Having information rest solely in the minds of observers seems at risk of becoming subjective idealism. The information has to correspond to and emerge from external state differences or else how can we discuss incorrect interpretations of any signal? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why i suggested "two player" game semantics. The semantics of interaction isn't accommodated by the traditional conceptions of either computation or causality, both which define life to be a one-player game but disagree as to who the solitary player is.

Wouldn't physics generally be answering the question of "if nature acts in such-and-such a fashion how will nature respond?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

There certainly are many scientists who offhandedly assume in an old-fashioned way that causality must be an "objective" notion. But as Bertrand Russell pointed out, the notion of causality is objectively redundant. e.g, what does the notion of causality add to a description of the Earth orbiting the Sun? The notion of causality adds nothing of descriptive value to any proposition that states an actual state of affairs, while the employed purpose of causality is to model possible outcomes in relation to possible actions. Do you really wish to promote the possibilities that exist in relation to a model to the status of objective reality, given the fact that possibilities aren't scientifically testable or observable?

In general, scientific models are supposed to be about "the way the world is," not games. I don't think such interpretations were ever particularly popular with practicing scientists, hence why the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which is very close to logical positivism, had to be enforced from above by strict censorship and pressure campaigns. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The Copenhagen interpretation itself isn't generally regarded as constituting a game-semantic interpretation of QM, but it should be noted that the the linear logic behind the ZX calculus has very strong game semantics (e.g see Blass and Abramsky's work on game semantics and linear logic ). The conceptual connection between Logic and games goes all the way back to Aristotle. And of course, logic is used to both state the causal assumptions of a model, and also to define computation. So there are good reasons for interpreting both causation and computation at least semi-normatively in terms of game-semantics, an analysis which if correct, precludes both from constituting or describing observer-independent properties of the universe.

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unenlightened: the natural world can be defined without reference to any Gods. — Art48

That depends on whether "God" is narrowly understood as referring to a specific type of causal explanation that rivals physical explanations as another type of causation, or whether "god" is understood as being an integral concept to the very meaning of cause and effect.

E.g for Melbranche, God is the only causal agency, indicating that for Melbranche science is the study of miracles, implying that any empirically valid scientific law is god choosing to follow a deterministic strategy. His position might seem ontologically superfluous, e.g why assume that the course of the universe is the strategy of a single player game, as opposed to assuming the universe to be a zero-player game that is driven forward mechanically without any intervention, divine or otherwise? Melbranche apparently believed the universe to be mechanically describable but resisted the elimination of causal agency, due to believing that the propositions of mechanics aren't analytic but synthetic, making similar arguments to the empiricists such as Hume who came after him.

The original conception of computation was of a "mechanical method" that is synonymous with a deterministic "winning" strategy with respect to a single player game of finite and complete information. To recall the Church Turing Thesis

A method, or procedure, M, for achieving some desired result is called ‘effective’ (or ‘systematic’ or ‘mechanical’) just in case:

1 ) M is set out in terms of a finite number of exact instructions (each instruction being expressed by means of a finite number of symbols);

2) M will, if carried out without error, produce the desired result in a finite number of steps;

3) M can (in practice or in principle) be carried out by a human being unaided by any machinery except paper and pencil;

4) M demands no insight, intuition, or ingenuity, on the part of the human being carrying out the method.

This original conception of computation in terms of a mechanical method is therefore strongly, if not completely normative, strictly in relation to perspective, and anti-real in being defined entirely in relation to human purposes and human psychology, whist forbidding any empirical contribution from mother nature herself to the computational process. Or as Wittgenstein summed it up : "Turing Machines are what humans do" . Such single player games are incompatible with a realist's conception of causation as a zero player game that is fully determined by the initial state of the game without any subsequent interventions by man, nature or god.

To bring causation and computation into line requires their definitions to be weakened and generalised so as to refer to strategies of two player games involving interaction and dialogue between man and nature. Computer science and mathematics can then be understood as attempting to answer questions of the form "If nature were to act in such-and-such a fashion to my actions, then what are my available winning strategies in relation to my goal?". While physics and it's concept of causality could be understood as asking the complementary dual question "If one were to act in such-and-such a fashion, then how is nature expected to respond?"

As I explained already, this does not give a true representation of "final cause" because it provides no real basis for a distinction between consequences which are intended, and consequences which are accidental. In other words, if final cause was truly determinable from an agent's behaviour, all accidental acts by the agent would necessarily be intentional acts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Firstly, what makes you think that there is an objective matter of fact as to whether an effect was intended or accidental? Secondly, if there are such facts, then what do those facts consist of?

If we narrowly interpret the meaning of an "intention" as referring only to the agent's internal state, , then intentions as such cannot be teleological, for the agent's actions are explainable without final causes.

So in order for intentions to be considered teleological, one must consider both what is going on inside the agent as well as the environmental effects that the agent's behaviour produces, - effects which play no causal role in the agent's history of decision-making. Yet this understanding of 'intentionality' as a type of relationship between the agent's behaviour and the environmental biproducts of his actions, in turn implies that the agent is fallible with regards to knowing what his intentions are. For who now gets to decide what the agent truly intended?

Note that the problem of "Inverse Reinforcement Learning" is the problem of inferring an agent's overall goals from a history of the agent's behaviour, including the environmental consequences it's actions. It is a chicken-and-egg paradox; In order for observers to estimate an agent's overall goals given a history of it's behaviour, they must assume that the effects of the agent's actions were in accordance with it's intentions, that is to say, they must assume that the agent is an expert who understands his environment. But how can it be known whether the agent is an expert? Only by assuming what the agent's goals are :)

This implies that teleological concepts are either semantically or epistemically under-determined.

Since temporal order is what defines causation, separating the two only renders causation as unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, if taken in the very hard sense of "separation". I'm referring to the fact that different observers from different perspectives, each of whom controls different variables, might have conflicting views as to what was the cause/intervention and what was the effect in a given situation.

Suppose Alice believes that if she presses button A, then a distant observer Bob will press Button B, otherwise Bob won't press button B. No other information is assumed.

Her causal belief might be represented by A => B.

Logically, this is equivalent to asserting NOT B => NOT A.

Therefore, in the event that Alice decides not to press the button, i.e. that event NOT A occurs, shouldn't Alice be open to the possibility that her decision not to press A was the effect of Bob deciding on NOT B 'before' Alice made her decision?

Posited examples of backward causation look a bit like teleology, but are categorically different. ,

If this is true, it's proof that there is no formalized definition of "cause".

And, since there are two distinct principal types of causation, efficient and final, there will never be an acceptable formalization of causation until the relationship between the two is represented properly. Formalization of one principal type of causation while excluding the other principal type of causation does not give a true formalization. — Metaphysician Undercover

But "Final causes" are representable in terms of bog standard causation without invoking teleological purposes, as demonstrated by reinforcement-learning algorithms that train a robot to implement "goal seeking" behaviour via iterative exploration and feedback . In this case, one might say that the "final cause" of the trained agent's behaviour is the trained evaluation function in the agent's brain that maps representations of possible world states to their estimated desirability. In other words, the final cause refers not to the actual goal-state in the real world that observers might colloquially say the learning agent "strives towards", but to the agent's behavioural policy and reward function that drive the agents behaviour in a mechanistic forward-chain of causation from an initial cause in a manner that is teleologically blind.

The agent's actions are not being "pulled" by the goal in any literal sense, so I am at a loss as to the incentive for mixing up purposes which refer to behaviour that converges towards a goal state, and causation which makes no reference to goal states.

This is exactly why a formalization is impossible, and causation will always be philosophical rather than scientific. This provides no basis toward understanding the cause of "doing something". So, a person does something and this causes something which otherwise wouldn't occur. If we want to know whether the thing which otherwise wouldn't have occurred is intentional, or accidental, we need a much better principle than this. And if you claim that this is irrelevant to "causation", all that matters is whether the thing otherwise wouldn't occur, you fail to properly represent "final cause" in your formalization, and you provide no principles for excluding accidents from our actions. However, it's quite obvious that the effort to exclude accidents is very important. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you accept the distinction between purposes and causes, then there is no case for the concept of causation to answer to regarding the distinction between intentions and accidents. For that's purely a matter of teleology and not causation.

The use of "final" in "final cause" seems to be misleading you. "Final" is used in the sense of "the end", and "end" is used in the sense of "the goal" or "objective". The terms "end", and "final" are used when referring to the goal or objective because the intentional cause is what puts an end to a chain of efficient causes when looking backward in time. So if D caused E, and C caused D, B caused C, and A caused B, we can put an end to that causal chain by determining the intentional act which caused A. It is called "the end", or "final" cause because it puts an end to the causal chain, finality. — Metaphysician Undercover

A is at the beginning :) Either a "final cause" is used to refer to a bog-standard initial cause that implies none of the teleological controversy commonly associated with aristotolean "final causes", else "final cause" refers to a teleological concept such as a purpose that is defined in relation to a goal state that is external to an agent's brain and that plays no causal role in the agent's behaviour, despite the fact the agent's behaviour converges towards the goal state.

Take a chain of dominoes for example. We look at the last fallen domino and see that the one falling prior to it caused it to fall. Then the one prior to that one caused it to fall. When we continue to follow this chain of causation, we find the intentional act which started the process, and say that this is "the final cause", because it puts an end to that causal chain. The terminology is derived from our habit of ordering things from the present, and looking backward in time, so that the causes nearest to us at present appear first, and the furthest are last. — Metaphysician Undercover

I suspect you are deviating from the commonly accepted notion of "final cause". The whole point of the "finality" in "final cause" is to imply that teleological concepts are necessary for explaining the effects of causation, which isn't the case in the dominoes example; teleology is explainable in terms of purposeless causation, as AI programmers demonstrate. But causation isn't explainable in terms of teleology. To mix up the concepts leads to confusion.

This I do not understand at all. The fact that accidents are still considered to be caused, demonstrates that causes are not necessarily "considered to be controllable preconditions". Furthermore, I've never heard of a causal model which allows for a cause to be after its effect. You simply create ambiguity here by saying "in some absolute sense" because the principle of relativity of simultaneity allows that from the perspective of different frames of reference, the temporal order of two events may be reversed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which demonstrates the point i was trying to make, that what we call the "temporal order" has to be distinguished from the "causal order". That A causes B but not vice versa, doesn't necessitate that A occurs before B in every frame of reference. Also recall the time-symmetry of microphysical laws, models of backward causation etc.

You don't seem to understand causation sime. There is no scientific definition of cause. Cause is a philosophical concept. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think that's misleading and somewhat inaccurate. It is true that causation didn't undergo strict formalisation until the twenty first century, economists being among the earlier pioneers of causal modelling in the twentieth century, and that causation is still undergoing formalization in tandem with the brother concepts of probability and temporal logic. Nevertheless, there has been a rapidly converging consensus in both the scientific community and industry in recent decades to the formal identification of causes with particular variables of a probability model, that if intervened upon by the actions of an experimenter, are expected to produce observable changes in the correlations among variables that lie "downstream" of the intervention. See Judea Pearl for an authoritative account.

Causal models merely express the concept that doing something leads to observations that otherwise wouldn't occur. Unlike Russell's conception, the modern meaning of causality is counterfactual. Causal models essentially define causes as being 'initial' with respect to the causal orders they define or describe, making "final causes" an oxymoron in the sense of the causal order.

Nevertheless, causal models have nothing to say regarding the order and linearity of time itself unless their variables are given additional temporal parameterization. All that they demand is that causes are considered to be controllable preconditions of their effects, not that causes are necessarily temporally prior to their effects in some absolute sense, which might well be considered a matter of perspective.

"Final cause" is the intent, the purpose. So it is exactly the case that your thoughts, goals, and motivation are literally the final cause of the shed. Whatever reason you had, whatever purpose you had in your mind, this is the reason why the shed was built. Therefore these ideas, as intent, are the cause of your actions, and by extension the cause of existence of the shed. This is the basis of the concept of "intent" in law, the decision to bring about consequences.

That is why "variable" does not serve as an adequate representation. The fact that you wanted a shed, and this motivated you to go out and built a shed, is the cause of the shed. And you could further specify the particular purpose you had in mind for the shed when you built it. The intent, purpose in mind, or "final cause", is not a "variable" in the coming into existence of the shed, it is the cause of existence of the shed — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand Aristotle's definition of a 'final cause', but it makes no sense to me to muddle such "final causes" with the "causes" meant by the modern scientific definition of "causes" that refer to experimental inventions that go on to produce measurable effects. Especially considering the fact that 'Final Causes' are reducible to iterative evolutionary or adaptive feedback loops between an agent or population and their environment that are understandable in the bog-standard "initial cause" sense.

'Final causes' might be reasons with cognitive significance but imo reasons and causes are best kept apart, for they don't obey the same logic.

I agree, and I see a problem with the determinist attitude. Describing activity in the physical world in terms of efficient causation has been a very useful and practical venture. The problem is that this descriptive format has limitations which the determinist ignores or denies. We find that within human beings there is an active mind, working with immaterial ideas, to have real causal affect in the physical world. Causation from the mind, with its immaterial ideas is described in terms of final cause (goals purpose and intent), choosing from possibilities, which is completely distinct from efficient causation.

So there is a very real need to recognize the limitations of "efficient causation" as an explanation of the activities in the physical world. And we need to accept the reality of the immaterial "final cause" as having real efficacy in the material world. — Metaphysician Undercover

According to one of the two main accounts of causality, namely the perspectival "interventionist" interpretation, a causal model is a set of conditional propositions whose inferences are conditioned upon variables that are considered to have implicative relevance but which are external to the model, such as the hypothetical actions of an agent. These models, whose use is now widespread in industry and the sciences, are thus naturally "compatibilist" in conditioning all models inferences upon hypothetical or possible values of external variables that are considered to be chosen freely. So I presume you are criticising earlier historical conceptions of causality such as Bertrand Russells', which assumed a causal model to be a complete description of a system's actual dynamics (thus making cause and effect redundant notions).

What I don't follow is the relevance of a "final cause", unless it is surreptitiously being used to refer to an initial cause, i.e. a bog standard cause. For example, if I am working to build a shed in the back garden, what is the "final cause" of the shed here? Obviously my thoughts, goals and motivation throughout the project cannot be considered a literally "final" cause, which speculation notwithstanding, leaves the resulting actual shed as the only remaining contender for the final cause. Are you insinuating that the resulting shed caused me to build it? (which incidentally isn't likely to look anything like my imagined shed due to my terrible practical skills)

Direct realism, how can it be proven to be better than idealism? — Agent Smith

Direct realism can be thought of as absolutised idealism, to recall Berkeley's 'Master Argument' that all acts of measurement, thought and observation are in relation to some perspective; if one denies or ignores perspectival relativism, one jumps from subjective idealism to direct realism.

My understanding of indirect realism refers to my understanding of perception in relation to a third person subject, with respect to objects of my first-person world that I consider myself to directly perceive; for my frame of reference constitutes the very foundation of my understanding of indirect realism in other people.

The debate between direct and indirect realism is as misplaced as Galilean debates before Einstein as to whether an object is moving or not.

If you show me a tree and say "This is the one tree that stands before us", then I am in common-sense agreement. This generally means that I am automatically interpreting your proposition as referring to my frame of reference and to my frame of reference only.

However, I can also understand your proposition as referring to your frame of reference rather than mine. In which case, the number of trees depends upon the general consideration as to whether the reference of a proposition is taken to be relative to perspective.

If I interpret you as referring to either mine or to your frame of reference but not both, then it remains true that "there is one tree that stands before us", however it is semantically indeterminate as to which tree (i.e. which perspective) is being referred to the proposition.

On the other hand, if the reference of this proposition is considered to entail both perspectives then it is no longer the case that we can say that there exists only one tree, for there are two distinct perspectives.

It's metaphysical solipsism not the "how can we know" one, because we really can't. WE can't even know if we exist, like I said.

Berkley can argue against and unobserved and unimagined tree all he wants it doesn't make it any less real. It's also why idealism died out I guess and why we follow science. The "if I don't see it it didn't happen or isn't real" is one of the easiest things to disprove.

Everything else you said is irrelevant to the topic. — Darkneos

You appear to have false preconceptions regarding Berkeley's position. I'd recommend studying the SEP article before continuing discussion.

First, it is necessary to distinguish the main types of solipsism and discuss their interrelations.

1) Metaphysical (M)
2) Epistemological (E)
3) Psychological (P)

Initially, it seems that your post concerns E solipsism, in asking "How can one know whether or not one's mind is all that exists?". Thus buried in this question are a concept and a presupposition, namely that one is using a closed a-priori definition as to what one means by one's mind, relative to which one is asking whether there exists a type of evidence, that if observable to ones mind, settles the question as to whether one's mind is all that exists.

M solipsism on other other hand, isn't a presupposition, but a refusal to grant intelligibility to the idea that there exists anything outside of one's mind. This entails that one's mind isn't meant as a closed and static concept that is a priori definable, but as an open and adaptive concept that is rationally and empirically exhaustive of one's concepts and potential experiences to the point of closing off the domain of philosophical and epistemological inquiry.

Philosophies that are sympathetic towards M solipsism are phenomenalism and empiricism. We might recall Berkeley, who rejected the conceivability of an unobserved and unimagined tree, Wittgenstein who questioned the intelligibility of the distinction of idealism and realism, and Charles Sanders Pierce who considered the external world to be congealed mind. These philosophers weren't speculating that mind is an exhaustive substance, as when an E solipsist and his naive-realist opponent considers mentality to be an object for propositional analysis. Rather, those philosophers treated mentality as a meta-linguistic activity that is the very basis of any act of rational and empirical enquiry.

As such, it doesn't make sense to argue for or against M-solipsism, as an M-solipsist will always interpret the arguments of any purported opponent or critic M-solipsistically. Indeed an M-solipsist might even identify as a realist for all epistemological purposes.

P solipsism is a ruminative psychological condition experienced by amateur philosophers and isolated individuals such as astronauts, who mistake their narrow a priori self-concept for the world. Anyone who self-identifies as an M-solipsist runs the risk of experiencing this condition as a result of misunderstanding the meaning of M-solipsism.

In my opinion, the very meaning of a religion refers to it's psychological, economic and political causes and it's intended psychological, economic and political effects. This includes both theism and atheism.

For example, part of the meaning of modern atheism are the unsustainable life-styles we associate with consumer-capitalism, life-styles that Baby Boomers in particular often justify on the basis of their metaphysical belief that "you only live once" . Atheism both drives, and is driven by, consumer capitalism, e.g. retailers preaching to us that we must live this 'one' life to the fullest.

If my opinion is correct, then the rise of sustainable environmentalism throughout the world will be correlated with a rejection of today's widespread atheistic beliefs for metaphysical belief systems that give moral incentive for individuals to live sustainably.

One of the oversights of common-sense atheists is that they reject the existence of the transcendental on the basis of a lack of evidence, and yet they tend not to consider the semantic possibility that the very meaning of transcendental concepts refers to the world. For isn't the psychology and behaviour of a Christian preacher fully accounted for by the physical causes of his behaviour? In which case, what so-called 'claims' asserted by the preacher should the atheist be sceptical about?

If "Steel" is accepted as denoting a purely physical concept, then by definition "steel" cannot be semantically reduced to any individual's private thoughts, experiences or understanding of "steel".

To account for this, if a speaker says "I am thinking about steel", interpret them as saying

"I am thinking about p-steel" - where 'p-steel' is understood to an indexicial. This implies

- "p-steel" has direct and immediate referential content for that particular speaker, and for that particular speaker only. This referential content includes both the speaker's perceptions of their external world and their subjectivity. From the perspective of an external onlooker who tries to understand the speaker, this referential content can be identified with the immediate situational causes of the speaker's utterance of "steel" (and hence nothing to do with any mythical 'public' understanding of "Steel").

- P-steel has no public referential content, except in the sense previously considered.

- "Steel" has no a priori referential content; Every empirical identification of "steel" is an instance of "p-steel" with respect to a particular observer.

Your broad question falls under Meta-Metaphysics.

Here's a good book on the subject.

Anomalous Monism is only concerned with third-personal causal analysis of propositional attitudes, and so it isn't really relevant to the "hard problem". Rather, AM concerns the "soft problem" of inter-translating the public ontologies of scientific psychology and the physical sciences.


"Davidson restricts the class of mental events with which Anomalous Monism is concerned to that of the propositional attitudes—states and events with psychological verbs such as ‘believes’, ‘desires’, ‘intends’ and others that subtend ‘that-’ clauses, which relate subjects to propositional contents such as ‘it is raining outside’. Anomalous Monism thus does not address the status of mental events such as pains, tickles and the like—‘conscious’ or sentient mental events. It is concerned exclusively with sapient mental events—thoughts with propositional content that appear to lack any distinctive ‘feel’."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/

The "conscious events" that AM doesn't address are those that correspond with our private use of language as indexicals, as in the cry " owww toothache!!" - an occasion that constitutes a bespoke use of language, that in spite of appearances isn't justified by, nor needs to be justified by, a priori established linguistic conventions regarding the public meaning of "toothache"in the referential or functional sense of a noun or verb.

If I cry "owww toothache!!" , although the noun "toothache" has (many) public definitions that a dentist might use to assess the physical state of my mouth, my cry of "toothache!" bears no semantic relation to the dental definition of toothache, for I am privately using "toothache" as an indexical, rather than publicly using it in the dental sense of a noun. So regardless of whether or not I 'actually' have "toothache" in the sense of a dysfunctional dental property, my cry of "toothache!!" still stands as a fact, even if outsiders are puzzled as to what it could relate to from their perspective.

Although indexicals are excluded as objects of Davidson's analysis, given that indexicals a) serve to ground public definitions in the minds of each and every individual and b) that people use the nouns and verbs of their public language as indexicals in an unpredictable bespoke fashion, indexicals contribute to the indeterminancy of translation and reference that Davidson appeals to in the context of the propositional attitudes he analyses.

There's a useful paper i'd recommend reading with regards to Wittgenstein's relation to Dennett's views:

Consciousness demystified: A Wittgensteinian critique of Dennett's project

S4 Modal logic (which lacks logical quantifiers) is best thought of as a weakening of first-order logic:

Instead of having the particular comonad known as 'universal quantification' and the particular monad known as' existential quantification' which already give first order logic a canonical and a priori definition of "necessity" and "possibility", S4 has a weakly defined arbitrary comonad called "necessity" and an arbitrary monad called "possibility", making it weaker than first order logic.

But gven that modern type theories permit arbitrary definitions of monadic structure in addition to explicitly possessing quantifiers whose use is optional, what justifies philosophers continuing the study of modal logic with it's antiquated and impoverished syntax and weaker modes of justification that ironically encourage misleading over-interpretation by philosophers?

In my understanding, what gives Modal logic continued relevance is the usefulness of Kripke Semantics, i.e. the intuitive and useful concept of an accessibility graph of possible worlds together with propositions that pick out subsets of those worlds, a semantics which the syntax of Modal logic succinctly describes.

But if the semantics of modal logic are merely regarded as the predetermined outcome of 'real' modal operators of an underlying modal logic, as seems to be indicated when philosophers attempt to justify their abstract modal reasoning with respect to an assumed definition of the modal operators, then i think Modal logic is either obsolete, and misleading.

Ironically, I think where Kripke Semantics shines is when it is used descriptively in a data-driven fashion to chart one's present knowledge of possible worlds, without appealing to the necessary implications of a dubious modal operator. For modern logic handles reasoning from dubious assumptions in a much clearer, richer and flexible fashion.

Intentionality is a concept I use when I refer to other people's perspectives, whereas phenomenality is a concept i use exclusively with respect to my experiences.

It makes no sense for me to interpret science as analyzing a first-person subject, therefore it makes no sense for me to interpret science as saying anything either for or against phenomenality.

So you have never been unconscious? I know I have and that you do not have any grounds to doubt my subjective account of having been unconscious. — 180 Proof

'Unconsciousness' is a deceptively named concept, given that its conditions of assertibility are identical to the empirical concept of amnesia.

E.g, " I know I was unconscious last night" ,means something like "When contemplating what happened last night, I associate my experiences with the present, as opposed to the previous night."

The hard problem can be paraphrased by the following Wittgensteinian semantic problem

"How are my perceptual and cognitive judgements that i express using my mother tongue, correlated with the public conventions that define my language"?

Once these two concepts are distinguished, the hard problem ought to evaporate, regardless of whether the two concepts can be put into correspondence. For there isn't a meaningful public answer as to whether or not Mary 'learns' new information about the concept of colour when leaving her black and white world; for none of Mary's perceptual judgements bear any analytic relation to public physical theories about colour .

Of course, Mary is likely to decide to associate her perceptual judgements with said physical theories as part of a private-dialect we might call "Mary's personal physical colour theory"

Naturalised neurological theories are semantically deficient for tacking the hard problem, due to the fact their theoretical concepts are only publicly defined up to third person predication, which restricts their applicability to the description of psychological predicates in relation to the mythical third-person subject.

For example, my perceptual judgement that this apple in front of me is "green" isn't part of any public neurological theory of colour perception. Rather, my perceptual judgements constitute my personal semantic foundation for interpreting public neurological theories of colour perception.

A scientist who fails to acknowledge that a-perspectivalized naturalised science has a 'hard problem' conflates their private interpretations of science with the public theories of science. These aren't the same thing. For instance, Einstein's understanding of General Relativity isn't part of the theory of General relativity; The theory of relativity isn't defined in terms of Einstein's thoughts and observations and the theory doesn't even define observation terms. So Einstein would not be at liberty to use the public definition of Relativity to explain the existence of his frame of reference. Rather, he is at liberty to apply the public definition of relativity to his frame of reference as he sees fit.

Nobody can agree upon what Kant really meant, even when Kant was still alive and responding to criticism. That said,

If Kant is interpreted to be an identity phenomenalist, meaning that he considered the concept of noumena to ultimately be ontologically reducible to "appearances" when appearances are taken in the holistic sense of the entirety of one's experiences, then he would, like other empirically minded philosophers such as Berkeley , Hume and Wittgenstein, have regarded the metaphysical Hard problem as a misconceived pseudo-problem that results from mistakenly reifying the concept of "mental representations" as being a literal bridge between two qualitatively different worlds. But this would say nothing of Kant's views regarding the semantically 'hard problem' of translating noumena into appearances.

In Kantian terminology, the natural sciences do not make a distinction between noumena and appearances; for any physical entity describable in any SI units can be treated as either a hidden variable or as an observation term at the discretion of the scientist in relation to his experimental context. This doesn't imply that the sciences are committed to one world (whether phenomenal or physical) or both; it only implies the practical usefulness of ignoring the semantic relationship between theory and phenomena, which has been the case so far for the majority of scientific purposes that fall outside of epistemology.

If Kant was astute, he would in my opinion have regarded his phenomena/noumena distinction as being a practical distinction made for the purposes of epistemology, as opposed to a metaphysical distinction, for obvious reasons pertaining to the creation of philosophical pseudo-problems.

Asking for a scientific explanation of consciousness, is like asking an artist to paint a canvas into existence.

Scientific explanations are grounded in empirical evidence, so it is nonsensical to demand of science an explanatory account of what empirical evidence is, which is what asking for a scientific explanation of consciousness amounts to.

The Hard "Problem" does exist, but only in the sense of a semantic issue.

The Hard problem should not be regarded as a deficiency or bug of the natural sciences, but as a positive feature of the natural sciences; the semantics of the natural sciences should be understood as being deliberately restricted to the a-perspectival Lockean primary qualities of objects and events (for example, as demonstrated by the naturalised concept of optical redness) so as to leave the correlated experiential or 'private' concepts undefined (e.g phenomenal redness). This semantic incompleteness of the natural sciences means that the definitions of natural kinds can be used and communicated in an observer-independent and situation-independent fashion, analogously to how computer source-code is distributed and used in a machine independent fashion.

If instead the semantics of scientific concepts were perspectival and grounded in the phenomenology and cognition of first-person experience, for example in the way in which each of us informally uses our common natural language, then inter-communication of the structure of scientific discoveries would be impossible, because everyone's concepts would refer only to the Lockean secondary qualities constituting their personal private experiences, which would lead to the appearance of inconsistent communication and the serious problem of inter-translation. In which case, we would have substituted the "hard problem" of consciousness" that is associated with the semantics of realism , for a hard problem of inter-personal communication that can be associated with solipsism and idealism.

The issues discussed in this thread primarily concern the necessity of complex valued integers and rationals in relation to entangled quantum states, their interactions and the Born rule.

The issues you raise concerning the existence, usefulness and intelligibility of the continuum of reals as part of the foundations of QM is valid albeit tangential to that discussion. Furthermore, the issues you raise are avoided in quantum computer science that is grounded in alternative mathematical foundations for QM that are constructive, computable and usually finite, such as Categorical Quantum Mechanics that is the underlying foundation for the ZX calculus. Those theories retain the essential underlying logical properties of complex Hilbert Spaces that are necessary for formalising quantum computing applications, including the conjugate transpose operator and unitary and self-adjoint operators, but without retaining the continuum of reals and the non-constructive propositions of complex Hilbert spaces.

In PI Wittgenstein opined that a central phenomenological distinction between a voluntary action versus an involuntary action, is that in the latter case an action is accompanied with a feeling of surprise, whereas in the former case feelings of surprise are absent.

Elsewhere he made it clear that he didn't believe in an absolute theoretical distinction of the concepts. So he evidently didn't hold much regard for the 'pseudo-problem' of free-will. Certainty, the meanings and use-cases of those conceptual distinctions in say, behavioural psychology, are radically different from their application in logic and mathematics, phenomenology, criminal law, physics, etc.

E.g consider the fact that in Physics the causal order doesn't have to be taken as being the same as the temporal order, and in the causal analysis of a given system the "first cause" is defined arbitrarily according to it's use value; a presentist can consistently interpret their present actions as being the first-cause of their subsequent observations, including those observations that they interpret as memories.

The assumption of static meanings is a foundational axiom of epistemology. If that axiom is rejected, then there cannot be a substantial and objective notion of epistemic error, beliefs cannot be identified with mental states and people can only be said to make predictions.

Second-order skepticism about the existence of static meaning is antithetical to first-order skepticism about the truth of our theories. The way I look at it, not only do we have Gettier problems, we cannot even be certain that we really have Gettier problems!

In science, and especially data science and machine learning, Occam's razor is often misunderstood to be an a priori principle. This can encourage biased and erroneous inductive inferences, typically in cases of Bayesian model selection or Bayesian averaging with respect to a family of different theories, where the 'prior' confidence assigned to the predictions of a particular theory is taken, without justification, to be inversely proportional to it's 'description length'.

The above principle can only be applied non-controversially when a supplementary argument is given to justify why the theories are described in the way they are, for otherwise the description lengths assigned to each candidate theory is arbitrary. E.g a diagonal straight line is only 'simpler' than a diagonal sine wave when the coefficients of both lines are given in terms the Standard Basis corresponding to the Cartesian axes. But the opposite is true when both lines are described in terms of a Fourier basis.

Well, I suppose that arguing, instead of Occam's razor per se, that one should present a hypothesis or theory in the simplest available manner is better than presenting such information in a convoluted or inflated way. — Manuel

Which goes towards explaining what Occams razor actually is; the principle of Occam's razor is our post-hoc revision of our linguistic conventions in response to our observations, so that our language encodes our most validated theories as efficiently as possible. Occam's razor shouldn't be mistaken for an a priori principle of inference, rather it should be understood to be a prescription for revising our linguistic conventions so that our past-conditioned expectations are easier to communicate and describe.

Definitions don't need to be observer independent. For example, the Cambridge Dictionary defines beauty as "the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when you look at it"

I agree that one only knows that coffee has a strong flavour after drinking it, in that the drinker reacts to the taste of the coffee. But even so, is it still not the case that the coffee has a strong flavour, not that the coffee causes a strong flavour? The drinker of the coffee discovers a property of the coffee. — RussellA

I would say that it depends on perspective, and more generally how the given term is used.

It is certainly the case that one often uses language tautologically, as for example in the case of private perceptual judgements. For example, ordinarily I might judge my socks to be 'white'. In this situation I am using 'whiteness' to mean my experience of my socks - I am not estimating their colour as being the effect of a hidden-variable that is a theoretical term of public discourse, e.g. 'optical whiteness' as referred to by Physics - rather i am defining what "whiteness" is in my judgemental context.

The interesting thing about continuations, is that they seem to accommodate such private analytic judgements. Take the continuation

Whiteness :: For all r, (whiteStimulus -> r) -> r

The intended meaning is that the public meaning of 'whiteness' is the hypothetical set of outcomes that might occur in response to anything acting upon a particular class of stimuli called "whiteStimuli'", in any conceivable fashion.

Then take the function (whiteStimulus -> r) to mean Bob's private interpretation of a 'whiteStimulus'. From Bob's perspective, it is tautologically the case that a 'whiteStimulus' is indeed a 'whiteStimulus'

By inserting the identity function id :: white-stimulus -> white-stimulus into the previous continuation, we get

Whiteness id :: white-stimulus

We can think of the term (Whiteness id) as representing Bob's private understanding or use of the public definition of Whiteness, which as shown, is indeed is of type 'white-stimulus'.

So the public definition of whiteness as a continuation isn't in contradiction with the subjective 'private language' use-cases of whiteness by each speaker of the linguistic community, but accommodates them in the same way that it accommodates the objective physical definition of 'whiteness' in terms of the physical responses of optical estimators,.

However, continuations seem to present the problem of infinite regress; for what exactly is the definition of the type called 'white stimulus' here? presumably in some use-cases, such as in physics it is taken to be another hidden variable that is another continuation.

White-Stimulus :: For all r , ( someType -> r) -> r

Whilst in other use-cases, such as Bob's perceptual judgements, it refers to a 'given' of experience that is decided by tautological judgement.


Continuations obviously aren't the whole story, nor even necessarily part of the story for there are problems, but they seem useful in conveying the open-ended, counterfactual and inferential semantics of terms as well as accommodating the differing perspectival semantics of individual speakers.

The fact that people have a use for coffee means that the presence of coffee causes things to happen. However, coffee is not defined by what it may cause to happen, coffee is defined by what it is, a dark brown powder with a strong flavour. — RussellA

So in your opinion, 'dark brown' and 'strong' are observer independent properties of coffee that everyone can point at? Recall that the taste and colour of coffee is relative to perspective. Different organisms and processes react differently to coffee. From my perspective, how can i understand your use of "dark brown" and "strong" except as an observable effect of you drinking coffee?

Here's a type-theory inspired suggestion for explaining or dissolving ineffability: Identify the meaning of a word with it's effects in relation to a given stimulus. This idea is a generalisation of "meaning-of-use" known as causal semantics.

E.g take the integer 2, which in Haskell can be written

2 :: Integer

where 2 is by definition the result of 1 + 1

On the other hand, if we identify 2 with it's effects, this means interpreting 2 :: Integer to be equivalent to the following type

2 :: (Integer --> r) -> r, where r is of arbitrary type (not necessarily a Nat).

In other words, here the meaning of 2 is the effect that 2 has on every function of type (Integer -> r) that takes an integer and returns an object of type r, where r is arbitrary and refers to any type. In functional programming, the latter representation of 2 is known as a continuation'.

In Haskell, 2 can be converted to a continuation by writing ($ 2), i.e.

2 :: Integer

whereas

($ 2) :: (Integer --> r) -> r,

Example applications of the latter type include

($ 2) (+3) = 5
($2) print = "2" as the display output of a computer monitor.

i.e r isn't necessarily an abstract type, but can refer to physical events.

in Haskell, the form 2 :: Integer is considered to be fundamental and the meaning of it's continuation is derived from this consideration. But in general there is nothing stopping us from treating the continuation as semantically fundamental. This stance has the benefit of allowing the meaning of a type to be generalised so that it is always incomplete, evolving and contingent upon the affairs of the physical world, e.g. effect r could refer to a physical or psychological response to a symbolic instance of integer 2, such as sense-data created by the mind of a human in response to a 2, or to the operations of a physical machine reading 2 as input.
"
In terms of continuations, the public meaning of "coffee" is of type

Coffee :: (Coffee-stimulus -> r) -> r

where 'coffee-stimulus' is the type of a perspective-relative hidden variable that isn't publicly shared (since only reactions to stimuli are publicly available). So if a person's reaction to a coffee-stimulus is of type (Coffee-stimulus -> r), then the effect of 'coffee' on that person is by definition implicitly included in the public definition of "coffee", in spite of the fact the public definition of coffee does not know about or explicitly include that person reaction.

Edit : I realise the last paragraph is technically problematic. For instance does 'sense-data' refer to r or to 'Coffee-stimulus' ?

Drop the word "objective" if it gets in the way.

Both an observer on the earth and one in orbit around the sun will agree that, for an observer on the earth the earth remains stationary, while for an observer in orbit around the sun it moves. Movement is relative to the frame of reference and can be translated from one frame to another. Basic relativity. — Banno

Relativity indeed lacks the concept of objectivity in being a family of conditional propositions of the form
x --> p(x), where x is a given frame of reference. As conditional propositions they are mutually consistent as you point out, and since the theory of relativity does not assume the existence of any particular frame of reference it isn't descriptive of any particular world.

On the other hand, we like to think that multiple observers exist who occupy one and the same universe in different frames of reference. The problem is, if we accept the reality of different frames of reference, say x' and x'', then relativity implies the unconditional conclusions p(x') and p(x'') that appear to be mutually inconsistent if interpreted as referring to one and the same world, e.g the Earth moving and not moving.

So to restore consistency it seems to me that one must either reject in a solipsistic fashion the existence of other frames of reference, or reject relativity, or accept the conclusions of relativity as referring to different worlds.

But there are other ways to resolve "the conflict". Either the cases are equivalent and can be transformed from one to the other as in the geocentric/heliocentric example, or one account is wrong or insufficient, as in the Herodotus/Thucydides example.

Inventing the paraphernalia of worldmaking is surely overkill. — Banno

So objectively speaking, is the Earth moving or not? Can objectivity be relative?

I avoid the rain by staying inside. Hence, it is not ineluctable; and not real. — Banno

When it is raining outside, you cannot "avoid" that it is raining outside "by staying inside". Btw, your example doesn't concern ontology, Banno, which, in the context of my remarks, isn't relevant. — 180 Proof

This line of discussion leads towards the topic of irrealism; for we can at least claim

A. Each individual has a different conception of reality, that is incommensurable with respect to each and every other persons conception of reality; different individuals aren't using a common basis of understanding when they each refer to 'reality', for their understanding of reality is relative to their unique perspectives.

But if A is true, then how does one avoid the conclusion of irrealism?

B. Each individual has a different reality; there isn't a shared reality that individuals are occupying and describing.

On the other hand, each of us will probably insist that we possess a concept of 'shared reality', if only because we communicate to each other and to ourselves in a common language whose semantics aren't publicly defined in relation to the perspectival judgements of a particular individual at a particular moment in time and space.

But isn't even this supposedly aperpsectival concept of 'shared reality' relative to perspective, and thus not a defence against irrealism?

The pre-theoretical notion of reality , e.g Johnson's pain when kicking a rock, should be distinguished from the ideology of realism that often accompanies, but is not implied by, the use of a naturalized ontology such as in the natural sciences. The ideology of realism interprets the inter-subjective usefulness of a naturalized ontology as evidence that reality transcends and grounds the subject and his perspective, which the idealist and anti-realist reject as being incoherent.

Universal definitions that apply to an infinite number of cases are not extensionally exhaustive descriptions of anything, in spite of appearances to the contrary. A universal definition that quantifies over an infinite domain is an intensional and prescriptive definition, i.e. a speech act, that is given in relation to an indeterminate number of future observations, as in "Put all dirty socks onto this pile".

Therefore any proposed universal definitions of "reality", "truth", "existence", "equality" etc can only be prescriptive rules of language for standardising the public expression of individual judgements that are made on a case by case basis. Such universal definitions don't describe their future applications before the respective future judgements are made, and the outcomes of said judgements aren't dictated by the a priori universal definitions - only the expression of such judgements can be said to be determined a priori by the universal definitions.

Definition of 'extensionally meaningful? — TonesInDeepFreeze

The extensional meaning of a set are the items it refers to, in contrast to the definition of the set in terms of a formula, that is to say it's intentional meaning. Countably infinite sets cannot be given an extensional definition for obvious reasons, which is why finitists object to the reality of such objects, even if conceding that such 'sets' have instrumental use for generating numbers.

That's not a definition of anything, let alone the set of natural numbers. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Its just short-hand for the inductive definition of the Naturals in terms of an F-algebra with respect to an arbitrary category in which 1 --> N represents '0' and N --> N represents the successor function that corresponds to the Dedekind infiniteness property.

'N is Dedekind infinite' means that there is a 1-1 correspondence between N and a proper subset of N. There's no need to drag isomorphism into it. — TonesInDeepFreeze

That's a fair enough remark, given that only the right arrow is involved.

'

The function {<j j+1> | j in N} is provably a 1-1 correspondence between N and a proper subset of N, so it proves that N is Dedekind infinite (and notice, contrary to your incorrect claim, choice is not involved). But that proof is not a definition of anything, let alone of the set of natural numbers. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I never said that Choice was involved in the definition of dedekind infinity, i said that the presence of Choice causes all infinite sets in ZF to become Dedekind infinite by default, which is a major failing of ZFC in ruling out the only sort of "infinite" sets that have any pretence of physical realisability in the sense of extension.