If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental. — Fooloso4

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

Negentropy decreases entropy.... — Pantagruel

You can choose to accept pluralism, like William James and simply marvel at the multifaceted aspects of the world - this is valuable and instructive especially in terms of aesthetic appreciation. But it won't get you far, it seems to me to stop the search for underlying principles — Manuel

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. — Fooloso4

How do you respond to the claim that science is founded on a metaphysical position - that reality can be understood? — Tom Storm

Or do you view science as being less totalising than this claim and more tentative in its approach?

So, yes, metaphysics isn't modern science, because it attempts to go beyond some of the limits of modern science. — Pantagruel

So in that sense noumena and phenomena can be understood to be the same thing seen under the two different aspects: in-themselves and as-they-appear.

I remember reading somewhere that there are two schools of thought among Kant scholars: the dual world theorists and the dual aspect theorists. — Janus

As the Buddha travelled around delivering his teachings, he gathered many followers who set aside their worldly life to follow him.

One of these men was an intellectual named Malunkyaputra, who had been inspired by the Buddha’s deep insight. However, Malunkyaputra eventually grew frustrated with the Buddha, who seems to have avoided answering basic metaphysical questions, like “is there an afterlife?” and other grasping at understanding the universe its purposes.

One day Malunkyaputra confronted the Buddha about it, and declared that, unless the Buddha answered his questions, Malunkyaputra would give up the Buddhist life and return to his old life within society.

The Buddha responded with a story:

Suppose a man has been shot with a poison arrow. His friends and family that were with him rush to call a doctor to remove the arrow and administer an antidote to the poison. But, before they’re able to, the man who was shot stops them, shouting “I will not let this arrow be removed until I know — who shot me? How tall was he? Of what material was his bow made?”

Then the Buddha asked Malunkyaputra what he thought of the man in his story, who refused treatment for his injury until his questions about the man that shot him were answered. Malunkyaputra responded: “He is a fool — his questions are not relevant to treating his injury, and he will die before he gets them answered.”

“Similarly,” said the Buddha, “I do not teach whether or not there is an afterlife and what it is like and such. I teach only how to remove the arrow of your suffering, by revealing its origin, and the Eightfold Path to its end.”

No object without subject. — Wayfarer

As I remember it (it's a while since I read the book) Pierre Hadot in Philosophy as a Way of Life understands the various ancient Greek philosophical systems as sets of ideas designed to live by, not consisting of claims to be critiqued and argued over. Philosophy under that conception has a different purpose: to provide ways of living designed to free practitioners from the unruly desires, petty concerns, existential anxieties, and worldly attachments that can make life a misery.

A modern equivalent would be Cognitive Behavior Therapy or Gestalt Therapy: if you undertake that practice, you are not there to argue about their different metaphysical or phenomenological claims, but rather to accept the set of ideas that constitute the therapy and practice in accordance with them to (hopefully) gain the result.

So, as Hadot points out Stoicism, Skepticism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Platonism and Neoplatonism all had very different sets of metaphysical ideas, but they were all similar in there status as philosophical and ethical practices designed to live in better ways. Epicureanism, for example, explicitly rejects the idea of afterlife.

So, I don't think you can cite Hadot to support any contention that it was the metaphysical ideas in the ancient philosophies that were of primary importance: it is more likely that such ideas were as diverse within the systems as were the different kinds of people with their different mindsets, that they sought to attract. — Janus

Although I will also observe that yours is not a physicalist account of physicalism. — Wayfarer

Physicalism is a paradigm for generating conjectures or models and not a theoretical explanation of phenomena. — 180 Proof

The idea that life can be explained with reference only to the laws of physics is physicalism, right? — Wayfarer

In short, as I see it. abstractions are not primary or fundamental they are abstracted from particulars, so they are therefore secondary and derivative. — Janus

The religious narrative of mans sinful nature and possibility of redemption is more optimistic than the idea we are frequently facing evil and suffering with no reason and no redemption. — Andrew4Handel

The reason that I'm not a physicalist is that matter does not act. — Wayfarer

It is only acted upon.

Idealism seems to me an example of philosophy poisoning. — wonderer1

Phenomenology seeks to remedy this condition by returning attention to the primacy of being - the reality of lived experience - *not* as something to analyse through science or metaphysics but through attention to 'what is’ - ‘dasein’. — Wayfarer

What I'm arguing is that 'how the object appears' is dependent on the observer. 'What it is' can be specified in the case of physical objects, in terms of its quantifiable attributes, which appear to be observer-independent, but may better be thought of as 'measurably consistent for any observer' ... — Wayfarer

↪180 Proof :down: — Metaphysician Undercover