Not at all, the metaphor has a completely physical basis so how can it be an argument against physicalism?

I would say that information content isn't a thing in and of itself but is about what an observer can distinguish.

My point is not really 1 or 2 but an inversion of 2 - how can an observer infer the material content from the image.

The photo thing I think isn't so much supposed to be an analogy for the physical and mental per se but of the relationship between representations and the mediums that hold them. Perhaps a better way to put it is that the information is about what is being represented and nothing else. Experiences are representations of things in the outside world. If they had information about what is going on inside your head they would be bad representations and our neural architecture isn't designed to represent that information. There is no reason to expect that the representations of our experience should be reducible to whatever is going on inside our heads if they serve the proper function of representations.

The photograph absolutely does have information about the medium that it is made of. I can subject a photo to all sorts of chemical tests. I can identify what it is made out of, what it dissolves in, etc. I can discover fingerprints and DNA on the photograph, which will help me determine its history.

But I am talking about the information contents of the actual image, you are talking about features of the physical object the image has been projected on. I can produce the same image on different paper or have it on a digital screen and identify the contents of the image; those contents are not directly related to the physical composition of a photograph you can hold in your hand and cannot be reduced to it, which is the main point.

Yes, it's true that that image is not totally independent of other factors; after all, the type of camera and resolution etc will have an effect on the image but these largely still come from the same interactions during the photo-taking process by which the image of Everest was stored - it is still information of the image which is independent of the physical medium an image is projected on and so cannot be reduced to it.

how the photo got there

I wasn't very clear at all when I said this because I didn't anticipate it to become a topic of the convo but I actually mean't to say the actual physical process by which the photograph was created in the moment through light reflectance and absorption and what ever complicated physical processes are involved. This can't be inferred just from looking at an image.

The film itself will tell me what type of device was used to take the picture and I can then use my computer, a physical device, to find all sorts of information on the exact physics that would allow a person with a camera to create such a picture.

Yes and this is what we have done in neuroscience but the point is that that physical information is not directly inferrable from the image itself, it relies on additional empirical observations extraneous to the features of the image, e.g. the arrangement of color parameters that form what we can identify as the image.

You seem to be setting up some sort of dichotomy between the "image" on the photograph and the physical photograph. But physicalism is an ontology that explicitly denies that any such dichotomy exists except in our minds. Film is physical. It encodes information about the pictures taken with it by virtue of physical processes. And, in comparison to how minds are generated, the physical processes involved in photography are very well understood in physical terms and arguably already reducible to them.

Well I don't think there is necessarily a dichotomy in the way you suggest since the information in the photograph is being perceived and interpreted through a physical process - whatever person or perhaps even machine, computer program etc is reading the image.

But the point is that to read the information in the photo, whatever machine has to be designed to distinguish arrangements of color parameters or inputs that map to those arrangements. That information is the contents of the image but nothing in that arrangement will tell you about the medum that image is projected on. I can imagine a circle, see it on a computer screen, see it on paper. What tells me that that image is a circle and differentiates it from non-circles has nothing to do with some kind of medium it is represented on.

When physicists do make ontological claims, they increasingly seem to be embracing various forms of immaterialism, mostly ontic structural realism, rather than physicalism

I think this is splitting hairs really for the purposes of the part you quoted because whether you're talking about ontic structural realism or physicalism, you're not changing the central role of physical constructs in the universe amongst other constructs. If you look at people like James Ladyman, they are expressing the same kind of sentiment as in that quote; they try to produce a more rigorous characterization of reality which can essentially be used as a vehicle for their naturalism, empiricism.

I have to go but I will reply to this in a couple of hours!

Thanks btw!

I don't know how well what I am about to say will come across but ...

I don't really understand what immaterial meaning ... means. To me, meaning is like a construct we use to refer to our own understanding and knowledge which is directly embedded and enacted in the dynamics of experience...

In other words, meaning is just use. Use is just dynamics of experience which reflect dynamics of neural activity.

Meaning can therefore be deflated in terms of being implicit in these dynamics as opposed to being an explicit thing

The problem is that this implies that not everything can be explained in physical terms. So, this cuts against many common formulations of physicalism, such that "a complete physics can, in principle, explain everything."

I am not sure I totally agree. In the OP I suggest that irreducibility is a natural consequence of the fact that experiences are representational. I then don't think that it is coherent for a representation to be reducible to things that cannot be identified with what is being represented, like with the photo example: a photograph of Everest contains information about everest, it does not contain information about the medium the photo is on, how the photo got there, what physical processes enable us to see the information in the photo etc.

It doesn't seem coherent to me that we should be able to gleam that information if the photo was a veridical representation of Everest. That the photo doesn't contain this information is not a fault, its exactly what the photo is supposed to do. The fact that experiences cannot be reduced to the physical then is not some kind of epistemic gap that it should be possible for us to breach; no, if experiences are representational then it is impossible to explain this in the same way that a round square is a logical impossibility. We should not expect physicalism to explain this kind of thing.

At the same time, it might be possible for the physical to demonstrate this kind of thing in principle through things like machine learning where we design an architecture for some artificial intelligence and describe the information it can process, describe the limits of what it cannot process or explain. This is speculative but I think that is a plausible avenue which is a surrogate for an explanation; for instance, if we create an advance A.I., it might start to say that it has experiences that it can't explain consistent with what we say about how our own experiences are irreducible.

Obviously, someone may just say that experiences emerged somewhere along the development of this A.I. but then the interesting part would be if we can explain why the A.I. is saying these things purely through the dynamics and mechanics of its architecture without recourse to explicit experiential constructs, which is exactly how a physicalist might want to explain away the irreducibility. If we cannot help but find our experiences irreducible as a consequence of the nature of what our brains are doing, then we may have just explained away irreducibility without needing to say that this irreducibility is because the mind and brain are distinct entities.

But then what exactly is it that makes nature "physical?"

If physical facts can only describe one set of things in the world, then it seems like "physical" is a subordinate category, and that a higher category should subsume both the physical and the mental aspects of reality...

The question then becomes: what does physicalism explain that other ontologies cannot and how does it differentiate itself from objective idealism aside from a bald posit that nature is essentially "physical?"...

The dividing line would seem to be the claim that there is something that is ontologically distinct, a substance or process that is "physical," and that this physical substance/process somehow supervenes on all that is mental in a way that is relevant enough to be worth positing. That is, physicalism has to have some sort of extra explanatory value to it after we allow that it cannot explain/describe all aspects mental phenomena. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think from my perspective, it's not so much about some kind of physical substance as the kind of models we have about the world. As you say, the idea of a physical substance is ill-defined and vague; however, the models that have emerged in the natural sciences seem to be successful and I think that is what we should follow when trying to decide the best way to describe things that actually exist.

For me, it is very explicit that physical models are constructs which have been created by us, biological machines. I am not sure scientific models allow us to do more than predict things in some type of fashion which is directly situated and embedded in our own experiences. There isn't necessarily even a strict dividing line between predictive scientific models and other types of models in our experience; in modern neuroscience, the brain is a predictive machine which mediates all our models whether in the sciences, humanities, the way we use language, folk physics, our understanding of social situations or our own mental concepts etc.

There is therefore room for all sorts of constructs in our mind and they are just that - models! For me its trying to pick the best ones for some purpose, not necessarily turning these models into concrete substances. There is not necessarily a strict difference between models we have for things in physics, chemistry, biology, economics etc, and I don't want to say these each have their own fundamental substances either. I am agnostic, even anti-realist perhaps on that kind of thing, nonetheless there seems to be a strong intuitive picture that emerges in the natural sciences about how some constructs e.g. ones in physics seem more fundamental or to have more primacy than others. The value of physicalism then is in the value and power of physics in the natural sciences.

Someone might say this kind of physicalism is difficult to explicitly differentiate from an objective idealism but then again to say you are idealist seems to me to be adding something extra on top of the advocacy of these models in the natural sciences as opposed to just taking the explanatory value of those models at face value.

Obviously all these models are actually embedded and situated in experience as has been said. The physicalist would then say that this experience is identical to the physical just that there is no coherent way of making the reduction from the information represented in conscious experiences and the models of the physical we have constructed in conscious experience, also situated in those representations. The point of the OP is supposed to be that if irreducibility can be explained away as due to the nature of information processing in our brains then the identity between experiences and the things in physics can be defended, we just have an inherent inability to explain it in the same way that a machine learning architecture has inherent limits on what it can do or how self-reference has inherent limits.

So maybe the lesson is just to abandon "physicalism" and embrace "naturalism, monism, and realism?"

Yes, I think you could view it this way though I think the argument in the OP can also be used to defend physicalism. I think it depends on someone's inclinations; yes, physicalism is poorly defined but terms like "monism" or "naturalism" are no better I don't think. Yes, maybe it would be more true to say something like we cannot access the fundamental ontologies of nature but I also think physicalism does capture something more about my inclinations than the other labels, and captures how physics does seem to take a central role in my understanding of what exists. In some ways its actually a more honest characterization of my views and attitudes than something like neutral monism

@RogueAI

explaining how it happens

A: In my view, rejecting the duality of mind and body makes explaining how conscious happens an invalid question.

reducing it to brain states

B: I personally don't believe that consciousness can ever be reduced to brain states but I don't think this is a fault of a physicalist model but can plausibly be explained away as a consequence of limitations or quirks in information processing.

arguing successfully it doesn't exist at all

It depends what is meant here. Imo the natural sciences point to dualism being false because 1) science has found no evidence of separable mental substances that are separable from physical phenomena. 2) science seems to suggest that physical constructs are sufficient for intelligence, perception, cognition etc.

So I think science suggests something like monism. I think its then reasonable for someone to take a physicalist world view since the constructs we find in the natural sciences are the kinds of things a physicalist universe would be based on in principle. I think maybe a physicalist might say that they aren't denying we experience things just that they are nothing above the physical.

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Obviously some people have said that the natural sciences more or less only describe the behavior of things not what things actually are intrinsically - they are free to posit that this stuff is phenomenal. But I think in light of points A and B above and the difficulty of creating a coherent, non-trivial definition of what conscious phenomena actually is, I don't think someone who identifies as a physicalist can be accused of failing to explain anything anymore than a physicist can be impelled to explain why anything exist at all and there isn't just nothing.

The physicalist is therefore not necessarily be saying that "non-conscious, mindless stuff" doesn't exists just that it wouldn't be anything above the physical and anything about it that can be meaningfully explained about it can be done through constructs from the sciences.

I might even go as bold to say that this kind of physicalism I am envisioning might be compatible with someone who believes that the universe is phenomenal as long as they believe that there is nothing more to explain about it than through the constructs we find in the natural sciences, which I think would probable render their concept of phenomena a bit explanatorily redundant and inaccessible, perhaps useless.

I think what should be abandoned is the metaphysical assumption of some kind of dualism where over here sits physical things and over there sits mental things and they are totally separable. In that regard, the idea that matter generates consciousness is based on a faulty assumption.

So that even while you recognise something like the 'explanatory gap' or 'the hard problem of consciousness', you think physicalism is a pretty safe bet regardless

I don't think that characterization describes the view I promoted so well. I think the explanatory gap is significant enough to question physicalism but I think that if that explanatory gap can be explained away as being due to limitations or quirks of information processing then there is no reason to think that explanatory gap is a consequence of some intrinsic ontological distinction.

I think rather than an argument explicitly for physicalism, it is a counter to arguments used against physicalism specifically that use irreducibility to say that the mental and physical are different. But since the idea of what the physical actually is is a bit up in the air or ill-defined I don't think the argument can be used as a way of ruling out idealist, panpsychist or neutral monistic who might just say something like physical things are actually just mental things. But I think the main significance is the argument is a defence for the physicalist against irreducibility.

There's definitely some stuff in what you have written which resonates with the direction I want to go in generally when it comes to my philosophy of mind - what kinds of information are available to us and how tjat impacts the explanations we can give about what we perceive. Only I would resist the idea of meaning being immaterial. I'm sympathetic to view that kind of deflate the status of meaning as a thing.

How do you do itallics here?

Yes, I guess it is a kind of non-reductive physicalism but the root of the irreducibility is explicitly to do with information processing. I see the surface resemblance to Davidson's view but I anticipate there's probably a fair amount in his view I would disagree with. I cant say I'm too familiat with it though, it seems like quite an involved view of the mind/brain.

Well, all I can say is I disagree then. I think the photograph metaphor seems a coherent analogy of the view and that I think it is consistent with someone being a physicalist.

Yes, I think there is an important point here if I understood correctly. We can say we have experiences but I don't think they necessarily tell us anything much at all about anything and I think even if experiences are so immediate and visceral to us, they don't necessarily allow us to make conclusions about the nature of the universe. In fact I would say I am inclined to say reducibility or explanation never comes for free and any reductions we make requires prior assumptions that don't necessarily seem well justified - all knowledge is susceptible to the munchausen trilemma.

I think your view is too restrictive of physicalism; how would you characterize what my view is saying then? I would say its plausibly fully physicalist because the reason for the inability to reduce I think can be explained physically, for instance through the limitations of what a computing / information processing device can or cannot do. Look at the photograph example too - the explanation for the information a photograph contains is obviously physical - a photograph doesn't contain information about the medium it is represented on for physical reasons, it doesn't contain information about objects obscured from view for physical reasons.

This is an interesting and good point. We can only go by the evidence of what science gives us which looks like a complicated picture of an outside world beyond our experiences. I agree that there is nothing that necessarily makes our representations actually exactly true, objective, totally veridical representations of what is going on - I think that is probably impossible for various reasons and perhaps the ways we can view the world are chronically underdetermined/indeterminate. Nonetheless, I don't think it is unreasonable for someone to defend a physicalist view, depending on how they conceptualize it, given the success of the natural sciences and what they seem to say. My focus on this post was that if someone chose to be a physicalist, then the irreducibility of experience would be the main argument against their view, and I was looking at a counterargument.

But you are presupposing that everything has to be explained in some kind of reduction but the point is that if what we experience are representations or information about the outside world then such a reduction is incoherent. Its not like there is some explanation or reduction out there in principle that we just dont know, its that such a reduction does not make logical sense, like how paradoxes don't make logical sense. If such a reduction is not coherent then I dont think the failure of that reduction can be an argument against physicalism.

But if the reason something cannot be explained is not about ontology but about limits in explanation then I don't think that is an argument against physicalism. If information processing is a physical thing based on particular architectures then it is plausible that there are limits on what it can explain just like how a cat brain cannot explain things a human brain can. You might not expect some kind of machine learning architecture to explain itself without the right kind of structure either. If a physicalist thinks that our brain does all the information processing then if there are plausible reasons to suggest that there are limits on the kinds of reports a brain can generate about the information it processes or things it does, then it might seem reasonable from a physicalist point of view to say that they believe everything is physical - because thats what all the scientific evidence suggests - but my brain architecture is just physically incapable of producing the kinds of reductions, explanations or descriptions that you might want and perhaps should not be capable of doing that if it needs to be representing veridical information about the outside world.

To me, it might just be required that a physicalist believes everything is physical. You might expect everything should be describable in physical terms but what if there are good reasons that they cannot be? That doesn't necessarily stop them being physical just that our ability to explain or describe things doesn't come for free. Maybe we are what its like to be physical things.. we just can't explain it or describe properly the relation.

Thank you for the welcome. The point I try to make is that if experiences are representations of things in the outside world then maybe they can never be reduced to brains. Yes, you can say - "well I have experiences and that is that" - but a physicalist could just say that his experiences are his brain. You would tell him he is wrong because experiences don't reduce to brains but if this irreducibility is something a physicalist expects or is consistent with physicalism then the argument wouldn't work.

I feel like he does reject that idea about propositions. I seem to remember a whole section where he is criticising the way a picture is entailed by a proposition or something like that.

well said but we can go deeper than that. all of these fields are expressed through math. ultimately our descriptions of the brain and consciousness are just math. mind is math. then look at important findings in math like godel incompleteness amongst others all suggestions on limits to self reference. paradox is inherent in any (self)description of the mind.