj2VrCqoJY2sK39jDo75tEsHCXRvnIbXj6piEo-1755233088-1.0.1.1-hwG6qkhXRhpNzX1sA2p0De1fz9QOQx0R02eiQSs4ALE

Yes, sure. LLMs don't encounter information in the same way we do, they cannot choose how they encounter information in the way we do, they don't have aversion or reward afaik.

Do you mean that they are capable of engaging in rational discourse without the benefit of human consciousness? — Ludwig V

They are capable of intelligibly talking about experiences even though they don't even have the faculties for those experiences. An LLM has a faculty for talking, it doesn't have a faculty for seeing. The structure of language itself is sufficient for its intelligible use.

Wittgenstein’s private language argument is a case in point, and recent philosophy has been much concerned about Dennett and others who seem to claim that our perceptions are all illusions. — Ludwig V

I don't think either of these philosophers claim that what you experience doesn't exist in some sense though. Dennett I believe is just refuting our conception of experience as representing something that transcends and is separate from, over and above, our biology. Wittgenstein is talking about how language is used, and I think it is more salient now than ever that his pointis correct given how LLMs are probably as good at talking about things like colour as we are. We can even learn things about colour from an LLM even though the LLM doesn't experience colours.

LLMs are demonstrating his beetle-in-box argument.

The way to view it is that in quantum mechanics the statistics of complementary variables have to abide by uncertainty relations in all physical situations. If you change the physical situation in a way that allows it to behave differently, it still has to obey those uncertainty relations.

Measurements are physical interactions and they are designed to induce sharp correlations with the measured system which have to obey uncertainty relations. This is why disturbance occurs. Its not because measurements are special; the disturbing properties of measurement are just a special case of disturbing propeties that can occur for any physical interaction.

This assumes measurement is fundamentally about one physical system causally interacting with another physical system. — Wayfarer

Its hard to interpret this differently. You have a double slit scenario and you throw particles through the slits; they will form an interference pattern on the screen. Now you insert the measuring device in the scenario; the particles no longer show fringes but clumps. This is an unambiguous physical change in the behavior of a physical system.

The "disturbance" language already smuggles in a particular metaphysical picture - that there are definite physical properties in existence that are disturbed by measurement. — Wayfarer

But you can prepare systems to have definite properties and then disturb them. You can prepare light so that it has a specific, definite polarization in one direction; you can then out it through polarizers which will then evince disturbance of the systens properties.

In any case, the so called 'interaction-free measurements' are ways to get new information without getting 'positive' results. — boundless

But "interaction-free measurements" work because there is a physical change in the system behavior due to a change in the experimental context, analogous to closing a slit in the double slit experiment.

Because registering a measurement result requires the measuring device to physically interact with the system you are measuring. The stronger the measurement interaction (i.e. correlation), the stronger the disturbance. Closing the slit is arguably no less mysterious either because its not obvious to most why the closing the slit would change the behavior either.

The measurement problem depends on your interpretation on QM. But the physical effect measurements have is regardless of interpretation. Saying the wavefunction isn't real can be a solution to the measurement problem but the solution or interpretation would still have to account for how measurements to have a disturbing physical effect.

aren't puzzling features of physical reality that need to be accounted for — Wayfarer

But they are. They are obviously physical events happening out in reality. If you do a double slit experiment and close or measure one of the slits, it will physically change the results you see of where particles are hitting the screen at the end of their journey.

Edit: And to be clear, by "physically changes the results", I just mean the system behaves differently in different situations.

Spelling/Grammar corrections.

non-locality was not as "straightforward" as you imply. — Gnomon

I was implying the realism was straightforward (specifically in the Bohmian mathematical description). The non-locality may not be given that it is problematic for relativity under naive understanding. But maybe alternative understandings can come up? Who knows.

but isn't this more or less the same as the axiom of a persistent world under materialism? — sime

Yes, but when you belueve in God, you don't have to justify it! Perfect solution.

I posit that there is no fact of the matter of me having a different subjective experience of red to someone else. because my experience of red can be said to be characterized purely by informational structure in sensory inputs. If we are processing the same kind of structure, there is no fact of the matter that could make it so or distinguish that I was experiencing something different to anyone else. When there are discrepancies in color vision that can be observed, its because the information from the world people are processing is different. To say that someone elses red could be different imo reifies a dualistic conception of mind which I believe is illusory. Its very easy to imagine people having contrary experiences of things like color because its very easy to imagine myself things having different colors in my own perspective. I can conceive of what it would be like for a blue chair to be green instead, and I can clearly picture that. But in some sense, if I were to imagine and generate an actual mental picture of a green chair that in real life was actually blue, what is my brain actually doing? If when I see green in real life, my brain is processing a certain kind of informational structure, then when I imagine a green chair, I am surely just recapitulating that same structure. I can't divorce my counterfactual imaginings from those informational structures, so I cannot actuslly divorce my own subjective experiences and counterfactual imaginings from them either.

If all knowledge comes from experience - as Locke himself says - then how do we know this supposedly non-appearing, measurable 'stuff' we designate 'matter' actually exists?For Berkeley, that’s not empiricism, it’s speculation disguised as science — Wayfarer

I like to say the same about your phenomenal-noumenal distinction. Not very useful, adding extra mystery where none needed.

I’m not alone in thinking that the many-worlds interpretation is wildly incoherent. — Wayfarer

Your views are about as incoherent than Many Worlds. In fact, I think that Many Worlds is actually very coherent. Its fault is not intelligibility but that its just radically strange. Qbists and relationalist views are much more incoherent imo.

I believe that Bohm’s pilot waves have been definitely disproven — Wayfarer

It hasn't. Its extremely difficult to disprove interpretations that reproduce the same empirical predictions.

There's also my favored stochastic interpretation which doesn't have any of the pitfalls of the others and is completely locally realistic.

Nothing to do with ‘echo chambers’ more that you can’t fathom how any anti-realist interpretation could possibly be meaningful. — Wayfarer

Maybe. I just don't think you can say realism cannot possibly be true when these models are not falsified.

Why, do you think? — Wayfarer

Maybe try reading something from the last 75 years!

That is what he shares in common with positivism, but the conclusions he draws from it are radically different. — Wayfarer

Yes; like I said earlier, I just like to imagine he would come to different conclusions in a different context. He seems more cogent than most wooists; albeit, God.

BTW, even Bohm's*4 "realistic perspective" is typically labeled as a form of Idealism — Gnomon

Bohmian mechanicsisjust straightforward realism that happens to involve non-locality.

But, on a philosophical forum, and for philosophical purposes (introspecting the human mind), some form of Idealism — Gnomon

Sure people are going to pick interpretations in ways aligned with their philosophical inclinations. I don't believe we should be picking them as a means to philosophical purposes.

You are missing the point. Husserlian Phenomenology is not at all concerned with material existence as it is focused on the experience of consciousness. — I like sushi

I was directly replying to mention of the combination problem. If my answer was not coherent with the topic, it is because the combination problem was evoked in an improper context.

We are talking about consciousness so it makes sense to start at the source rather than shift to what our consciousness constructs (that is a representation of other in the idea of something being something). — I like sushi

The thing about experiences is that there is nothing much to say about them other than say we are directly aquainted with them and can distinguish them. What else we can do is organize them, relating them to each other, and giving them labels, like what science does.

Not really sure what this is trying to convey. Thefe are several coherent realist perspectives on QM which don't invoke any form of collapse, such as Bohmian, Many Worlds, Stochastic mechanics and possibly others. Your response just seems to me like someone pretending that these theories, which all reproduce the correct quantum behavior, don't exist. You have clearly put yourself in an echo chamber where the only relevamt opinions on QM are those of subjectivists, wooists, relationalists.

But IMO he used the empiricists' arguments (e.g. Locke) — boundless

Berkeley IMO took away the 'physical' using empiricist arguments. — boundless

This is why I think in another context he could have been something like a logical positivist. I just get the impression even from wikipedia that despite being clearly a hardcore apologist of God, he had a mindset and reasonings in common with the analytical tradition, imo.

Can physics provide, and should it aim to provide, a truly objective account of the world? Realism tends to treat this as a yes-or-no question. And that’s where, I think, the problem lies. — Wayfarer

Again, a number of different realist accounts of quantum theory exist. There is no consensus on this at all that quantum theory has gotten rid of realism or something like that.

Whereas more idealistically-tinged interpretations are compatible with the observations without having to question the theory. — Wayfarer

There's various realist positions that don't actually question the theory either!

The question of interpretion of physics is as much one of philosophy as of physics. And Kastrup has got considerable practical experience in physics — Wayfarer

Sure, but there is no like established consensus or even empirical accessibility on these issues where you could appeal to an expert's opinion on "realism" in QM as reliable or unimpeachable. All the experts have different opinions in this field.

It is an argument about emergence, not combination — Wayfarer

The combination problem is more or less the problem of strong emergence from a panpsychist perspective. Replacing combination with emergence does not really solve much because they are similar issues. You could justbite the bullet on strong emergence as a dualist, but then a panpsychist could do the same with combination problem.

Phenomenology (and also idealism) don't face this problem, as they don't presume that matter is fundamental in the first place. — Wayfarer

Given that we have very good idea about the exiatence of microscopic things, I think idealists either has to resort to some kind of solution that has problems like the combination problem: microconsciousnesses combine together, macroconsciousnesses dissociate; perhaps also some ad hoc hand-waving of something like "brains are just what our consciousness looks like through another perspective". Idealism might have some parsimony in terms of "everything is mental", whatever that even means; but I don't think any of these perspectives the fact that the irreducibility of experience means there isn't really any intelligible explanation available to us to explain why reality would have distinct experiences at different scales, how they emerge from each other whether upward or downward; and if not, why science seems to describe structures like brains which seem to have no reminiscence to our own first person experiences. Just saying everything is mental may in some sense be simpler than materialism or dualism, but I don't think it provides any deeper insights or amelioration to these issues.

PHD on philosophy makes you an expert in physics? Does not compute.

His first employment was at CERN — Wayfarer

I really doubt he qualifies as an expert in the field. He doesn't seem to have a physics PHD. "Realism" is also more interpretational / foundational and less to do with what people do at CERN, nor is there consensus on it, I believe.

Yes, but the positivists detested metaphysics. How would Berkeley have been received, explaining that everything is kept in existence by being perceived by God, in that environment? — Wayfarer

Well, in my scenario, he doesn't believe in God anymore. And as much as postivists detest metaphysics maybe Berkeley also detested talk about things that seem to speculatively go beyond what is in appearance which is just what one experiences. Seems like a parallel.

Bernardo Kastrup never says that. His analytical idealism says that the reality of phenomenal experience is the fundamental fact of existence. — Wayfarer

He is always saying that. I have seen him talk about quantum theory and about how he thinks the alleged falsification of "realism" there is some kind of indication that these physical things are only appearances and whats really going on is something deeper. And then he starts talking about diasociative alters and all this nonsense.

Do you believe in ghosts as well then?

Berkeley's metaphysical idealism is polar opposite to logical positivism's hardline materialism. — Wayfarer

But they weren't necessarily materialists, they were first and foremosts empiricists who wanted to constrain what could be talked about in terms of observation. Logical positivism was related to phenomenalism. I don't think he would have been impressed with Kastrup's view which seems to always be alluding to something mysterious under the hood.

I distinctly remember my impression of Berkeley from university was that he had quite scientific mind, he had sharp, cogent arguments. However, he was a Bishop after all. I like to believe that if he didn't have God, and access to modern science instead, he would have been more on my side of the debate.

What Berkeley objected to was the notion of an unknowable stuff underlying experience — an abstraction he believed served no explanatory purpose and in fact led to skepticism. His philosophy was intended as a corrective to this, affirming instead that the world is as it appears to us in experience — Wayfarer

This is not so different from my objections to your insistence on some mysterious divide between phenomenal and noumenal. I don't think his arguments were out of some fundamental distate of objectivity and bias toward subjective woo. I think if he had been around in the early twentieth century he would have been a logical positivist and then made the natural adjustments in light of post-positivism. I don't think he would have been a Deepak Chopra fan.

They actually do have some studies like this on people. Also on animals, the look at their brains during dying.

There are millions of accounts, and thousands have been corroborated. How much evidence do you want? — Sam26

I think these kind of things needs more controlled scientific study. We don't even really have a full understanding or mastery of the brain yet to have a reasonable understanding of what could and could not be happening.

To strip it of evidential value in this one domain is to apply a double standard. In cases where the testimony is specific, independently confirmed, and time-locked to periods of absent brain function, speculation is not a rebuttal. — Sam26

In my opinion its perfectly reasonable to be skeptical in these strange scenarios. Knowledge and evidence here is to sparse substantiate anything as we are talking about some of the most difficult to study phenomena in science generally using methods not exactly renowned for high reliability. But speculating on naturalistic explanations is reasonable considering the body of scientific knowledge we have about how the world works. There is absolutely no reason to prefer speculations that life exists after death or other woo woo imo. Clearly there is bias here. Many of us are biased away from woo woo explanations because of what scientific knowledge and evidence seems to say. Some people are biased in the completely opposite direction, and I have no idea why. Until there is actual good enough data, its difficult for this not to be anymore than people choosing a preference on bias and effectively making a bet. Do you think that the breadth, consistency, reliability of scientific knowledge so far is a reliable predictor that naturalistic explanations will prevail? Or do you want to bet on what has been so far unsubstantiated, conspiratorially evasive, empirically and theoretically murky woo woo?

Absolute madness.

It would have no awareness of the physical stuff that the brain enables us to access. — Punshhh

Then how do dead people have knowledge of physical events suring NDEs when their brain is shut off?

It could just mean that complexity is needed to house consciousness. — Sam26

Well its clearly not if dead people can have complex experiences without a functioning brain.

I dunno, brains seem like a complex, expensive bit of machinery, biologically speaking. Seems weurd that we would go through all the trouble to evolve complicated regions for emotion, processing space, the body, vision, hearing... only to not even need them during these NDEs. Think a similar kinds of bizarreness like this also occurs when thinking about religions, souls, the afterlife. The brain seems superfluous, like why do we need a brain to cognize and emote about God when we would be expected to have some kind of relationship with God in the afterlife.