Well, I can't say I understand exactly what you are proposing, but it seems like you are saying the question of the medium is secondary, but then you explain why it must be primary. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it is simpler than that. We are using "medium" is different ways. I think. For me, empty space is not a mediium. A medium is substance that fills a space. Space is a co-ordinate system, which defines the possibilities where certain kinds of object may be. Objects are distinct from mediums because the latter are found everywhere, but objects have a locating within space.

I agree with everything you say. But it is not easy to say it clearly.

A rule can fix the standards for correctness without implying that the entire infinite list exists as a finished thing. We often feel “it’s already there” because the rule is firm, but what’s “already there” is the method, not a completed infinite inventory. — Sam26

What bothers me is that we seem driven to talk about processes in connection with infinity, as you do in the first sentence. But does such a concept make sense in the context of mathematics? Or does it mean that constructivism must be true, at least in the context of infinity?

Personally, I don't think God's foreknowledge contradicts free will, but others disagree. — Ecurb

I agree with you.

If I'm right aht Milton's defence of God, that the Fall was, in the end, a Good Thing, seems to me the deepest problem here.

I recently read this book. It was a real treat. I don't often finish a book thinking that I should read it again immediately. But I do still resist reading the actual poem.
I realize this is too late for your book group, but I'm sure there was a lively discussion - I hope so, anyway.
Some random comments.

It does seem that Satan is the most interesting character, and I'm sure Milton intended that. Satan could not tempt us if it was always clear that he was a demon. I do wonder how some of the people that are in the book reconciled their fascination with him with the threat that the revolution could turn sour, let us say. It doesn't seem to have put any of them off their projects.

Good point, although the French Revolution suffered from some of the same problems as Satan's rebellion. — Ecurb

Yes. In some ways, the greatest danger is in the moment of success. It's interesting to reflect on how Wordsworth reflected on this problem, by comparison with Milton. Both ended up as conservatives, though in rather different ways.

Paradise ruled by a dictator seems almost an oxymoron to me. And, I find it hard to think of a place where certain knowledge is forbidden as a paradise. — Ciceronianus

In the case of Paradise, since God's commandments are always good and right, it will always be good and right to obey. The only problems are our failures to grasp that. (In the background, of course, we have the Euthyphro problem, whether God's commandments are good and right because they are his commandments, or he decides what to command on the basis of his knowledge of what is good and right.)
The prohibition against eating the apple is a puzzle. In the Bible story, God fears that Adam and Eve will acquire knowledge of what is good and right; he cites a concern that they would become like gods as a result. I can't see that this makes any sense. In any case, in the event, they ate and clearly did not become gods.

Are revolutions doomed to fail? — Ecurb

I think it is dangerous to generalize here. The American Revolution. The Scientific Revolution. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in the UK. Though much depends on what you think success is.

"The world was all before them..." Was paradise lost? Or gained? — Ecurb

I think that those final lines strongly suggest that Milton wants us to think that it was gained. As I remember it God responds to Satan's defection by saying that He will turn this disaster to good use. We have to assume that He was more or less in control throughout.
But there are questions. Assuming that Adam and Eve do acquire knowledge of good and evil, are we happy to say that they were better off as a result -- bearing in mind the punishments that God inflicts on them. Is the innocence of animals and small children a better, happier state than human life? But we do not think of humans who lack moral sense in a radical way as "better off" or even "happier" than ordinary people. I really don't know how one might even think about how to answer that question. Though I think it very likely that Milton would answer that a moral sense is essential to being human.
If Satan is an essential part of human life, is God complicit with him. Is it possible that God was complicit in the initial rebellion?

Since the concept of "space", and its accompanying mathematics provide for infinite divisibility, and the proposed medium is simply conceptual, how could the medium be modeled in any way other than a way which is consistent with the concept "space", and the related mathematics, i.e. as infinitely divisible. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems to me that the question of a medium in space is secondary. The first move is to set up a co-ordinates and rules for plotting the position of objects on those. (In other words, the concept is defined by the practice.) Once we have co-ordinate and objects, the question of a medium makes some sense. How non-mathematicians develop the concept is another question. But we can be pretty sure it is by interacting with the ordinary world. Mathematics, in my book, is a development of that.

Limits, as against calculating velocities? Let's be clear, these two descriptions are quite consistent with each other. If you are pointing out that Zeno's description is incomplete because he doesn't include the bit where Achilles passes the tortoise, I think we agree. — Banno

I never intended to suggest that they were in some way inconsistent. On the contrary, the point is that they are both in order. So the question is, why do we prefer to use one rather than the other. Your suggestion is plausible - narrow focus in an analysis can be very helpful, but also very misldeading. The paradox of Zeno's paradox, for me, is that Achilles is precluded from reaching a point that defines the system - the limit. The first step is to divided the distance from the start to the goal, limit, by 2, and so on. The limit is not an optional add-on, (as it seems to be in the case the natural numbers).

And if I put on a “Wittgenstein hat” for a second, he migft say: don’t let the word “infinite” hypnotize you. Most of the time it just means “this process can continue without end,” not “we’ve discovered a weird tower of endless infinities.” — Sam26

I'm sure he would. But it is not so easy to rest content with "this process can continue without end". On one hand, we think that the result of the function for each value is "always already" true. On the other hand, we feel that the result is not available until the function has been applied to each value. What makes this game even more puzzling, is that it seems we can know things about the whole sequence without working out the results of the whole sequence. The first example of this is that we can know that the process can continue without end.

I suppose the thought here is to show that the limit is not so much made up or defined, but sitting there waiting to be found within ℝ. We construct ℝ then find these interesting results. — Banno

We are not comfortable with the fact that rules have consequences when they are surprising or not what we want.

nsisting that Zeno's infinities are about how the world is and not how we talk about it is question begging. That's exactly what is in question. — Banno

Let me try to be a bit clearer. I cited the bumble bee just because it was a case where there isn't much, if any, doubt about how the world is as opposed to how we think about it. I wanted to contrast that with the issues about infinity. There are two ways of approaching Achilles & co. One is Zeno's way, the other is simple arithmetic, which one might think is how the world is. But that's not how we respond. I'm not sure I understand why, exactly, except that both are methods of calculation, so both come from the same stable. (Contrast the bumble bee). Possibly, we could choose to stick with simple arithmetic in the Zeno case. So perhaps the reason is that we need it for other calculations, such as the orbits of planets and other issues in geometry. In which case we need both. In other words, this choice cannot really be posed as between how the world is and how we talk about it.

We should remember that we unfortunately have lost Plato's original book, where likely the Eleatic school would have made their own viewpoint. Now we have just the texts of those who were against the Eleatic school, the "mainstream" Socratic-Platonic school. — ssu

That would indeed be of great interest. I wonder if we could construct a reply that they might have made?

I do admire your devotion to the practical. Detaching yourself from it and purely following the contours of the mind will set you out in front of contradictions. — frank

It may well do so. It may also set you in front of outright fantasies that have no connection with any kind of truth. The theoretical stance needs a grounding in ordinary life, if only because there is no escaping ordinary life. Not even philosophers can really escape from it.

Paradoxes occur when we say things incorrectly. The world cannot be wrong, but what we say about it can be. — Banno

There used to be a story that aerodynamics showed that bumble bees cannot fly. Did anyone doubt that bumble bees can fly? I don't think so. I understand that aerodynamics is now clear that bumble bees can fly. But in that case, it was clear how the world is, as opposed to how we thought about it, or described it. Why is it that we don't just point out that the arrow will leave the bow, and that Achilles will catch up with the tortoise? It seems that we cannot simply correct infinity, but have to learn to live with it. Calculus fits in to that project.

I'm not convinced that all paradoxes can be resolved. Some of them, like Zeno's, may be inherent in the project of saying things about the world. Self-reference is another part of our language that we struggle to escape from. Are we sure that we cannot just live with at least some of them?

Everybody grows the psychological structures they need to deal with the life they have. I can't tell you how you need to think in order to successfully be you. If deep suspicion about mental stuff, coupled with strong faith in the world is the outlook your psyche thrives with, then God bless it. — frank

Each to their own, I suppose. But is that how you think about your own views, as well? If that's what's going on, why do we bother arguing with each other?
It is not uncommon for people to believe that the ordinary world is not really real, but is some kind of dream or fantasy or shadow. I doubt they would welcome a pat on the head and permission to believe whatever they need to believe.

My apologies for my curtness. I'v'e in mind heading off a divergence into discussions of rules. — Banno

Of course. The ghost at the feast, perhaps.

Zeno saw himself as proving that all motion is an illusion. You're saying that he's wrong, but you aren't providing an argument. That's fine. — frank

Well, one could simply argue that the argument is not a proof, but a reductio of a certain approach to space, time and infinity.
We can compute when Achilles will achieve his goal as soon as we know how fast he is running and how large the distance is. That figure does not change as the race progresses. Unless Zeno can find a fault in that calculation, it proves that the issue is in the approach to the question, not in the situation as described.
In a fixed period of time, Achilles passes an increasing number of distances, culminating, no doubt, in his traversing infinitely many distances in an infinitely small amount of time. Zeno seems to think that he takes a non-infinitesimal amount of time to traverse an infinitesimally small distance.

We know exactly how to carry on. — Banno

Thanks, Banno. I knew I would not get it quite right.

The "number" of natural numbers (positive integers) equals the number of integers because a 1:1 mapping can be identified between the sets. — Relativist

I think it is important to underline that the mapping between the sets is identified between the first few steps in the series (I may have the exact terms wrong). But the written identification runs out at some point and is conventionally followed by .... The conclusion that it applies right through the sequence follows from the fact that there is nothing to stop it continuing on the principle that every step in the sequence is structurally identical. (You would need to give a reason why things should be different at some point.)
I've found that this is not obvious to everyone.

However, i see it as implicit, and unavoidable from the meaning given to those terms within the system. — Metaphysician Undercover

I realize that you see the contradiction as implicit and unavoidable. But you are not recognizing the meaning given to the terms within the system.
"countable" within the system means only that some of them can be counted and we cannot find any numbers in the sequence that cannot be counted. Actually, since we had that discussion, I've come across the term "countably infinite" which I think is much less misleading.
And I think that you are not aware of how the term "limit" is used within the system. A limit, in this context, is a value that the series gets closer to, but never reaches. It is not a value derived from the function. It is not the last term in the series.
It does not constrain the series at all. So, in Zeno's paradox, Achilles gets closer and closer to the tortoise but never reaches it. (Forgive my inexpert account.)
From my perspective, the adjusted meaning of terms within the system is one of the biggest differences between us.

The connection to theology which I get a glimpse of, is the ontological argument, which became unacceptable even in theology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for that. I hadn't thought about it. But that wasn't what got Cantor into trouble.

Some Christian theologians saw Cantor's work as a challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature of God. In particular, neo-Thomist thinkers saw the existence of an actual infinity that consisted of something other than God as jeopardizing "God's exclusive claim to supreme infinity". — Wikipedia - Georg Cantor

I think that a dissection of the ontological argument here might be thought off-topic. So I won't go any further into territory that I don't understand anyway.

If we were talking at the level of metaphysical or empirical truth I would agree with you. But at the level of formal truth, either ZFC ⊢ ∃f (bijection) is true, or it isn't. I have a hard time making sense of the claim that it isn't. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes. I was thinking in terms of a truth that could be recognized unconditionally, as it were. But then, "either ZFC ⊢ ∃f (bijection) is true, or it isn't" is just that. So I missed that truth. The difference is, I suppose, is that I doubt if one could defend similar claims beginning "In metaphysics..." or "Empirically..."

For many of us on the thread, (1) is straight-forwardly true. So when someone denies "the bijection exists", we hear it as a denial of (1), since that is all we mean, whereas I think the people making the denial are (perhaps?) not intending it in this way. Hence all of the confusion.
What are your thoughts on this? — Esse Quam Videri

It is possible, and has been the case at times in this discussion, that both sides of a debate are thinking in terms of "straightforwardly true". But there is a case for saying that, in this instance, "straightforward truth" just isn't available. To put it one way, there is truth in the orthodox account of infinity, and the "Aristotelian" and nominalist accounts. Much of this debate has circled round this, without producing much in the way of mutual understanding. Classic philosophy.

Wittgenstein's approach seems to me much more likely to be fruitful - which is not to say that everything that he argues for is equally convincing - ref; "infinity". The aim of dismantling philosophical theories by showing that some term or other had not been effectively defined is an excellent test. But nonetheless, the comparison of a philosophical view with an interpretation of a picture suggest that a more laid-back approach is more likely to enable us to understand the issue and its difficulties, at least. Then the option of admitting that the problem is insoluble or has more than one solution may be open to us or that the issue

I suppose so, but the GPS in your phone was designed using math invented by Descartes. — frank

Indeed it was. And it is important to see and to notice that mathematical ideas apply to the physical universe, at least sometimes. Whether this is unreasonable or not, is not obvious to me. But reasonable or not, it is so. Pragmatic approaches often get short shrift around here and I don't equate "works" with "true". But where some idea or technique does work, that seems an important fact about it - just as whether it is verifiable or not is not the whole story, but is an important part of it.

Is this a form of pragmatism? Yes, I think it probably is. I am not adopting the axioms because they are "true" in any robust sense, but because they enable so much interesting, beautiful and indispensably useful mathematics. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes. That's why I prefer the classical approach here. But I don't rule out that perhaps there is something about the alternative approaches that has not yet come to light. There is a connection to theology, which might explain why those approaches survive, though I confess it would not recommend them to me.

So I dont't understand what you are saying here, especially what you mean by "2 divides 1 and 3". One divided by two produces a half, and three divided two produces one and a half. But it doesn't make sense to say that two acts as a division between one and three in the way that you propose. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm sorry. I should have said "separates", not "divides".

So it looks like you disagree with my premise that counting is a form of measurement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you think of a form of measurement that is not counting - apart from guessing or "judging"?

Since you claim that starting to count something is sufficient to claim that it is countable, then if we maintain consistency for other forms of measurement, puling out the tape measure would be sufficient to claim that the item is measurable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree. Since this is not an argument, it seems inappropriate to reply.

I'm saying that in the presence of an inconsistency between ZFC and computable notions of mathematics, coupled with the obvious uselessness of of non-constructive cardinal analysis, the theological origin of ZFC becomes conspicuous. — sime

OK. Obviously I'm not in a position to comment.

which is a conclusion that Cantor accepted because it resonated with his theology. — sime

Are you suggesting that is a reason for rejecting his conclusions? Either way, I would suggest that we leave Cantor's theology as a matter between Cantor and his God.

Why do you think the proposition that the natural numbers is countable does not contradict the proposition that the natural numbers are infinite, in the way I explained? — Metaphysician Undercover

It depends, as I explained earlier, how you define "countable". I don't say that it's just all just a matter of definitions, but it's probably a good idea to get those agreed so that we can be sure we are talking about the real issues. As it is, we don't agree and so we never get to identify and discuss the real issues.

That's exactly right. To say that 2 is between 1 and 3 is to say that it serves as a medium. However, in the true conception and use of numbers, 1, 2, 3, is conceived as a unified, continuous idea. This unity is what allows for the simple succession representation which you like to bring up. No number is between any other number, they are conceived as a continuous succession. To say that 2 comes between 1 and 3 is a statement of division, rather than the true representation of 1, 2, 3, as a unity, in the way that the unified numbering system is conceived and applied. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure what you mean by "serves as a medium". I accept you are right to observe that the numbers are defined as a succession. (I don't know why you call the successor function a representation of something, but let that pass...) But the point of a succession is that every step (apart, perhaps, from 0) has a predecessor and a successor. That is what it means to say that n is between n-1 and n+1. It is not wrong to say that 2 unites 1 and 3 and it is not wrong to say that 2 divides 1 and 3. But it is wrong not to say both.

"Infinite" means limitless, boundless. The natural numbers are defined as infinite, endless. limitless. All measurement is base on boundaries. To say a specific parameter is infinite, means that it cannot be measured. Counting is a form of measurement. Therefore the natural numbers cannot be counted. To propose that they are countable, is contradictory, because to count them requires a boundary which is lacking, by definition. — Metaphysician Undercover

This just turns on your definition of what it is to count something.
Using a ruler to measure a (limited) distance means counting the units. Obviously, we need enough numbers to count any distance we measure. So having an infinite number of numbers is not a bug, but a feature. It guarantees that we can measure (or count) anything we want to measure or count.
I maintain that if you can start to count some things, they are countable. You maintain that things are countable only if you can finish counting them., It's a rather trivial disagreement about definitions. But I do wonder how it is possible to start counting if I can only start if I can finish.

If I recall correctly, he specifically said "habit" rather than "rule", which suggests naturalizing logic, and indeed I think that's where he was headed. — Srap Tasmaner

There's a lot that could be said about that. It is tempting to classify some rules as habits. Habits neither have, nor require, any kind of justification. They are what they are and that's all that can be said. Rules, on the other hand, can provide justifications and, just for that reason, are, mostly subject to justifications. Some rules do not have, and do not require, any further justification - especially if they set the standard for right and wrong. So these are like habits in that they do not require justification and unlike habits in that they can provide justification. (I'm sketching here.)

We do not find numbers in nature, not in the same way we find trees and rocks and clouds. Did we then make it all up, our mathematics? Is it just a game we play with arbitrary rules? — Srap Tasmaner

That's true. But as soon as we recognize a tree, and recognise this is a different tree and this is the same tree again, we have have sown the seeds of counting. Not so much in the case of rocks and even less to in the case of clouds.
I don't think we make mathematics up like a story or even like a game (although the comparison can be useful). But it is a mistake to move from saying that we make mathematics up to saying that it (or its objects) don't exist. They don't exist in the way that trees and rocks do, but that shouldn't be a problem.
I don't like saying we discover or recognize mathematics either. It's not wrong, exactly, so long as we don't compare such discoveries to what explorers like Columbus do, thus positing a world of mathematics comparable to the physical world we live in.
Mathematics shares features with other practices in our lives and so comparisons can be useful. But I am unable to adopt any one comparison as the whole truth. (Comparison is always partial and involves differences as well as similarities.)
I'm in favour of naturalizing, if that means locating things in our lives and practices. But one has to acknowledge that there is a somewhat different project, at least in relation to mathematics, which is the search for foundations for a structure (as opposed to a set of practices).

If you think Meta has convincingly shown that numbers do not exist, then I suppose that's an end to this discussion. And to mathematics. — Banno

No, I don't think that @Meta has shown that numbers don't exist. I'm inclined to think that he doesn't believe that, either. He has been explicit that he rejects what he calls Platonism, but I don't think it follows that he thinks that numbers do not exist. I'm not sure he even rejects the idea that there are an infinite number of them - since he realizes that we can't complete a count of the natural numbers. I do think that we can't get to the bottom of what he thinks without taking on board the metaphysical theory that he has articulated.

I think that it is not necessary for the infinite number of numbers to exist in my mind. All I need to have in my mind is S(n) = n+1.
— Ludwig V
This is Aristotle's finitism. — frank

I didn't intend it to be. Surely, it works like this - Aristotle thinks that infinity cannot be real if we cannot complete the count. I intended to say that infinity is real even if we cannot complete the count, because the successor function tells us so.

Per Aristotle, infinity exists in potential. The actual is always finite. Set theory, by handling infinity as a set, appears to be defying finitism. This is an unresolved issue in phil of math. Someday it may result in a shift in thinking about set theory. — frank

Yes, I'm aware of that - and of the startling results that followed when his view was set aside and infinity was treated as real, thus enabling the invention/discover/development of the calculus.
Come to think of it, one might argue that Aristotle does not actually say that infinity doesn't exist, just that it exists ("in potential"). But everyone thinks that something that potentially exists doesn't exist and it would be perverse to suggest otherwise, I suppose.

Ramsey suggested that universal quantification is actually an inference rule: to say that all F are G is to say, if something is F then it's G.) — Srap Tasmaner

I didn't know that came from Ramsey. But it is in the same spirit. Instead of having to remember each specific F and that it is G, and that my list of F's is complete, we just have to remember a rule.

People decided that this would be really good, and so the system was designed and maintained that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you do know that the series is infinite without completing the count of them all.

Deduction from false premises produces absurdities. That's what Zeno is famous for having demonstrated. — Metaphysician Undercover

Zeno, if I remember right, thought that he had developed a proof that change is impossible. It is other people who treat his proof as a reduction. The catch is that they have not yet discovered which of his premises is false.

But the issue is whether an infinite quantity is countable. Any finite quantity is, in principle countable. But, since "infinite" is defined as endless, any supposed infinite quantity is not countable. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's just playing with words. We agree on the facts.

I'll give you a brief description why abstract "ideas" are classed as potential by Aristotle. This forms the basis of his claimed refutation of Platonism, and provides the primary premise for his so-called cosmological argument which demonstrates that anything eternal must be actual. — Metaphysician Undercover

I thought following paragraph very interesting. It made sense of your arguments. Not that I agree with it.

When numbers are assumed to be mathematical objects, these objects simply exist independently of any human mind. The supposed object is not in my mind, nor your mind, because it would be in many different places at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was going to put that argument to you. But I see it is not necessary.

In case you think I did not address this claim, 'having being within a system' is fiction. It can be said that Frodo Baggins has being within a system, but this type of being is well known as "fictional". — Metaphysician Undercover

And yet, Frodo Baggins exists - in the way that fictional characters exist. They can even be counted. Similarly, numbers exist - in their way.

It is absolutely necessary that the referenced infinity of numbers must have independent existence because it is absolutely impossible that they could exist within any minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not quite sure that I understand you. I think that it is not necessary for the infinite number of numbers to exist in my mind. All I need to have in my mind is S(n) = n+1.

It's just extending the way we talk about numbers. What started with the Biggest Number game gets extended into infinity, both ∞ and ω, the difference being that while ∞+1=∞, ω+1>ω; The first reflecting the teacher's answer "infinity plus one is still infinity", the second, the player's answer "infinity plus one is bigger than infinity". What we have is a division in how we proceeded, in the rules of the game, not in what "exists" in any firm ontological sense. It's chess against checkers, not cats against dogs. Neither set of rules is "true" while the other is "false". — Banno

Quite so. The difference is, however, that while we can work quite happily with both chess and checkers, it seems pretty clear that this game is not just an addition to the menu of possible ways we might amuse ourselves. @Metaphysician Undercover believes it is illegitimate in some way. It turns out that the disagreement turns on a metaphysical disagreement. Tackling that needs a different approach.

Advocating for new rules, new distinctions, new domains of discourse gives us a normative standard that is neither realist nor relativist. — Banno

A consummation devoutly to be wished for. But can you explain a bit what that standard is?

We know that the natural numbers go on for ever. Therefore it is impossible to count them, or that there is a bijection of them. — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you know that the natural numbers go on for ever? Have you tried to count them and failed? That doesn't prove that they go on for ever.
But perhaps you have counted some of them. That's easy enough to do.
When we are counting numbers, it is natural to start at the beginning. But we could start at any point in the sequence, and go on as long as we like from there. So we cannot find any numbers that cannot be counted.
So they are countable in the sense that some of them can be counted and we cannot find any numbers in the sequence that cannot be counted.

Admlttedly, the step from there to saying that they go on for ever is an induction.
But it is not an induction like the conclusion that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. We can see from the first few steps that anything that emerges from the function will be a number (because it is the successor to a number) and this is nothing to stop the next number emerging.
So the induction is secure. I know that there is some debate about this, but that is the debate we should be taking up.

They could not have all come into existence therefore it is impossible that there is a bijection of them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, so this is about actual and potential infinities. My problem with that is that I don't see how the idea of a possible abstract object can work. In an Aristotelian system, as I understand it, the concepts of matter and potentiality are linked. But that only applies to physical or material objects. Since abstract objects are not material, I don't see how they can have any potential for anything.
I have to admit that much of the talk about functions, suggests that they produce their results only when we feed in values for the variables. This is misleading. The answers are "always already" defined, before we start calculating. Nothing more is needed for a number to exist.
The philosophical parameters for the debate what it means for a mathematical (abstract) object to exist are well enough defined, so that's the debate we are really involved in.

And the majority of people don't want the hassle of a local computer. They don't know how to program it. Basically everything will be just buy once... and then it continuously updates and you pay an annual payment. — ssu

Quiite so. I'm afraid I'm among those who doesn't want to be bothered.
And then you will be locked in for life.
Then I find myself thinking that it won't be so bad - there will be rebels and perhaps government actions. Who knows?
But it does drive home the point, that @BenMcLean mentioned. Unrestricted libertarian capitalism doesn't work for anyone except the capitalists, who enjoy their liberties at our expense.

I'm inclined to see President Trump, even at his worst, as an effect of the inevitable direction of the American political system and not as the cause or instigator of a historically unique evil. — BenMcLean

There are similar movements for similar reasons in Europe. So although @ssu is right about the reserve currency business, the squeeze has had similar effects elsewhere. But the solution is not fortress America, but a fairer economy and international trading system. But don't hold your breath.

I think the OP is still a very interesting topic to debate. I don't see it as a political thing, but more of an economic and commercial development that can be seen in many things. — ssu

I can see that moving towards subscriptions and rents is better business than selling people copies of software. That seems to need continuous updating anyway, so what's the point of owning it?
Still, the OP has a point. And I'm sure there's be a healthy trade in the data we all keep on the cloud.

Now it's obvious that your current administration is outright hostile to Europe, and Europe cannot at all rely on the US or it's military industrial complex. — ssu

Quite so. I think there may be people who think that things will get better once Trump's term ends. We'll see. But even if they did get better, I can't see that anyone with any sense would trust it/them again - not for decades into the future.

Never underestimate just how similar in reality European system is to the American one. — ssu

That's true. I was mainly interested in the question of principle and especially the point that it is possible for a right-wing government to embrace the principle - i.e. the labelling of welfare as inherently "socialist" or "left wing" is a mistake.
I confess I have no idea what the arguments were in the US about this.

If I paint a landscape from memory of a park I visited long ago, do I need to appeal to mental images to explain how I did it? Is it not explanation enough just to say, “I am trained to paint landscapes, I visited that park, and have a good memory, go visit the park and you can see how accurate the painting is.” I don't need to say, “I am good at painting the mental copy of the park I have in my mind.” There need not be any mental copy at all. — Richard B

Exactly. If you are painting from a mental image, how could you distinguish between mistakes you have made because you are not very good at painting mental images - though you might still be stellar at painting actual landscapes - and mistakes you made because you are not very good at painting actual landscapes even if your mental images are a bit naff.

there does need to be some limiting principle on how far to the economic Left I need to go in order to avoid Soviet style tyranny. — BenMcLean

Isn't that a moral and political question, rather than a strictly economic issue?
In any case, I doubt if it is reasonable to expect to draw those lines in advance. People are very inventive about the ways they misbehave and misuse their assets. Perhaps it is best to enable the state to make a judgement case by case (subject to criteria and subject to the law). Compare competition regulations.

EDIT. I meant to point out how different this authority is from the more traditional, aristocratic notiong. There is no sense of social responsibility attached to the domain of an individual under libertarianism. This doesn't mean that no-one feels such a sense, or that traditional mores were good at ensuring that individuals with power exercised it properly. But there is a difference here, and an important one. (No, I'm not recommending going back to the old ways).

In context, I was explaining the doctrinal implications of libertarian orthodoxy in policymaking. — BenMcLean

Yes. I was taking an opportunity to smuggle in a hobby-horse of mind. It seems paradoxical, but look at it this way. Society and the state define the limits of individual freedom. Within the scope of the freedoms that are allowed, each individual is (supposed) to be free to do whatever they wish. That means that they have total authority to determine what happens within the scope of those freedoms. Clearly, someone who owns more property, of whatever kind, has authority over that property - and pretty much unrestricted authority at that. Money effectively enables people to acquire and control resources of all sorts and so, the more money you have, the more resources you command.
(I'm ignoring, for the moment, the tendency of most people to feel the restrictions of not owning things and not enjoying the freedom that brings to decide what happens more than the opportunities they already have. That's a whole other can of worms.)

doing anything whatsoever which would actually address this problem requires abandoning the Cold War era Baby Boomer libertarianism on economics which has been a core part of the self-identity of the Republican party for nearly half a century. — BenMcLean

Yes. I expect they will move when the electorate does.

The causal chain explains how perception occurs, not what perception is of. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes. It seems to me that the fact that we do not perceive light waves as such is important. Light and sound are the means by which we perceive, not what we perceive.

By contrast, perceptual access to the Sun or a ship is sensory and causal, not mediated by beliefs or descriptions. — Esse Quam Videri

Exactly.

So while I agree that a relation cannot obtain to a non-existent object as such, I deny that this forces the conclusion that the object of perception must be a present mental item. — Esse Quam Videri

Quite so. But then one has to explain what a hallucination of a dagger is, if not a mental image. That's not easy, because most people are absolutely sure that, like Macbeth, they see a dagger that is not there. Hence, a dagger-like object. Illusions like the bent stick are easy - we can demonstrate that the stick in water should look as if is bent - it's an actual physical phenomenon. At the moment, I'm inclined to just say that Macbeth is behaving as if he can see a dagger, and believes he is seeing a dagger - but there is no dagger and hence no perception of a dagger.

The disagreement now seems to be about ontology — whether objects are momentary temporal stages or persisting continuants — rather than about logic or semantics. — Esse Quam Videri

At the moment, I'm inclined to think that this is just a question of different notations. I need to be shown that something hangs on the distinction.

As I have mentioned before, the interpretation I have used for years is that infinity means boundlessness, not a cardinal number. — jgill

I've thought about that, but always assumed that someone would then demand how I explain "unbounded but finite", which, I'm led to believe is also possible. I've sometimes used "there is no last term". Is there any problem with that? (Mathematically, I'm sympathetic layman.)

I wonder if and when physics will find uses for transfinite objects. Perhaps it already has. — jgill

I certainly woudn't bet against that. I'm only deterred from betting in favour by the fact that it could take a long, long time before it happened.

Then, "countable" was introduced as a term with a definition which contradicts the infinite extension of the natural numbers. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is just one example of the way in which, when you change one feature of a language-game (conceptual structure), you often have to change the meaning of other terms within that structure.
So, "countable" in the context of infinity cannot possibly mean the same as "countable" in normal contexts. In the context of infinity, it means that you can start counting the terms and count as many as you like, and there is no term that cannot be included in a count; the requirement that it be possible to complete the count is vacuous, since there is no last term. It's not a problem.

So, tell me how it is that you claim "it's a known fact that you can line up all the rationals"? Has someone produced this line of all the rationals, to prove this fact? Of course not, because it is also a known fact that this is impossible to do, because no one could ever finish. What's with the contradiction? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, perhaps it needs putting in a slightly different way. For example, how about "there is no rational that you cannot place on the number line"?
When you define the successor function - Successor(n)=(n+1) - you can see that there will never be a last number, and you don't have to try to write all the numbers down to do it. You can also see that each and every number is defined - or perhaps better, there is no number that is not defined. So you do not need to complete the task in order to see that the conclusion is true. In the relevant mathematical system, that is a proof that they all exist and can be located on the number line.
Is there something going on in the background here about actual and potential infinities?

What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that a socialist or quasi-socialist system could actually pay for itself without turning into Soviet style tyranny the way the libertarians assume? — BenMcLean

A lot depends on what you consider socialism to be, and opiniions differ on that.
But the important point is that the question does not really depend on ideology. The very first state to introduce systemic state welfare provision was - Prussia, in the 1880's, Bismarck was the Chancellor at the time and led the process.

In domestic policy, Bismarck pursued a conservative state-building strategy designed to make ordinary Germans—not just his own Junker elite—more loyal to the throne and empire, implementing the modern welfare state in Germany in the 1880s. According to Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis, his strategy was:
granting social rights to enhance the integration of a hierarchical society, to forge a bond between workers and the state so as to strengthen the latter, to maintain traditional relations of authority between social and status groups, and to provide a countervailing power against the modernist forces of liberalism and socialism. — Wikipedia - entry on Otto von Bismarck

The whole problem is rooted in the question: does the state have the responsibility to care for its helpless fellow citizens, or does it not? I maintain that it does have this duty, and to be sure, not simply the Christian state, as I once permitted myself to allude to with the words "practical Christianity", but rather every state by its very nature. ... There are objectives that only the state in its totality can fulfil. [...] Among the last mentioned objectives [of the state] belong national defence [and] the general system of transportation. [...] To these belong also the help of persons in distress and the prevention of such justified complaints as in fact provide excellent material for exploitation by the Social Democrats. That is the responsibility of the state from which the state will not be able to withdraw in the long run. — Bismarck's Reichstag Speech on the Law for Workmen's Compensation March 15, 1884 See Wikipedia - Otto von Bismarck

The welfare state can be a judicious combination of realpoitik (enlightened self-interest) and Chirstianity, designed to frustrate liberalism and socialism. It is not even necessary to frame it as taxation. It can perfectly well be framed as insurance - (state subsidized if it is politically necessary).

This is clearly very, very bad but nothing in libertarianism can explain why it's bad or can prescribe any remedy for it, because as long as "it's a private company", nothing can be done. — BenMcLean

Thanks for the rest of your post. You add to my general alarm about the way the world is going. But it isn't true that nothing can be done. Capitalism can be regulated, and it is already regulated in many ways. One of the regulations is about monopoly and competition. If there was a political will, all those moves could be countered.
The deep danger in libertarianism is that it contains the seeds of authoritarianism. This development shows up the danger nicely. Whether or when people will wake up is another question. As Bismarck shows, an authoritarian regime is perfectly capable of buying its opposition off.

Presuming anything is the act of a conscious being, so it is certain that presumption of the physical world presupposes a conscious being. But we know that the physical world existed long before any conscious beings existed (at least on this planet) and, since we know of no conscious beings that exist without a physical substrate, we can be sure that the physical world can exist without any conscious beings in it.
— Ludwig V
This is a popular and seemingly knock-down objection to philosophical idealism. After all, how could the mind (or the observer, or consciousness) be fundamental to reality, as such, when rational sentient beings such as ourselves (and ours are the only minds we know of) are such late arrivals in the long history of the universe? 
It is this line of argument that is to be scrutinised here (sc. in the thread "About Time. — Wayfarer

Ok. I must admit, I have never thought of it as a knock-down argument. Perhaps that's because I don't really believe that such things really exist. in this case, it seems like a mere assertion, which I expected you to challenge directly. I did have my reply to your reply ready, but I guess you've taken the discussion in a different direction.
From my point of view, this is a case study of the concept of time to clarify the idealist thesis in general. In a way, I think case-by-case is a much more appropriate way to approach the question.

You haven't presented evidence that the world did not exist prior to consciousness. The only thing you've observed is that humans have measured change with units we call time, and you think that if there isn't a consciousness measuring change that change cannot happen. That's a big claim with nothing backed behind it. — Philosophim

No. I was expecting a challenge on that point. One aim in the argument was to demonstrate that our language is constituted to identify and describe objects that exist indepdently of it. Indeed, these are so pervasive that we are often deceived into thinking that a language-independent reality is being described, when it isn't. So the distinction is not always obvious.
There are other clues. In (modern) science, the methodological importance attached to experiments and observations depends entirely on the fact that they provided independent evidence that posited laws are correct or need amendment.

To begin with, it is important to be clear about what is not at issue. I am entirely confident that the broad outlines of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution developed by current science are correct, even if many of the details remain open to revision. I have no time (irony intended) for the various forms of science denialism or creationist mythology that question its veracity. I am well acquainted with evolutionary theory as it applies to h.sapiens, and I see no reason to contest it. — Wayfarer

Well, its good to see that we agree on so much. But then, I wonder what we disagree about. Berkeley makes a similar claim, which, at first sight, prompts the same issue. In his case, tracking the shifts in the meaning of the crucial terms is a fascinating exercise and can only increase one's respect for him.

What the following argument turns on instead is the role of the observer in the constitution of time. — Wayfarer

"Constitution" is, I gather, a bit of a term of art in philosophy. It seems to mean the process by means of which we make things up, construct them. So your thesis is that we construct time.

So the claim is not that change requires an observer, but that time as succession—as a unified before-and-after—does. Without such a standpoint, we still have physical processes, but not time understood as passage or duration. — Wayfarer

This seems to be an acknowledgement of something that is observer-independent. But you suggest a different conception of time, which includes, what mere change, you say, doesn't include - succession or before-and-after or duration.

Physics relates states to one another using a time parameter. What it does not supply by itself is the continuity that makes those states intelligible as a passage from earlier to later. I don't understand this. Every morning, the sun rises, then it moves across the sky and finally sets. That seems like succession and continuity to me. The dawn is before noon and dusk is after noon.

However, I do accept that developing clocks changes things radically. — Wayfarer

A clock records discrete states; it does not experience their succession as a continuous series amounting duration. The fact that we can say “one second has passed” already presupposes a standpoint from which distinct states are apprehended as belonging to a single, continuous temporal order. — Wayfarer

I'm afraid you may have been hypnotized by the traditional clock-work (!) clock. But the first clock (and calendar) was (most likely) the sun. However, the moon also acts as a measure, and we have, for example, water-clocks and candle-clocks as well as electric clocks that do not tick. In fact, the ticking clock is also a process of change in the world and not really any different from any other clock.

So what is measured is a process in the mind-independent world and the measure is a process in the mind-independent world. Our contribution is to enable more accurate measurement; it does not create of constitute anything (except some units of measurement).

But the fact that we can compare any process with any other can create an illusion - that there is some absolute process with which any other process can be compared - absolute time and absolute space which exists independently of any actual objects or processes. But the concept of empty space and empty time is the result of our ability to compare processes and objects in certain respects and our ability to create an abstract framework for them. That's all.

In other words, the intelligibility of the world to you is a 'given' that isn't explainable in terms of something more fundamental. Am I misunderstanding you? — boundless

I don't find a clear meaning in the question whether the world is intelligible or not. I was trying to extract some sense from it, by paying attention to cases, rather than large generalities.

I was saying, perhaps not very clearly,
1. that in some cases, what we call disorder is disorder in a collection of objects (or processes) that we can recognize. So it is disorder among elements, but identifying the elements is a level of order. Here, the world is both ordered and disordered. It's a question of levels.
2. so in radical disorder (as in "the world is unintelligible") we could not even identify distinct objects or processes. What, then, would it mean, to say that such a world existed - not that it could be said, because we couldn't exist in it.
3. Sometimes, order in the world is something we recognize, and sometimes it is something we impost, in the sense that we choose which of many possible orderings we wish to pay attention to. In the latter case, it is a moot point whether one says that we recognize the order or impose it.

It seems to me that "The world is unintelligible" and "The world is intelligible" are a false dilemma. But even to consider it allows that it is possible that the world is intelligible, and even that possibility may be sufficient to say that the world is intelligible. I would rather say that the possibility is a methodological assumption which is indefeasible, because if our existing ways of understanding the world fail us, we can construct new ones. So there will never be compelling evidence that we must give up on that assumption.

The straightest answer I can give is that the world is partly intelligible and partly not. But even where we do not understand some part of the world, we wring from it such understanding as we can.

Does that help?

As for your other comments - perhaps look at the original post if you haven’t already rather than the passage in isolation? — Wayfarer

Well, yes, if I had read the whole piece, I would not have got so excited about the Wittgenstein reference. But now that I have, I don't see that everything that I said was so far off the mark as to deserve no reply. But then, one can't expect a reply to everything.
As I understand it, the practice of tying one's comments to quotations is to try to ensure that comments are directed at something specific. I think that's good practice, although it is sometimes rather limiting.

Its primary method is the epochē or “bracketing,” in which one suspends the “natural attitude” — the habitual assumption that the world exists just as we take it to do. This suspension is not a denial of the world; it is a way of clarifying the pure content and structure of experience without smuggling in our preconceived notions of what it means. The resemblance between Husserl’s procedure and the Buddhist practice of “bare awareness” in mindfulness meditation is not coincidental. — Wayfarer

What bothers me here is that the methodology of our physics makes a very similar move. It brackets those aspects of the world that cannot be handled by its methods. So my question becomes how phenomenology resolves what classical physics leaves out . In a sense, perhaps it does, but it sits alongside physics, insulated from it - as physics is insulated from phenomenology. Both are theoretical projects and result in the hard problem rather than solving or dissolving it.

The resulting puzzles — the Hard Problem most of all — arise not from the mysteriousness of consciousness, but from the misapplication of categories that cannot, by design, encompass them. — Wayfarer

Quite so. So phenomenology is part of the defence of consciousness, but not part of the solution of the problem.

... Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, you do not deny the truth of the naturalistic, causal account of the relationship. So what does "priority" mean here? Does it mean something more like "logical priority", in which Eucldi's axioms are prior to his theorems, but not temporally prior to them? Or something like Heidegger's "always already"?

But consciousness does not appear from the outside. It is the medium within which anything like “outside” and “inside” is first constituted. — Wayfarer

I don't see how consciousness can be both the medium withing which inside and outside are defined and at the same time one limb of the dialectical pair.
The solution is simple. It is to accept that knowledge is always of something, and therefore, most often, connected to the outside. Ditto consciousnes, experience, concepts etc. You seem to think that knowledge exists in its own right, quite independently of what it is knowledge of. But knowledge is defined in relation to its objects (and to its subject as well) So the supposed gap is bridged.

... Bitbol’s point is not that materialism is wrong in its domain, but that it becomes inappropriate — and conceptually unstable — when extended to the nature of conscious experience. — Wayfarer

I could say exactly the same about idealism.

But still, if it is intelligible it seems 'natural' to ask ourselves if there is a 'reason' of that intelligibility. — boundless

Well, my first reaction is to examine the question to work out what will count as an answer.

A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic. — Ludwig V

I think that's as good an answer as you are ever going to get.

Of course, you are free to avoid such speculations. But I find them very interesting, fascinating and so on. — boundless

Fair enough.

I don't think in terms of transcendence because the idea of a transcendent realm or reality seems unintelligible to me, or else simply a reification of a conception of this world into another imaginary register, so to speak, and I don't think the idea is at all helpful philosophically. — Janus

I think there is something to be made of the idea. For example, the table is somehow more than the sum of its parts. One might recognize this by saying that the table transcends its part. But there is no particular glamour or value involved here. It is just that the parts need to be integrated, arranged, put together in a certain way before the parts become a table. In addition, one can recognize that any description of the table will fail, in some sense, to "capture" everything about the table, so the object transcends the descriptions of it.

How the world 'is' independent from (sc. the representation ordered by our own cognitive apparatus) is unanswerable because we can't get out from our own perspective. I believe that there is a truth in there but at the same time, they overreach. — boundless

I agree with that - especially that there is a truth in there. Philosophy pushes into binary yes/no responses. But, for example, it is true that we can't get out from our own perspective. What idealists tend not to notice is that our perspective throws up problems that it cannot deal with. So we are forced to reconsider and develop a new perspective. The disruption is the world talking back to us.

Because, it has no reason (I am using this word without any reference to 'purpose' here) to be intelligible, otherwise. It might be intelligible, yes, but I don't think there is any need for that. And yet, it seems that it is. It could be a complete 'chaos' and yet it is ordered. My question is: why is it so? — boundless

If it has no reason to be intelligible, it has no reason not to be. But this misunderstands what intelligibility is, in two respects. Intelligibility is always partial, never finished. What we understand generates new questions and hence new understandings. But also, the category of the chaotic is, curiously enough, a matter of perspective. A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic.

My own speculative answer is that even what we call 'mindless', 'inanimate' matter has a structure because it derives from a 'Principle' of both 'being' and 'intelligibility' (and this IMO is an 'argument' - speculative argument, not a 'proof' - of the existence of a 'Divine Mind'). — boundless

I'm really not qualified to speculate with you, I'm afraid.

Reduction by itself isnt necessarily a bad thing, but we want to aim for the right kind of reduction. Reducing phenomena to physical processes relying on objective causal mechanisms is concealing kind of reduction since it slaps abstractive idealizations over what we experience, hiding the richness of that experience. Husserlian reduction and Wittgensteinian seeing bracket the flattening generalizations of empiricism so we can notice what is implicated in them but not made explicit. — Joshs

I agree that reduction is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends, I would say, on the context, and there is a huge dose of pragmatism required here, rather than the simple-minded pursuit of truth. But I have to say, Wittgenstein's project seems to me the most promising approach. Husserl and Heidegger, for me, amplify and elaborate the range of theoretical stances available, but do not manage to arrive in the lived world. Perhaps Wittgenstein does not get there either, but he does identify where we need to go.

The aspect called physical reality comprises events and objects which in themselves are devoid of affect, relevance and mattering. They simply ‘are’ as neutral facts of the real. Relevance is a gloss we as subjects add to them. — Joshs

Well, there is a case for saying that relevance is not properly though of as something added to the neutral facts, but something that underlies the project of thinking of things as neutral facts. In other words, we pursue the project of understanding the world stripped of relevance in pursuit of our human lives. So that project needs to be seen in the context of our lives.

I was joking but it seemed to me that your use of adverbs like 'clearly' meant that it was impossible for you that I could be a panentheist :smile: — boundless

I thought you might be. Perhaps my response was clumsy. I must confess I didn't give a thought to your possible religious beliefs. If I offended you, I apologize.

Consider this analogy. Alice every time that plays a lottery, wins. Let's say that this reapeats for 10 times.
Our instinct is: it can't be "just a coincidence". We want an explanation of "what is really going on". Perhaps, we discover that the lottery system is rigged in her favour, with or without her knowledge. And then we discover how it is rigged and we can make an explanation of why she is winning.
However, someone else might just say: "well, it is unlikely but it isn't impossible. The game works as it should, Alice is just very, very, very lucky.". — boundless

Thanks. This is very helpful. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure that we are lucky to be alive. Some people think that life is a bit of a curse.

So, here's the point. If, for instance, the mathematical structure of our physica models doesn't 'reflect' an intelligible structure of the "physical world as it is", our success becomes difficult to explain. We might just be lucky: there is no intelligible structure but somehow we manage to make models that work. Or there is an intelligible structure which is 'reflected' (albeit imperfectly) into our models that allows us to make successful predictions. — boundless

I'm finding it very hard to envisage the possibility that there may be no intelligible structure in the world. It seems to me that the fact that we survive and find our way about seems to me to demonstrate that there is. So, for me, there is no "if there is an intelligible structure...", only "Given that there is an intelligible structure..."
There is the possibility that quantum mechanics demonstrate that, at that level, there is no intelligible structure. But I maintain that the probability laws in quantum mechanics demonstrate that there is some structure in the world, even if there is some chaos. If there was none, there would be no probability laws.

There is an interesting and possibly confusing issue about how much of the structure we perceive in the world is imposed on it by us, and how much of it is recognized by us - i.e. does exist in the world independently of our perception of it. I don't have an answer for that.

Is there such a thing as an unintelligible structure? If there's a structure, it will be intelligible. If it's not intelligible, it won't be a structure.

Yes, but why should a 'mindless world' be intelligible at all? If conscious beings - and even more rational beings - are completely accidental product of 'blind' processes of a 'mindless world', why would such a world have a structure that can be truly (even if imperfectly) understood by them? — boundless

Why do you think a mindless world might not be intelligible?
I don't know that we are an "accidental" product of the processes of the world. That presupposes there is some purpose or system at work with a definite aim. I don't think there is. However, given that it was always possible that life would be generated by the world that we inhabit, it is not all that surprising that life did develop.
Your description of "mindless" and "blind" hints that you think there is some impossibility or unlikelihood of that happening by itself, as it were. Am I right? Why do you think that?
Perhaps the probability of life developing is small. But small probability events happen all the time. Ask any lottery winner. Consider the existence of any star.
Finally, given that we evolved to survive and even thrive in this world, it cannot be much of a surprise that we are equipped to understand it.

As for your other comments - perhaps look at the original post if you haven’t already rather than the passage in isolation? — Wayfarer

I guess I should. Give me a few hours.

This dissolves the dualism of the hard problem by showing there to be a single underlying process of experiencing accounting for the historical decision to bifurcate the world into concepts like ‘physically real’ and ‘real in other ways’. — Joshs

Your strategy is quite right. But I don't think your solution really works.
It the underlying process is a process of experiencing, then isn't it firmly located on one side of the dualism? One needs something that embraces - or even, I suppose, transcends - both sides.
You mention history, so you have opened the door to complication. It seems to me that the original decision happened in ancient Greece. But your characterization of it does not quite catch its significance. Plato - who may or may not have been the first - makes the division you describe. But, for him, the physical world was a world of shadows because it is a world of change. The true world was the changeless world of mathematics where the objects we call Forms resided.
That suspicion of the material world survived and was dominant in Western culture until Aristotle was rediscovered. It suited the Christian church perfectly. However, Aristotle, of course, brought the Forms back to earth and located them firmly in physical reality. Perhaps this was when the primacy of matter began, But materialism was not unknown to the ancient world - Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius.

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein said that the best way to do philosophy would be to use poetic language. — Janus

I don't recall Wittgenstein's remark about poetry, but I'm prepared to believe it. I seem to remember that he says somewhere that one could write a whole book of philosophy that consisted of nothing by jokes. I wouldn't have expect jokes to be a forte of Wittgenstein's, who seems an extremely serious-minded person to me. But then, he loved cowboy movies. Perhaps we all have a lighter side. I hope so.

There’s a difficult point at issue here so bear with me. It is often said that ‘materialism says that everything is physical, and idealism that everything is mind or mental.’ That they are therefore structurally similar albeit constructed around different ontological elements. — Wayfarer

You don't actually reject this, and there must be some account of the two in relation to each other that brings out the agreements and the disagreements. Without some such structure, there wouldn't be a problem.

That dualism is exactly what phenomenology seeks to avoid. — Wayfarer

I guess this is the difficult point you mention. I'm not sure that I should pronounce on phenomenology at all. But if it is the epoche that you are talking about, I don't see how it helps. It seems to me more like a clear taking of sides - especially when the resulting project is called phenomenology which locates it in the world of phenomena - experience.

But if consciousness is not a “something,” it is also not a “nothing.” It is neither a useful fiction, nor a byproduct of neural processes, nor a ghostly residue awaiting physical explanation. Instead, says Bitbol, it is the self-evidential medium within which all knowledge about objects, laws, and physical reality arise (here the convergence with Kant is manifest). Any attempt to treat consciousness as derivative — as some thing that “comes from” matter — therefore reverses the real order of dependence. The world of objects may be doubted, corrected, or revised; but the presence of experience itself, here and now, cannot be disconfirmed. — Wayfarer

There is much to agree with in the first sentence. I'm not sure I completely understand the second sentence, but it is certainly true that only people and, to some extent, other conscious beings can be said to know things. But then comes the slide. You put it more clearly in the OP

Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur. — Wayfarer

Presuming anything is the act of a conscious being, so it is certain that presumption of the physical world presupposes a conscious being. But we know that the physical world existed long before any conscious beings existed (at least on this planet) and, since we know of no conscious beings that exist without a physical substrate, we can be sure that the physical world can exist without any conscious beings in it. You and Bitbol seem to slide from what is obviously true to something that is either obscure and not explained or clearly false.
If I had a clear explanation of what is meant by "priority" and "derive" here. I might understand better what you are getting at.
The last sentence of your quotation seems to be true, in a sense, although I do not think that the idea that there is a world of objects can be doubted or corrected or revised. However, it is true that many (most) specific assertions about that world can be doubted or corrected or revised. But I don't see the relevance.

But one takeaway is that both phenomenology and Buddhism are very much concerned with philosophy as lived, as it informs day to day or moment to moment existence. — Wayfarer

I can get behind that. I don't fully understand how the "theoretical stance", which is so popular in philosophy, and the lived world are related. But I'm clear that, in the end, philosophy needs to attend to both and recognize that the lived world is the context for the theoretical stance, not the other way round - unless, perhaps, you are Euclid. I'm sure you are aware that is a theme found, not only in Heidegger, but also in Wittgenstein as well.

Bitbol's "if consciousness is not a something, it is not a nothing either" rang a bell.

. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain.” Admit it? What greater difference could there be? “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a Nothing.” Not at all. It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said. We’ve only rejected the grammar which tends to force itself on us here. — Wittgenstein Phil. Inv. 304

I don't claim there's any great illumination for us here. It's just a curiosity. Does Bitbol ever mention or quote Wittgenstein?

But this makes it sound as though there is more than one real world; that physics effectively captures the reality of an aspect of it (the physical) and we need another explanation alongside of it for something like consciousness. This is dualism, a reification of the hard problem. — Joshs

I agree with you that the hard problem needs to be dissolved rather than solved. But it is also worth remembering that the intention behind the arguments is precisely to stake a claim for the reality of consciousness - to put a block in the way of reduction. The arguments have succeeded, I think, in doing that. But they have presented us with another problem instead of the original problem.
Part of the problem is encapsulated by the confusion inherent in the idea of the "real world", "reality". The idea that physics captures the reality of an aspect of the world is meant to insist that there is only one world, which is thought of in many ways. These conceptual systems are related to each other in something of the way that different interpretations of a picture are related. They are independent, complete in themselves, yet, in a sense competing with each other, and, in that competition, co-existing. The picture of the duck-rabbit is really a picture of a duck and a picture of a rabbit and it is not possible for it to be both simultaneously; yet there is only one picture. It seems impossible and yet, there it is.

If instead we claim that the phrase ‘physical world’ is not describing a world that is real in the sense of being real independent of our conscious interaction with it, then we are doing phenomenology. — Joshs

So, in order to avoid consciousness being subsumed in physics, you subsume physics in consciousness. That just perpetuates the issue. Yet it is true that physics qua science was developed by human beings. But those human beings posited the world as something that existed independently of consciousness or at least of how consciousness happens to conceive of it. We cannot be true to consciousness, it seems, without being false to physics - and vice versa. The puzzle picture resolves our anxiety or at least to show that we can live with both.

This dissolves the dualism of the hard problem by showing there to be a single underlying process of experiencing accounting for the historical decision to bifurcate the world into concepts like ‘physically real’ and ‘real in other ways’. — Joshs

I don't think it does. We need some way of conceiving of a single process, but not one that dissolves the physical into the mental. We didn't need the dissolution of consciousness into physics either. Co-existence, co-dependency is the only way to go. Not that it is easy.

You might be disappointed by what I say now: I am a panentheist, so obviously, I regard the (Divine) Consciousness as ontologically fundamental — boundless

I'm not disappointed at all. Many people have beliefs of this kind that I do not share. You, in your turn, may be disappointed to learn that I have never been able to sign up to any doctrine of this kind - mostly because I find it too hard to make sense of them. For purposes of classification, I call myself an agnostic. I think we can co-exist.

No, merely stating and observing they work isn't an explanation. They could for instance work by pure 'luck'. — boundless

I don't understand what you are asking for.

The physical world seems intelligible, which seems totally ungaranteed if
the 'physical' was totally independent from consciousness. — boundless

"The physical world seems intelligible" means, to me, that we can understand the physical world. You use the word "seems" which suggests that you think that might not be the case. I agree that we do not understand it completely. Is that what you mean? I can't see what it might mean to say that our partial understanding is an complete illusion, as opposed to partly wrong.
Conscious beings evolved in the physical world, and evolved the means for understanding that world. If those means had failed to understand the physical world, our species would likely have died out long ago. No?

What gives you a guarantee that the 'better' account isn't also illusory if there is no intelligibility? — boundless

There is no guarantee. In fact, past experience supports the idea that any given account will be superseded in due course. I see no reason to suppose that there will ever be a final, complete account. The thing is, each account generates new questions.

Yes, what it is like cannot be subject to ontological analysis, even though we may be able to give inadequate verbal descriptions of it. The descriptions, if they are to be intelligible, are always in terms of sense objects and bodily states, sensations and feelings. — Janus

I'm always fascinated by the fact that a question that seems, on the face of it, to have a perfectly straightforward answer manages to persuade us that it has no proper answer at all. The descriptions are gestures towards what escapes description. But if the description is not the real thing, it cannot substitute for the real thing in our experience.

What the 'explanatory gap' and 'hard problem' arguments are aimed at, is precisely that claim. That everything is reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. That is the point at issue! — Wayfarer

Well, that's a good point. But doesn't idealism fall into the same trap in reverse? The solution, if there is a solution, is to understand the two apparent foes in their relation to each other.
Here's an attempt. (I'm channelling Ryle here, but I'm sure that won't prejudice you.)
An accountant knows everything that goes on in the library - it all shows up in the accounts, one way or another. So every book registers in the accounts. But all the accountant (qua accountant) knows is how much the books cost, how much the shelving for the books costs, etc. What accountants don't know is anything about what is in the books - the stories. You have to read them to know that. (There's a by-way here about the meaning of "in" the books. What's in the books, you might say, is paper and ink or maybe words and pictures. Where is the story? Well, it is not outside the book, that's for sure.) You could say that the accounts include everything that goes on in the library, but miss the point of the library, which is what the stories and ideas in the books. That does not mean that the accounts are irrelevant. On the contrary, they are essential if the library is to function properly.
We could tell a similar story about all the other people involved in the library, both inside it and outside it. The whole story needs all these points of view if the institution is to be understood properly.

At this point? Justifying building stuff because our lords have said it's time to accept the inevitable. — Moliere

The story of the roll-out does justify a feeling that it has been imposed, rather than introduced. There's an impression that the policy is to get it out there and embedded and sort out any problems afterwards - or don't sort them out and force us to accept whatever we are given. But the world was ready for it. How come? It's been a dream for decades.

There are cities wanting data centers since our lords have pointed: not just manufacturing, but energy firms and city councils. — Moliere

Well, yes. Everybody wants the latest thing. In a way, no different from the latest fashion in clothes or music.

Though, yes, the point is not what it actually does for us as much as it's what it makes for thems owning the architecture we are currently communicating with. — Moliere

Well, yes. The prospect of a fat profit is always an incentive.
But I think there's more than that to it. There's a prospect of finally getting workers who can do any job under any conditions without all the messy issues that come with employing human beings. There's a vision of god-like entities that will tell us how to solve all our problems. Disappointment will set in eventually.

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure? — RogueAI

It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it.

a year ago. When plagiarism was considered shameful. — bongo fury

I think the problem is that AI doesn't fit into the standard ideas about plagiarism. If plagiarism is using someone else's work without acknowledgement, there's an issue about whose work the AI's work is.

To find out whether the bot were really as shameless as all that? Perhaps, having asked for and received from it full details of a source, it was remiss of them not to have politely sought clarification on whether these new details were indeed factual? — bongo fury

I have the impression that my informant did not believe the AI in the first place but found it hard to believe that it was wrong. As to the citation, either the AI did not, or could not, give one, or it did give one. It would take only a few minutes to see that the citation was wrong, so it was then necessary to check all the text to make sure it was not just a mistake about the citation.