Metaphysical naturalism (MN) provides a metaphysical context for what we know about the world. Of course, any metaphysical theory should be consistent with what we know, but the strength of naturalism is that it depends the fewest assumptions. The basic assumptions of MN are not derived scientifically (as scientism would require)- they are a product of conceptual analysis - just like any other metaphysical system must do. — Relativist

However, if you drill down, the basis of the 'conceptual analysis' turns out to be scientific. If you discarded scientific cosmology, atomic physics, evolutionary theory, and so on, what would be left of 'metaphysical naturalism'? And, for that matter, isn't 'metaphysical naturalism' oxymoronic insofar as naturalism is generally defined in opposition to metaphysics?

Qualia are a problem, but can be rationalized as illusions. — Relativist

What is at issue inthis rather glib statement? What's hiding behind these words?

'Qualia' is an item of academic jargon intended to denote 'the qualitative aspects of experience' - the 'what it is like'-ness of seeing, smelling, touching, experiencing - of being, in short. So in what sense are qualia 'a problem'? They're a problem for physicalism, because physicalism claims that what is real must be objectively measurable, which these qualitative states are not. Physicalism recognises only atomic, molecular, and chemical reactions that can analysed in quantitative terms within the framework of mathematicized science. 'Qualia', the qualities of existence, are 'a problem' only insofar as they can't be accomodated within that framework. So they need to be 'rationalised as illusions'. Meaning that the qualities of experience, how it feels to be human, need to be rationalised away. But an illusion can only be an artefact of consciousness. One may have delusions about consciousness, but it's not possible that consciousness itself is an illusion.

You haven't provided an overall metaphysical framework. — Relativist

To do so would require probably another long post, but essentially, I try to combine elements of traditional metaphysics (Christian and Indian) with phenomenology whilst also keeping within the outlines of evolutionary science and cosmology. I see the evolution of life in terms of the manifestation of intelligence, through which the Universe becomes aware of itself. So life and human life in particular, are not the products of chance, but neither necessarily the products of an external 'intelligent designer'. 'What is latent', as one lecturer put it to me, 'becoming patent'.

In Buddhist philosophy, the source of suffering is attachment (or clinging) to what is transient and ephemeral revolving around ego-centred consciousness. The aim of philosophy is release from those attachments, known in Eastern philosophy as liberation or mokṣa, whereas the absence of insight into that is to be ignorant of the causal chain that drives existence. Much more could be said, but that's the general drift of the metaphysical framework as I understand it.

Plus you have Rinehart stomping around saying that they're not far enough to the Right. And that dreadful Madame Lash on Sky News (Abbott's former dominatrix). So, yes, there are nefarious forces.

you're welcome. Recommend the book if you can get hold of a copy.

I don't agree that they will maintain the hard right that Spud inflicted on them. Ley says they have no choice but to move to the centre, and I think they will have to do that, otherwise the Teals will continue to eat their breakfast. (And, by the way, the Teal Nicolette Boele seems to have beaten the Liberal Gisele Kapterian in Bradfield, albet by a vanishingly small margin probably requiring a re-count. Incidentally there was a very minor social media scandal when 'Boele was forced to apologise for telling a 19-year-old salon employee that her hair washing was “amazing, and I didn’t even have sex with you”. Careers have died on less. )

I think, neither. The liberal-conservative parties can only be a realistic electoral prospect in coalition. If the separation is permanent I can’t see how they can ever be a real force again. I think Howard thinks the same, and most of the old guard as well.

Some analysis the other day, SMH or ABC, said that the collapse of the Liberal vote ultimately goes back to the climate war decisions made by Minchin and Abbott. There was a photo of the infamous group hug when they overturned the carbon tax, which was actually working exactly as intended. Then there was the disgraceful knifing of Turnbull by the climate deniers and the takeover by the Spud. That is what allowed the Teals (environmentally-aware conservatives) to scoop up the conservative vote.

By the way, as an afterthought - is the ALP roughly equivalent to Canada’s Liberal Party?

Space and time are pure forms of intuition that enable the possibility of our being able to have experiences. But what kind of experiences is he referring to? — RussellA

Any!

Critics of nominalism like Dugin and Benoist do often connect it to the unraveling of traditional identities, but as you point out, that assumes the legitimacy of those categories in the first place. From a nominalist view, those identities are constructed and contingent, not essential truths. — Areeb Salim

Are there any? Or is truth always a mental construct?

There’s an element of faith, but there are also signs and milestones. But I’m fully expecting you to declare ‘but we can never know that’, as you generally always do.

@tim wood mentions the book The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, which I read just as I started posting on forums, around 2010. It is a very insightful book. The subject really is the geneology of modernity - where 'geneology' means the development over time of the deep assumptions and understandings that underlie modern thought and philosophy.

'Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descarte and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which, according to Gillespie, dismantled the rational God and Cosmos of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, born out of a concern that anything less than this would jeopardize His divine omnipotence. Subsequent intellectual history is, in Gillespie's reading, a grappling with the question of free will and determinism. Protestantism becomes fideistic ('salvation by faith alone'), and denies free will in order to preserve God's absolute power (illustrated by Calvin's doctrine of predestination). However, this in turn culminated in an ambivalence about salvation: if God simply wills whom to save, human action can have no real merit. Gillespie's chapter on the debate between Erasmus-Luther was among the most interesting in bringing this out' ~ from a review.

… the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age. Viewed from this perspective, the process of secularization or disenchantment that has come to be seen as identical with modernity was in fact something different than it seemed: not the crushing victory of reason over infamy, to use Voltaire’s famous term, not the long drawn out death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed, and not the evermore distant withdrawal of the deus absconditus Heidegger points to, but the gradual transference of divine attributes to human beings (an infinite human will), the natural world (universal mechanical causality), social forces (the general will, the hidden hand), and history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason). ...

That the de-emphasis, disappearance, and death of God should bring about a change in our understanding of man and nature is hardly surprising. Modernity … originates out of a series of attempts to construct a coherent metaphysic specialis on a nominalist foundation, to reconstitute something like the comprehensive summalogical account of scholastic realism. The successful completion of this project was rendered problematic by the real ontological differences between an infinite (and radically omnipotent) God and his finite creation (including both man and nature).

---

Nominalism and all its ways are devices of the Devil if devil there be. And in particular it is the disease which almost drove poor John Mill mad,—the dreary outlook upon a world in which all that can be loved, or admired, or understood is figment.

— Charles Sanders Peirce, "Semiotic and significs : the correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Lady Victoria Welby"

Compare with:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. — Ideas have Consequences, Richard Weaver

(That book, by the way, is on a similar theme to Gillespie's. Weaver was a professor of English at Chicago, and published his book in the 1950s, since when it has become a staple of American intellectual conservatism (which is unfortunate in my view.))

My interpretation of this issue, and why it is important, is that this is how scientific materialism comes to be such a dominant force in modern western culture. Why? Because in the absence of universals, the nature of being can only be understood in terms of particulars, and universal concepts reduced to the psychological or social.

Oddly enough Berkeley is considered a nominalist. — NOS4A2

As indeed he was, and it is one of the major shortcomings of his otherwise ingenious philosophy. His circumlocutions on 'general ideas' are the weakest point of his writing - something which C S Peirce also commented on.

It just seems that we can, say, speak of 'boundless that is writing' but, in fact, there is no 'boundless' and the whole thing is illusion-like. If one wants, instead, to assign some reality to us and the world it seems to me that one must assume that the 'external world' has some intelligible structure. — boundless

Recall the koan, 'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.' 'First, there is a mountain' refers to before training, before initial awakening, the state of everyday acceptance of appearances. 'Then there is no mountain' refers to the state of realisation of inter-dependence/emptiness and the illusory nature of appearance. 'Then there is' refers to the mature state of recognising that indeed mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers, but with a balanced understanding.

To me, it seems absurd to refer to matter as a "hypothetical substance", as if it's worth entertaining that it is unreal. Absurd, because it's unwarranted to believe matter to NOT be an actual substance. It seems a futile attempt to wipe our cognitive slate clean. — Relativist

Metaphysics is first philosophy, it starts from first principles. Descartes started his famous meditation on Cogito with exactly that 'wiping the slate clean'.

Go back to the passage I was alluding to:

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 time. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation

Now, if you consider any material object - the computer you're looking at now, the desk it's sitting on, the keyboard you're typing on: '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 time.'

You might explain the sense in which this is mistaken.

There's nothing empirical about metaphysical naturalism. You're conflating scientism with MN. — Relativist

You refer to 'facts of science' in defense of metaphysical naturalism, and specifically to reject anything perceived as inconsistent with modern science (teleology, qualia, formal and final causation, to mention a few.) You admit that physicalism doesn't really accomodate or explain the nature of mind. But then, when pressed about that, you say, that metaphysical naturalism is not science, even though it apparently relies on scientific ontology. Pardon me for so saying, but it seems a little disengenuous.

The indeterminism arises when interacting with something beyond the quantum system. This is where multiple interpretations of QM step in to explain what is occurring - and these explanations are essentially metaphysical, with the same problems that any metaphysical theory has: unverifiable and unfalsifiable. No interpretation is really inconsistent with MN, unless you choose to treat consciousness as something special and magical to begin with. — Relativist

Why the need for 'interpretations' at all? Why has the problem come up? You can't deny that debates over the meaning of quantum mechanics have been boiling ever since it was discovered. If there was a definitive explanation, then what were the arguments about, and why are they ongoing? Why was this thread created? Why does it ask 'does anyone support mind-independent reality'? Why did Einstein feel obliged to ask the question about the moon existing? You're not addressing any of those questions.

Plato sometimes referred to his Ideal realm as "more real" than material reality. His cave & shadow metaphor illustrated that concept. But I interpret his "eternal realities", not to mean more material & physical, but as more important for the theoretical purposes of philosophers. — Gnomon

As I’ve mentioned several times in this thread and elsewhere, this depends on the understanding that there are degrees of reality (or realness?) I suppose you could illustrate that with reference to a subject undergoing psychotic delusions - they would have ‘lost their grip in reality’, we would say. They would interpret their thoughts as demonic voices and perhaps suffer from hallucinations. Obviously the great majority of us are not delusional psychotics, but perhaps our grip on reality is still less that optimal, due to the way in which we habitually misinterpret or misunderstand the nature of existence. According to the Greeks, the philosopher has an enhanced understanding of the nature of being, superior to that of the ordinary uneducated man (the hoi polloi) because s/he is able to see more truly by virtue of the power of reason and mastery of the passions. So we’re in the middle, between rank psychosis at one end, and enlightened wisdom at the other. (And it’s a bell curve.)

The origin of Greek metaphysics is with Parmenides. In his prose-poem, Parmenides says that the great majority of people fall under the sway of illusory opinion, whereas he has been shown ‘the way of truth’ (by the goddess, as it happened, but then, this was the ancient world.) Parmenides’ successors, including Plato, sought to reconcile his vision with the facts of existence. This is the subject of an enormous body of arcane literature any fluency in which presumes knowledge of Ancient Greek (which could be expected in the days when students received an education in the Classics.)

Suffice to say, the idea of the forms in Plato are usually dismissed by current philosophy. But in my view, this is because they have been passed down through generations of classroom practices and their meaning has been lost or misinterpreted. This is why I keep referring to a fairly slim academic text book, Thinking Being: An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, by Eric Perl. It summarises Parmenides and Plato very effectively in the first couple of chapters. (It’s out of print but I’ve managed to get that .pdf copy.)

But in the examples you’ve given, I already see the kinds of mistakes that I think have crept in to the interpretations of Plato through centuries of interpretation. Chief amongst them is the idea that the ‘forms’ exist in some ‘ethereal realm’, a ‘Platonic heaven’ which is ‘separate’ from the ‘real world’, and also that ‘form’ can be understood as an ideal shape, which I think is completely mistaken. Perl explains the mistake of that in the chapter ‘The Meaning of Separation’ (see this post).

I’m not saying you or anyone should believe it, but that it’s important to recover the original vision of these texts as distinct from the many (often conflicting) interpretations that have grown up around them. Perl is a good starting point for that, as are books by Lloyd Gerson who is a recognised leading scholar of Platonist philosophy in the contemporary world.

It’s a temporary separation, ‘let’s live apart and work things out’. Early in the election cycle. They have no chance of any kind of electoral success as separate parties, if by some miracle the liberals come back from the dead they’d still need to form a coalition govt with the nationals to create a majority.

And yet, more often than not you appeal to empirical cognitive faculties — Jamal

‘Play something we can dance to!’ :rofl:

I’m not inclined towards any kind of philosophy that tries to treat mind (or consciousness) as something objective. Of course the functions of consciousness can be studied objectively through cognitive science, but its real nature is another matter. That’s why I’m not inclined to use expressions like ‘cosmic mind’ or the like. To me, the unknown nature of mind itself is very important to always recall (instead of believing that it has been or can be ‘explained’ by scientific principles.)

It always feels like you want to be a full-on metaphysical idealist but can't quite bring yourself to do it. — Jamal

Epistemic idealism - what we know is shaped by how we know. And empirical realist - not saying that the world is all in the mind. But that it has an ineliminably subjective pole, which we're not aware of unless we teach ourselves to be.

You haven't provided one, and indicated it's outside the scope of your interest — Relativist

I think I have provided one, but that you're not interested in it, or think that it's absurd, for calling into question what you think is obvious. Again, philosophy is 'love-wisdom', not an inventory of things that exist in the world, or methods of harnessing nature to our advantage. It is not necessarily in conflict with those activities, but it is also not defined in their terms. Plato thought that the principle task of the philosopher was to prepare themselves for their inevitable death. Has that been superseded by scientific progress? (I'm not referring here to such scientific fantasies as cryogenetics.)

Consider how absurd it would be to dismiss a well-supported scientific theory on the basis that it's inconsistent with some prior philosophical commitments (have you ever debated a creationist?) Again: what unequivocal facts are inconsistent with, and thus falsify, physicalism? Explanatory challenges are not defeaters, but they could be taken into account in the abductive reasoning. — Relativist

Physicalism is not a falsifiable hypothesis. It's a philosophical view of the nature of reality. The central problem with physicalism is, as Schopenhauer says, that it seeks to explain what is the most immediately apparent fact, namely, the fact of one's own conscious experience, in terms of a hypothetical substance namely matter, the real nature of which is conjectural and uncertain. As we've discussed, and you acnowledge, physicalism doesn't and probably cannot explain the nature of mind or consciousness, yet when we come to this point, that inconvenient fact is disregarded.

Do you truly not believe mind-independent objects? If so, why do you believe that? — Relativist

This is presented in the OP The Mind Created World, a précis of the first half being as follows.

That post defends a perspectival form of philosophical idealism, arguing that mind is foundational to reality—not in the sense that the world is “in” the mind, nor that mind is a kind of substance, but that any claim about reality is necessarily shaped by mental processes of judgment, perception, and understanding.

Contrary to the dominant assumptions of physicalism and metaphysical naturalism, which treat the physical world as ontologically basic and knowable through objective science, this essay argues that all knowledge of the world is always already structured by the perspective of a subject. This does not mean denying the empirical reality of a world independent of any particular mind, but rather recognizing that mind is the condition of the intelligibility of any objective claim.

I pose a thought experiment involving an alpine meadow to demonstrate that a scene without perspective is unintelligible and that, therefore, perspective is not incidental but constitutive of reality-as-known. Drawing on phenomenology and non-dualism, the argument is made that 'existence' and 'non-existence' are not a simple binaries, and that treating unperceived objects as straightforwardly existent (or non-existent) misconstrues the nature of experential knowledge.

The essay does not reject science or evolutionary accounts of the cosmos. Rather, it questions the default metaphysical assumption that objectivity is the sole criterion of reality. Instead, it contends that the world as known arises through the unifying activity of consciousness, which science has yet to fully explain and indeed generally tends to ignore.

Ultimately, the essay argues that philosophical (or transcendental) idealism, rightly understood, does not negate the reality of an external world, but sees it as inseparable from the conditions of its being known. What is called 'reality' is not merely physical, but always shaped by mind. So, therefore, mind is truly a fundamental constituent of what we understand as reality, but in a transcendental rather than objective sense.

Mind independence is true on an empirical level as a definite matter of fact. But the problem with methodological naturalism, is that it wishes to extend mind independence to reality as a whole, to make a metaphysic out of it. It tries to make a metaphysical principle out of empirical methodology. (Recommend Bas van Fraasen on this.)

That’s the sense in which I believe quantum theory undermines the assumption of scientific realism—an assumption that, I think, underwrites the metaphysical naturalism you’re defending.
— Wayfarer

It doesn't do that, in the least. — Relativist

Of course it does! As you've mentioned John Bell, another quote of his:

The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect quantum correlations seem to demand something like the "genetic" hypothesis. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work. — John Bell, quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein (Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 84)

Those 'correlations' were the subject of the 2022 Nobel Prize, awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger, which underscored a pivotal shift in our understanding of reality. Their experiments with entangled photons violated Bell inequalities, challenging the classical notions of local realism, the idea that objects possess definite properties independent of observation and that no influence can travel faster than light (source).

As noted in the Nobel Committee's award statement, their findings suggest that "quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by any local hidden-variable theory," implying that the properties of particles are not predetermined but are defined only upon measurement.

So, question: doesn’t the idea that particles lack definite properties prior to observation strike at the very core of ‘mind-independence’? And wasn't this one of the reasons why Albert Einstein (and now Roger Penrose) are highly critical of quantum theory, saying it must be incomplete or incorrect? And yet these very awards affirm the success of a theory that defies classical assumptions about the mind-independent nature of reality.

This exclusion could not be sustained in quantum physics, where the so-called observer problem brought the role of measurement and observation back into focus. Since then, physics has no longer provided the idealized model of mind-independent reality
— Wayfarer

That's simply not true. That was a claim some made, based on a basic Copenhagen interpretation. Most today would say that an observation is just one example of an entanglement, and that the entanglement results in a collapse of the wave function (some claim there's no collapse at all, but a world branching - but that's too unparsimonious for me). — Relativist

Actually I do have to circle back to this. The point at issue was the supposed mind-independence of the objects of classical physics. That is made explicit in Galileo's philosophy of science by the division of the 'primary attributes' (measurable) and 'secondary attributes (sensory).

Furthermore that the laws of physics were understood to be universal and not dependent on the context in which they were applied, operating deterministically in accordance with the mathematical principles discovered by Galileo and Newton (et al).

But with the discoveries of quantum physics, it was found that the experimental context had to be taken into account, because it has a direct bearing on outcome of the observation. One example is the wave-particle duality identified by Neils Bohr, which he called the 'principle of complementarity' and regarded as his most important philosophical discovery.

As for the 'measurement problem', that has never really been resolved to unanimous agreement. The reason for the so-called many worlds theory is precisely because it does away with the so-called 'wave function collapse' - but at the cost of infinitely proliferating worlds.

My interpretation of all this is that the 'modern period' corresponds with the period between the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) and theFifth Solvay Conference (1927) when the main tenets of quantum mechanics were first made public. The modern period corresponds with the heyday of strong scientific realism. I'm of the view that the Solvay Conference marks the beginning of the post-modern period which appeared to undermine the mind-independent nature of reality (and in a much wider sense than in physics alone). This development was why Einstein felt obliged to ask the rhetorical question, 'Does the moon continue to exist when nobody is looking?' His answer to that question would be an emphatic 'yes'. But the point was, he had to ask! And subsequent science has not been kind to Einstein's scientific realist convictions.

That’s the sense in which I believe quantum theory undermines the assumption of scientific realism—an assumption that, I think, underwrites the metaphysical naturalism you’re defending.

Spinoza can be read as thinking that material substance has the potential for both the attributes of extension and cogitation. — Janus

Spinoza never used the term ‘material substance’. — Wayfarer

What did I miss?

I don’t know, the term ‘samadhi junkie’ suggests that practitioners may develop a strong personal predilection for the experience. — praxis

Hardly representative. Attachment to any experience is discouraged in Buddhist training. Samma samadhi is the guiding principle.

Nobody has brought up William James The Will to Believe. It's rather a modern classic in this context.

Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time… measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement ~ Evan Thompson, Who Really Won when Bergson Debated Einstein — Number2018

:up: I've quoted that exact passage a number of times recently, because it makes a crucial point: that subjective awareness cannot be eliminated from any meaningful concept of time. Also agree that Kant makes a similar point in the Transcendental Aesthetic. In other words, there is no 'objective time' per se - time itself is inextricably linked to the subjective awareness of it. This is true even though we can obviously measure time as if in the absence of any observer, and knowing that there were aoeons prior to the advent of conscious beings. Yet outside conscious awareness, there is nothing that provides the relational perspective that any measure of time must assume. (Hence the expression 'the land before time' to refer to ancient or primeval landscapes. See also Schopenhauer: How Time Began with the First Eye Opening.)

The obvious retort is to ask how you could know this. If you cannot know these truths unless you are wise, how can you know that someone else knows these truths? How can you know someone knows "p is true" unless you also know that p? — Banno

And the obvious response is, one of degrees. One might experience some degree of awakening, short of reaching any kind of plateau of wisdom. A Pali Buddhist expression is ehi passiko - come and see. Learn by doing. Practical wisdom, if you like.

That koan you refer to, incidentally, is extracted from the voluminous corpus of Sōtō Zen literature, and taken out of context, can easily be misinterpreted. Sōtō puts a lot of emphasis on 'ordinary mind', meaning not seeking some special state or trying to attain something. But this doesn't mean that there isn't the requirement for very disciplined training, and Japanese Zen training is very disciplined indeed.

I appreciate your thoughtful engagement throughout this exchange, and I recognize that my arguments are unlikely to shift your position. But I would like to make one further observation.

While you distance metaphysical naturalism from scientism, it seems to me that in practice it tends to rely on scientific findings as the principal arbiter of philosophical questions—especially when appealing to parsimony to set aside questions that science cannot easily address. You acknowledge that physicalism has significant explanatory gaps when it comes to the philosophy of mind—gaps that figures like D. M. Armstrong would argue have already been closed. Yet despite recognizing these limitations, you seem prepared to treat the framework as the best available by default. 'Hey, it's a great car! Don't let the fact it doesn't steer bother you! Look at the panel work!'

That strikes me as an unresolved tension: relying on science to ground metaphysics when it appears fruitful, but retreating to a more minimal philosophical stance when its limits are acknowledged. I think that’s a structural challenge for naturalism as a philosophical position.

Furthermore, I would question whether the definition you cite from the Blackwell Dictionary straightforwardly supports metaphysical naturalism per se. Framing metaphysics as “an inquiry by pure reason into a reality beyond perception” seems to align more with rationalist or even idealist traditions than with a naturalism grounded in empirical science. I suspect that if the full entry were consulted, it would acknowledge a broader range of metaphysical approaches—some of which explicitly challenge naturalism’s reliance on empiricism and its rejection of any such ‘beyond.’

But, thanks again, we should let the thread owner get a word in.

Agree. Although I would cautiously add, that it may only be known first-person, but it's not a matter of personal prediliction.

it takes that step too far that I so often accuse you of also taking. — Banno

I'm in good company, then. Murdoch's 'Sovereignty of the Good' has also been mentioned a few times.

But anyway - the reason I brought up the idea of levels of being, is because it is relevant to the question of faith, and to the criticism of faith being 'belief without evidence'.

How so? Because there are truths that only the wise can grasp - grasping them is the hallmark of wisdom. I'm emphatically not claiming to be in such company, I'm simply looking through the glass, darkly. (I guess this comes from my years of hanging out at the Adyar Bookshop.) It is abundantly demonstrated in the literature of Zen Buddhism (and again, making no claims as to any acomplishment in that demanding discipline.) But the culmination of those paths - awakening or satori - provides a perspective that us ordinary folk do not have. So, in the absence of insight, all we have is faith.

This is exemplified by one of the early Buddhist texts (the Pali texts revered by Theravada Buddhists). It's a dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta, a disciple who is customarily associated with wisdom. Summarily, it is like this (source text provided):

The Buddha asked, “Sariputta, do you simply trust that developing the faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom leads to the Deathless?”

Sariputta replied, “It’s not just on trust, Lord. Those who haven’t seen this for themselves must rely on others’ word. But those who have directly known and realized it have no doubt. And I have seen and realized it for myself; I have no doubt that these faculties, when fully developed, lead to the Deathless.” — Pubbakotthaka Sutta: Eastern Gatehouse

There are at least analogies for this in the Christian faith, as well, not least the 'through a glass, darkly' metaphor alluded to above. None of which means that blind faith, or fanaticism, or misplaced idealism are not real dangers on that or any religious or spiritual path. Faith is not the terminus of such paths, but it is a requirement, in that one has to have confidence enough to pursue what is often a very arduous path, often with no obvious end or reward in sight.

So I reject this 'belief without evidence' dogma, as that is what it is. For those prepared to pursue these paths, there is plenty of evidence, albeit not of the kind that positivism will acknowledge.

You are trying to cut off a conversation that makes you uncomfortable, that cuts against your own views. — Banno

Not at all. There is a practically infinite number of textbooks and philosophers nowadays. (I read in Nous magazine the other day that at any given moment there’s a backlog of 10,000 philosophy papers awaiting publication.) So one is obligated to decide which subjects to pursue. Granted, I’ve only made the most cursory study of modern modal metaphysics, but going on, for example, the IEP article on the subject, it corresponds to the criticism @Gnomon gives above - ‘the dominant style in philosophy today is one of dry, detailed analysis and argumentation, filled with technical terms that only specialists --- and often very few of them --- can get through’. All of the works mentioned in that article are by, about, and for academic philosophers, with practically no audience outside of that. Whereas the classical tradition of philosophy does at least concern practical wisdom and a deeper understanding of life as lived. Like, the fact that reality extends far beyond what we moderns assume as its limits. I’ll never obtain real scholarly knowledge of Platonist philosophy either, but at least it has some real juice and is part of a living cultural tradition, not an academic parlour game.

Spinoza never used the term ‘material substance’. His term is simply Substantia—“that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself” (Ethics I, Def. 3), known to us through the attributes of Thought (cogitatio) and Extension (extensio - although there are infinitely many more attributes). Reducing that to ‘material substance’ is just the kind of problem the original post is addressing. Furthermore there’s nothing in physics which meets Spinoza’s definition of substantia - everything known to physics is relational, contingent, and defined in terms of something else. (For that matter, there’s nothing in physics corresponding to Aristotle’s ‘ouisia’, either.)

I mentioned it recently, with regards to his re-statement of traditional ontology and the levels of being.

levels of reality — Banno

The divided line

The materialist simply says that matter in certain configuration can feel and think just as matter in certain configurations is measurable. — Janus

So perhaps you might find a passage in Spinoza which supports that contention.

And how do you share your "self abnegation" without getting arrested? — Banno

I can't claim to be adept at it, but at least I think I understand the point.

That first person might still be convinced, and become a True Believer, and spend the rest of their life chanting, but they can't bring out their private experience so that it can be challenged, revised, discussed and all that other stuff we do to decide if a proposal is true or not. — Banno

Misinterpreting again. It’s not that it’s solely a ‘matter of personal opinion’. It’s that levels of reality correspond with levels of being and knowing. What do you think was taught in Plato’s Academy? The aspirant had to prepare themselves to understand. So it was subjective in one sense - has to be known first-person - but in another sense, relies on detachment, which is precisely *not* subjective, in that it depends on self abnegation (subject of my essay Objectivity and Detachment).

I believe Spinoza was a materialist — Janus

Spinoza is not a materialist in the modern reductionist sense. He held that reality expresses itself equally through both Thought and Extension, so rejecting reduction of mind to matter. His God-or-Nature is not a personal deity, but neither is it mere physical substance. Spinoza’s philosophy is closer to what we would now call neutral monism or double-aspect theory, where mind and body are modes of one infinite Being. ‘Substance’ in Spinoza is not something measurable by way of objective analysis, in the way that material substance is (or at least, was) thought to be.

Recall the original intent of this thread. It is to argue that the philosophical term ‘substance’ derived from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, is often confused with the everyday meaning of ‘substance’ as ‘a material with uniform properties’. What I’m saying is that, mainly due to Descartes’ description of mind as ‘res cogitans’, this leads to the oxymoronic conceptions of ‘thinking thing’ or ‘spiritual substance’. And a lot of confusion, and much bad philosophising, hangs off that equivocation.

Perfect statement of modern moral relativism (and/or the ‘Cartesian anxiety).

Unfortunately for you, you’re not actually a bystander.

what is to count as evidence ought to be available for public scrutiny — Banno

But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person. I might have a genuine insight, but unless I’m a brilliant artist or novelist, then not be able to convey it for public scrutiny. Or I might try to convey it, but the public might be unable to interpret it.

You yourself profess to resist ‘scientism’ - yet the insistence that truth claims ought to be subjected to third-party validation is one of its principle dogmas. And that’s because whatever evidence it admits needs to be measurable. And as you and I both know and agree on what a meter is, and what a kilogram is - then we can present evidence amenable to ‘public scrutiny’. Whereas, a vital part of religious philosophy is the realisation of ‘the immeasurable’ (although again it is only Buddhism that makes it explicit, and in line with their love of lists, they name four.)

And go back to the source texts of philosophy. Socrates wandering the public square, asking questions of all and sundry. All of his enquires were made in the open, yet many of those he questioned were not able to answer them. Does that mean his questions ought not to have been considered?

I think Plato’s philosophy assumes that the answers to the kinds of questions that Socrates was posing, would not be able to be answered by the hoi polloi. Isn’t that why Popper declared Plato an enemy of ‘the open society’? And yet, that might be saying something significant about the quest for philosophical wisdom.

The tension with Christianity, in particular, is that it removes this need for philosophical discernment. ‘Foolishness to the Greeks’. Even so, Christ himself was quite a stern master: offering salvation to ‘all who would believe’ but then, believing turns out not to be so easy after all.

seeing faith as involving belief without evidence is not a dogma, but a description of how faith functions in many religious contexts, where The Faithful are encouraged - indeed, extolled - to maintain their belief in the face of doubt, uncertainty, or counter-evidence. — Banno

I think it is part of faith that it must be severely tested. For some reason, that countercultural classic film The Game, Michael Douglas, comes to mind. Faith comes with all kinds of trials, and with the real possibility of failure. Part of the game!

I seem to recall Bill Haley and the Comets 'Rock Around the Clock' is often said to be the first bona fide world-wide rock'n'roll hit song, although Wikipedia adds 'In terms of its wide cultural impact across society in the US and elsewhere, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", recorded in April 1954 but not a commercial success until the following year, is generally recognized as an important milestone, but it was preceded by many recordings from earlier decades in which elements of rock and roll can be clearly discerned.'

On music technology - I've learned to use Apple Logic Pro to produce and master songs, not that any of them have ever received commercial attention. But it's not hard to discern the presence of such digital music workstation technology in today's music, because of its crystalline precision and sound separation - all the layers clearly defined and balanced. Plus the ability to utilise any kind of instrumental sounds and vocal effects without even leaving your desk.

Divine judgment implies a conscious, willful decision by a deity. Perhaps you fear that Buddhism is wrong and theistic religions are true? — praxis

I'm saying that in effect, karma and 'divine judgement' add up to something similar. Christianity has God's judgement, in Buddhism, the consequences of one's actions are due to karma. But depictions of hell are similar.

incidentally, about this dogma that 'faith is belief without evidence'. The believer will say that the world itself evidences divine providence. There may not be evidence in the sense of double-blind experimental data across sample populations of X thousand persons. But the testimony of sages, the proper interpretation of religious texts, and the varieties of religious experience all constitute evidence, although of course all of that may equally be disregarded. The will not to believe is just as strong as the will to believe.

I do fear divine judgement
— Wayfarer

Really? Why? — frank

Karma - means the same. In Buddhism, there's no Supreme Deity handing out rewards and punishment but there are hell realms all the same.

Ha! Yes, this and people like Ike Turner. — Tom Storm

legend has it that a DJ (name escapes me) starting using 'rocking and rolling' (predictably sailor's slang) in place of Rythm and Blues, which is was associated with (ahem) colored folk. (Well, it was the fifties.)

Where should I start? — Quk

Probably in the 1950's, with American radio.

Why took it thousands of years until Rock music became popular? — Quk

Had to invent the Fender amp first, and they didn't have electronics. Nor, for that matter, Levi's jeans.

(I think Beethoven was one the first famous Rock'n'Rollers.) — Quk

Roll Over Beethoven