Hey that’s pretty good. One for the scrapbook. Although shedding the illusion is often rather more traumatic than a snake shedding its skin.

We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience consciousness

Rather like objects as ‘permanent possibilities of sensation’ but here the objects are noumenal.

Mathemarical concepts for Husserl are no more ‘real’ than the spatial objects we interact with in the world. — Joshs

And no less.

Physicists, probably more than anyone else in science, are obsessed with simplicity, unification and "naturalness," and not without reason, because this attitude has accompanied spectacular advances in physics over the past two centuries. But how philosophically justified is it? And how sustainable? I suppose that goes to the question of the proverbial "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." — SophistiCat

Subject of a book by Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math.

Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades.

The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.

(Although from my perspective, embracing reality 'as it is' will entail abandoning the axiom that it is only physical.)

I've discovered a Notre Dame Review about a book which I'll probably never get around to, but which finds some common ground between Platonism and Husserl, Phenomenology, Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics, Richard Tieszen, from which:

In his later Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), Husserl develops the method of eidetic variation. Eidetic variation consists of a series of mental acts that aim to grasp an invariant, ideal, non-sensory object that serves as a substrate to a range of experiences. The same object is given across this range of experience and we experience its self-samenesss. Husserl suggested that this method would serve to sharpen our conceptual grasp of ideal objects, and Tieszen argues that this method is in fact close to the actual procedure employed in modern geometry. In abstract sciences, Tieszen writes, "objectivity and invariance go hand in hand" (p. 89), and invariance is best understood as givenness. An ontology of abstract objects, then, should rest on the elements of Husserlian epistemology.

Husserl called his position "transcendental" phenomenology, and Tieszen makes sense of this by claiming that it can be seen as an extension of Kant's transcendental idealism. The act of cognition constitutes its content as objective. Once we recognize the distinctive givenness of essences in our experience, we can extend Kant's realism about empirical objects grounded in sensible intuition to a broader realism that encompasses objects grounded in categorial intuition, including mathematical objects.

The view is very much like what Kant has to say about empirical objects and empirical realism, except that now it is also applied to mathematical experience. On the object side of his analysis Husserl can still claim to be a kind of realist about mathematical objects, for mathematical objects are not our own ideas (p. 57f.).

This view, Tieszen points out, can preserve all the advantages of Platonism with none of its pitfalls. We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience, given fulfillments of mathematical intentions. The evidence that justifies our mathematical knowledge is of the same kind as the evidence available for empirical knowledge claims: we are given these objects. And, since they are given, not subjectively constructed, fictionalism, conventionalism, and similar compromise views turn out to be unnecessarily permissive. The only twist we add to a Platonic realism is that ideal objects are transcendentally constituted.

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. (p. 13).

Bolds added. It is in accordance with my intuitive understanding.

I am of the view that inner as opposed to outer, objective aspects of 'reality' are important here in the tradition of human understanding. Science, similarly to religion may be embedded in mythic understanding. What do you think, especially in relation to the concept of myth? As far as I see it is a topic involving dialogue between ancient philosophy, as well as anthropological thinking and research. How may the development of ideas about 'gods' or one God be understood in the history of religion and philosophy? — Jack Cummins

They're good questions, but also very big questions. There is a description you might sometimes encounter, 'scientia sacra', meaning the sacred science. It is not a popular term, but still has currency amongst the advocates of the perennial philosophy, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr and others. This is the theme that there are universal, undelying tenets of wisdom which are made manifest in the individual cultural forms throughout history. In the pre-modern world, there was a perceived unity between the human being as 'microcosm' and the universe, Cosmos ('as above, so below', although the traditionalist vision has been undermined by science in some important respects.)

But it's a vast field of study, which can be approached through a number of perspectives. Karen Armstrong is a good source on that. Huston Smith might be another to consider. Joseph Campbell, as mentioned already. James Hillman another. There's also the more up-to-date and contemporary approaches, like Brian Swimme's evolutionary cosmology. Gary Lachmann's books might be of interest also.

In a nutshell, 'mathematical platonism' would suggest people have experienced these higher realities and found mathematics to be existing within them. — Tzeentch

Here is a passage about Augustine which details the Platonist insights that inspired his religious conversion.

During his Manichaean period Augustine’s attention had been focused on the external corporeal world. His thinking had consequently been bound by sensory experience: he could conceive only what he could form a sensory image of. Platonism, however, admonished him to abandon the corporeal world and turn inward, using the eye of his own rational soul. When he did so, he discovered an astonishing new realm. The incorporeality, immutability, and eternity that characterize purely intellectual thought are the clues that led Augustine, by stages, to the divine nature itself.

Augustine begins by establishing a hierarchy that sorts into general categories and ranks the natures that comprise the universe: existence, life, and understanding:

Therefore the nature that merely exists (and neither lives nor understands) ranks below the nature that not only exists but also lives (but does not understand) – the soul of the non-human animals is of this sort. This nature in turn ranks below the nature that at once exists, lives, and understands – for example, the rational mind of the human being. (lib. arb. 2.6.13)

His strategy will be to argue that there is a nature that ranks above the rational mind of the human being, a nature that he will identify as divine (lib. arb. 2.6.14, 2.15.39). In order to discover it, he ascends the hierarchy of natures, turning attention first from bodies (the first and lowest-ranking category in the hierarchy) to the soul (psuche, the nature constitutive of both the second and third categories), and then within his own soul from the sensory (found in both human beings and the non-human animals) to the rational: “a kind of head or eye of our soul ... which does not belong to the nature of non-human animals” (lib. arb. 2.6.13).11

Having ascended as far as reason – that which is highest in us – he focuses on reason’s distinctive perceptual capacities and the distinctive sorts of objects they put us in contact with, the objects of pure thought. By way of example, Evodius, Augustine’s interlocutor in the dialogue, first suggests that they consider “the structure and truth of number,” by which he means arithmetical facts and relationships of the sort expressed by such truths as “seven plus three equals ten” (lib. arb. 2.8.20–21). Augustine himself adds the example of the indivisible mathematical unit that is the foundation of all number. He later introduces into the discussion a collection of a priori evaluative and normative truths such as “wisdom should be diligently sought after,” “inferior things should be subjected to superior things,” and “what is eternal is better than what is temporal” (lib. arb. 2.10.28). He thinks of these truths as constitutive of wisdom itself and therefore normative for anyone who would possess it. Moreover, anyone who is able to contemplate them will recognize their truth. Examination of these various examples leads Augustine to three conclusions: intelligible objects of these sorts are independent of our minds, incorporeal, and higher than reason. Put briefly, the main lines of his reasoning are as follows (lib. arb. 2.8.20–12.34):

1. Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds.

2. Intelligible objects must be incorporeal because they are eternal and immutable. By contrast, all corporeal objects, which we perceive by means of the bodily senses, are contingent and mutable. Moreover, certain intelligible objects – for example, the indivisible mathematical unit – clearly cannot be found in the corporeal world (since all bodies are extended, and hence divisible). These intelligible objects cannot therefore be perceived by means of the senses; they must be incorporeal and perceptible by reason alone.

3. Intelligible objects must be higher than reason because they judge reason. Augustine means by this that these intelligible objects constitute a normative standard against which our minds are measured (lib. arb. 2.5.12 and 2.12.34). We refer to mathematical objects and truths to judge whether or not and to what extent our minds understand mathematics. We consult the rules of wisdom to judge whether or not and to what extent a person is wise. In virtue of their normative relation to reason, Augustine argues that these intelligible objects must be higher than it, as a judge is higher than what it judges. Moreover, the intrinsic nature of these objects shows them to be higher than reason. They are eternal and immutable; by contrast, the human mind is clearly mutable. Augustine holds that since it is evident to all who consider it that the immutable is superior to the mutable (it is among the rules of wisdom he identifies), it follows that these objects are higher than reason.

...By focusing on objects perceptible by the mind alone and by observing their nature, in particular their eternity and immutability, Augustine came to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal. When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?” (FVP 13–14), he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality. — Cambridge Companion to Augustine

Popper's "Third world" differs from Plato's world of forms in that it is entirely an artefact of language and culture and is thus constantly changing. This is in contrast to the changeless world of Plato's forms. — Janus

True. Although there is considerable debate about what 'Plato's world of forms' actually is or means. In any case, the reason I mentioned it, is because Popper grants a kind of irreducibility to those things that constitute the third world.

:up:

There really is privileged metaphysical structure; we're just not sure about the terms to use. — J

That's why I suggested that essay about Frege. I'm no expert in Frege - in fact that essay is about the sum total of my knowledge - but it explores the idea of a 'third realm', somewhat similar to Popper's idea with the same name. Those kinds of ideas are all generally Platonistic.

You seem to be suggesting that one of these logics is correct. — Michael

If you mean, I believe that there is a truth to logical laws that is not dependent on one or another philosophical doctrine, then yes, I do believe that. I think the law of the excluded middle, for instance, describes something inherent in the structure of reality—not something contingent on whether anyone happens to conceive of it. It is a 'metaphysical primitive,' i.e., something that can't be reduced further.

There's a subtle point at issue here—the ontological status of such principles that are not created by the human mind but can only be grasped by a rational intellect. These principles, while independent of any particular mind, require the rational intellect to apprehend them—highlighting the unique role of reason in discerning universal truths. Whereas in today's culture there is an inherent tendency to try and account for those principles naturalistically, as a result of evolutionary neurology, etc (i.e. 'naturalised epistemology'). But this again relativizes them or makes them contingent facts. Would you agree with that?

Your view seems to be a form of transcendental idealism, which is about how we understand reality fundamentally through mental ideas (and cognitive pre-structures) and thusly is a form of epistemic idealism---not ontological idealism. — Bob Ross

Good analysis Bob.

As for the decomposition problem, Kastrup does address that through his theory of 'dissociated alters'. He proposes that reality comprises a universal consciousness ('mind at large'.) This universal mind is analogous to a field of subjectivity, from which all individual experiences arise by dissociation.

Dissociation: Individual conscious beings, like humans, are seen as dissociated "alters" of the universal mind. Just as alters in dissociative identity theory are partitioned segments of a single psyche, the individual consciousness is a localized expression of the universal mind, dissociated from its broader unity.

This is very similar to the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which Kastrup has acknowledged in dialogues with Swami Sarvapriyananda, the head teacher of the Vedanta Society of New York. And a similar idea is expressed by Albert Einstein, of all people.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. — Albert Einstein, Letter of Condolence

But I would add the caveat that the whole concept of 'mind at large' is problematical if it is conceived as something objectively existent in a way analogous to matter or energy. (I wrote an (unpublished) Medium essay on that topic which can be reviewed here.)

There is no scientific evidence for dualism - verifiable separability of mental stuff and physical stuff. It is also not metaphysically parsimonious and borderline incoherent. So which is it? Mental stuff or physical stuff? — Apustimelogist

If you read the OP carefully, you will note that I discuss that problem in paragraph four. I emphatically do not posit any conception of 'mind stuff' or 'spiritual substance' which i regard as an oxymoronic conception, to wit:

To say the world is made of experience in the same way as houses are made of bricks also doesn't avoid the hard combination problem... — Apustimelogist

The second objection (to idealism) is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. — Wayfarer

All due respect, you're viewing the issue in the wrong register. As I say at the outset, the approach is perspectival, it is not an essay about what 'things are made of.' That is a job for physics and chemistry. But the nature of our own first-person experience is real on a different level and the question of its nature has to be approached in a different way. That's what I mean by 'perspectival'. I know from reading your post here and elsewhere, you view the issue through a certain perspective, and that challenging one's assumed perspectives is difficult. But the philosophical perspective the OP advocating is of a different kind or order.

You can believe that numbers and other abstracta really and truly exist without being a mathematical platonist. You merely assert that they exist because we have created them, and they will cease to exist if we also cease. — J

What about the laws of logic, like the law of the excluded middle? Does that cease to obtain in the absence of rational sentient beings? I’m more inclined to the understanding that it is discovered by rational sentient beings, and with it the realisation that it must be true in all possible worlds. The alternative is to subjectivize such principles, which reduces them to social conventions. Meaning whatever reality they possess is contingent - so they can’t ‘really and truly exist’.

I tend towards objective idealism - that logical and arithmetical fundamentals are real independently of any particular mind, but can only be grasped by an act of rational thought. I believe that’s more in line with classical metaphysics.

See Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge.

Do mathematical objects exist in some exotic realm, awaiting discovery? — jgill

As I said, I think ‘exist’ is problematical in the context. Not that they don’t exist, but the way in which they’re real is different to empirical objects. They are ‘objects of mind’ rather than ‘objects of sense’, but I don’t think the philosophical lexicon has an appropriate term. I tried this out on ChatGPT recently and it suggested ‘transcendentally objective’, although that is hardly an elegant expression.

And it has changed character from a descriptive and predictive tool to an enormous game, unbounded in some aspects, with recently formulated foundational rules. — jgill

Consider synthetic chemistry and genetic engineering. These too are grounded in traditional chemistry and biology but now have dimensions that would never be found in nature herself. It’s analogous in some ways.

I've always thought of these little critters as part of the metaphysics of mathematics — jgill

Maybe they are to natural numbers as viruses are to organisms ;-)

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

Does that make sense? — Tzeentch

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

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

See this post

:ok:

I’m interested in what you mean, regardless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sebastian Rödl — J

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

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

Well known knuckle-dragged spills the beans

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

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

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

everything that makes you you... — praxis

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

:100: Thanks for the introduction to Shaun Gallagher.

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

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

*

Thanks. Worth knowing.

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

Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

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

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

3. Hence, 'mind-created world'.

I agree that consciousness is a natural process — Joshs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:100:

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