I think many Americans aren't extremely enthusiastic of voting for either of the two, even if they know who they will vote. — ssu

To wit: a left-wing YouTube channel I watch recently had an episode titled "Vote! (For Joe Biden! (Who Sucks!))"

I don’t think it’s on a linear axis, but I do think there is a spectrum of viable skepticisms. I’m more skeptical about political forecasts than scientific consensus, which I’m more skeptical of than logical conclusions. I think skepticism relies to some extent on confidence in practical terms, you can be open to being challenged on issues, but the problem is we don’t have all the time in the world. It’s not a reasonable way of living life to be open minded to the possibility of every conspiracy theory for instance, you have to make judgment on what’s worth your time. You have to juggle confidence and open mindedness. — Saphsin

That's perfectly in keeping with what I'm talking about. If some crazy conspiracy theory seems unlikely to you, you're free to believe to the contrary of it, without being able to prove the contrary of it. But if you should come across actual proof that it is true, then you should accept that proof and modify your beliefs accordingly.

Likewise, logical deductions are proof you can see for yourself; scientific consensus can usually tell a much more tractable story of why it's held and how you can check for yourself if you cared to; political predictions, usually less so; etc. Those are all degrees of how much something seems like it to you, and so how inclined you are to believe that way instead of to the contrary. Wherever you fall on any of those issues, you're free (as in, not epistemically wrong) to believe however seems likely to be correct to you, without having to conclusively prove that your position is right and everyone else is wrong; so long as you're also open to accepting evidence that you are wrong.

My issue is where does one draw the line. At what point is skepticism too far and according to whom? I — Darkneos

It's not a matter of skepticism being taken too far on any kind of linear axis, it's about there being two different senses of "skepticism", where you can (and should) do one of them 100% and the other 0% at the same time without contradiction.

There's skepticism as in being open to the possibility of your opinions being wrong, and accepting evidence to the contrary if it should happen to come up. This is something you should always do 100%. Always be open to new evidence, always be willing to question your opinions. I call this "criticism" to distinguish it.

Then there's skepticism as in rejecting every opinion out of hand just because there isn't good enough reason to force you to accept it, to prove that it is correct beyond any shadow of a doubt. This is something you should 0% never do, because if you're consistent about it, it will lead you straight to nihilism, solipsism, etc. I call this "cynicism" to distinguish it.

If you're critical but not cynical, that means you're open to tentatively believing in things just because they seem right to you, without being able to conclusively prove them right beyond all doubt, and yet also completely willing to throw those beliefs out if you should come across evidence to the contrary of them, and on the lookout for evidence that would be contrary to them.

That means you're free to believe comforting things (and should, for your own well-being), until you should see reason to reject them. And then you should find the next most comforting thing that might still be the case, and believe that until there is reason to reject it. (While meanwhile, also acting so as to minimize the chances of the least-comforting things coming true.)

Well the problem I have with challenging beliefs is that you end up with something like solipsism as a result. I mean at what point do you stop? What merit is there in being rational if I have no ground to stand on? I — Darkneos

There is a difference between challenging beliefs as in rejecting them all until they can be proven from the ground up -- which, as you say, inevitably leads to solipsism and other nihilistic views, because there is no "ground" -- and challenging beliefs as in being open to the possibility that they might be wrong, and being responsive to evidence that suggests they are.

I have an essay against the former called Against Cynicism that touches on the difference, as well as an essay for the latter (rather, against its opposite) called Against Fideism.

The former essay is dependent upon another called Against Nihilism that I think might help assuage some of your concerns about solipsism. They're all part of my general philosophy of Commensurablism that I think (hope) could be helpful for you.

On the general topic of comfort, I think you might also enjoy the Optimism section of my essay On the Meaning of Life.

I hope some of those can bring you some comfort.

I think that's actually true. The Bronze age system was similar to socialism. The workers brought their goods into the temple and the priests split it up and distributed it. Markets as we think of them were either a result of collapse of the bronze age system or they were one of the factors that precipitated the collapse. — frank

Socialism is not synonymous with centralized distribution, nor is capitalism synonymous with markets. Socialism vs capitalism is about how ownership of the means of production is divided. Broad or common ownership of the means of production with free trade is market socialism. Narrow private ownership of the means of production with centralized distribution is state capitalism aka corporativism aka fascism.

we'll naturally be reasonable unless one of us becomes infected with communism or some other social ailment — frank

The communists would say it is the rest of the world that has been infected with capitalism.

An-archy's - an-arkhos's - root meaning is without (a) chief, in a modern sense without a governing principle or rule. — tim wood

Anarchy is without rulers, not without rules.

I think OP is maybe talking about the idea of people taking comfort in ideas, e.g. religious ones, and that being derided as a bad thing.

If I am correct OP, I think the reason for that derision is the implication that in taking comfort in an idea, you are engaging in wishful thinking, saying something you would like to be true, to the neglect of whether something actually is true or not.

I have a different assessment of the degree of certainty of that claim.

No one in real life thinks things are correct or incorrect — Isaac

I'd like to see a poll about that. Even one just here on TPF. Actually, I did one of those on morality already, and it seems like many people think otherwise. (But you know that already, you were there).

Also, given that a majority of people are religious, and the kind of violent opposition to disagreement religion often generates (that you yourself reference here), it seems pretty clear that many, many people "in real life" think things actually are correct or incorrect. If any thing, people seem to tend more astray in the direction that affirms that (but doesn't tolerate differences of opinion) than the other way (that rightly questions everything, but then denies there are any correct answers).

But just as I suspected, your whole thing underlying every view your espouse is "nothing is actually correct or incorrect". Which, FWIW, is precisely one of the philosophical views I think is objectively incorrect. As you know already, because you were involved extensively in the thread where I said what I think those things are.

I'm counting being uninterested in checking your beliefs against the senses as "ignoring empirical evidence".

Plenty of people ignore claims that there is empirical evidence to the contrary of their beliefs, rather than actually check if those claims pan out. That's being unresponsive to reality.

You didn't claim you knew something. You claimed other people didn't. — Isaac

Those are inseparable conditions. To think that something is correct is to think things contrary to it are incorrect.

If you can't see the horrific places that thinking everyone else who doesn't follow your ideology is actually objectively wrong have lead to, then God help us. — Isaac

Do you think that those who think the places that leads to are not horrific are wrong about that? Or those who don't think it leads to those places? If so, aren't you guilty of exactly what you think is such a horrible crime?

I ask because one of those very things I think is an objectively wrong philosophical view is appeals to authority, faith, popularity, etc; as well as justificationism, telling everyone else that they must reject their beliefs until they can prove them from the ground up, in lieu of which (i.e. on my account, rejecting justificationism) differences of opinion are to be tolerated until proof one way or the other can be found.

How do you measure responsiveness to how the world is without knowing in advance how the world is? How could you possibly know what anyone is responding to? — Isaac

Everyone has direct access to a small part of the world -- that's what sensation is. (This hinges on the direct realism covered in the previous thread on the web of reality). Ignoring empirical evidence from your senses is being unresponsive to the state of the world.

Edit - who are these people unresponsive to the way the world is? — Isaac

I'm not going to reproduce a list of all fallacies and everyone who's ever committed one for you.

Take a synaesthete. When they see the number 4, they hear a high pitched ringing. They test this a million times looking at a million number 4s. Is their belief that number 4s make ringing noises more justified than if they'd done only a thousand such tests? — Isaac

Inasmuch as "number 4s make ringing noises" is understood to be a statement -- like all statements should be understood to be -- about a relation between the observer and their environment, then yes. If you mean they think that number 4s produce vibrations in the air that cause other people to hear high pitched ringing, then no, because that's not an experience that could falsify that kind of belief. But if they just think that number 4s cause them to hear high pitched ringing, then yes.

Hm. I think you've just put forward beliefs which haven't been disproven yet. Lets say I believe my friend Joe dated a woman yesterday. I ask him, "How did your date go last night?" supremely confident that he would date someone, just because I believe he would. No evidence, nothing. Joe replies, "It went great!"

Are we to say that I knew Joe dated a woman last night before I confirmed it? Popperian justification requires that we apply our beliefs, that they must be able to be falsified, and we must try to do so. Otherwise you're saying even induction is knowledge. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your intent at this point, so feel free to correct me if I am. — Philosophim

I'm intending to agree with Popper.

On my account, you were weakly justified to believe your friend went on a date at first, and then when observation that could have falsified that didn't, your justification increased. It's difficult to state that in the terminology of "knowledge", because it's odd to say something like you "knew a little" at first and then "knew a lot" later.

You really have a problem with anybody ever thinking they know anything, don't you? That's the consistent theme across all of your posts: someone claims to know something, you do everything you can to insist that they don't. Do you fancy yourself Socrates, the only person wise enough to know how unwise he is?

And that would be fair enough, if neither was an option! — tim wood

Exactly: whether you order chicken shit or dog shit or nothing, you’re getting force-fed some kind of shit or another.

I doubt a lot of people are in denial of the truth as much as they are convinced by the arguments. — Marty

Sure, but it’s easier to remain convinced of a falsehood by a bad argument when there’s nothing at stake for being wrong.

Also, if the result that we end up using just common sense. Isn't that just the entire point that's being made here? — Marty

Even if the correct philosophical answers end up being common sense, there is still value in exposing why all the alternative nonsense is wrong, to keep people from veering away from common sense.

The difference I suppose is that people persist in holding views that have already been shown wrong in philosophy, because there’s not serious practical consequences attached to being philosophically wrong. Where in the fields that are “hardest” and “make the most progress”, being wrong can get you killed.

Philosophy makes progress only in showing what philosophical views are wrong. If what’s left over is common sense, so be it.

This is not actually unique to philosophy though, because critical rationalism. The only progress that can ever be made in any field is showing what options are wrong, and so narrowing in further on those that might still be right.

You can't then propose a method of justification which relies on us knowing directly the way the world actually is — Isaac

I don't. The justification lies in someone's responsiveness to however the world is, not on knowing how in particular the world is.

Eliezer Yudkowski has said something similar, defining knowledge as "the ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality". If you can equally explain every outcome, you know nothing. This links knowledge with the concepts of information and entropy. — Echarmion

I'm planning a thread on something very much like that soon. :-)

You couldn't know anything about morality — Echarmion

You can if you assign a meaning to moral claims the way I did in the earlier thread on metaethics and the philosophy of language.

It would then presumably follow that only those beliefs can be considered knowledge that have no justified contrary beliefs, i.e. all contrary beliefs are rules out. But, if we insist on some objective notion of truth, a belief can be true before we are able to find significant arguments to rule out contrary beliefs. We'd then have to conclude we have knowledge of something even though we are similarly believing contrary things about it. That doesn't sound very useful. — Echarmion

The terminology of "knowledge" is frustratingly black-and-white; it's easier to state in terms of "justification of belief". If we have not yet checked for any possible contrary evidence, then our justification is very weak. If we have thoroughly checked for possible contrary evidence, then our justification is very strong. It is indeed possible to have some degree of justification for contrary beliefs -- the initial state of all belief is that everything and its negation is very weakly justified -- but the stronger the degree of justification for one, the weaker the justification for contrary ones must be.

Preemptively tying into the information and entropy thing to come soon, this is why more specific beliefs that are still unfalsified are better-justified: by their very specificity, they have exposed themselves to more chances of falsification, and yet survived.

It was a Doctor Who joke.

Time is a ball (of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff), balls are round, cycles are round, therefore time is a cycle.

Why not? — Isaac

Because guessing (or otherwise non-responsive-to-reality belief formation) and just happening to be right doesn’t rise to the standards that we hold knowledge to. Knowledge is supposed to be some kind of important relationship between belief and reality, not just coincidence. This is, again, the root of the whole Gettier problem.

Who on earth believes something despite also believing there's evidence to the contrary (sufficient to counter that belief)? — Isaac

Once again we need to distinguish between believing there is good evidence to the contrary and there actually being good evidence to the contrary. If we don’t, then we have to concede that every belief anyone ever has is equally justified, i.e. there is no such thing as epistemic error, because as you say, everyone THINKS they have good reason to believe as they do, but often they don’t.

determined to be true e.g. by observation, deduction, etc. — Kenosha Kid

That just is justification.

Anyway, see above with Isaac wrt the difference between thinking something is true (or reasons are good) and it actually being so.

That would be saying that knowledge is simply true belief, which then leaves open the problem of people who form beliefs in a way not responsive to the state of the world but their beliefs just happen to coincide with reality.

(Which is really the problem at the root of Gettier problems, too).

Phrasing it in terms of the counterfactual clarifies that the belief has to be responsive to reality to remain justified. If you believe unicorns are in your back yard and would continue believing that despite evidence to the contrary, but as it so happens there are unicorns in your back yard, you didn’t really know that. If you would be responsive to evidence to the contrary, and there just isn’t evidence to the contrary because your belief is correct, then you know something.

It acquires this status 'justified' simply by virtue of there being another belief which references it. — Isaac

Not on my account. On my account it's justified by default. Justification is the initial status of a belief, and it can only get worse from there, not better. That's the whole point of critical rationalism. The way you're interpreting it is equivalent to the usual justificationism, and the problems you're pointing out are exactly the problems I have with justificationism.

Take my example of believing there are unicorns in my back garden. That's just a belief. Then I also believe there's no good reason not to believe there's unicorns in my back garden. My — Isaac

It's not a matter of whether you believe there are no good reasons not to believe there's unicorns in your back garden, it's a matter of whether or not there are good reasons, and whether your belief would be changed by the presence of them.

This does raise a sort of meta question, of whether we can ever know whether we actually know anything. But even if we can't ever be sure that we do know things, it's still nevertheless possible that we do know things. This thread is about my account of in which circumstances someone does actually know something, whether or not they or we can know for sure that they know it. If they believe it, and they would disbelieve it were there actually reasons to do so (whether or not we or they can be sure there are not such reasons), then they know it.

mere belief becomes something more than that — Isaac

I think maybe this is the point of confusion. I’m not talking about transforming beliefs into anything else, but just when a belief is or isn’t justified, or warranted.

Ok, I just wanted to make sure this was what you really believed, as on its face, it seemed contradictory. — Philosophim

I don’t see the apparent contradiction. Can you elaborate?

I’m basically applying the same standard of justification to belief as we usually do to action, at least in the modern free world: any action is by default justified, until it can be shown somehow wrong. We’re not obligated to do nothing at all except those things that we can prove from the ground up that we must do. We would normally consider than an absurd standard for justifying our actions, but it’s all too common to apply that standard to justifying our beliefs.

No. You always were mistaken about one if these things, they merely exhaust the set. If you've narrowed it, what was the possibility you've eliminated? — Isaac

You’ve narrowed the possibilities you’re aware of being possible by realizing that certain combinations of things are not possible. They were always not possible, sure, but we’re talking about your awareness of the possibilities.

No, I don't get it. — Isaac

See the above analogy to justification of actions, I think that will clear it up.

Do you prefer ghosts (idealism), machines (eliminativism) or both (dualism)? Pick your poison. — Andrew M

Machines made of ghosts made of machines made of ghosts.

It remains the case that you are either mistaken about A or mistaken about the relationship between B and C, or mistaken about the relationship A = B and C (or you're mistaken about logic itself). — Isaac

Sure, but you’re still mistaken about at least one of those things, so you know it can’t be the case that all of them are true at once, and the range of possibilities is thus narrowed.

The whole approach rests on the flawed assumption that we build up our beliefs one block at a time from some first principle like an inverted pyramid. — Isaac

You get that opposing that assumption (or rather, the assumption that that is the correct way to form beliefs) is what critical rationalism (as opposed to traditional justificationist rationalism) is all about, no? I’m not making that assumption, I’m explicitly opposing it.

Who, in your opinion, has the last word to approve it is true or not and/or it is useful or not? — KerimF

Nobody, but that’s more a question about institutional knowledge and epistemic authority than the topic of this thread which is individual knowledge.

Are we talking about my own personal belief or something that is believed by everyone because all humans by necessity believe or perhaps because science believes ? — magritte

See just above, although I do think that the methods of individual knowledge formation form the basis of the institutions of knowledge as well.

we must always be open to the fact that we do not have the entire picture. — Philosophim

I agree completely and didn’t mean to say anything to the contrary. It’s rather quite the whole point of critical rationalism that you never narrow down to any single certainty, only rule out some possibilities leaving fewer (but always multiple) remaining options.

It sounds like maybe you’re misreading the same thing Kenosha is below...

This requires knowledge of whether or not the thing is true — Kenosha Kid

No more so than traditional JTB. Really the whole “truth” component of both traditional and my modified JTB is a historical vestige that’s rather redundant. Knowledge is merely justified belief, where justification itself implies a reason to think it is true; we only bother saying “justified TRUE belief” because before the justification criterion was added, the standard was simply “true belief”. It would have been better if the “true” had simply been replaced by “justified”.

It is easy to ground a disproof of something: just show a contradiction. E.g. if A = B and C, and you can show that B and C are contrary to each other, you can rule out A.

(It could still be the case that B, or C, you just know that you have to reject at least one of them, so it can't be the case that A. In general, ruling things out never narrows down to one specific remaining possibility, only a narrower range of possibilities).

Trying to ground a positive proof of one specific thing, on the other hand, inevitably leads down an infinite regress.

Pfhorrest's points in it were good for a broadly sympathetic construal of the qualia concept in a (reasonably) theory neutral way. — fdrake

Thanks. Though @Olivier5 has already been participating extensively in a more recent thread where I expound on that far more greatly, and generally seems to disagree with me, though I'm not completely clear on in what direction.

I wear pants for the same reason. — unenlightened

Covid aside, I do think laws requiring clothes are puritanical and unjustified, and I’ve sometimes imagined that a great protest against victimless crimes and general tyranny would be to just sit around naked on the steps of a prominent government building doing nothing but existing.

A “concentrated mind” (one under high pressure) is not necessarily a good thing. I know in a work environment I can get much more work of much higher quality done when I’m not under pressure to do it, and when I’ve had times of existential dread fearing death and the end of the world it made it much harder to think clearly. In general, I feel like I thought much better (“was smarter”) when I was younger and more carefree than I do now that I’m older and constantly stressed.

If I act upon a rock, it reacts: if I push it, it moves, if I shine a light on it, it reflects it, etc. That demonstrates that the rock is receiving input.

It's the only thing it could possibly mean if it's all that's supposed to distinguish a real human being from a philosophical zombie that is absolutely indistinguishable from a human being in the 3rd person. Anything else would fall under the domain of things you could distinguish a zombie from a human by.

And you can't seem to separate the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and physical existence. Phenomenal consciousness is about what it is like to have a particular experience from a first-person perspective. There is no qualitative aspect of experience (or qualia) for a rock. Unless rocks are somehow conscious - in the normal sense of that word (which is not synonymous with bare existence) - then there is nothing it is like to be a rock. Rocks don't have any awareness of their experience or any first-person perspective, so there is no "what it is like" for a rock (e.g. from a rock's perspective). At least, rocks certainly don't exhibit any perspective or awareness that is typically associated with, and often defined as, consciousness. — Luke

I've not failed to separate the concepts, I've intentionally drawn a connection between them: the only thing that phenomenal consciousness could be if it's truly separate from all functional aspects like the zombie-people stipulate, is something without which anything would in effect not exist.

I agree that rocks aren't conscious, in the normal sense of that word. The normal sense of that word is the thing called access consciousness, it's a purely functional thing, and even philosophical zombies are stipulated to have it. The only thing I think rocks have is whatever's left after that is accounted for, which gets called "phenomenal consciousness", but I think has nothing to do with consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word, and is something that is just a fundamental part of what it means for anything to exist: the capacity to receive input from other things, not just to act upon other things.

If philosophical zombies do not use sense organs to really experience using them — creativesoul

Sorry, ambiguous sentence. I didn’t mean “use them to really experience”, but “really experience what it is like to use them”.

So, what does a rock with phenomenal consciousness have that a rock without phenomenal consciousness doesn't? — Luke

On my account, a rock with phenomenal consciousness is just an ordinary rock, and a rock without phenomenal consciousness would thereby cease to exist, or else be some kind of phantom rock that’s unresponsive to anything that’s done to it.

(Not that I think that’s actually possible, because every action is an interaction so any means it would have of making a phantom appearance would also be some means of acting upon it and so giving it something to experience).

On the account of people who think zombies are possible, a rock without phenomenal consciousness is just an ordinary rock, and a rock with phenomenal consciousness is ... also just an ordinary day rock, so far as we could tell, indistinguishable from a “zombie rock”.

You've told us that the difference is not "any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”, but this is exactly the type of thing that I would say that phenomenal consciousness is. — Luke

It seems to me like you just can't manage to separate the concepts of access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Those things you list are all functional, access-consciousness things. And that is what I think consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word is all about.

Phenomenal consciousness is just some philosophical nitpicking that's completely beside all of that.

Aren't you conflating phenomenal consciousness with physics more generally? — Luke

Metaphysics, but yes that’s the point, phenomenal consciousness is some metaphysical thing, nothing to do with the functional capabilities that define conscience as we ordinarily mean it.

striving to change things we can change and indifference with respect to the rest — 180 Proof

:up: :100:

Yet this tiny, trivial difference leads you to believe that zombies cannot exist. — Luke

No, that's backwards again. That tiny, trivial difference is the entirety of the supposed difference between humans and zombies. Eliminating the supposed problem of philosophical zombies is why I believe everything has that tiny, trivial thing: because if they didn't, then zombies are possible, and if zombies are possible then either we are zombies, or we're only not because magic.

In what sense does it have phenomenal consciousness at all if it “doesn’t have any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”? — Luke

In what sense does a philosophical zombie lack phenomenal consciousness even though it functionally has perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, etc?

The whole point of this exercise is to get to a place where we can say function determines experience, so anything that does those functions has those experiences. Whatever the people who postulate the possibility of philosophical zombies think is missing, that's the thing that I think everything has; and it's also the only thing I think Mary's Room demonstrates. (Namely, that there is a difference between first and third person perspectives, even though those perspectives are of the exact same thing).

I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness, so I’m not sure of your point here. Is it that there’s a large functional difference between rocks and humans? I don’t see how it’s relevant to phenomenal consciousness. — Luke

The point is that the difference between a rock without phenomenal consciousness and a rock with phenomenal consciousness is tiny, as is the difference between a philosophical zombie and a human, while the difference between a rock without phenomenal consciousness and a philosophical zombie, or a rock with phenomenal consciousness and a real human, is enormous. So the having of phenomenal consciousness or not is a trivial philosophical detail compared to the enormous functional differences between humans and rocks.

The only way I can make sense of this is if you think that our phenomenal consciousness has no causal influence, or that it is an unnecessary appendage to human function. In that case, why do you believe that zombies cannot exist? — Luke

That's backwards again. The people supposing that philosophical zombies could exist are the ones talking as though phenomenal consciousness has no causal effect. They suppose you could have something that functions exactly like a human but "isn't conscious" in some way.

On my account, phenomenal consciousness is absolutely essential to all causation, because on my account phenomenal consciousness is identical to the input into the function of a physical thing -- any input into any function of any physical thing, while the specifics of that function are what matters for whether or not the thing really has a mind in the ordinary sense.

On my account, the only way something could possibly lack phenomenal consciousness would be if it received no input at all -- in which case, not only could it not do all the mental things humans do, but it would effectively vanish from existence, no longer interacting via any of the physical forces.

Not much or nothing? It makes all the difference between having and not having phenomenal consciousness. — Luke

Not much. I made this point already about the behavior of a rock.

In a colloquial sense we say a rock just sitting there is "doing nothing". But if it was truly doing absolutely nothing, it would be undetectable, and seem not to exist (just like the zombies above): it would not be reflecting or emitting any light, so it would not be visible; it would not be pushing back on any molecules that tried to intersect it, so it would not be touchable; etc. So technically the rock is "doing something", it's just not much in our colloquial way of speaking.

Likewise, technically the rock is "experiencing something" -- whatever it's like to do just that boring physics stuff and nothing else -- but that's just not much in our colloquial way of speaking.

Note he says 'Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning.' And this applies to physicalism, including yours. — Wayfarer

If you'd followed the two threads that preceded this one (the one on mathematicism and the one on the web of reality -- skipping one on Kant-like "categories" that got little response, but you might like), you'd see that my kind of physicalism is all about function, and not exactly meaning per se, but information.

On my account all of reality is an informational structure -- the concrete physical universe is an abstract object, and all other abstract objects are concrete physical universes to any persons that may exist as substructures within them -- and particular physical objects are nodes in the web of signals that constitutes the function of the abstract object which is our concrete universe, which signals are the input into and output from those functions. Those signals are both the occasions of our phenomenal experience (the input into our functions), and the literal force of our behaviors upon other things (they are literally the force-carrying particles, mostly photons, that mediate our interactions with all other things, and so the only real output of our functions).

Physicalism on my account boils down to a kind of phenomenalism, a radical empiricism, where empiricism in turn is entirely about phenomenal experience. On my account physical stuff is "mental" in that sense, the sense that people who think zombies are possible mean by "mental", both in that it is the object of experience (half the point of the thread on the web of reality), and in that it is the subject of experience (half the point of this thread). But meanwhile, minds, actual minds functionally like human ones, are all made of physical stuff... which in turn is all "mental" stuff as above.

In that metaphysical sense of "mental", I don't think there is any distinction between the "mental" and the physical. The only real distinctions are between the function of one thing vs another. There is no substrate of one kind or the other that those functions are instantiated in. Function is everything.