rather I am expressing skepticism towards those who would claim mathematics is 'objectively real', and also pointing out the contradiction in the term 'mathematical platonism'.

Does that make sense? — Tzeentch

It makes sense, but I would also suggest that it’s based on a common misconception. The idea of a ‘realm of Forms’ is often misconstrued as an ‘ethereal realm’, like a ghostly palace. But consider ‘the domain of natural numbers’. That is quite real, but the word ‘domain’ has a very different sense to that of a ‘place’ or ‘world’ - even if there are some numbers ‘inside’ it and others not. ‘Domains’ and ‘objects’ are metaphors or figures of speech which are easily but mistakenly reified as actual domains or objects. But that for which they are metaphors are real nonetheless.

The point about ‘truths of reason’ is that they can only be grasped by reason. But due to the cultural impact of empiricism we are conditioned to believe that only what is materially existent - what is ‘out there, somewhere’ - is real. But numbers, and other ‘objects of reason’, are real in a different way to sense objects. And that is a stumbling block for a culture in which things are said to either exist or not. There is no conceptual space for different modes of reality (leaving aside dry, academic modal metaphysics). Which is why we can only think of them as kinds of objects, which they’re actually not. They’re really closer to kinds of acts.

See this post

:ok:

I’m interested in what you mean, regardless.

If Platonism seems to ‘undercut’ empiricism, it does so only by occupying the opposing pole of the binary implicating both physicalism and platonism within the same tired dualistic subject-object metaphysics. — Joshs

I don't know if I agree with your diagnosis that the opposition to Platonism arises from 'subject-object metaphysics'. I think it goes back to the decline of Aristotelian realism and the ascendancy of nominalism in late medieval Europe. From which comes the oxymoronic notion of mind-independence of the empirical domain, when whatever we know of the empirical domain is dependent on sensory perception and judgement (per Kant). Hence those objections in that passage I quoted, 'The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous'. Anything real has to be 'out there somewhere' - otherwise it's 'in the mind'. That is the origin of subject-object metaphysics.

see both numbers and physical things as pragmatic constructions, neither strictly ideal nor empirical, subjective nor objective, inner nor outer, but real nonetheless? — Joshs

But there are imaginary numbers, and also imaginary objects, even imaginary worlds. There are degrees of reality, and there is a such a thing as delusion, and delusions can be very deep indeed, in today's panoptical culture. Agree with the constructivist attitude overall, but still want to honour the epistemology of the Divided Line.

Interesting discussion of this topic was published in The Smithsonian Institute magazine, from which:

Some scholars feel very strongly that mathematical truths are “out there,” waiting to be discovered—a position known as Platonism. It takes its name from the ancient Greek thinker Plato, who imagined that mathematical truths inhabit a world of their own—not a physical world, but rather a non-physical realm of unchanging perfection; a realm that exists outside of space and time. Roger Penrose, the renowned British mathematical physicist, is a staunch Platonist. In The Emperor’s New Mind, he wrote that there appears “to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. It is as though human thought is, instead, being guided towards some external truth—a truth which has a reality of its own...”

Many mathematicians seem to support this view. The things they’ve discovered over the centuries—that there is no highest prime number; that the square root of two is an irrational number; that the number pi, when expressed as a decimal, goes on forever—seem to be eternal truths, independent of the minds that found them. If we were to one day encounter intelligent aliens from another galaxy, they would not share our language or culture, but, the Platonist would argue, they might very well have made these same mathematical discoveries.

“I believe that the only way to make sense of mathematics is to believe that there are objective mathematical facts, and that they are discovered by mathematicians,” says James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science recently retired from the University of Toronto. “Working mathematicians overwhelmingly are Platonists. They don't always call themselves Platonists, but if you ask them relevant questions, it’s always the Platonistic answer that they give you.”

Other scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?) — What is Math?

Why not, indeed? But I think that extended passage brings out the underlying animus against mathematical Platonism, which is mainly that it undermines empiricism. And empiricism is deeply entrenched in our worldview.

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. — SEP, Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

I resolve the conundrum by saying that numbers (etc) are real but not existent in a phenomenal sense. They are intelligible or noumenal objects (in a Platonic rather than a Kantian sense) and as such are indispensable elements of rational judgement.

Reducing truth to a binary seems to edge us towards primarily defining truth in terms of "propositions/sentences" and, eventually, formalism alone, and so deflation. This is as opposed to primarily defining truth in terms of knowledge/belief and speech/writing.

The key difference is that, in the latter, there is a knower, a believer, a speaker, or a writer, whereas propositions generally get transformed into isolated "abstract objects" (presumed to be "real" or not), that exist unconnected to any intellect. Such propositions are true or false (there is no gradation) simpliciter. Such a view seems to require some dubious assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would argue that the underlying 'dubious assumption' here is that the world, and by extension truth, exists independently of any mind or knowing subject. This move to isolate propositions as abstract objects, true or false simpliciter, overlooks the relational nature of truth. From an idealist perspective, truth emerges within the interplay between the knower and the known, and severing this connection risks reducing truth to a sterile formalism. Hence also:

The essential unity of the thinker with the thought, the knower with the world, can only be shown by rejecting, as Kimhi does, the idea that a proposition can be true or false in the absence of some context of assertion. — J

Sebastian Rödl — J

I've read about his books and tried to tackle some of his papers, but I'm finding him difficult reading. I would be pleased if there was another here with some interest.

'Ain't never gonna do it without my fez on' ~ Steely Dan

Well known knuckle-dragged spills the beans

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-20/canavan-coalition-not-serious-nuclear-keith-pitt-quits/104749828?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link

thankyou again :pray: I'm hanging about in a holiday house on Christmas Holidays (summer where I am) and this will make for interesting viewing.

The Trump-Musk Shutdown is a fair indication of the paralysis and complete incompetence of the MAGA movement to do what they are elected to do, which is actually govern. It's become clear that the World's Richest Man is in effect calling the shots, saying he doesn't care if the Government shuts down and that no legislation ought to be passed until after the Incarceration Inauguration. The Emperor, meanwhile, has made it clear he intends to rule by decree (a.k.a. 'executive order') and bully anyone who opposes the Divine Will by either launching bogus 'investigations' (e.g. Liz Cheney) or threatening their primary pre-selection. Just what could be expected from electing an insurrectionist president with no interest outside his own.

everything that makes you you... — praxis

'He who saves his own life will loose it'. Transcending egoic consciousness.

:100: Thanks for the introduction to Shaun Gallagher.

The problem of base load power isn't just corporate propaganda. — ssu

Yeah I didn't think so, although must admit to probably needing a bit more research. I'm not against nuclear power in principle, but the practical, political, economic, and environmental barriers are enormous, particularly here in Australia.

*

Thanks. Worth knowing.

However, the "hard question" remains : by what physical process does a brain construct a worldview? — Gnomon

Unknown

In that case, is natural Matter their substitute for belief in a super-natural Ideal realm? — Gnomon

As I've said earlier in the thread, the process was one of elimination: first posit 'the world' as comprising extended matter and non-extended mind; then show that there is no feasible way for the latter to affect the former; then declare that latter non-existent, leaving only the former. That's the predicament leftover from the 'Cartesian division'. It's still very much active in the grammar of the Western worldview.

True enough, but there is also need for massive distributed storage, either batteries or some other mechanism, like hydro, to supply baseload power. I'm sure that's not just corporate propaganda. Although that said, there's work underway to connect existing grid infrastructure to solar plants e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/16/climate/coal-to-solar-minnesota?cid=ios_app

When I first heard of small modular reactors, they seemed a great idea. But as we all now know, they're not ready for market yet and may not ever be. The only one being trialled outside China was mothballed a year ago.

Fair. By talkback, I meant populism rather than principle, although that doesn’t fit either as the nuclear policy isn’t that popular. I can’t stand Dutton, I’ve never believed he could be PM, but then I thought the same of Albanese in the past, so who knows?

Agree. Dutton is wholly driven by talkback radio politics rather than principle.

"Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly." — Gnomon

What he's saying, is that the 'idea' of the object, which is its appearance to us in consciousness, is 'immediately given'. That applies to every characteristic of the object - how it feels, how heavy it is, etc, all of which are ideas. The key phrase is 'it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time'. He's *not* saying that we have the idea of the object on one hand, and the actual object on the other - everything that appears to us, appears as 'idea'. Whereas materialism attempts to explain this unitary experience with reference to something else altogether, namely, 'matter', as a theoretical construct existing apart from or outside the experience of the object, and which is somehow more fundamental than the experience itself.

I recall you've read Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order - the resonances with that book ought to be clear. For example:

In fact, what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be “physical”. On the other hand, since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality. It is shown in the final chapter ('Mind, Life and Universe') that this is an illusory dichotomy, and any complete account of the universe must allow for the existence of a nonmaterial component which accounts for its unity and complexity. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p. 6). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

That 'nonmaterial component' is not, however, external to the mind itself, but the activity of consciousness which integrates sensory and intellectual data into a meaningful whole - Kant's 'transcendental unity of apperception'. (Ref. Pinter doesn't mention Schopenhauer but there are numerous references to Kant.)

I don’t think Dutton’s nuclear policy stacks up, but it’s also a great pity that it’s been made a partisan political issue - by him, mind you. But I think nuclear energy research should be on the table as part of a possible solution, instead of it being a Labor v Liberal matter.

I see the concept of the 'middle way' as a principle for careful thinking, but wonder how may be it seen as as a basis for ethics? How useful is the idea? — Jack Cummins

First of all, it requires interpretation in terms of the culture and society within which it was articulated. That is the basis of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation. When the Buddha articulated the 'middle way', he had specific kinds of 'extreme views' in mind. It wasn't simply a kind of bourgeois 'moderation in everything'. One extreme was asceticism in pursuit of purification, and the ascetic practices of the time were indeed extreme. On his quest, the Buddha fasted almost to death, and in fact there is a class of Buddhist icon which represents Siddhartha Gautama (as he was known prior to the enlightenment) as an almost skeletal figure:



It was on the verge of death that according to legend the Buddha was offered sustenance by a passing milkmaid, upon which he renounced extreme asceticism as profitless and unworthy.

The opposite extreme, of sensual self-indulgence and pursuit of pleasure, is represented by what he had renounced, a life of relative luxury. Thereafter he recommended a 'middle way' of avoiding both extremes of asceticism and luxurious living, although of course the traditional mode of life of a Buddhist monk is still ascetic from the perspective of modern culture, if not from that of ancient Eastern culture.

However the middle way is also intepreted on a philosophical level as the avoidance of two extreme views, namely, those of nihilism and eternalism. (The philosophical form is called Madhyamaka, literally 'middle way.)

Nihilism is the view that at death the body returns to the elements and there are no consequences of actions performed in this life (or karma). There are various forms of nihilism, one of which was represented in the early Buddhist texts by the Carvakas, materialists, often merchants or aristocrats, although there were also nihilist ascetics.

The other extreme is eternalism, which is a harder idea to fathom. Here is where the culture has to be taken into account, as in ancient Indian culture, there was already a strain of belief in the fact of re-birth, that beings are re-born in the various states of being according to their karma. 'Eternalism' was the view that, first, there is a forever unchanging kernel or essence which migrates life to life and which stands apart from all change and flux, and second, that the aim of the religious life is to be born in higher states of being in perpetuity. Whereas the Buddha's teaching was that there is no such unchanging kernel or self, and that the aim of the religious life is not to enjoy propitious rebirth but to escape altogether the plight of continued rebirth.

Of course, that is a bare outline of the basic ideas of the middle way, but they have been elaborated over millenia in many different cultures and settings.

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. ¹

It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to electricity, to the vegetative and then to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is, knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought 'matter', we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it.

Thus the tremendous petitio principii (= circular reasoning) reveals itself unexpectedly; for suddenly the last link is seen to be the starting-point, the chain a circle, and the materialist is like Baron Münchausen who, when swimming in water on horseback, drew the horse into the air with his legs, and himself also by his cue. The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. ²

Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But ...all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time³. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained.

To the assertion that thought is a modification of matter we may always, with equal right, oppose the contrary assertion that all matter is merely the modification of the knowing subject, as its idea. Yet the aim and ideal of all natural science is at bottom a consistent materialism. The recognition here of the obvious impossibility of such a system establishes another truth which will appear in the course of our exposition, the truth that all science properly so called, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach its final goal, nor give a complete and adequate explanation: for it is not concerned with the inmost nature of the world, it cannot get beyond the idea; indeed, it really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation

-----

1. This grounds the connection between physical causation and logical necessity.

2. "The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains" ~ Christian Fuchs

3. Hence, 'mind-created world'.

I agree that consciousness is a natural process — Joshs

Whereas I think it is an open question, subject to constant revision as our conception of nature is constantly changing. There are strong lines of argument that rationality itself is not subject to naturalistic explanations.

Kant correctly recognized that taking a strictly materialist stance depends on an idealism, since the very notion of a mind-independent object covertly smuggles in all the subjective apparatus needed to have an object appear before a subject. So realism and idealism are not opposites but versions of the same subject -based thinking. — Joshs

But critical idealism will recognise that in a way that metaphysical realism, like most here, would not. Acknowledging the unavoidably subjective nature of knowledge is in direct contradiction to metaphysical realism. And also Bernardo Kastrup questions that idealism and materialism are opposites at all. Idealism is not positing 'mental stuff' as a constituent of reality, in the way that materialism does. Materialism attempts to explain the primary datum of experience (consciousness) in terms of inferred, abstract constructs (matter). This makes materialism dependent on a speculative leap that is ungrounded in direct experience.

if you want to get beyond the realism-idealism, fact-value split, you have to be able to see value WITHIN matter, not separate from it and alongside it. — Joshs

Idealism is perfectly compatible with realism, but not scientific or philosophical materialism. But I agree that Husserl and Heidegger performed a valuable service by returning to the 'things themselves' and the actualities of embodied existence which is not found in Kant.

"So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word "spirit" is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively". — Three Philosophies, One Reality — Gnomon

I should say something more about that. Gudo Nishijima was a Sōtō Zen master, who died about 12 years ago. He was not a monk, he had a career in the banking industry in Tokyo. He elaborated a philosophical system based on the teaching of Dogen who was the founder of Sōtō Zen. His 'three philosophies and one reality' can be summarised as follows - human understanding unfolds through a dialectical process involving stages.

Idealism: This stage corresponds to subjective and theoretical thinking. It represents abstract ideas and the way humans interpret reality through their minds. However, idealism alone leads to suffering due to the inability to reconcile these ideas with the material world.

Materialism: This is the objective view focusing on the material, external world. It considers reality purely in terms of physical phenomena and disregards subjective experience. This perspective, while useful, obscures something fundamental to human existence.

Realism (Synthesis): This phase integrates the subjective (idealistic) and objective (materialistic) views, forming a more balanced and practical understanding. It emphasizes the role of action and experience as a way to unify these perspectives.

Reality Itself: The ultimate stage transcends philosophical frameworks. It is the direct experience of reality through practice, particularly Zazen (sitting meditation). Dogen highlights that reality cannot be fully captured in words or intellectual concepts; it must be lived and experienced.

All this is laid out in his book To Meet the Real Dragon.

:100:

My only prayer is 'Thanks for this day Lord'. Every night.

Not existent, but real, I say. Precisely where that distinction shows up. See What is Math? Smithsonian Institute Magazine.

It's a case well put. But how do we rule out a different approach and model all together? Does it have to be physicalism versus idealsim? Is dualistic thinking all we have to resolve our biggest quesions? I'd be interested to hear more from a rigorous, post-modern perspective assessing the foundational axioms or presuppositions that may be propping up our confusions. And if the world is entirely mind created and contingent, how do we know anything for certain about either metaphysical position? — Tom Storm

Just when I thought I was out......

I explained above the 'Cartesian divide' and the source of the mind-matter division. Ever since, Western philosophy has vacillated between materialism (the objective is real, everything arises from matter) and idealism (the subject and mind alone is real). You're right in saying that is a dualism, but there are many layers of meaning. Bernardo Kastrup points out that materialism - that the basic constituents of reality are material in nature - and idealism - that reality is experiential in nature - are incommensurable types of explanations. It's not a contest between different kinds of constituents, but a completely different perspective. Idealism, in the way that I intend it, and I think in the sense in which it is meaningful, is not about what 'things are made of'. It is about the nature of reality as experienced. It's not positing 'mind' as a kind of building block or constituent in the way that materialism did with atoms. It is pointing out that whatever is real, is meaningful only insofar as it is meaningful for a subject. Materialism attempts to arrive at certainty with reference to an ostensibly mind-independent physical reality. Idealism as I understand it points out that this is an oxymoronic conception, as whatever is known of matter, is known by the mind through perception of objects. So the idea of a mind-independent object is self-contradictory.

But it's very important not to make an object out of 'spirit' or 'mind'. Nishijima-roshi puts it like this:

The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit.

I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing (physical) exists outside of matter. Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.

So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word "spirit" is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Three Philosophies, One Reality

Compare:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

It must lie outside the world. — Wittgenstiein

//

Learning is one of the defining characteristics of our species. The drive to learn is another. We can learn. It's inconceivable that we not bother. All of us not attempt to learn anything that doesn't have a practical purpose? — Patterner

Quite so. 'Man desires to know', said Aristotle. Philosophy is the pursuit of an understanding that is worth having for its own sake.

I will make one more comment, and then I'm logging out for a time, as I'm going away with my dear other and I've promised not to spend too much time on the forum talking to my 'invisible friends' as she puts it (sometimes through gritted teeth.)

I will conclude for now by making the observation that nothing is 'purely' or 'only' physical. That has been made abundantly clear by physics. It is not an appeal to 'quantum woo', as I've studied the issue closely, from a philosophical perspective. It is beyond dispute that at the most fundamental level, we can no longer conceive of reality in terms of particulate matter, of energetic particles obeying deteministic laws. Determinism went out the window with the uncertainty principle, and it's not going to be revived. Particles are now understood to be excitations of field states. And what field states are is far from obvious.

But nothing about that statement vitiates or calls into question science. I'm in awe of science, technology, computers (where I've made a living for the last two decades as a technical writer) and medicine. It's constantly evolving and endlessly fascinating. What I reject is the leftover view that the world and everything in it can be understood on the basis of physical principles and physical causation.

The reason physics is paradigmatic in modern thought, is because it encapsulates the very idea of scientific certainty and precision. In creating the Cartesian vision, physics excludes whatever can't be described and predicted by the mathematical laws of bodies and forces. But it has to be recalled that all of this rests on three fundamental steps: idealisation (i.e. the 'ideal bodies' 'ideal planes' etc), abstraction (i.e. abstracting away all of those attributes that can't be predicted according to physical principles) and objectification. Because of the immense prestige and success of physical science over the last two centuries, this is extended to serve a paradigm for life and everything it entails. But it cannot be that.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

From this I have formed the view that as soon as life appears then you have the appearance of something which is not reducible to physics or chemistry. Because it is the beginning of the appearance of perspective, and, as argued at the outset, without perspective nothing can be said to exist (see How Time Began with the First Eye Opening.)

And with that, bye for now. :party:

Perhaps we just don't understand the physical well enough. What's the alternative? Posit the existence of another realm? — Janus

I will circle back to this earler comment, because I think it underlies a lot of what is being said. Objectivity was crucial to the emergence of early modern science, which distinguished it from the intuition-based, introspective theorizing of the medieval and ancient world. So it is not coincidental that the first uses of the word 'objectivity' began to appear in the early 1600s. This emerged alongside Galileo's new physics, and his conceptual division between the primary and secondary qualities of objects - the primary being figure (or shape), size, position, motion, and quantity, while the secondary included color, taste, aroma, and sound. Descartes further entrenched this model with the separation of mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa), set against the backdrop of a universe devoid of teleology (action for a purpose). Right knowledge becomes the mathematically precise description of data in space-time.

In effect this divides the world into separate realms. There's the physical domain - objective, quantifiable, tractable to empirical analysis - and the subjective domain - the inner world, personal and private, the domain of values. We respect the right of individual conscience and the importance of values but they're not real in the same sense as objective facts. You yourself say this frequently. So you're saying there's the scientific view, maybe it's not perfect, but it's all we have, but to question that is to 'posit the existence of another realm'. And that's because the Cartesian division is implicit in 'the grammar of our worldview'. That's how it has been set up for us. We see the external, material, real world, and the private, ineffable, knowing subject as separated realms.

See these episodes of John Vervaeke, 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' for a detailed analysis.

Ep 20 - Galileo and the Death of the Cosmos
21 - Martin Luther and Descartes
22 - Descartes vs Hobbes

The thing is, your 'point' is a mystification of what is a relatively simple and clear physical picture. — wonderer1

It is not. It is well-accepted science which your physicalist blinders won't allow you to ackowledge.

There is no need for a 'different level' for semantic content to exist on. Semantic content is attributed to linguistic media (letters, Braille, Morse code, etc.) by neural nets which have been trained to attribute semantic content to such media. — wonderer1

Neural networks which are created by humans to fulfil their requirements according to specifications. There are no such systems existing spontaneously as a consequence of physical causation.

And yet you rely on LLMs — wonderer1

I use them as a reference source and I see no incongruity in so doing. I'm not a Luddite.

I'd expect you could come up with a way of falsifying any physicalist account of language. — wonderer1

What do you mean by physicalism? What are you arguing for? I've presented a couple of sources that call the physicalist view into account, you won't even acknowledge them, so what's the point of continuing?

as well as Buddhism. — Corvus

He was very much a disciple of Kant, although one who dared to correct his teacher, but his main Eastern source was a translation of one of the Upaniṣads, not Buddhism. Buddhism was not well known in Schopenhauer's day, although he does mention it.

Isn't Buddhism after all based on the nihilism? — Corvus

Nihilism is rejected as a false view in Buddhism. It is one of the 'two extremes', the other extreme being eternalism, although that is a difficult concept to explain in few words.

Although that essay you quote is indeed pessimistic, perhaps I have been too easily impressed by the idealist aspects of his philosophy. His dour pessimism is alienating at times.

The way I compare Schopenhauer's philosophy to Buddhism is that he has an acute sense of the 'first noble truth' of Buddhism, that existence is dukkha, suffering or sorrowful or unsatisfying. But not so much of the remaining three 'noble truths' - that suffering has a cause, that it has an end, and that there is a way to that end. So it's not unreservedly pessmistic, although it is not very compatible with what modern culture regards as normality.

I can see why he says it, and why Schopenhauer has the reputation of being a pessimist who says that life is meaningless. I'm a lot more drawn to his 'World as idea' than I am to the whole 'philosophy of the Will' aspect. But that is not the whole of his philosophy. Take a look at Moral Awareness as a Mode of Self Transcendence and the following sections.

At issue is whether this is or is not reducible to physical causation.

Words are patterns of physical vibrations propagating through the air, or physical text. — wonderer1

The original claim was:

All of Greene's books....consist of paper and ink. Is that all they are? How does the meaning they convey arise from the combination of ink and paper? — Wayfarer

The point I am making is not that ink and paper aren't essential to the physical nature of the book but that semantic content exists on a different level from its physical form. Words may be encoded as sounds or written letters in various languages, yet the same information can be encoded in entirely different symbolic systems—whether in different languages, Braille, or even Morse code—and still retain its meaning. This demonstrates that semantic content is independent of the specific physical medium in which it is expressed.

A book 'contains meaning' only insofar as it is read and understood by a subject capable of interpreting its content. Furthermore, different readers may interpret the same information in diverse ways, highlighting the subjective and contextual nature of meaning-making. The meaning is not an inherent property of the physical text itself but arises through the interaction between the symbolic representation and the mind of the reader.

So language has a physical aspect, but it can't be accounted for by physical principles alone.

The reason I introduced biosemiotics to the conversation is because a similar principle is operative at every level of organic life. Biosemiotics depicts the operations of cellular life as language-like rather than machine-like. I mentioned it, because it too challenges physicalism on a fundamental level.

The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm — Marcello Barbieri, What is Information?

That in essence is the materialist view. However the author goes on to say:

but that is not the case. The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life—biological information and the genetic code—that are totally absent in the inorganic world, which means that information is present only in living systems, that chemistry alone is not enough and that a deep divide does exist between life and matter. This is the information paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’.

That is consistent with Norbert Weiner's oft-quoted aphorism, 'Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.'

Of course I don't expect that to make any sense to anyone so unwilling to consider physicalism charitably as yourself. — wonderer1

Physicalism is a proper methodological principle but philosophical materialism is a different matter.
At issue is the claim that a brain is 'nothing but' atoms, or that life can be understood in solely physical or chemical terms, or that living beings are 'simply' organisations of the elements of the periodic table and no different in kind from inorganic matter. There are other levels of meaning and organisation - not a mysterious 'something else' as any kind of vital spirit or secret sauce, but higher level organisational principles that appear throughout organic life that are not reducible to physics. That is the point of From Physical Causation to Organisms of Meaning. But I don't expect that to make sense to anyone so unwilling to consider challenges to philosophical materialism as yourself.

The semantic elements in your stream of thought are physically detectable. — wonderer1

Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch?

Pagels argues that John is a "gnostic gospel," which might be a bit much, but there is something to the idea. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I had the idea that she thought the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi was gnostic and that John represented what was to become orthodoxy (in Beyond Belief). Do I recall incorrectly?

What you say is not true. — Janus

He’s :100: right.

Beyond those kinds of concerns do you think the answer to whether consciousness is physical or not could matter for any other reason? — Janus

You say it doesn’t matter, but you sure as hell love arguing about it. The question @Patterner is asking is a perfectly valid one - how can we be affected by the meaning of words when meaning, itself, is not physical. That is the central question of Terrence Deacon’s book Incomplete Nature, which you mention. He certainly doesn’t question naturalism but extends it to account for what he describes as ‘absentials’—things that have no material existence but have causal roles in all sentient life. It’s an intriguing argument, though not one I’ve fully mastered.

I’ve been listening the last two years to John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. …
— Wayfarer

Yes, I have watched most of that series. I noticed he discusses Hegel but does not have one on Schopenhauer. I think that's something revealing. — schopenhauer1

He talks about him in Episode 22, immediately prior to the episode on Hegel. He says Schopenhauer was the ‘godfather of nihilism’ which I don’t necessarily agree with. But that and the preceding two episodes are riveting,

But trying to sort out what it means exactly has been...knotty. I get conflicting accounts on how it says that reality can be real or local but not both. — Darkneos

There's an entire section of publishing and media devoted to explaining, exploiting, or denying ‘quantum weirdness’. The best book I’ve read on it is Quantum, Manjit Kumar, which goes into the history and implications in depth. It’s accessible to the non-physicist reader too. But there are no easy answers to these conundrums.

I'm pretty sure physics doesn't really have anything to say about realism, anti-realism, or idealism — Darkneos

Don’t be. Physics was at the center of the Copernican ‘scientific revolution’ and that had massive philosophical impact. The ‘quantum revolution’ was arguably even more impactful, especially considering the central role of physics in science and technology.

Pre-WWII, there were two very influential British scientists and science communicators, Sir James Jeans and Arthur Edfington. They’re not mentioned much nowadays but their books sold in the millions in their day, and both of them presented cases for forms of idealism based on physics. There is still a thriving school of idealist-leaning physicists among other schools of thought.