This doesn’t negate the fact that one can explain the whole by reduction to its parts and the relationship between those parts in their proper arrangement. — Bob Ross

This is only part of it. You are leaving out important information that cannot be gained simply by looking at an arrangement of parts. An engine does work. That work depends on parts but is not in any of the parts or combination of parts. The whole cannot be explained without an explanation of what the engine does, how it functions as a whole within another whole, a car for example.

It is not simply of analysis into parts but of parts as dynamic systems within larger dynamic systems. A dynamic system is more than just an arrangement of parts.

if one is fundamentally claiming that the mind is a part (or group of parts) of a physical body which emerges due to the specific relationship between those parts, then they are thereby claiming that the mind is reducible to the body. — Bob Ross

I am claiming that there are no disembodied minds. We find bodies that seem to be without mind, but no mind without bodies. The physical is ineliminable.

quote="Bob Ross;811549"]The purpose is irrelevant for all intents and purposes here.[/quote]

You do not know what an engine is or even what its parts are if you do not know its function and purpose.

A tornado is explained by the reduction of it to its parts (e.g., wind, dust, etc.). — Bob Ross

An actual tornado is not an assemblage parts. Wind does not combine with dust, etc. The forces that create the tornado create the wind and raise the dust.

Physicalism is arguing that it can explain (in terms of the how it works) a mind in terms of the physical biological brain. — Bob Ross

Physicalism as I understand it, does not argue that it can explain mind in physical terms simply because it cannot yet. What is at issue is methodological rather than ontological. Because we do not have access to disembodied minds we must look to the embodied minds of living being. That is the only place we find mind.

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience.

a) states that there are physical things and that we are aware of these things within experience. If, however, you accept b) then it is not simply that we are aware of these things in experience but that they would not be without experience.

It is a soft problem, though, because it is reconcilable in the view; whereas the hard problem of consciousness is a hard problem because physicalism is provably unable to solve it even theoretically. — Bob Ross

If there is fundamentally only mind then the physical has to be explained in terms of mind. It there is fundamentally only the physical then the mental has to be explained in terms of the physical. If one cannot be solved in terms of the other this cuts both ways.

And once again, it has not been proven that physicalism is unable to solve it even theoretically. You are convinced it can't. You should leave it there.

I am not claiming that we have evidence of minds existing that have no bodies except for the universal mind. With the universal mind, we do have introspective experience of this. — Bob Ross

I have no introspective experience of a universal mind. Private experience cannot stand as public, shareable evidence. In your mind is the idea of universal mind. That idea in your mind is only evidence that your embodied mind can entertain the notion of a non-embodied mind .

Your mind, as the producer of the dream, did not have a body in it. — Bob Ross

My mind that produced the dream is an embodied mind. Whatever I dream, whether a body is present in it or not, it is the dream of an embodied mind.





.

That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul

It seems remarkable to me that this is not more readily understood.

When one explains an engine, they do so by reducing it to its parts and the relation between them when put together properly. — Bob Ross

An engine is not an assemblage of found parts. The parts are designed and manufactured as parts of a whole. Even something as simple as a bolt cannot be understood in isolation, without it being a part of a whole.

A biological entity is not put together out of parts. It can be separated into parts but unlike the engine those parts did not exist prior to the living being.

The relations between the parts that constitute the engine is weakly emergent from the parts — Bob Ross

They are not emergent. Once again, parts are parts of some whole. The relation of parts is inherent in the design of the parts. They are designed with their function and purpose in mind.

With the engine, it is 100% a reductive explanation because once I explain to you the parts and how they relate to each other there is nothing more that needs to be explained about the engine. — Bob Ross

Of course there is more that needs to be explained! What is it for? What does it do? What is its purpose? The engine itself is a part of some larger whole. Not only must the parts of the engine function but the engine itself must function. There must be an energy source that is not part of the engine. The engine must convert this energy into a useful form to be used by the larger whole of which the engine is a part.

Most idealists do not deny that there are physical things, but they mean it in the sense of tangible objects within experience. — Bob Ross

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience. Either a) you are a substance dualist or b) you are a monist. If b) then you cannot sidestep an explanation of how mental stuff gives rise to physical things.

Physicalists do not mean it this way: they mean that there are actual mind-independent objects beyond the tangible objects within your conscious experience. — Bob Ross

Idealists mean there are physically-independent minds. Given the central importance of conscious experience in your account, what do you make of the fact that we have no conscious experience of disembodied minds?

But the point of the hard problem of consciousness argument is precisely that no amount of objective analysis can capture the first-person experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am aware of the claim. The third person report is first person.

[Added: a joke that fell flat. The person's report is first person, but third person to the investigators.]

You might ponder, then, what it is that ‘eliminative materialism’ seeks to eliminate. — Wayfarer

I'll leave it to them to tell you what they are eliminating and why.

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.’ — Wayfarer

My great, great, great ... grandthing. We keep a picture of it in a prominent place.

This is, of course, a poetic simplification, but it is a provocative way of stating his physicalist stance.

Why didn't he just specify a single "physical entity"? — Gnomon

According to Aristotle biological beings are a single physical entity. There are no separate forms and hyle floating around waiting to be combined. There is not one without the other, substantiated in living physical entities, that is, substances.

I don’t see how this helps your case that physicalism doesn’t dissolve into reductive physicalism. The pile of parts of an engine does explain the weakly emergent property (or properties) of a running engine. — Bob Ross

The point is that reduction is only a part of the process. You cannot understand an engine if you do not understand the parts. That is the reductive part. But you can't understand an engine at that point. The parts have to fit and operate together. You have to look at the functional whole. That is the non-reductive part of the process.

Let's look at this from a different perspective:

Your argument eliminating the physical cuts both ways.

If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental.

The hard problem in reverse.

I outlined an argument for why I do know this. I am unsure as to why you said this: it is unproductive. — Bob Ross

Getting someone to realize that they do not know something they think they know can be very productive.

This is true and that is why I specifically used the term ‘reductive physicalism’. I do not think that irreductive physicalism is a valid position (as it either dissolves into reductive physicalism or becomes a closeted substance dualism). I can elaborate on that if you would like. — Bob Ross

You have it backwards, it is not that physicalism dissolves into reductive physicalism but that the analysis of a complex involves an understanding of its parts as they function in terms of the whole. By analogy, you cannot understand how an engine works by taking it apart. A pile of parts is not an engine. Taking it apart in only a part of the process whose goal is to understand the whole.

Complaining about a valid metaphysical position is kibitzing. Insisting on a metaphysical position when trying to understand a biological organism is counterproductive. Fortunately, most working in this field are unconcerned with such issues.

Correct, but the claim that the living organism is fundamentally a mind-independent organism is to reduce consciousness thereto. — Bob Ross

Physicalism is not a rejection of mind. To the contrary, it seeks to understand mind in terms of the organisms that have minds, without assuming that mind comes from somewhere other than the organism.

If one cannot account for consciousness with a reductive physicalist approach, then the only other option is that it is not emergent. The proof that it is emergent rides on the idea that it can be reduced to brain states. — Bob Ross

A misunderstanding of physicalism is not proof. Brain states are only part of the story. But of course the brain is an important part of the story. It is not clear what you think a brain state is.

As I said before (in the proof), the only way to argue that it creates consciousness (without just making it up) is to argue in the form of “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impact consciousness in [this way]”. You are assuming it creates consciousness even though this form of argument cannot prove it. — Bob Ross

Consciousness is not a set of biological functions. I think this mistake is the source of your claims about brain states. Consciousness has content, it is of something, and that something is the biological functions that are the conditions for consciousness.

The only way you can prove that consciousness is produced by the brain is by the reductive physicalist method. — Bob Ross

If by proof you mean argument, such proofs are beside the point. But then again, if you think the problem of consciousness is a metaphysical problem, then your only recourse is to rely on argument.

So if you can’t prove it with reductive physicalism, then you have no reason to believe it. — Bob Ross

I would counter by saying you can't prove it by metaphysical argument, but you think you have. Back to the top of this post.

The objection to Dennett remains that no third-person account of even something as simple as pain can ‘do justice’ to the actual feeling of pain, because no amount of analysis of the firing of nerve fibres, no matter how scientifically accurate, actually constitutes ‘the feeling of pain’ (‘what it is like to be in pain’). This is why, for example, John Searle parodied Dennett’s book as ‘Consciousness Explained Away’. — Wayfarer

It is not the analysis of the firing of nerve fibers but the actual firing of nerve fibers through stimulus that could cause a third person to report feeling pain.

Exactly!

I have not read enough of the information on information to have formed an informed concept. I agree that without physical processes there would be no information.

When I claim that reductive physicalism has a ‘hard problem of consciousness’, I am claiming that it is impossible for that metaphysical theory to explain consciousness: — Bob Ross

Right, you have said that several times. But that is not something you know.

I am not claiming that we merely haven’t yet. — Bob Ross

Right. You are claiming that we can never provide a physical explanation. But again, that is just an assertion, and it is not evidently true. [

quote="Bob Ross;811138"] ... my definition of a ‘hard problem’ is that it is irreconcilable under the view in question[/quote]

There you go. Based on your definition. But creating a definition and then rejection something because it contradicts your definition does not hold water.

The Hard Problem is a term of art. It has a specific meaning as defined by Chalmers and is used as defined. Calling something "a hard problem", stipulating it is irreconcilable with physicalism, is your problem, not the accepted meaning of the hard problem.

so in order to explain consciousness on this view one has to reduce mental states to brain states. — Bob Ross

The brain is part of an organism. Physicalism need not be reductive physicalism. The recognition that a living organism can be conscious, is not reductive. To look at an organism as a whole is not reductive physicalism. To claim that consciousness must come from elsewhere because a physical explanation must be reductive is misguided.

[set of biological functions] impact consciousness in [this way]” — Bob Ross

It is not that biological functions impact consciousness but that it creates consciousness.

why do those biological functions give rise to consciousness? — Bob Ross

We don't know. But we do know that some living organisms are conscious and we do not know of consciousness elsewhere, so it makes perfect sense to look at conscious organisms. To ignore these physical organisms because you reject reductive physicalism is willful blindness.

With your claim (that you quoted as well), I was pointing out that you were claiming (if I didn’t misunderstand you) that science can eventually come to understand how the biological functions give rise to experience — Bob Ross

I am simply saying that we should not deny the possibility. It is not a question of the "rightful investigator of the hard problem".

I am not sure how Chalmer’s defines a ‘hard problem’. — Bob Ross

The term is Chalmer's neologism. I posted two statements of it above. The second in his own words.

If you agree that it is a hard problem, then I think you should also agree that science can’t help solve it. — Bob Ross

You are defining "a" hard problem as one that is beyond the reach of science. By your definition science can't solve it. But this is question begging. Scientists are working on the problem of consciousness and felt experience, and the extent to which they are successful cannot be determined by the boundaries you set between science and metaphysics.

Your argument amounts to saying that if the hard problem is solved then it is not a hard problem.

You can’t claim that biological functions product or give rise to experience without being committed already to physicalism — Bob Ross

One need not be committed to any metaphysical claim, whether it is physicalism or something else. An investigation of consciousness in biological organism should begin with biological organisms.

you are presuming, in the question at least, that biological functions produce mental events). — Bob Ross

It is obviously true that Impairment to biological function impacts mental events. Since it is experience in biological organisms that is at issue those organisms is a reasonable place to start.

but once they realize that it is impossible to understand it via science — Bob Ross

,

This again is question begging, it assumes as established the very thing in question.

the physical transmission, which is a phenomena — Bob Ross

It is not. The physical transmission makes phenomena possible.

If the physical is an extrinsic representation of the mental ... — Bob Ross

The physical in this case is the living organism. A living organism is not an extrinsic representation of the mental. We can, however, mentally represent a living organism. That representation takes place within a living organism.

If you hooked up a brain scanner to a person that is knocked out on anesthesia — Bob Ross

Is the brain scanner an extrinsic representation of the mental? Why is it necessary? It if, and the person knocked out are extrinsic representation of the mental then the mental or Mind should have direct access.

so would analytic idealism postulate that the ingestion of a drug and its side effects in the world is simply a representation — Bob Ross

The ingestion of a drug is not the ingestion of a representation. If that were the case, the pharmaceutical industry would be out of business. The effects "in the world" are not the same as effects in a video game.

it does not follow that what is truly happening is physical stuff (in a colloquial or even formal sense of the term) simply because we experience it as tangible within our dashboard of experience. — Bob Ross

It is not simply that we have an experience but that physical stuff has a physical effect. When a plant dies from lack of water or a fish from lack of oxygen, that is a physical event not a mental representation.

The video game doctor — Bob Ross

This might be reverent if the world and everything in it, including us, is a digital simulation.

does that mean that the character fundamentally exists as that ‘physical’ stuff? — Bob Ross

The character fundamentally exists as a character in a video game. There would be no video game without the physical stuff that makes it possible. The game itself is real in a sense that the characters in the game are not. In the same way, a book is real in a sense that the characters in the book are not. Story characters, whether in videos or books do not have the same physical constraints on them that you (if you are not just the character in someone else's story) or I (I am not) have.

No object without subject. That’s my final offer. :wink:

Pinter goes on to make the case that without subjects, there are no facts. — Wayfarer

An object and a fact are two different things. No facts without subjects because facts are propositions. Objects are not.

If, as you claim, we can't get outside the appearance then what is the basis of the assumption that there are no discreet entities? When a meteor hits the earth one thing impacts the other.

That’s the whole point - you can't get outside the appearance to see it as it 'truly is'. — Wayfarer

And yet you quote Pinter making a claim about the mind-independent world

The mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p92)

My view is that it really exists, but that the very notion of existence always implies an observer for whom it exists, — Wayfarer

The very notion of anything at all implies something having a notion. But existence is not the notion of existence. As you say, the object really exists.

I didn’t find anything I disagree with in the quote from Chalmers you made: was there something in it you thought is a problem for my view? — Bob Ross

Here is what I said, and your response:

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science!

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, — Bob Ross

How does what I say differ from the hard problem as described by Chalmers? He concludes:

It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If experience arises from a physical basis, then the question of why and how biological function gives rise to experience, is the hard problem. If, as Chalmers says, physical processing give rise to a rich inner life then how and why that should be, then I would not have thought it necessary to state the obvious, science deals with the physical, with biological function.

Now you might think that science will not yield an answer, but that does not mean investigating the problem scientifically is not an investigation of the hard problem.

The physical “transmission” is the extrinsic representation of the mental. — Bob Ross

The physical transmission is not an extrinsic representation, it is the medium through which data is transmitted.

Secondly, anesthesia causing you to not dream and the signals in the nervous system being blocking thereby is expected under idealism too — Bob Ross

If the signals in the nervous system are blocked that shows that the transmission of data is physical.

Anesthesia, like everything else, is fundamentally mental under idealism ... — Bob Ross

This makes no sense. An anesthesiologist uses drugs not something mental. She does not rely on hypnosis.

...the outward expression of the mental idea of anesthesia disrupting your mind — Bob Ross

Again, it is specific drugs that cause anesthesia. Drugs are not the outward expression of the mental. These drugs affect awareness, they disrupt the mind.

The infinite can only be conceived by means of the negation. — Paine

Do you mean that the infinite is conceived by what is not infinite? If so, this is the opposite of what Descartes is claiming.

Is there some equivocation in the passage you cited:

For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — ibid. page 45

between wholly perfect and more perfect? For example, from the fourth meditation:

The more skilled the craftsman, the more perfect the thing that he makes ...

What the craftsman makes might be more or less perfect but is never wholly perfect. And as quoted before:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

The term 'more perfect' allows for improvement, for greater perfection. It seems to follow that something more perfect rather than something wholly perfect is sufficient for me to recognize my lack of perfection.

From what source, then, do I derive my existence? — ibid. page 50

There is a shift from the source of my ideas to the source of my existence. He argues that the source cannot be something less perfect than himself. For this reason he rejects his parents as the source of his existence. But surely he knows enough biology and animal husbandry to know that a more perfect offspring can come from less perfect parents. The source need not be something wholly perfect or even more perfect.

At the end of the fourth meditation he says:

This is where man’s greatest and most important perfection is to be found ... If I restrain my will so that I form opinions only on what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, I cannot possibly go wrong.

His ability to avoid error and thus become more perfect comes from himself. The more perfect from the less perfect.

I think that shows Descartes agreeing with the Scholastics that an infinites series of causes must go back to what is not caused ... — Paine

Descartes does not agree against an infinite regress of causes but against an infinite regress of ideas (third meditation). He argues that the cause must have at least as much reality as the effect, but this does not mean that there cannot be a regress of causes. Perhaps the idea that there must be a limit only marks a limit to our understanding of what is without limit.

... my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. — ibid. page 45

Starting, as Descartes does, with doubt, what is first is that he exists.

For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — ibid. page 45

The reason he doubts is because he desires to find something certain and indubitable. Recognizing that he has been deceived by his senses does not require the idea of a more perfect being, only the recognition that his senses have sometimes deceived him.

Toward the end of the third meditation he says:

I understand that I am a thing... which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things

And in the fourth meditation:

I know by experience that will is entirely without limits.

and:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

So, it seems that the source of his idea of something perfect and without limits could be himself.

And although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

It is interesting that in arguing for an infinite idea he rejects the idea of an infinite regress of ideas.

But the object is what appears in experience ... — Wayfarer

No. What appears in experience is not the object but the object as it appears.

How do you differentiate between the object as it is in itself, and as it appears to us? That is the question. — Wayfarer

How it appears to me might be different from how it appears to you. How it appears might be different under different conditions. Are we talking about the same object or different objects when there is a difference in appearance?

If I were an auto salesperson, what would I make of this in my everyday experience? — jgill

The expression, "sell the sizzle not the steak" comes to mind. Another is about men and big or fancy cars and compensating. Of course it depends on the customer but appearance sells.

Would it make a difference were I to be a mathematician? — jgill

Maybe. Mathematicians talk about beauty, elegance, and simplicity, but although they are attracted to these things what is decisive is whether things "add up".

How do you differentiate between the thing shown and the thing as it is in itself? — Wayfarer

I differential, as you did, between the thing I show to you and what will also appear in your experience. I can hold that thing and bring it to you, but cannot hold what appears in your experience.

How is that agreement going to come about? — RogueAI

Start by banning the philosophers.

Seriously, general agreement, if and when it occurs, might be along the same lines as has occurred with animal consciousness. There are some who still deny that a dog, for example, is conscious, but they are now in the minority.

I think what he has in mind simply the notion that when we perceive something in a manner in which we cannot say we obstructed by anything, say, bad vision or a confused understanding, we should take the experienced thing as true. — Manuel

Descartes' example of the wax is instructive. His senses do not yield a clear and distinct perception of the wax.

In the second meditation he says:

Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone – formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in.

Clear and distinct perception requires reasoned thought.

He goes on to ask:

When was my perception of the wax’s nature more perfect and clear? Was it when I first looked at the wax, and thought I knew it through my senses? Or is it now, after I have enquired more carefully into the wax’s nature and into how it is known?

It is, of course, the latter, but what is it that he come to know clearly and distinctly about the wax based on his inquiry? From the third meditation:

For if I examine them [his ideas of bodies] thoroughly, one by one, as I did the idea of the wax yesterday, I realize that the following short list gives everything that I perceive clearly and distinctly in them: size, or extension in length, breadth and depth; shape, which is a function of the boundaries of this extension; position, which is a relation between various items possessing shape; motion, or change in position.

To these may be added substance, duration and number.

Based on this list the question arises as to how his clear and distinct perception of the wax differs from his perception of some other object. He is correct that to perceive nature of an object requires the intellect, but it seems problematic to exclude the senses from such inquiry.

Intelligence and consciousness are not the same.

Suppose it gets to the point where there is general agreement that AI has become conscious. This would weaken rather than strengthen the case for idealism.

The same principle applies to all phenomenal experiences whatever. Stones move, mountains form, things get taken from the fridge. — Wayfarer

There is a difference between a stone or mountain and phenomenal experience.

The basis of the idealist argument is all such phenomena still occur within experience — Wayfarer

By definition the phenomena occur within experience.

If you show the same things to to me, then they will also appear in my experience, — Wayfarer

The things shown and their appearance in your experience are not the same. The phenomenal experience is of the thing shown.

According to Aristotle, living beings, ousiai (substances is a misleading translation from the Latin) are formed matter. Form, eidos, and matter, hule, are inseparable.

Joe Sachs explains it this way:

But being-at-work is what Aristotle says the form is, and the potency, or straining toward being-at-work is the way he characterizes material.

Aristotle rejects the idea that forms are patterns (Metaphysics 991a-b).

With regard to telos Sachs says:

Every being is an end in itself, and the word telos, that we translate as end, means completion.

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, which would, indeed, be expected (under physicalism) to be explained eventually (or at least possibly) by science. However, the hard problem is metaphysics proper. — Bob Ross

In Chalmers own words, from "The Hard Problem of Consciousness":

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information- processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it’s like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it’s like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information- processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it’s like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

Think of a vivid dream you have had ... — Bob Ross

This example works against your claim. If I am anesthetized I do not dream. Signals in the nervous system are blocked.

I'll put it this way: there can be matter without mind but not mind without matter.

Do you think the mind is a product of such physical interactions? — Wayfarer

I am not able to give a full blown theory of mind, but will say that I think there is more to it than just physical interactions.

I am unsure as to what you mean here: could you please elaborate? The hard problem of consciousness is absolutely a metaphysical problem, as it pertains solely to metaphysics and has nothing to do with science. — Bob Ross

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science! Blocking such inquiry because it does not fit your metaphysical assumptions is the metaphysical, that is, conceptual problem.

What assumptions? — Bob Ross

Start with the title of this thread.

Philosophy of mind is metaphysics ... — Bob Ross

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.

... science should not be in the business of ontology ... — Bob Ross

The question of being is a philosophical question, but that does not mean that science, which deals with actual beings, is excluded from ontological inquiry. Although the term had yet to be invented, Aristotle is a good example of how one does not exclude the other but form a whole.

Firstly, again, we don’t experience that the world is physical either ... — Bob Ross

Right, we don't experience that the world is physical, our experience includes things that are physical.

... we infer it from the data — Bob Ross

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact, and so on. — Wayfarer

And the counter-argument is that because things are different they interact in different ways. We can observe this and describe this but these interactions occur whether we identify them or not.

The larger argument is that consciousness continuously structures experience this way ... — Wayfarer

The pattern formed by three pennies is different than an object with three spikes that latches on to the three receptors of another object. So, yes, we make connections but it does not follow that things do not have structure and are not connected to other things based on their structures. Structural biology is a good example. At various levels living organisms have structure. Consciousness can identify these structures but consciousness does not make them. If they did not have these structures there would not be living organisms.

I question whether Descartes is trying to escape solipsism as you described — Paine

It is not that he is trying to escape solipsism but if all he knows is the content of his mind he has, so to speak, painted himself into a solipsistic corner.

You haven't addressed the argument, — Wayfarer

I am addressing this claim:

Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

That is simply not true. It is trivially obvious unless observed we cannot know or say what that shape is, but shape is intrinsic to stones and the COVID virus and countless other things. We observe that things fit together based on their shape, or move as they do because of their shape, or interact with other things because of their shape, but if they didn't the world would be nothing like it is. You might object that we could not know or say that anything is if not perceived, but this gets things backwards. There would be nothing to perceive if nothing existed.

What idealism, analytic or transcendental, is drawing attention to, is that the mind creates the framework within which our judgements about the stone — Wayfarer

The stone either moves along with the current or not. This happens whether we observe it or not. Whether or not it happens depends on its shape. In another example:

According to the NIH

SARS-CoV-2 particles are spherical and have proteins called spikes protruding from their surface. These spikes latch onto human cells, then undergo a structural change that allows the viral membrane to fuse with the cell membrane.

We are able to describe this shape based on observation, but the shape is independent of observation and judgment.

From that starting point of what will allow him to escape his isolation, the existence of God provides a possibility that 'objective reality' does not. — Paine

A self-imposed isolation that only arose only because, as he said at the start of the first meditation:

I needed – just once in my life – to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations.

In order to do this he says he will withhold consent from beliefs that are not completely certain and indubitable. So for the purpose of rejecting all his opinions, he must find in each of them at least some reason for doubt.

In the ordinary course of his daily life no such doubt arises. Put differently, the need for complete certainty and indubitability is an unnatural requirement. He creates a problem he may not be able to solve. Positing God as an innate idea, rather than being an escape from solipsism, further isolates him.

Toward the end of the third meditation he says:

The only remaining alternative is that my idea of God is innate in me, just as the idea of myself is innate in me.

But both that he is and what he is are conclusions he arrives at through reason.

Toward the beginning of the second meditation he asks:

Isn’t there a God (call him what you will) who gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts?

Toward the end of the first meditation he says:

So I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has done all he can to deceive me – rather than this being done by God, who is supremely good and the source of truth.

This malicious god (call him what you will) cannot be the cause of his idea of himself. Descartes is the author of this thought. Can he not also be the author of the opposite of this thought, of a god who does not deceive but is supremely good and the source of truth? If he supposes the one then why can he not suppose its opposite?

You say:

It is not only that "I did not give this idea of God to myself" but I need the idea of God to accept what is given in experience. — Paine

Does he? He makes two claims. First:

But what about when I was considering something simple and straightforward in arithmetic or geometry, for example that two plus three makes five? Didn’t I see these things clearly enough to accept them as true? Indeed, the only reason I could find for doubting them was this: Perhaps some God could have made me so as to be deceived even in those matters that seemed most obvious.

If he has no reason to suppose there is a god determined to deceive him, he has no reason to doubt that two plus three makes five. And no reason to rely on any god at all:

Also, since I have no evidence that there is a deceiving God, and don’t even know for sure that there is a God at all, the reason for doubt that depends purely on this supposition of a deceiving God is a very slight and theoretical one.

Second:

Now it is obvious by the natural light that the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect. For where could the effect get its reality from if not from the cause?

Truth determined by natural light is not truth revealed by God. But what does the natural light reveal about God. According to the natural light the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect. Is this indubitable? Consider the tipping point. "Wetness" is not the cause of water being wet. A molecule of water is not wet. It is only where there is enough molecules of water that it becomes wet.

And which stone would that be? 'Oh, it doesn't matter - any stone.' But 'any stone' is an abstraction - and abstraction is still dependent on the matrix of conceptual thought. — Wayfarer

We can be more specific. We meet on the bank of the Concord River where Thoreau hunted for rocks for his collection. We find two stones, formed millions of years ago, one smooth and round, the other rough and jagged. We place them in the river and watch. The smooth stone will be carried along by the current, the jagged one will catch and snag. Although we observe what happens, it does not follow that the stones do not have a shape unless observed. It is because of their shape that one is carried along and the other snags.

I am not merely claiming that physicalism hasn’t explained mentality but, rather, that it can’t. — Bob Ross

It is merely a claim. It is not a theoretical or metaphysical issue, but an actual practical one. Your metaphysical assumptions are an impediment.

That is a metaphysical claim (specifically a physicalist claim), not science proper (i.e., physics in the tradition, Aristotelian sense). Nowadays, due to the age of enlightenment and modernism, we tend to smuggle metaphysics into ‘science’ without batting an eye. — Bob Ross

This is nonsense. First, Aristotle's physics rests on its own metaphysical assumptions. Second, if you want to hamstring science by requiring it to adhere to the authority of Aristotle, you are too late. If Aristotle were alive today his physics would look quite different.

it is due to a careful consideration of the possible metaphysical theories and finding it the most parismonous. — Bob Ross

So, first you fault science for smuggling in metaphysics and then appeal to metaphysical theories. The fact of the matter is that advances being made in neuroscience do not get tangled up in metaphysical questions of substance monism, dualism, pluralism.

Are you essentially arguing for ontological agnosticism? — Bob Ross

No. I am arguing that the claim that the universe is experiential in essence is, as I said, not something we experience or know. Speculative ontology is not something I take seriously beyond its limited entertainment value.

Moreover, even though the reality that I am considering in my ideas is merely objective reality, I ought not on that account to suspect that there is no need for the same reality to be formally in the causes of these ideas, but that it suffices for it to be in them objectively. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

So, the reality is he has this idea, that is, an image in his mind. As he says:

When ideas are considered solely in themselves and not taken to be connected to anything else, they can’t be false ...

Objectively, that is, as objects of the mind, his having these ideas cannot be false. But:

All that is left – the only kind of thought where I must watch out for mistakes – are judgments. And the mistake they most commonly involve is to judge that my ideas resemble things outside me.

There is no way to verify that the idea does resemble something that has a formal mode of being or reality. But, he claims:

eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

This conclusion is questionable. From the Cottingham translation:

And how could the cause give reality to the effect unless it first had that reality itself? Two things follow from this: that something can’t arise from nothing, and that what is more perfect – that is, contains in itself more reality – can’t arise from what is less perfect. And this is plainly true not only for ‘actual’ or ‘intrinsic’ reality (as philosophers call it) but also for the representative reality of ideas – that is, the reality that a idea represents.

Is it true that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect? We are told that the triangle we draw is never a perfect triangle. A perfect triangle would be one that does not contain any of the defects of the one the drawing is supposed to be a representative of. It is from imperfection that we get the idea of perfection. In more general terms, it is from absence, lack or want, from the desire to have more or be more, that we get the idea of completion and satisfaction, of perfection.

We can form no meaningful idea of what exists in the absence of the order that the mind brings to reality. — Wayfarer

I agree, but I don't think it follows that:

Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape.

There is an implicit endorsement of scientific realism in this. Analytic idealism is not a realist philosophy in that sense. — Wayfarer

But that does not answer the question.

Thanks for posting the line about hats and coats which is a crucially important topic, which I am particularly interested in — Manuel

I thought of you when I quoted it. You had mentioned it before but couldn't remember where you read it

If I had to guess, when we just look at something, what we literally see with our eyes are colours and shapes and distances, but we do not judge what we see with our eyes, but with our minds: this the shape I am currently looking at, which is grey, elongated and thin, is actually a flexible lamp. — Manuel

What would someone who had never seen a lamp see? In the old Yankee Magazine they would post a picture in each issue of some old object someone found. The question was, "what is it?" Which meant, what was its purpose, what was it used for. Of course, someone who did not know the answer might use it for some other purpose. What they see, I would argue, is not something other than what they did with it.

More thoughts on Descartes "I"

In the Synopsis he says, parenthetically:

(But here it should be noted in passing that I do not deal at all with sin, i.e. the error which is committed in pursuing good and evil, but only with the error that occurs in distinguishing truth from falsehood ...)

The omission of sin from a discussion of what a human self is of utmost significance. Beliefs such as being born of sin, original sin, and redemption from sin are of central importance to the Christian teachings he claims to be supporting.

In the Second Meditation he says;

But this ‘I’ that must exist – I still don’t properly understand what it is; so I am at risk of confusing it with something else, thereby falling into error in the very item of knowledge that I maintain is the most certain and obvious of all.

The cause of this fall is nothing more an improper understanding of what he is. In the story of "the Fall" in Genesis, gaining knowledge man becomes like the gods. (Genesis 3:22) But the serpent already knew this and part of his enticement of Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge for this reason (3:5) But in the Genesis story immortality is forbidden. Christianity grants the immortality of the soul. In the Synopsis Descartes says:

But since some people may perhaps expect arguments for the immortality of the soul in this section, I think they should be warned here and now that I have tried not to put down anything which I could not precisely demonstrate.

He cannot prove the immortality of the soul, but what separates man from the gods is immortality, and so, with immortality man is not just like the gods but is a god. Descartes is no less subtle than the serpent.