As for there being no time outside the awareness of it, that depends on your definition of time. — noAxioms

OK, how about ‘no time outside the measurement of time’. I refer back to the earlier quote:

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.

The objections to this seem to be that time is ‘obviously’ objective. But isn’t that because, as we’re all members of the same species and culture, we measure it acording to agreed units?

Imagine some species on another planet, far larger than Earth, with a daily rotation of one of our weeks, and an annual rotation of tens of our decades. Presumably the units they would use for measuring time would be very different to terrestrial units.

Is there an objective time which is independent of these two apparently incommensurable systems of measurement?

So the Trump administration has finally acknowledged something I’ve pointed out for a long while. That is that the writ of habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, applies to everyone, including non-citizens and undocumented immigrants. It means that, once arrived, a person has the right to argue his or her case before a judge. I’ve said in the past that this amounts to a kind of osmosis - if a person arrives from a territory with no recognition of human rights, it violates the rights they receive from being in the US to return them.

Now Stephen Miller is calling this principle into question on the (dubious) grounds that undocumented immigrants represent an invasion, and habeas corpus doesn’t apply in the case of an invading force. Trump has said a number of times of late that it would be impossible to bring each case of a couple of million undocumented immigrants to court, so this argument is making that claim explicit. Miller of course says ‘the constitution is clear’, which it is, in the case of an invading force. So it will depend on whether the judiciary agrees that undocumented arrivals constitute an invading force.

Everything I say here is well within the bounds of philosophy of religion in which this thread is situated, although it will be meaningless to positivism as a matter of definition.

I don’t at all but I recognise the metaphor.

a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’
— Wayfarer

Because there is such a thing as “making sense”, I agree it therefore makes sense that there is a being that makes all sense of everything. And I agree, such a being is not one of us, so we may never apprehend it, or will never make sense of everything. — Fire Ologist

I don’t generally quote scripture, but one of the New Testament aphorisms is ‘blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall know God’ (Matt 5:8). In saying that I’m well aware of my own lack of purity and the probable consequences of that. But I want to consider this through a philosophical rather than confessional perspective.

I understand that teaching to be a reference to what came to be called ‘theosis’ or ‘the divine vision’, It is described as a state of union with the Divine and is the culmination of the spiritual life in both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity (although with a few exceptions it is not nearly so explicit in Reformed Theology for reasons I won’t enlarge on here.)

Similar motifs can be found in other spiritual traditions, of divine union, mystical absorption and so forth. Of course there are also profound differences between them and I’m not suggesting they all be blurred into a kind of mushy new-age syncretism. But from a philosophical perspective it’s the convergences that are interesting, as it suggests archetypal forms found across cultures. And all of these traditions - not only religious teachings, but also philosophical traditions - indicated the importance of purity of motive, lack of attachment, abandonment of craving, and so on, as preconditions for that insight to arise. That is the kind of ‘saving insight’ that the Biblical verse is referring to. It is not an empirical observation about states of affair in the world, but insight into the divine origin of being- mystical insight, known under various terminologies in different cultures - Gnosis, Jñāna, Prajñāpāramitā being examples from different traditions. Again, the cultures differ amongst themselves as to the specifics, but again the similarities are of more significance than the differences: they are agreeing and disagreeing about something real.

I also think there is a possibility that, in our likeness to God (the higher one), we sometimes apprehend things completely, that when we know something, we know the same thing God knows. We will forever pursue all-knowledge, but along the way, possess particular knowledge the same as any knowing being would possess. — Fire Ologist

Well, your own Catholic tradition has a noble and still esteemed school of philosophical theology, namely, that of St Thomas Aquinas, who (again from a philosophical perspective) I would propose as an example (and possibly the last example) of the philosophia perennis in the Western tradition. Thomas’ adoption of Aristotelian hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism conforms with your general idea. See Sensible Form and Intelligible Form in Aquinas. I’m not presenting it as ‘holy writ’ (which many will present Aquinas as) but as a philosophical model which I think still holds up even in light of the many scientific discoveries since Thomas’ day. That idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes, which themselves arise in the Divine Intellect. I know there are many ways to criticise that philosophy and that it is overall regarded as superseded in the Western tradition, but I’m not sure how many of those who criticise it really understand what they’re rejecting. Underlying all of this is a different mode of knowing and being to that of the detached observer of states of affairs in the world.

Incidentally, the ‘through the glass, darkly’ is part of a Pauline scripture that is very often read at wedding ceremonies, and indeed one of the most poetic invocations of the spirit in the whole New Testament. The complete verse is

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. — 1 Cor. 13-12

‘Then’ is a reference to entering the divine presence, nowadays generally understood as something that happens only at the time of death, but in the mystical sense, corresponding with the advent of the beatific vision.

What, then, are these assumptions? What are scientists assuming when they do science? Probably no one would say they're arbitrary -- that scientists just like scientific method -- so what justifications can philosophy of science offer for them? — J

Totally other thread - but it’s along the lines I suggested. Early modern science and philosophy - Galileo, Newton, Descartes - the division of mind from matter, primary attributes from secondary, the exclusion of factors not considered amenable to quantification. The description given in Nagel’s ‘Mind and Cosmos’. But meta-physics never goes it away, per the famous remark about philosophy burying its undertakers. Quantum physics has brought up large metaphysical questions which remain unresolved. Philosophy of biology has expanded to include biosemiotics and the metaphysics of symbols. And so on. But the positivist spirit is still powerful - ‘all that can be known, can be known by science’.

Much more to say but family duties call for a couple of hours.

You posited a sense we can have no sense of. — Janus

As I said.

Right. Should have been ‘me’ then, rather than:

what could it be to us? — Janus

Can’t disagree but increasing tax rates on higher incomes is necessary and it would be a forward step if a Republican congress does it.

You have this tendency to regard your own experience as the sole criteria for what anyone else should accept.

shame that Dreyfus and Husic were rolled by factions - but that’s politics, I guess. I do wonder if Dreyfus will resign his seat, though. After such sterling service, it’s pretty shoddy treatment.

None of it makes sense, so, to me, there is plenty of room to trust God anyway. — Fire Ologist

I would like to believe that a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’

I don't 100% believe there is no afterlife, but it really is nothing more than a fantasy, — Janus

So, which?

I can't see any point in worrying about something you can do nothing about. — Janus

Death can’t be avoided but if there does turn out to be an afterlife then what one has or has not done may indeed be highly significant.

Yes, all true. Anyway, it’s been interesting to see how big a story it has been, it’s been headlines here in Australia ever since Francis’ demise. There’d be nothing like that over the election of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Well, knock me down with a feather. Trump has told Johnston that he wants him to support raising tax rates on high incomes :yikes: - something the Republican Party has long refused to even consider. My bet is that Bessent and his other Treasury wonks have suggested it. But it actuallly seems - gulp - a good idea.

I guess, but the stress laid on nationality (and also to some degree nationalism) sits awkwardly with the supposed universality of the Catholic faith.

The oft-stated idea that the Buddha says there is no self, tout courte, is mistaken. The Buddha denied there was a permanent self 'set like a post' or 'immovable like a mountain peak' that migrated life to life. But asked outright 'does the self exist?', the Buddha declined to answer. When asked later why, he said he didn't want to side with those ascetics who maintain that kind of 'eternal self', or on the other hand, to say that 'there is no self whatever', as the questioner would not have understood it.

So the idea that there are future lives, but no single individual, is how it comes across in popular culture, but it's not entirely accurate. It is well known that in Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnate lamas are said to be able to recognise the possessions of their former incarnations - that is part of the test for recognising them. It's not a soul that is reborn, but a mind-stream ('cittasantana') that has manifested again (voluntarily, in the case of lamas, whereas for most other people it's due to ignorance). And liberation from the cycle relies on the extinction of the idea of a self to which karma is attached. That's the theory, anyway. But the practical upshot is, everyone else is destined for some future existence in one of the 'six realms'.

What's dawning on me is not at all romantic: it's the fear of God's judgement which is said to occur at the time of death. (That struck me recently when I watched a feature on Mt Athos, in an interview with the head monk.) In Buddhist terms, no God is involved, but Buddhists have just as vivid a depiction of the hell realms as well as the other realms which await one in the next life. That scares me a lot more than the idea that death is simply the end - the fact that one is condemned to exist and that many of the possible existences that await might be considerably less fortunate than the one I find myself in. That is something often found in Buddhist texts, although Buddhist modernism tends to neglect it.

I believe the real reason behind the claim that science disenchants the world is that it seems to foreclose on the idea of any kind of afterlife. People say science is dehumanizing and I can only think that the dispelling of the fantasy of an afterlife must be what they mean. — Janus

However, if there really is a life beyond this one, then foreclosing it would be momentous, would it not? If you don't believe in it, it is only a matter of a fallacious belief; but if you do, then something is at stake which might be more significant than anything else in your life.

Me, I'm wrestling with it. I think a lot of what is said about it is obviously mythical, but it remains, for me, at least an open question, and something that nags me, now I'm in my 70's. And that if it turns out to be real after all, it could be the ultimate in rude awakenings.

*

Not being Catholic, the philosophical question that occurs to me is why the fuss about nationality? Surely such a figure transcends nationality.

I think it's nonsense to say that science doesn't require or imply a metaphysic. The metaphysic of early modern science was: no metaphysics. That was largely based on Galileo's rejection of Aristotelian physics, but in a larger sense with the rejection of the ptolmaic cosmology in which metaphysics was embedded that characterised the 'scientific revolution'. And it was also a consequence of the fundamental division that early modern science and Cartesianism set up between mind and matter, and between the primary and secondary qualities, with the objective domain characterised entirely in terms of the measurable attributes of bodies and mind relegated to the domain of interiority and subjectivity. Which leads to the picture of a cosmos directed by the 'blind watchmaker', devoid of purpose and intentionality in which intelligence only appears as an adaptive trait and as an unintended consequence of those purposeless forces. And of course, part of the diabolical clevereness of that metaphysic is to deny that it's a metaphysic!

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. — David Loy, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole

Thanks for the quote Wayfarer. — noAxioms

You’re welcome - from his book The Goldilocks Enigma (also published as The Cosmic Jackpot). I quoted it in support of my contention that there is no time outside the awareness of it.

Andrei Linde enlarges on this point in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, part of the excellent Closer to Truth series. Linde claims it is necessary to include consciousness in any coherent account of the Universe.

I think it should be uncontroversial that parts of what are generally deemed to be "metaphysics" come into play on the sciences at every turn. For example, one cannot discuss the "origin of species" in biology, or different "types" of atom or molecule without the notion that different concrete particulars can nonetheless be "the same sort of thing" (i.e., the notion of species, essences, and universals coming into play). Likewise, questions of emergence includes the relationship of parts to wholes, and shows up in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Perhaps the most obvious example is causation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You could just as easily say that this is owed to the fact that Greek philosophy and science laid the basis for the whole development of modern science, that without the intellectual armoury provided by Aristotle and the other great minds of that tradition and it’s conceptual groundwork - substance, essence, accident, dynamic, potential - science would not have developed at all. Not for nothing that the scientific revolution occurred in the West and not India or China, which a millenia earlier were way ahead of Europe in terms of art and culture.

Would there be MS Word Tenplates had Plato not seen the Form?

Sure, observations can be interpreted differently, but these are not intended as subjective interpretations, they are speculations about an actual event. — Apustimelogist

Outside the awareness and measurement of duration, there is no time.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

I don't think an explanatory gap entails some kind of fundamental metaphysical dualism — Apustimelogist

by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this approach does not tell us why there is experience in the first place. But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.

This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world. Nothing in this approach contradicts anything in physical theory; we simply need to add further bridging principles to explain how experience arises from physical processes. — David Chalmers, Facing Up...

But I don't see that it has a superior shot at objective truth. Do you disagree? — Relativist

I've already gone through in detail the hidden assumptions behind the term 'objective truth', no point doing so again. Thanks for the chat.

My issue with your position is that you've only stated negatives- what's wrong with physicalism and/or scientific realism. — Relativist

Thanks for this thoughtful and open response.

I agree that any metaphysical frameworks face limitations, and I appreciate your concession that explaining the mind is a weak point for physicalism. That’s where I keep pressing—not because I deny the empirical success of science, but because I question whether empirical models alone can explain intelligibility itself, or the first-person structure of consciousness. And also that this is inherent to the kind of 'scientific theory of mind' that characterises physicalist philosophies.

You're right to ask for a constructive alternative. I don’t propose a complete system—but I do think we need an account that puts the subject back into the frame, rather than treating experience as a by-product of unconscious machinery. That’s why I’m drawn toward post-Kantian approaches (phenomenology, enactivism, and some forms of idealism), where the focus is on how reality appears to us as structured, meaningful, and knowable.

As for structural realism: yes, it might be a way of moving toward a more modest realism, one that acknowledges that what we know is structure, but perhaps not the intrinsic nature of what instantiates that structure. That could open the door to something more meaningful than bare physicalism.

So no, I don’t think physicalism is “disproven” but I do think it has an inherent blind spot. And the moment we acknowledge that meaning, interpretation, and intelligibility are not themselves physical, we’ve already moved beyond physicalism in the strict sense.

Yes, the mind is doing all the interpreting- whatever the mind is. Do you have a better account of the mind? — Relativist

But in order to even approach a coherent account of mind, a framework is needed—something more than functional or mechanistic description. Classical Greek philosophy, as Pierre Hadot shows, was precisely an attempt to provide such a framework: not just a proto-scientific theory, but a vision of reality informed by reflection on what it means to live and to know. Similarly, Buddhist thought offers an extraordinarily detailed and multi-layered account of mind and its transformations—yet it does so without treating mind as reducible to brain.

These traditions aren't opposed to observation or analysis, but they don’t assume that science alone defines what is real (especially because science in today's sense wasn't even understood in their day). But they remind us that the subject—the knower—is part of the picture, and that understanding mind means engaging with it from within, not just from the outside.

So to me the fact that we seee the world frok a perspective can be valid without implying anything fundamentslly mysterious. — Apustimelogist

I feel your frequent statements of not seeing anything profound or mysterious or needing to be understood indicate a kind of absence of curiosity or insight into specifically philosophical questions. Rather a kind of sanguine acceptance of the scientific worldview. Would that be fair?

You can do experiments which show the effects of things like time dilation related to clocks without requiring observers or perspectives or anything like that. — Apustimelogist

Yes. You can or I can or someone else can. But those experiments don't do themselves. In all cases the experimenter is providing the perspective within which the observations are meaningful.

To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. 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. — Bergson-Einstein Debate

the hard problem of consciousness doesn't factor into most neuroscience. — Apustimelogist

That's because neuroscience is not philosophy. 'Facing up to the problem of consciousness' was about the fact that the neuroscientific accounts cannot, as a matter of principle, provide an account of the first-person nature of experience. That's where the explanatory gap is found.

I think the modern fetish for mathematization is probably what leads him (Donald Hoffman) in this direction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He has to be able to express his theory in mathematical terms for it to be credible. Science relies heavily on quantitative analysis. As you say, that is at the heart of, not just modern nominalism, but modern science generally. The scientific revolution was owed in large part to the ability to identify precisely the quantitative attributes of objects of analysis, and to remove those fuzzy qualities of ends and purposes and intentionality that still underwrote Aristotelian physics. This is what gives rise to what René Geunon describes as the 'reign of quantity' in which we're all immersed.

Oh - and that last chapter (10) in Hoffman's Case Against Reality - I just don't get it, from the point where 'conscious agents' are introduced. I so thoroughly don't get it, that I put the book down, and do something else. I think for the last time.

I believe you said that you agree that there exists a mind independent reality. This implies that, whatever it might be, it is not dependent on intelligibility or reason. Is it that our limitations and failures leads you to believe it is futile to consider the nature of mind-independent reality? — Relativist

Mind-independence has two levels of meaning. At the empirical level, of course the world doesn’t depend on my mind or yours for its existence. But at a deeper level, what we take the world to be—what we can know or even meaningfully say about it—is always mediated by the mind’s structuring activity. In Kant’s terms, we never experience “things in themselves” (Ding an sich), but appearances shaped by our forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of understanding.¹

This doesn’t mean the world is a figment —it means that what see as a mind-independent world is still the world as it appears to a conscious subject. Even to model a subjectless universe requires that the model is still constructed within the space-time framework our minds impose. Without a subject, there is no point of reference for spatial extension or temporal duration, since those are not properties of things-in-themselves but forms through which we intuit them. Without that framework, we'd be unconscious or in a state of complete dissociation.

Scientific realism typically assumes that the world exists just as science describes it, entirely independently of any subject or perspective. But this overlooks the extent to which the scientific image of the world is grounded in the conditions of our cognition. Kant’s transcendental idealism accepts the empirical reality of the world but denies that we can know it apart from the way we constitute it in experience.

The idealist criticism of scientific realism is that it forgets or overlooks the role of the subject - as another of the German idealists said, 'materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself'.

¹ Critique of Pure Reason, A369–370.

I suggest that it is justifiable to believe the physical world is at least partly intelligible - justified by the success of science at making predictions. — Relativist

I agree—but intelligibility is grounded in relations among representations. To the extent that things appear to us as structured phenomena, it’s those mental structures that make intelligibility possible. This insight is echoed not only in Kantian terms but in cognitive science and the constructivist tradition more broadly.

This challenges physicalism, not by denying the success of science, but by questioning the metaphysical leap that treats “the physical” as something with inherent, mind-independent reality. Scientific models work because of their predictive and explanatory power—but that success doesn't license the conclusion that the world exists exactly as described in itself, independent of the subject’s contribution to its appearance.

The objection I have to materialist theories of mind is that they attempt to ground intelligibility in the physical domain itself—specifically in neurological processes—without acknowledging that the meaning and coherence we attribute to neural data are not in the data; they are read into it by the observing scientist ('this means that', 'from this, we can infer that....'). In other words, it is the mind that interprets the brain, not the brain that explains the mind.

This reveals a circularity at the heart of the physicalist account: it presumes that mind is reducible to brain, while relying on the mind’s interpretive capacities to make sense of the brain in the first place.

A reality/illusion distinction only makes sense if there is something other than illusion, some mind that knows "reality in itself" as opposed to fitness. If it is just "fitness all the way down," then fitness is reality and his argument is based on a false distinction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I quite agree, that is what I suspect about Hoffman's book. He does discuss various objections to FBT theory around pages 44-45 in the ebook edition I have. He quotes Steven Pinker, saying

We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.

However as I've noted elsewhere this is a similar argument of Plantinga's, the evolutionary argument against naturalism - that if naturalism is true, then it undermines the trust we have in reason.

But then, he says on p 66

what about our perceptions of math and logic? Doesn’t the theorem assume math and logic, and then prove there’s almost no chance that our perceptions of math and logic are true? If so, isn’t it a proof that there are no reliable proofs—a reductio ad absurdum of the whole approach?

Fortunately, the FBT Theorem proves no such thing. It applies only to our perceptions of states of the world. Other cognitive capacities, such as our abilities with math and logic, must be studied on their own to see how they may be shaped by natural selection. It is too simplistic, and false, to argue that natural selection makes all of our cognitive faculties unreliable. This illogic is sometimes floated to support religious views believed to be incompatible with Darwinian evolution. But it wields too broad a brush.

My bolds. Which again makes me think the title is a misnomer - it should be 'the case against cognitive realism' or something of the kind. After all ancient philosophy was always inclined to suspect that sense perception was or might be a grand illusion.

I suppose that's somewhat the point he makes in the last chapter when he calls his previous position self-refuting and argues for idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you be so kind as to specify where he says that?

Yes, but as I'm always wondering, does anyone give a shit about it? — Christoffer

One of the readers comments on that article was, the people who could do anything about it - mainly, Congress - don't give a shit. There are plenty of others who do, but they can't do anything other than write articles or organise protests.

But the judiciary is holding the line, against repeated attempts to breach it. Many of his executive orders are held up in the courts. All is not lost, but it's dire, for sure.

Consider electrons: each of them has a -1 electric charge. This intrinsic property is identical in every instantiated electron. The charge is real, but it doesn't exist independently of the electrons. The -1 charge is a universal. So is electron: every existing electron has identical intrinsic properties. They are distinguished by extrinsic properties - location, which objects they are bound to, etc. — Relativist

I’d suggest that the nature of the electron is itself still an open question, particularly in light of quantum mechanics. The whole point of wave-particle duality, superposition, and entanglement is that even at the level of fundamental physics, we're dealing with mathematical structures that aren't neatly reducible to classical particulars (hence the ongoing disputes over interpretations). We describe electrons using the language of field theory and probability amplitudes, not by pointing to discrete “things” with self-contained identities.

Astrophysicist Adam Frank said

When I was a young physics student I once asked a professor: ‘What’s an electron?’ His answer stunned me. ‘An electron,’ he said, ‘is that to which we attribute the properties of the electron.’

So when we say "all electrons have a charge of -1," we are already operating in a space of idealized structure and abstraction, not simply observing physical things. I'm saying, that what are described as universals are indispensable components of those rational operations. But we're not directly aware of them as they're not, as it were, inherent in the objects of analysis. (That's what is meant by 'the hand can't grasp itself'.)

So when we say that all electrons have a charge of -1, what is it that we're referring to? It’s not just a feature observable in any one case—it’s a lawlike regularity, expressed in abstract terms, that applies to any possible electron, because that's how an electron is defined. But in order to grasp that, we’re not just detecting physical properties—we’re accessing something through reason: namely, an intelligible structure that governs particulars. And whether, or in what sense, that can be designated physical is the point at issue.

We grasp the properties that objects have, and apply the way of abstraction to consider just the property. — Relativist

Right - which is the unique ability of h.sapiens, so far as we can tell, and the ability which underwrites language, maths and science. We can learn the concepts which enable atomic physics and many other things, but those rational abilities are not something explained by science, and certainly not by physics alone.

how do you account for instantiations of the universal? Is there an ontological relation between the universal and its instantiation? — Relativist

The -1 charge of a given electron is not “tied” to the universal of negative charge by some cord or hook. Rather, the electron is an instance of a kind, and its negative charge is an instantiation of a universal property. We can only think about this because we already operate with concepts that abstract from particular cases. But the concepts don’t cause or bind the particulars—they are inherent in the intelligible structure. The universal isn’t an entity over here, and the particular over there, waiting to be connected. Rather, the universal is the intelligible content of the particular, grasped by reason. We abstract it in thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s merely mental. It’s real in the particular, just not as a separable object - it is how the object appears to the rational intellect.

Well a Hodgkin-Huxley neuron is basically just physics. — Apustimelogist

Yes, a Hodgkin-Huxley neuron is described by physics. So are sound waves, but that doesn’t explain the experience of hearing music. Describing a system in physical terms doesn’t explain everything there is about that system—especially not its qualitative, representational, or rational aspects. Einstein said, 'A theory can be logically perfect and completely unassailable, yet still not represent reality. It would be like trying to understand a symphony by looking at the air pressure waves on a graph. All the information is there, but the music is missing.'

The point at issue isn’t whether neurons obey physical laws. Of course they do. The question is whether describing them physically is sufficient to explain how thought, reason, or consciousness arise. That’s not a scientific question—it’s a philosophical one. Which you continually assume has a physical answer, but for which you're presenting no argument whatever.

Just because we can model a neuron using physics doesn’t mean we've accounted for how neurons give rise to meaning, intentionality, or rational inference. Otherwise, you'd have to say a voltmeter has opinions.

but they instantiate principles which could never be predicted on the basis of physics alone
— Wayfarer

But so what? This is an epistemic or explanatory point. Its just about complexity. — Apustimelogist

It's not just about complexity, though. Organisms are fantastically complex, on the one hand - the processes of cellular mitosis, reproduction, evolution, and so on. But they're also simple, in that a single organism is a simple whole, which subordinates and synthesises all that complexity against the ends required to survive and procreate. Nothing in physcis either does that, or accounts for that.

I don't understand what is special — Apustimelogist

And what makes you think that's a philosophical argument? :brow: Your philosophical position is so baked-in that you can't comprehend how it can be questioned. I mean, no offence intended, but that's how you come across.

This doesn't preclude thinking ABOUT them conceptually. The concept is a mental object that corresponds (as in deflationary truth theory) to the universal. The triangle concept in my mind is distinct from the triangle concept in your mind, but both concepts correspond to the universal. — Relativist

mental objects are private and subjective, but so is a concept - but as I said above, there is (or can be) a correspondence between each of our "triangle" concepts and the universal that exists in multiple instantiations in the world. — Relativist

Thanks for the response. But I’d like to press on the key issue: in what sense do universals exist?

You claim that universals exist only in particulars. But if our concept of a universal corresponds to something real, as you say, then that universal must be real in some way that is not identical with any of its particular instances, nor reducible to the act of thinking about it. Otherwise, what exactly is it that our distinct concepts are about? What are they referring to?

You say the universal “exists in multiple instantiations in the world.” But that only accounts for the instances of a universal—not the universal as such. If triangularity, for example, is just the set of all actual triangular things, then:

* How can we grasp it prior to seeing all of those instances?

* How can we know it applies to any triangle, even those we’ve never encountered?

That’s why I argue that universals—if they are truly universal—must exist in a way not reducible to particulars. And that implies a mode of being not located in space-time, but accessible only to reason. That’s what I mean by transcendental: not supernatural, but ontologically prior to particulars, and necessary for coherent rational thought.

If Armstrong’s “immanent realism” holds that universals are just shared properties instantiated in the physical world, then it seems to fall short of explaining the universality we actually grasp in thought—where we reason about the form itself, not its tokens.

I recall you’ve previously said that Armstrong doesn’t define universals or laws in purely physical terms. So in effect, what’s being presented here is a metaphysical theory dressed in the language of scientific realism—but it’s not empirical and it’s not testable. In that respect, it looks increasingly like a philosophical commitment to the principle of philosophical naturalism, but not science proper.

But I'll also add, this is because modern philosophy, generally, doesn't provide a conceptual space against which the 'transcendental' can be mapped. After all the keynote of the modern era is the secularisation and 'scientism' of philosophy. So they're averse to anything other than the natural domain, natural sciences, and so on, as it re-opens a question which they would rather believe has been closed.

Or when we consider philosophical questions.

But why should we presume that there is such a thing as the form of the table—that what something really is must be explained in terms of its purpose or essence? Isn't that just importing a metaphysical picture shaped by our cognitive preferences, not by necessity? — Banno

But our umwelt is also shaped by our cognitive faculties (which are not preferences, by the way. We don't get to choose them.)

There discussions amongst Aristotelians are irrelevant if Aristotelianism is misguided. — Banno

Which you will always say, and I will always dispute, so let's leave it there.

But in so doing, I'm only appealing to what was universally considered to be the substance of philosophy, up until the advent of the modern period. And also while fully conscious that some aspects of Aristotle are outmoded, superseded and not at all commensurable with today's science. But not all of them. I say that fully acknowledging my own limited education in the classical texts, but I still think there are elements that remain relevant. (I stumbled upon a 'bibliography of contemporary hylomorphism' (.pdf) Can't say I know much of what's on it, but it's describing a subject far from a dead philosophy.)

But there are aspects of Aristotelianism, or Platonism construed more broadly, that I don't believe are superseded - mostly just rejected, neglected and forgotten. As a consequence, I don't think the meaning of the Platonic forms (or their interpretation by Aristotle) are at all likely to be understood in this milieu.

For instance, this abstract of one of the entries in the above:

Barnes, Gordon P. “The Paradoxes of Hylomorphism.” Review of Metaphysics 56.3 (2003): 501–523.
Identifies a paradox at the heart of several recent critiques of hylomorphism. The paradox is that there are compelling reasons to think that the distinction between form and matter is mind-independent and real, and there are also compelling reasons to think that the distinction is mind-dependent and one of mere reason.

Who says reason is 'mere'? :chin: But regardless, directly relevant to many of the debates I'm having hereabouts.

On Sept. 9, 2024, the F.B.I.’s criminal investigative division reported that “as the use of cryptocurrency in the global financial system continues to grow, so too does its use by criminal actors.” The exploitation of cryptocurrency, according to the F.B.I., “was most pervasive in investment scams, where losses accounted for almost 71 percent of all losses related to cryptocurrency.”

Seven days later, Donald Trump declared on X: “Crypto is one of those things we have to do. Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.” In the same post, a month and a half before the election, he promoted his new venture World Liberty Financial Inc.

Back in the White House, Trump has discovered that what he criticized as “not money” six years ago could now serve as an ideal way to profit from his presidency. Estimates of the value of his crypto assets vary widely, from $2.9 billion by Fortune to $6.2 billion by Forbes, although Forbes acknowledged the figure is “a dubious estimate given it’s based on supply not yet on the market.” And as Trump said, it’s not, strictly speaking, money.

Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell and the author of “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance,” who has written extensively about digital currencies, contended in an email:

It is quite remarkable for any government official, let alone the leader of the free world, to create and promote a vehicle for rampant speculation and to directly profit from it. Trump seems to show scarce restraint in his willingness to use the levers of power to enrich his family and close associates with little accountability or transparency.

Trump’s release of two meme coins, $Trump and $Melania, Prasad continued, “take conflicts of interest to an altogether new level, especially given Trump’s official position and his control of the entire financial regulatory apparatus.”

On a broader scale, Prasad wrote:

These actions highlight the Trump family’s all-out embrace of different aspects of crypto, from the creation to the securitization of crypto-related assets. From the mining of Bitcoin to issuance of their own meme coins and stablecoins, there is no corner of this industry that Trump seems to want to leave unexploited as an opportunity for personal profit.

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, cited as a key example of Trump’s profiteering the president’s announcement on April 23 that the top “220 Special $TRUMP Meme Coin Holders will be Invited to an unforgettable Gala DINNER with the President on May 22, 2025.”

As a special enticement to stock up on the coins, Trump added:

FOR THE TOP 25 COIN HOLDERS, YOU are Invited to an Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT! PLUS, We have separately arranged for a Special VIP Tour for you — so make sure you stay in town! — NY Times, Who’s the Greatest Grifter of Them All

Well worth reading the rest of that article (via gift link supplied). The blatant corruption of the office of the Presidency is absolutely staggering. But then, in another article, we are invited to recall James Comer and the so-called House Oversight Committee, who spent the greater part of 2023-24 investigating the alleged corruption of the Biden family's connection to Hunter Biden's business interests. All of which blew up in Comer's face, as witness after witness repudiated the premisses of the investigation, with one being jailed for perjury and another fleeing the country. But, any interest in investigating Trump's flagrant conflicts of interest in his crypto ventures, or his sons peddling Trump Inc business interests all over the world? Not on your nellie!

Most of the materialism on this forum has a simple origin. It begins with Descartes' division of the world into res cogitans (thinking thing) and res extensa (matter). This becomes a major part of the 'new sciences' developed by Newton, Galileo, Boyle, et al in the beginning of the modern period. But 'res cogitans' is inherently problematical - what is it, where is it, and how does it affect or intervene with the physical order? Descartes himself couldn't answer these questions. So essentially it becomes shunted aside, in favour of exploration of the so-called purely physical, the objects of the hard sciences, definite, measurable, and with inummerable applications in technology. Why question that? How could it be considered that res cogitans was anything other than a ghost in the machine?

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, p33