I'm reading "What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics." Don't blame me, @Count Timothy von Icarus is making me read it.

Further -- the big conflict here, with respect to interpreting the sciences in a philosophical manner, is on different notions of causation. The SEP has a lovely page on Teleological Notions in Biology, which you won't find in chemistry except as metaphor. The intersection between physics and biology is interesting specifically because it's where we might be able to understand the relationship between our traditional notion of causation in science (not quite billiard-ball, anymore, but still), and the frequent use of teleology in understanding living systems. That is -- putting biology first isn't so crazy as it sounds because we're not modeling the world off of natural selection, but instead questioning what sort of causation is truly fundamental. — Moliere

A couple of thoughts.

I read a book a while ago "What is life? : how chemistry becomes biology" by Addy Pross. It's about abiogenesis and Pross writes, somewhat convincingly, that it would make sense to think of everything, including non-living matter, as subject to natural selection. That could be seen as evidence for your position, although I don't think it is. Cross-fertilization between disciplines is useful, necessary. That's different from understanding science, all human understanding, as a system of hierarchical levels. Perhaps you don't see that as a useful way of seeing things, but I do.

As for causation, it is mainstream philosophy, not to say everyone agrees, that causation is not a useful way of looking at the way the world works. As you suggest:

Or, if we are dedicated Humeans, we'll note that neither is fundamental at all, that there is no most basic kind of causation that everything can be reduced to, that it's a mere habit of the mind. — Moliere

That's nothing new. Bertrand Russell wrote a paper on it in 1912. That makes sense to me. This is not the place for us to get deeply into it.

To understand biology you need to study biology. To understand chemistry you need study chemistry, and all the same for the other subjects. The intersection between these fields isn't so clean as you present. — Moliere

It's about scale. You need to understand chemistry to understand biology at it's most basic level. Biological systems have to behave consistent with the rules of chemistry. The reverse is not true.

why not biology as a first science rather than physics? Maybe the results in physics, at certain times at least, aren't fundamental but specific to the system they're studying, and the aggregates of the physical world don't follow the same rules. — Moliere

It's about scale. Particle physics deals with the world at the smallest possible scale. To understand biology you need to understand chemistry and physics, but not the other way around.

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of this. Do you happen to know which towns? — Mikie

I'm guessing Newton and Brookline do. I was just checking and it says that town meeting members in those cases are elected, not chosen by lottery, so I was wrong.

T Clark, have you ever in the past, do you now, and might you in the future think of yourself as a "masshole"? — BC

No one in Massachusetts calls themselves a Masshole. Similarly, no one here ever eats baked beans. Also - you can't park your car in Harvard Yard, there are no parking spaces.

Right, in MA towns below a certain size have to do the town meeting. It works better than you might expect but not great. I was almost the town administrator for a town that had an open meeting and select board. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have affection for the town meeting in my town, but it can definitely be clunky.

I have no illusions this is possible on the federal level, but at the local (and perhaps state) level, it would be an interesting experiment. — Mikie

Massachusetts and some of the other New England states have something similar. Towns are governed by a Board of Selectmen and a Town Meeting. The selectmen are elected and the town meeting is open to all registered voters. In some larger towns that becomes unwieldy so they started using representative town meetings with members selected by lottery from a pool of applicants.

Thanks for the education. I'll take a look at "What is Real."

It was by no means an abuse of authority. I admit it might have been an error of judgement but it's been reversed. — Wayfarer

I appreciate it. I should not have been so combative.

The OP said nothing about 'the hard problem', that was introduced by you. — Wayfarer

That is such baloney:

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. But instead the brain is like an expert magician, who pulls a rabbit out of a hat even when he's inside an MRI. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And finally, the posts were not deleted, they were moved to more relevant thread, so as to keep this thread more on topic, which is already a complex and contentius topic in its own right. — Wayfarer

That also is baloney. I'm going to leave it there as long as you do.

Moderator note: the comments specifically about the hard problem of consciousness have been moved to the most recent thread on that topic, so as to maintain the focus of this thread on the OP. Please feel free to carry on with that conversation in the other thread. — Wayfarer

This is not reasonable unless the original poster specifically asked you to do it. The hard problem was an important aspect of the original post. My response questioning it's relevance was a reasonable and relevant response. That was as far as I intended to take it, but then @Count Timothy von Icarus responded to me. Unless you were specifically asked by them, your decision was an unreasonable use of your moderator's authority. And it's not the first time.

The first presents a functional analysis of the target phenomenon, which fully characterizes the target in terms of its functional role. The second presents an empirically-discovered realizer of the functionally characterized target, one playing that very functional role. Then, by transitivity of identity, the target and realizer are deduced to be identical. — Hard Problem of Consciousness - IEP

I don't think this accurately represents the understanding of those who believe that phenomenal consciousness can be studied effectively using scientific methods. It certainly doesn't represent my understanding. We've had that discussion many times before. Neurological processes are not identical to mental processes. I've never said they were and, in fact, have argued strongly they are not. We just finished this same argument a few days ago and I'm not ready to start up again.

True, but this is true for almost every interpretation of quantum mechanics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As far as we know, none of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics can be verified even in principle. They are all equivalent. There is no difference except, perhaps, a metaphysical one.

Right, but this is true of virtually all of quantum foundations. Mach famously held that atoms were unfalsifiable and unscientific. Quarks were held to be unfalsifiable pseudoscience until just a few years before they were "verified." Lots of elements of string theories are unfalsifiable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unverified is not the same thing as unverifiable. If I'm wrong and one interpretation of QM can be verified, then your argument will mean something. Modeling the behavior of matter at the smallest scales as atoms and quarks allows generation of predictions of behavior that can be tested. QM interpretations do not.

My counterargument would be that if you bracket off these issues as non-scientific it puts a stigma on them (and indeed a prohibition on research in quantum foundations was dogmatically enforced from on high until the late-90s). Philosophers in general lack the skills and resources to pursue these ideas; they have to be done by physicists. In many cases, we see theories that are initially attacked as unscientific coming to mature and eventually develop means of testing the theory against others. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I noted, if I'm wrong and the various QM interpretations can be tested, then we can have this discussion. I'm not the only one who thinks that is unlikely. I acknowledge I am far from qualified to render an opinion on this. I'm not a physicist. I'm basing my understanding on reading what other more qualified people have written.

Per Poppers evolutionary view of science, we need such suppositions because they are the "mutations," that allow science to keep "evolving." Of course, most mutations result in the death of the organism (or the scientific career), but occasionally they are hugely successful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem with that analogy is that evolutionary ideas in science have to make testable predictions in order to be useful. None of the QM interpretations do that.

In any event, we currently have a number of theories about what causes quantum phenomena that are empirically indiscernible given our current technology and knowledge. By what rights should we select any of them as canonical? The idea behind enforcing the Copenhagen Interpretation as orthodoxy was that this secured science against metaphysics, but this is not what it did. Instead, it enshrined a specific type of metaphysics and epistemology as dogmatism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They are not "a number of theories" they are a number of interpretations of one theory. The reason the Copenhagen Interpretation is in any way canonical is that it's really not an interpretation at all. It just describes how quantum level phenomena behave. Shut up and calculate is not metaphysics. It's anti-metaphysics.

How so? Certainly it's a problem that is taken seriously. The rapid coalescence of support for the Many Worlds Interpretation over that past decade is often based around the conception that the interpretation is "more likely," because it answers the Fine Tuning Problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There have been plenty of discussions of the fine-tuning problem here on the forum before that never got anywhere, just like all the hard problem and QM interpretation discussions. I'll just stand by my statement that it misrepresents the meaning of probability. It explains nothing. It will be fruitless to go any further here.

But the question remains, "why do the origins of consciousness yield so slowly to the same methods that have allowed us to understand so many other phenomena with a great level of depth." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a straw dog or straw man or straw something argument. The social and psychological mechanisms of consciousness have been studied for decades, centuries, millennia, with some success. The neurological mechanisms of consciousness have not been because the technology has not been available. Over the past few decades, those technologies have been evolving rapidly. Again, this is an argument that has been gone through many times on the forum without resolution.

In summary - I've identified three elements of you thesis about which I am skeptical - the fine-tuning problem, the hard problem, and the interpretations of QM. Clearly I have not resolved those issues and I'm sure I won't. I don't think I'll live long enough. My purpose here is just to let people who haven't run through this mill as many times as we have know that your argument is built on an unsteady foundation.

It is very frustrating to the point of willed ignorance that you keep misinterpreting/misrepresenting the hard problem of consciousness. In your own words, can you even summarize it correctly?? — schopenhauer1

The hard problem of consciousness is a philosophical problem concerning why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experiences.[1][2] This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give humans and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, perform behavioural functions, or provide behavioural reports, and so forth.[1]

The easy problems are considered "easy" not because they are literally easy, but because they are problems that are in principle amenable to functional explanations: that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioural, as they can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon in question.[3][4][1] Proponents of the hard problem argue that conscious experience is categorically different in this respect since no mechanistic or behavioural explanation could explain the character of an experience, even in principle. — Wikipedia - Hard Problem of Conscioiusness

That.

It occured to me the other night that the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, that consciousness is what causes wave collapse (or decoherence), solves the Fine Tuning Problem quite nicely. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. But instead the brain is like an expert magician, who pulls a rabbit out of a hat even when he's inside an MRI. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Some thoughts:

• Consciousness causes wave collapse - It is not currently possible to empirically differentiate between interpretations of quantum mechanics. It seems likely, to me at least but also to many others, that there never will be. That means it's metaphysics, not science, at least until the issue is resolved.
  
• Fine Tuning Problem - There is no fine tuning problem. It's just an expression of a fundamental misunderstanding of what probability means and how it works.
  
• The hard problem of Consciousness - We have this argument over and over here on the forum. Many of us shake our heads when others tell us they can't conceive that consciousness and human experience can be understood scientifically.

I won't clutter your thread any more with my skepticism. I don't mean to be disruptive.

This is a good post. You make your case clearly and your argument is a good one. Purely coincidently, I agree with you.

Your challenges still helped me flesh it out, so thank you. — frank

Anytime you need somebody to be confused, I'll be happy to help.

It's specifically about your assessments of past behavior. You assume you know the rules you were following. Kripke's skeptic suggests that there is no fact of the matter. The fiction of "quadding" is just meant to illustrate this. — frank

Rats. Now I'm back to not getting it again.

On the web, I found a discussion of this issue. Here's a link:

https://iep.utm.edu/kripkes-wittgenstein/#H1

It doesn't make things any clearer to me. I give up.

I think the problem is that following the rules of addition are exactly the same as following the rules of quaddition up to the number 57. What in your mental processes would have been different so as to prove that you weren't quadding rather than adding? — frank

Ah... Now, maybe, I understand your point. I'd forgotten that I'd never encountered 57 before. Let me think... Ok, for natural numbers, the definition of "addition" can be traced back to counting. Are you saying that I can count to 56, but for any larger number I'm doing something different?

Then I ask you for a fact about your previous behavior that shows that the rule you were following was addition rather than quaddition. — frank

Does my behavior include my invisible, to you (and perhaps to me), mental processes? If it does, I say "I already have given you that fact."

You haven't been doing addition. It was quaddition. — frank

I think this is where I'm supposed to berate you.

I ask you to add 68+57.

You confidently say "125."

The skeptic asks, "How did you get that answer?"

You say "I used the rules of addition as I have so often before, and I am consistent in my rule following."

The skeptic says, "But wait. You haven't been doing addition. It was quaddition. When you said plus, you meant quus, and: x quus y = x+y for sums less than 57, but over that, the answer is always 5. So you haven't been consistent. If you were consistent, you would have said "5."" — frank

Sorry. There's something I'm missing. If I apply the definition of addition to 68 and 57, I get 125, not 5. What you are describing, "quus," is a different operation which is not consistent with that definition.

That is the same fallacy as Dingo committed. I am not saying that philosophy is the only discipline that requires rigorous analysis. Law, mathematics, actually every scientific endeavour does. I am saying rigorous analysis is a part of philosophy. — Tobias

You've missed my point. I spent my career as an engineer formally and rigorously making and defending arguments very similar to the ones I do here on the forum. I didn't have to do professional level philosophy in order to gain that experience and skill.

It is actually what sets it apart from mysticism or faith. Mysticism does not require argumentation, but revelation. — Tobias

I make rigorous arguments about mysticism here on the forum all the time. It is one of the main subjects I'm interested in. Equating mysticism with faith is either a cheap rhetorical trick or a display of lack of understanding.

What standard can we agree on to judge what is philosophy and what is not? At the very least a a kind of thesis has to be presented and argued for. — Tobias

As the comment you quoted from my post notes, @DingoJones did present a thesis and argue for it.

developing skills at communicating about philosophical topics requires relevant skill developing social experiences including exposure to unfamiliar ways of looking at things. — wonderer1

Did anyone in this discussion indicate or imply that this isn't true? I don't think so.

JTB is partially correct in that knowledge must be a truth that is held in at least mind. If no one knows X then X is not knowledge. X must also be true. The key error is an insufficient connection between the justification and the belief. If the justification makes the belief necessarily true then the belief is impossibly false. Modal logic: □P ≡ ◇P // Necessarily(P) ≡ Not Possibly Not P — PL Olcott

JTB is a definition, not a fact. I think it's a bad definition. Any definition that says Isaac Newton didn't know that gravity is a force 340 years ago because we now think about it as a bending of spacetime is silly.

JTB is insufficient as a way of understanding knowledge. — wonderer1

I agree. It doesn't describe how real people know things or what they mean when the say they know something.

I am arguing, you on the other hand are not. — Tobias

This is clearly not true. You say "My claim is that philosophy needs dialogue..." @DingoJones gives counter-examples, which is a valid method of argumentation. You may be unconvinced, but I've heard that isn't the standard by which we should judge philosophy.

One of the criteria for being considered a philosopher — Tobias

I don't think we are talking about whether or not we are philosophers. We are talking about what philosophy is.

One of the criteria for being considered a philosopher is that you have displayed a certain level of rigor in your analysis of philosophical questions. Now if you never offer these arguments for scrutiny there is no way the community of philosophers can assess them and you cannot be considered a philosopher. — Tobias

Gregor Mendel's studies on genetics were never published until after he died. Would you say he was not a scientist? Emily Dickenson's poems were never published while she was alive. Would you say she was not a poet? I think your opinion of what it takes to be a philosopher is a bit high-falutin.

In your rather short not very thoughtful, but still condescending reply — Tobias

A good case of the philosophical pot calling the philosophical kettle black.

I know that thinking in solitude about life the universe and everything does not make you a philosopher yet. — Tobias

Are we talking about whether I am a philosopher - I've never claimed to be. I was talking about whether Taoism is philosophy.

There needs to be rigor in that thinking and that is hard to acquire on your own. — Tobias

Philosophy is not the only method for learning how to think rigorously.

the distinction between spirituality and philosophy — Moliere

I'm not sure what you mean by "spirituality." Is Taoism spiritualism? I'm willing to say it includes mysticism -The belief that direct knowledge of ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as self-awareness, intuition, or insight). It's fine if you decide that kind of philosophy is not your cup of tea, but it's unreasonable for you to claim it is not tea at all.

not just from Eastern religions, either. — Moliere

Your argument seems to be that eastern philosophies are not philosophies because they are religions, but they're not, or at least they don't have to be. Taoist philosophy is separate from Taoist religion and came first.

Philosophical School of the Dao ("Taoist philosophy") or "Taology" ("study of the Tao"), or the mystical aspect—the philosophical doctrines based on the texts of the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, and the Zhuangzi. One of the hundred schools of thought during the Warring States period. The earliest recorded uses of the term Tao to refer to a philosophy or a school of thought are found in the works of classical historians during Han Dynasty. These works include The Commentary of Zhuo by Zuo Qiuming and in the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Tan. This usage of the term to narrowly denote a school of thought precedes the emergence of the Celestial Masters and associated later religions. — Wikipedia - Taoism

Mysticism. — Tobias

There's a difference between the activities — Moliere

If that's true, then you don't consider Taoism and Buddhism philosophies, is that correct?

I'm not sure if you do need to bring something, — Moliere

I don't believe in philosophical blank slates. World views come as standard equipment, along with the accessories required to grow and develop them. Philosophy just helps us sharpen our pencils.

Note - three different metaphors in three sentences.

I guess I feel in philosophy there is so much to know and understand and so little time, that the situation is almost hopeless for someone like me who hasn't read significant texts and fully understood the ramifications of key concepts. — Tom Storm

I spend time on the r/Taoism subreddit on reddit. People are always asking how they can solve personal problems using Taoist principles. As I see it, Taoism is a path without a goal. It's a process to follow to make you the kind of person who can solve those problems. I think other kinds of philosophy are similar. Perhaps that seems at odds with what I wrote in my previous post:

That's pragmatism, or at least it's foundation. I come from science and engineering, so my focus is on knowledge - how to get it and what to do with it once you have it. Very concrete - problem solving. — T Clark

I don't think it is. Pragmatism is also about process, not answers. Answers are what science provides.

I think good philosophy begins with life, encountering a problem that doesn't yield to the usual approach, finding something that works and wondering why it works, noticing something peculiar, or noticing the peculiarity of something ordinary. It begins, so to speak, with things, not with ideas about things. — Srap Tasmaner

That's pragmatism, or at least it's foundation. I come from science and engineering, so my focus is on knowledge - how to get it and what to do with it once you have it. Very concrete - problem solving.

But when I look at SEP, I see too much philosophy that starts on paper, lives on paper, passes into oblivion on paper. — Srap Tasmaner

I find SEP really helpful, but I never go to it until I want the detail it provides. I also use it and Wikipedia when I come across something new I'm not familiar with.

1. Be curious about the world.
2. Be curious about how you think about the world.
3. Learn about the world however you can (looking, asking people, reading).
4. Learn new ways of thinking and, one hopes, get better at it by talking to people, reading, reflecting.
5. Make sure you don't forget (1) and (2), ever.
6. Don't worry if it's called "philosophy." — Srap Tasmaner

I like it. I started a thread a year or so ago about how you don't need to read philosophy. I overstated my case. I think reading other philosophers is useful, but everything has to start the way you've laid it out.

Because this is what is most important in philosophy: philosophical thinking, not philosophical knowledge. You can know about all the philosophers of the world and what they have written, but if you don't know how to think and actually thing philosophically --in the same way pone does with mathematics-- it's all on the surface. Very little useful. It's encyclopedic versus operational knowledge. And to operate philosophically is to think philosophically. — Alkis Piskas

Well put. I'd go one step further and say you have to know how to use philosophy in your everyday life in order to really be able to say you do philosophy. Your analogy with math is a good one. Reading and understanding the fundamental law of calculus is fine, but you have to be able to do the calculations.

↪T Clark is doing the approach to philosophy; when such introspection arrives at a conclusion, philosophy is being done. — Mww

I think that Kafka quote provides a good example of how philosophy is done, at least how I try to do it. I was rummaging around, thinking, talking to other people. Then I read that quote and it was as if a door opened. "That's what I'm doing! Someone else is doing it too." Reading philosophy is all about finding kindred spirits, not following gurus. My kindred spirits - Emerson, Lao Tzu, R.G. Collingwood, P.W. Herman, Kafka...

I would not attempt to actually 'do ' philosophy, I don't have the expertise. — Tom Storm

It always annoys me when you say something like this. You're one of the most widely read, open minded, observant, and genuinely curious people here on the forum. You do philosophy for the reasons people invented philosophy in the first place. And you like "Annie Hall."