Not everything we are interested in is falsifiable or testable. — tom

Of course, but if you want to determine which claims are more useful than others, and therefore more accurate, then they need to be testable and falsifiable, or else every claim has just as much validity as every other claim, which includes contradictory claims. When two claims contradict each other, how do you go about getting at which one is more accurate?

I asked you for a yes or no answer. Are you incapable of following directions? I want a yes or no answer — Agustino

I gave you an answer. It's not my problem if you don't like it.

Yes, that's the problem. You never made that distinction, but you gave me a list used to diagnose a medical condition. Is your claim that I suffer of the medical condition known as delusions? Yes or no? — Agustino

You suffer from delusions. You asked me to show you that you are delusional. I did.

Those are not delusions in a medical sense. — Agustino

I never made that distinction.

Yeah, you do have to look at ALL the symptoms, and in addition, you have to understand what they mean. Delusions are usually part of psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders are manifestations which halt someone's ability to function in society, that's one key characteristic. So unless my "delusions" harm my ability to function in society, they can't be medically qualified as delusions. — Agustino

The delusions do not interfere with general logical reasoning (although within the delusional system the logic is perverted) and there is usually no general disturbance of behavior. If disturbed behavior does occur, it is directly related to the delusional beliefs.

In other words, you can behave normally, except when your delusion is questioned.

Most people with delusions have them as a means of coping with the stress of life and the knowledge of death and an unfair world.

Read again. It says OFTEN, not always. Maybe you should check what you read?

Irritability synonyms: irascibility, testiness, touchiness, grumpiness, moodiness, grouchiness, (bad) mood, cantankerousness, curmudgeonliness, bad temper, short temper, ill humor, peevishness, crossness, fractiousness, pettishness, crabbiness, tetchiness, waspishness, prickliness, crankiness, orneriness

I'm not talking about headaches. I'm talking about delusions. There are a plethora of symptoms - most of which should be met to say that someone is delusional. A headache is only one symptom out of many that could indicate brain cancer or something else. You have to look at ALL the symptoms and perform tests to know what the root cause is. Going by one symptom doesn't get you to the cause. I didn't list one, I listed many, most of which you meet.

I think you really do have problems in understanding the meaning of what you read. — Agustino

An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility. — Harry Hindu

I think you have problems in understanding what you experience.

Of course it now remains for you to show that they were delusional. — Agustino

From Wikipedia
The following can indicate a delusion:

The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force.
That idea appears to have an undue influence on the patient's life, and the way of life is often altered to an inexplicable extent.
Despite his/her profound conviction, there is often a quality of secretiveness or suspicion when the patient is questioned about it.
The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief.
There is a quality of centrality: no matter how unlikely it is that these strange things are happening to him/her, the patient accepts them relatively unquestioningly.
An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility.
The belief is, at the least, unlikely, and out of keeping with the patient's social, cultural, and religious background.
The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of their psyche.
The delusion, if acted out, often leads to behaviors which are abnormal and/or out of character, although perhaps understandable in the light of the delusional beliefs.
Individuals who know the patient observe that the belief and behavior are uncharacteristic and alien.

Additional features of delusional disorder include the following:

It is a primary disorder.
It is a stable disorder characterized by the presence of delusions to which the patient clings with extraordinary tenacity.
The illness is chronic and frequently lifelong.
The delusions are logically constructed and internally consistent.
The delusions do not interfere with general logical reasoning (although within the delusional system the logic is perverted) and there is usually no general disturbance of behavior. If disturbed behavior does occur, it is directly related to the delusional beliefs.
The individual experiences a heightened sense of self-reference. Events which, to others, are nonsignificant are of enormous significance to him or her, and the atmosphere surrounding the delusions is highly charged.

I have indicated the parts you exhibit in bold. The ones in italics are the clear indications that you have a delusion.

No, I wasn't referring to that sort of scenario. I was referring to the sort of scenario where, say, someone saw a murder, but the murderer later threatened to kill all witnesses, and this person nevertheless comes forward to testify. In that light, his testimony, because he is willing to risk his life, has greater weight. — Agustino

Delusional people have risked their lives in order to maintain their delusions. They are even willing experience ridicule because the risk of losing the delusion is greater (be ridiculed or lose one's eternal status in heaven?).

And what risk is there really when losing your life brings the greatest things for you (going to heaven for eternity)?

The only way to distinguish between the validity of different claims is to apply the principle of falsification.

Methodological materialism is neither a belief nor an assumption but a restriction on method. Briefly stated, it holds that a non-material assumption is not to be made. Science, for example, is necessarily methodologically materialist. Science aims to describe and explain nature. Diversion into the "supernatural" or into the preternatural begins to address matters that are not natural and to obfuscate the natural. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The point of my whole thread (Physical vs. Non-Physical) was to question this distinction between what science can explain and what some other method can explain. The fact is that they both need to be consistent and compliment each other, because the natural, and the supernatural/prenatural have causal relationships with each other. To explain one is to explain the other, as they both interact with each other. Both methods cannot contradict each other, like they do now. All knowledge must be integrated into a consistent whole.

This is why I also call into question the distinction between the natural and the supernatural in my other thread (Artificial vs. Natural vs. Supernatural).

Yes, music has gone from being art to simply being a product to sell. While there were groups that started out with their own original sound and then commercialized their music to make a buck, it seems that today all the music that comes out is in order to make a buck. There is no originality any more. There's just simple music for simple minds.

Rock music has pretty much died and rap and hip hop have taken over. I think that rap and hip hop have begun to use up their originality now and are on their way down. Me and the people I talk to are constantly looking for new music, or new sounds, with new lyrics about new stories. There may come a day not far off where originality comes back and is what sells. Musicians will then be incentivized to experiment and come up more original stuff, where music will then experience a new golden age.

But all that may be complete fantasy if we allow ourselves to be dumbed-down as a society by expecting less from ourselves, which is a path I see us being led down.

To steal the property of another person could consequently lead to retaliation; do you want to take that risk? —


Are you going to stop me? There's millions of people just like me. — antinatalautist

I couldn't care less about the millions like you. If you are the one that stole from me, prepare for some dire consequences. People like you tend to not recognize that one day you're going to wrong someone that you wished you hadn't.

By stealing from others, you show that you like to be stolen from, or that it's okay to steal from you. Prepare to lose some your stuff and please don't whine about it when your stuff is stolen, hypocrite.

You may say that stealing from you is of no consequence. You will continue to steal from me and others. At that point it's just a matter of me finding that consequence that makes you change your behavior. What if your hands were cut off as a consequence of you stealing?

My explanation is simply that people can universalize their moral standards of behavior all they like. But there's nothing at all irrational in me personally opting out of this. Prove that moral standards for behavior should be universalized. Why should I not hold others to a population wide standard of moral behavior, while personally opting out of it. I get the best of best worlds. People choose not to steal from me, and yet I choose to steal from them. — antinatalautist

I could say the same thing about murder. What about when you steal from someone who has no quarrel about killing thieves?

Is there some sort of mind-independent moral fact that must behavior ought correspond to? No. — antinatalautist

Read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. He shows that cheaters don't make out as well as the non-cheaters in any human society. Humans have a longer memory and are better at making distinctions between individuals allowing them to hold those cheaters responsible and naming them for others so that the rest of us can avoid you or keep an eye on you.

The way I see it is that everyone is following the Golden Rule. The way people treat you is how they want to be treated. If they treat you nicely, you treat them nicely because that is how they want to be treated. If they are mean to you, you return the favor because that is how they like to be treated.

I have found that when people are mean or disrespectful and you mirror that behavior back at them they usually get the clue and won't behave like that around you anymore. It's all about providing consequences for people's bad behavior in order to change their bad behavior.

Nevertheless, the way good friends talk about 'life' around a campfire as they share a bottle bourbon seems 'deeper' than science to me. They talk about the total situation of life. Love, career, death, religion, art, etc. And they do it in a shared language that as far as I know has never been formulated or processed by philosophy or science. I think the wise-man fantasy involves getting behind life and language with a formula that sums the total situation up once and for all. In my experience the most believable philosophers are those who point at the gap between systems and what they'd like to conquer --being alive as a particular human in all of its complexity. (Unfortunately, even some of these 'existential' philosophers tend to impose some lingo and get themselves talked about formulaically. ) — tEd

You're the second person to talk about philosophical conversations being "deeper" than scientific ones.

Talk of Love, career, death Etc is really talking about the cultural influences in our lives. Really we are just talking about the icing on the cake. Science gets that the cake itself and its ingredients including the ingredients of the icing.

It seems to be that those conversations aren't deep at all but are rather shallow compared to talking about how those things even exist in the first place and why we even experience them and talk about them.

We seem to be saying the same thing, just using different terms. The fact that you keep using the names of people who came up with these formulas for representing some State of Affairs in nature shows that intent was involved in coming up with a formulas not in designing nature the way it is.

Mathematical formulas are just representations of the way things are, just like any language.

"Some people think better than others?"

Isn't this the same as asking if there are people that are more intelligent than others?

Wouldn't IQ measure this?

OK, what or where is the intent in the Schrödinger equation, the law of motion for
all particles? — tom

Simple. The intent lies within the cause of the equation themselves - Schrödinger. Why else would you call it the Schrödinger equation if not for the intent of Schrödinger himself when coming up with the equation. Wherever you find a statement, or law, you will find intent, for as far as I know, only people write statements and laws. Did Schrödinger design the universe to behave a certain way, or did he just write some equation that represents the way the universe behaves in a certain way?

No idea what you are on about. The Principles of Physics are laws about laws, or if you prefer Meta-Laws. There is absolutely nothing circular in that. — tom

Okay, so you mean something else with the second use of the term, "law", than you mean with the first use. Like I said, I dislike the use of the term, "law" when referring to the way things are. There is no underlying code, or rules for the way things are. There is simply the way things are and our representation of the way things are with language and math (laws).

Meh. The word "law" implies no such thing. — tom

Of course it does. Look it up in a dictionary. Laws are statements about things and statements are intentional.

The Principles of physics are laws about laws. — tom

This is circular and therefore meaningless. You're basically saying, "The Principles of physics are a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under the given conditions about a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under the given conditions."

In short: Thoughts and ideas possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and ideas cannot be identified with brain processes, as they are of a different order to the physical. — Wayfarer

Meaning, like information, is related to the relationship between cause and effect. Meaning is the same as information.

The meaning of some ink mark is the relationship between some ink mark and it's cause, which is either someone's ideas and their intent to convey them, or some accidental blob of ink, which was unintentional but still informs us of something - namely an unintentional release of ink from a pen. To say that that ink mark means nothing is to say that that ink mark doesn't have a causal relationship with some intent, but it does provide information about something.

This shows that intent can be, but doesn't have to be the meaning, or cause of some ink mark. Intent is not required for the existence of meaning. All that is required is causal relationships.

This also means that ink marks have meaning long after all life is extinct, because they were caused. It doesn't matter if some organism comes along and tries to make heads or tails of the ink marks. In fact, if any organism did come along and did try to make heads or tail of it, and wanted to get at what the ink marks really mean, they'd have to get at the cause, which is what the writer intended. If the organism just arbitrarily applied some meaning to the marks, are they really getting at the meaning of the marks?

I think a line in the sand has to be drawn. Physicalists can't constantly retreat into yet to be discovered physics. Of course, new physics has to be admitted, but the line says that all new things will adhere to the fundamental principles of physics.

We have a set of principles, which are laws about laws. A physicalist seems compelled to draw the line there. There may be new principles, but the old ones must survive.

So, according to physicalism, mental activity obeys the laws of thermodynamics; it requires energy and increases entropy. — tom

Personally, I don't like the term, "law", applied to how things are. It implies that there is some intent in the way things are, which would then require an explanation I don't think we can get to without contradicting current "laws".

I tend to think that the way things are are simply the way things are, and then there are our very accurate explanations (laws) which are used in predicting the way things will turn out. Scientific laws are really rules for making predictions, not the fundamental nature of reality, so I take issue with your "laws about laws" statement.

It seems that most people using the terms, "physical" and "non-physical", imply that there are two different fundamental natures of reality. Science, it is said, gets at the physical, while only religion, or "spiritual" experiences get at the non-physical. It seems to me that those that try to defend this distinction are really trying to defend their religious, or "spiritual", presumptions. What they can't seem to get past is the intimate causal relationship that exists between both.

Fair enough. Can we agree on this, though: You hold a trust/faith/belief that things such as the true nature of experienced/enactive aesthetics will be answered via investigation of objects while I hold the trust/faith/belief that such things can never so be discovered?

(I say "trust/faith/belief" because they in at least one sense all signify the same thing.) — javra

I believe that the true nature of the relationship between mind and world will be answered via the investigation of natural processes using a different vantage point than what we are using now. Like I said, most of the great discoveries that provide great predictive explanations of new experiences are the ones we acquired by taking a different look at the data.

There's a quote by someone (I can't seem to remember or be able to find it in a quick Google search) that goes something like this:
"The essence of discovery is seeing what everyone else seen, but thinking what no one else has thought."
This basically sums up the discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Einstein and Darwin.

Physical things are those things that obey the laws of physics.

Which laws? Certainly the conservation laws and principles. — tom

When you say, "laws of physics", do you mean the explanations science currently provides, which even science admits could be wrong, or do you mean the way things are?

You’re concluding rhetorical question relies on a circular argument, as far as I can currently see.

Just as can be the case with any other stance regarding, basically, philosophy of mind—idealisms (in plural since these can take many forms), Cartesian substance dualism, pluralism, and (my now personal favorite) dual-aspect neutral monism—so too can physicalism be a circular argument in search of some justification for not merely being a “because I say/believe/will so” argument.

Hence: P1) because I/we/they so assert, everything discoverable by science is physical (even though science might have no clue as to what it is; e.g. dark matter and dark energy (maybe over 90% of the known universe and of what we ourselves consist of as physical beings, this in the colloquial sense of physical); P2) because I/we/they so assert, everything shall be discovered by science at some future point in time (including all aspects of being and its becoming involved in consciousness); C) therefore, everything is physical (this due to the cause of me/us/them so saying it is—as explicitly affirmed in the two former premises).

This, as presented, is then a circular argument (where the conclusion is implicitly upheld in the premises) that does not demonstrate any stance to be true at expense of any other stance being erroneous. — javra

Thank you for this. I'm not sure if you noticed, but I put "physical" (and "non-physical") in quotes because the whole basis of this thread is questioning the validity of the distinction between the two. I keep asking for a explanation of the distinction, but thankfully I haven't been holding my breath.

Now that I think about it, this distinction seems to be related to the distinction between philosophy and science. In this case, the distinction seems to be in the manner we seek truth.

In my mind, there is only one way to seek truth - logic and reason. If all schools of truth-seeking are really trying to get at the way things really are, and not how they would like it to be, then it seems to me that they all will come to the same truth. In that case, there would be no distinction between them.

Philosophy is a science. Philosophy can't sit on it's own just questioning everything with it's skepticism. It needs the answers science provides, in the manner science provides, because science is the most skeptical of them all - always testing past and current theories.

Science requires falsification. Anyone with an ounce of wisdom knows that a person's account isn't proof of anything. We need more evidence, like more people performing experiments, and even then only holding the explanation as a place-holder for the next best explanation because history has shown that even a majority believing something doesn't equal proof (appeal to popularity).

Most of the great discoveries have come from looking at things from a different vantage point (Newton's theories of gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, etc.) - a more objective vantage point, and that is what I try to in my thinking of things. It is how I have come to see that many of these distinctions seem unnecessary, harmful even, to getting at the truth, or the way things are.

He might have said that, but that doesn't mean the explanation is going to be what we now understand as a scientific one, for reasons that I won't begin to try to explain to you. — Wayfarer

What other kind of explanation would it be? How would we test the veracity of the explanation?

Your "unwillingness" to explain is evidence for my case - that you can't explain the distinction between "physical" and "non-physical". To hold back information that you are unequivocally correct, would be like holding back information of your innocence and the guilt of another just to spite the prosecutor who you think doesn't deserve to be "educated". Give me a break. You don't explain, not because you won't, but because you can't.

Are there things that exist right now that are physical that science hasn't yet explained? — Harry Hindu


Of course. For example, maybe the most notable and dramatic instance these days is the acceleration of the recession-rate of the more distant galaxies. But a lot of other things too, of course, such as the observed system of particles, etc.

...because physics isn't completed, and probably never will be.

For that matter, ball-lightning hasn't been given an explanation satisfactory to all who study it.

Michael Ossiopff — Michael Ossipoff

Thank you, Michael, for answering the question that needed to be answered so that this discussion can finally move toward it's conclusion.

IF "physical" is defined as what science has explained.

THEN what is "non-physical" is what science hasn't explained.

Then how can there be "physical" stuff that science hasn't yet explained? How is it that the mind, and it's relationship with the world, isn't just one of those "physical" things that science hasn't yet explained?

Yes the possibility of consciousness being mysterious does disturb a lot of people. — Wayfarer

Mysteries are evidence of our ignorance.

Wasn't it Socrates - you know, that Greek dude that you "philosophers" like to quote so much - that said:
"There is only one good - knowledge, and one evil - ignorance."

It seems to me that the possibility of consciousness being explained as something not-so-special and non-eternal is disturbing to a lot of people.

Can we make the way a word functions in the world totally explicit? I don't think so. At best you can sharpen the meaning as much as possible for a particular purpose within a local conversation, it seems to me.

In general, knowing what 'physical' means is (IMV) a dimly understood knowing-how to get along with others in the world. Perhaps every use of 'physical' is unique, albeit with a family resemblance. Just because we have this fixed sequence of letters from a fixed alphabet P H Y S I C A L doesn't, in my view, indicate that the 'meaning' has the same kind of quasi-mathematical static, definite presence as the mark. The foundation of our making sense of things seems to lie mostly in darkness. — ff0

So then the words, "physical" and "non-physical" don't refer to any real state of affairs outside of one's own skull. That seems to support what I've been saying. Thanks.

Sure, we make inferences about the cause by examining the effect, that's exactly what I said. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perfect, then you finally agree with me for what I've been saying for months now - that effects inform us of the cause.

What I said is that we cannot "measure" the cause by examining the effect. The detective and prosecutor make a judgement which is not based on measurement of the cause. If it were a measurement of the cause, we wouldn't need a trial, a judge, nor jury, we could just refer to the measurement to see if the person measured up as guilty or not guilty. — Metaphysician Undercover

So we aren't measuring someone's guilt or innocence (the cause) based on the evidence left behind (the effect)? Just like how scientists use other scientists to check their results in order to minimize subjective mistakes, prosecutors take the evidence to multiple people (the judge and jury) and show the causal connection between the evidence and someone's guilt or innocence.

I don't think 'science' even tries to answer the most profound questions. — ff0

Another way of saying this is that science doesn't try to answer questions that don't make sense, or aren't falsifiable. What makes any answer to any question that isn't falsifiable better than any other answer that isn't falsifiable?

Moreover, I don't see how science can provide its own foundation. Engineering and medicine earn our trust more or less by giving us what we want. But the idea of eternal, universal truth sounds pretty theological to me. In short, its foundation looks to be largely pragmatic or 'irrational.' We keep doing what scratches the itch. By putting philosopher in quotes, you are (as I see it) linking the heroic 'payload' of the words science and philosophy in an ideological way --as if the 'deepest' kind of talk humans are capable of is the defense/worship of science. — ff0

What is an eternal, universal truth as opposed to just the truth? What is the 'deepest' kind of talk, as opposed to just talking about the way things are?

We cannot measure a physical thing by measuring its effects on another physical thing. That is, as it says, measuring the thing's effect, not measuring the thing itself. From that effect we can make some inferences about the physical thing which is causing the effect. Likewise, we cannot measure a non-physical thing by measuring its effect on a physical thing. But we can draw some inferences about the non-physical thing by measuring its effect on the physical thing

Can we not get at someone's intent (non-physical) by observing their behavior (physical)? Can we not get at someone's ideas (non-physical) by reading their words (physical)?

What is the barrier between these different realms, substances, or whatever distinction is being made? The only barrier is the one in our understanding, not one out there. History has shown that when we have a gap in our understanding we tend to fill it with all sorts of self-important ideas, like believing that our minds are special, souls even, and are part of something even greater, and will continue to exist forever, etc.,. This is why the distinction is still used - to keep the mind sacred and out of the hands of science.

I've seen a few responses that describe the physical as what is described by physics, and what is non-physical is not. I already asked these questions, but they were ignored, so I'll ask again:

What are people really saying when they say that what is physical is described by science and what isn't is non-physical? Before science explained atoms, the causes of diseases, the stars, etc., were they non-physical? Are there things that exist right now that are physical that science hasn't yet explained?

I hear you. But do you yourself consider the first-person experience of heartbreak to be physical in the same way that an electron is physical? — ff0

I don't know. What does it mean to be physical? This is the whole point.

Not only ‘the last part’. Honestly, you don't seem to understand the issue - then you ask for clarification about it, then argue against the suggestions that are made, without understanding them. You really need to do some homework on the whole subject. — Wayfarer

No, the problem is that I understand it perfectly. It is you that simply fails to ask simple question of your own beliefs that you delude yourself into believing. I'm asking questions that everyone else, including you, should be asking of themselves, and their own understanding of what the distinction between physical and non-physical is. Doesn't the fact that so many people are having such a hard time getting at the distinction mean something? Go ahead and turn a blind eye, Wayfarer, and keep yourself in the dark light of ignorance.

I'm having a difficult time getting through your post. Can you summarize it in your own words?

It's considered "nowhere" because it has been stripped of all subjective qualities. The world portrayed by science doesn't look, sound, taste, smell or feel like anything. And It's not from a particular vantage point. — Marchesk

What do subjective qualities mean in this instance if not the feeling of looking out from a particular location at a particular time? Stripped of those two qualities, it wouldn't be a view from nowhere, but a view from everywhere and every time.

If you are talking about the effect the emotions have on what it is we view, then that has no bearing on where our view is from, so to say that it is a view from nowhere when our emotional attachments are stripped doesn't make sense. It would simply be a view from somewhere with no emotional influences, or no goal in using the information the view is providing.

Which then leads me to ask, what is a view for? What is the purpose of having a view of any kind (from somewhere, from nowhere, and from everywhere)?

Science describes waves, spheres, angles, (geometry) etc.

We cannot measure a physical thing by measuring its effects on another physical thing. That is, as it says, measuring the thing's effect, not measuring the thing itself. From that effect we can make some inferences about the physical thing which is causing the effect. Likewise, we cannot measure a non-physical thing by measuring its effect on a physical thing. But we can draw some inferences about the non-physical thing by measuring its effect on the physical thing — Metaphysician Undercover

MU, you really need to think a bit more before posting. It takes just a few seconds of thought to come up with real examples that show that what you say simply doesn't hold any water. We get at causes all the time by measuring the effects. Just think about what a police detective and prosecutor does.

Yes, it is a feeling. There are no instruments that can measure feelings or the nature of any experience for that matter. Feelings are an internal experiences which often confound the experiencers themselves. — Rich

I asked several questions in that post that can't be answered by simply repeating what it is I'm questioning.

There are several ways to think about the distinction.

I think Locke's primary/secondary qualities captures it nicely.

One can also think of it in terms of the difficulty in reducing qualia, intentionality and indexicality to physical terms, while at the same time finding the idealist explanation for space, time, particles, etc to be unbelievable.

Or one can just say that the physical is mathemitizeable, while the mental is not. Meillassoux's version of speculative realism might fall into this, although he talks in terms of transcending Kant's correlationism to get at the mathematical reality.

On a more meta level, there is Nagel's subjective/objective split, with science being the view from nowhere, which is objective, and subjectivity being a view from somewhere. — Marchesk

Do they mean that the non-physical is forever and always unmeasureable? Are there things that are physical that haven't been measured?

I don't know what a view from nowhere is other than no view at all. It makes more sense to say that an objective view is a view from everywhere, not nowhere.