Dualism could be true. We could be descended from ancestors who were directly created by a God, and it doesn't change anything: there is still an external world and our senses deliver a functionally accurate understanding of it. Why doubt that? You seem to either deny it, or at least doubt it. Why? It's not dependent on physicalism. — Relativist

My issue with dualism, in the Cartesian sense, is that it tends to reify consciousness, treat it as a spiritual 'substance', which is an oxymoronic term in my view. I think some form of revised hylomorphic dualism (matter-form dualism) is quite feasble, one of the reasons I'm impressed with Feser's 'A-T' philosophy. I'm impressed by many of his arguments about the nature and primacy of reason, such as Think, McFly, Think. But he is critical of Cartesian dualism, at least as it has come down to us, and I think the 'Cartesian divide' is the source of many of the intellectual ailments of modernity.

But you agree there is an mind-independent reality:

though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye
— Wayfarer — Relativist

I do, but this is qualified by declaring that the world is not ultimately or really mind-independent, insofar as any judgement about its nature presupposes, but then 'brackets out', the observer.

The error I'm calling out is the 'absolutisation' of objective judgement. There's an Aeon essay (now a book) I frequently refer to, The Blind Spot of Science. It says, in part:

Behind the Blind Spot sits the belief that physical reality has absolute primacy in human knowledge, a view that can be called scientific materialism. In philosophical terms, it combines scientific objectivism (science tells us about the real, mind-independent world) and physicalism (science tells us that physical reality is all there is). Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary. The scientific task becomes about figuring out how to reduce them to something physical, such as the behaviour of neural networks, the architecture of computational systems, or some measure of information.

This framework faces two intractable problems. The first concerns scientific objectivism. We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience.

This doesn’t mean that scientific knowledge is arbitrary, or a mere projection of our own minds. On the contrary, some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.

The second problem concerns physicalism. According to the most reductive version of physicalism, science tells us that everything, including life, the mind and consciousness, can be reduced to the behaviour of the smallest material constituents. You’re nothing but your neurons, and your neurons are nothing but little bits of matter. Here, life and the mind are gone, and only lifeless matter exists.

To put it bluntly, the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness. — The Blind Spot

Why think our inherent belief in a world external to ourselves is false or completely inscrutable? — Relativist

In line with the above, it's true in one way, but not in another. The very first thing any organism has to do is establish and maintain a boundary between itself and the environment. It is a basic condition of existence. And from a common-sense (or naive realist) point of view, we're indeed all separate people and separate from the world. But this is illusory in the sense that reality itself is not something we're apart from or outside of. One of Einstein's sayings, often put on posters, captures it:

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 sent to Robert J. Marcus on the death of a son

I acknowledge that we'll never understand much about the mind through a physical analysis of brain structure. — Relativist

It matters for materialist theories of mind, such as D M Armstrong's and others, surely. They all proclaim the identity of brain and mind.

Again, the thrust of 'mind-created world' (and it might have been better called 'mind-constructed') is in line with cognitivism, the insight into the way the mind synthesises sensory data with inherent faculties of judgement so as to generate, construct, or create the sense of the world within which science and all else is conducted. It's not as radical as it might seem, but it is definitely a challenge for physicalism, which is the context in which we're discussing it.

There are many other constructs in physics and science that fit that description. — Apustimelogist

Right. Like the standard model of particle physics itself. Something which physicalism tends to overlook. But the main point is, I think the non-physical nature of the wavefunction mitigates against 'objective collapse' theories like Penrose's. As I said in the essay I wrote on it, his theories, like Einstein's, are based on the conviction that the universe *should* be deterministic. But that is a philosophical, not a scientific, argument.

If there's something about it that you would like to discuss with me specifically, then please feel free to let me know and I would be happy to discuss — Bob Ross

I felt the major point was Kant's relationship with modern cognitive science. You could say that in some respects some of his major ideas have been vindicated, the point being that unlike what some might say, he hasn't been left behind by subsequent science.

https://aeon.co/essays/who-really-won-when-bergson-and-einstein-debated-time

So - is your question basically ‘what does it all mean’?

Some of the posters held at the Women's March in DC today:

"We need a leader not a creepy tweeter."

"Uncle Sam stay outta my clam."

"Roe, Roe, Roe your vote."

"No sex with men until Roe comes back."

"Grab him by the ballot."

"Sometimes you gotta flush twice."

It was the backstory to my remark about Calvin.

Well, yes, agree.

It was a flippant line, poor form on my part considering the topic. Although there is some factual basis, it’s not coincidental that Calvin has been parodied as ‘The Ayatollah of Geneva’. That book I often mention (Tim Wood also mentions it upthread) Theological Origins of Modernity by M A Gillespie lays out a superb case of the watershed in intellectual history, when Ockham’s nominalism, and theological voluntarism, displaced scholastic realism at the centre of Western thought. From a reader review:

Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descartes and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which according to Gillespie dismantled the rational God and Cosmos of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, born out of a concern that anything less than such would jeopardize His divine omnipotence. (In other words, a God not bound to observe logic and no respecter of reason.)

Subsequent intellectual history is, in Gillespie's reading, a grappling with the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will will in order to preserve God's absolute power. However, this in turn culminated in an ambivalence about salvation. If God simply wills whom to save, human action has no real merit (ex. Luther's "sin boldly"). Gillespie's chapter on the debate between Erasmus-Luther was among the most interesting in bringing this out.
Also fascinating is Gillespie's detailed analysis of Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. The latter is usually depicted as an atheist (or his religiosity dubious at best) and his philosophy as chiefly political but Gillespie believes him sincerely religious (if not exactly orthodox) and reveals the underlying metaphysical concerns behind his thought.

And so Gillespie says, even in modern times, we are bequeathed with a similar wrestling between humanity's political ambitions (the expansion of freedom) and the inability to reconcile this with science's inherent determinist worldview. Likewise, in the post-9/11/ confrontation with Islam (which makes a brief appearance at the end) we are again confronted with the fideism and absolutism of Islam which sees the West's assertion of individual autonomy as a challenge to God's omnipotence, for whom our only response ought to be obedience.

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

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

We’re all caught up in the throes of this, every day.

I don't see that as inconsistent with the fact that from the perspective of phenomenological inquiry what is fundamental for us is what we are and can be aware of. I don't agree with the kind of thinking that counts what is fundamental for us as being fundamental tout court. Such thinking is too human-centric for my taste. I view it as a conceit. — Janus

It is naturalism (or physicalism) that is human-centric. Why? Because of having excluded the subject from consideration of what is real and declaring the measurable attributes of objects the sole criterion for what exists, as if that has philosophical significance, independently of any perspective whatever (something that the ‘measurement problem’ has made explicit.) Phenomenology, following Kant, is intellectually humble, in that it acknowledges the role of the subject in science, thereby overturning the conceit implicit in the presumption of a ‘view from nowhere’. And I continue to refer to The Blind Spot of Science, by Thompson, Frank and Gleiser, because I think it’s an important book that makes a case very similar to that I have given in the OP. It’s not an ‘appeal to authority’, it is an acknowledgement of a similar line of argument from recognised scholars.

Nothing about that inherently suggests anything about subjectivity. — Apustimelogist

That wasn’t the point at issue, which was that Ψ is outside of spacetime. (Among the interpretations are subjectivist ones like QBism, which makes sense to me.)

Anyway - I had the realisation the other day, when challenged with ‘name one thing that is outside space and time’ that the wavefunction fits that description, and yet is also at the heart of the success of modern physics.

This is not only not reassuring, it makes man entirely helpless, and it makes all of reality bottom out in the completely unintelligible and unfathomable. — Tom Storm

Sounds like Calvinism to me.

I suppose one way to "cope" with a lack of meaning could be to actually uncover to true meaning of life, how to "be a good person," or "life a good life," etc. :grin: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah I had the idea philosophy had something to do with that. Evolutionary biology, maybe not so much.

A first step would be to isolate (if it's not something that the brain as a whole does), how or where sensory information from all senses come together (as the mind is amalgam of the information from all five senses at once) from which the model is constructed.
— Harry Hindu — J

No such faculty. This is the problem of the subjective unity of experience which currently escapes scientific definition.

It’s from Dermot Morgan’s Introduction to Phenomenology. I quoted it in support of my overall argument, which is also similar to The Blind Spot of Science, another of your favorites :wink:

:100:

I asked if you had any comment on the passage about Husserl. Apparently not, but never mind.

ECMT posits that religiosity evolved to mitigate existential anxiety, foster cooperation, and provide meaning – functions that aren't necessarily incompatible with scientific inquiry.
2h — ContextThinker

Agree, but does it acknowledge that religions might make valid truth claims?

So Husserl is conceited?

Fair. But then a label turned them down because they didn’t have trumpets so you weren’t alone. But, I meant with regards to the issues at hand.

my understanding is wrong, and that is the issue — Mww

Never!

Might as well brag about being the only animal to play checkers. — goremand

As if that is the sum total of our achievements….

I don't follow this argument. — Janus

Any comment or criticism of the above snippet about Husserl?

The Logic of the Diamond Sutra: A is not A, therefore it is A Shigenori Nagatomo

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to make intelligible the logic contained in the Diamond
Sutra. This `logic’ is called the `logic of not’. It is stated in a propositional form: `A is not A, therefore it is A’. Since this formulation is contradictory or paradoxical when it is read in light of Aristotelean logic, one might dismiss it as nonsensical. In order to show that it is neither nonsensical nor meaningless, the paper will articulate the philosophical reasons why the Sutra makes its position in this contradictory form. The thesis to be presented is that as long as one understands the `logic of not’ from a dualistic, either-or egological standpoint, it remains contradictory, but in order to properly understand it, one must effect a perspectival shift from the dualistic, egological stance to a non-dualistic, non-egological stance. This thesis is advanced with a broader concern in mind: to reexamine how the self understands itself, how it understands others, and how it understands its intra-ecological relationship with nature.

.pdf, 32 pages including footnotes.

Don't you think the issue here is the difficulty of questioning the instinctive sense of the reality of the sense-able world? (a.k.a. naive and/or scientific realism). As Bryan Magee puts it in his book on Schopenhauer:

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

Modern society, generally, is overall realist in its orientation, it takes the sense-able world as possessing an intrinsic reality, which transcendental idealism calls into question. That's why I sometimes say, in a whimsical kind of way, that to understand it is to 'go through the looking glass' - it requires a literal cognitive shift or flip (and yes, I think Lewis Carroll was on to this!) Something like the satori of Buddhism, albeit perhaps not in the ultimate sense that Buddhists understand it, but a step in that direction.

There have been various reductionist and biologically-based attempts to explain or rationalise religion in terms of evolution. Evolutionary adaption is said to account for everything about human existence. Notable was Daniel Dennett's 'Breaking the Spell' (the New York Times review of which caused a bit of uproar).

Notice that none of the references provided are actually about religion, presumably indicating the conviction that religions have no content other than providing imagined solace or comfort from existential dread. Presumably the question of whether they can be in any sense true is put to one side.

Science provides an alternative framework for understanding the world, addressing existential questions through empirical evidence and rational inquiry. — ContextThinker

Modern scientific method excludes from consideration factors that are not amenable to objective measurement and analysis. Science’s framework was intended to provide knowledge through observation, experimentation, and rational analysis, with an emphasis on objectivity and reproducibility. That framework has been hugely successful in advancing our understanding of physical and biological phenomena, but until recently, it has never really engaged directly with existential questions.

The quoted passage instead suggests the 'conflict thesis', which generally casts religion as an outdated or superseded cognitive mode especially when viewed against the background of scientific progress. According to this view, science and religion are fundamentally at odds: science is seen as the domain of rational, evidence-based inquiry, while religion is framed as an artifact of cognitive biases or a tool for coping with existential anxiety. The implication is often that religion has no genuine insights to offer about reality or the human condition and so can only be understood in Darwinian terms, never mind that it is primarily a biological theory about the evolution of species.

But the times they are a'changing. In recent years there’s been a notable shift, particularly with the intersection of disciplines like cognitive science, neuroscience, and contemplative science, which are beginning to engage with questions of consciousness, well-being, the nature of meaning, and genuine philosophical enquiry. People like John Vervaeke are at the forefront of this movement, questioning the traditional limits of scientific inquiry and suggesting that cognitive science, in particular, is poised to explore existential questions more rigorously, in so doing entering into dialogue with many religious and spiritual philosophers and practitioners.

References: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, John Vervaeke (Video playlist).

Andrew Newberg and 'Neurotheology' (website)

Mind and Life Institute (website)

So, you think that would mean something to an animal? Sure you're not being a tad anthropomorphic there?

And what do animals value, then?

We do not have to have ever thought of the concepts time or space, and we would still function because we are beings of time and space. The argument that our ability to function is innate knowledge, means that even a single cell amoeba has an innate knowledge of time and space. That's absurd. — Philosophim

I hadn't thought of that, but it's true! The amoeba must at very least have an innate sense of itself as being separate from its environment, otherwise it would perish. Of course an amoeba has no consciousness of its own existence, but in some fundamental sense time means something to it, that it does not mean to a rock.

I wonder if this post, although not addressed to you, might have been relevant to your enquiries?

For me the difference all comes down to symbolic language which enables an augmented abstract-capable rationality. — Janus

Right. And all that this entails.

It's an ontological distinction - a difference in kind.

Anyway, I started reading the article linked in the OP, and I really didn't like it, so I'll leave this issue to the other participants.

I doubt how out of all those mentioned philosophers would deny that we are animals. — Janus

To save me the time of researching all of them I tossed it to ChatGPT.

It doesn’t need to stipulate the identity of whomever is in the chair. It is a general claim, to wit:

(P1) Presently sitting in your chair is a human animal. — NOS4A2

So if the intention of the argument is to prove that humans are animals, then that premise begs the question, as it already assumes that the human is an animal.

But that doesn't mean humans aren't animals — Baden

I would agree provided the implication is that humans aren’t just animals, or only animals. It’s the philosophical implications of that I’m wary of.

And I said, the argument begs the question.

Personally, I think we can acknowledge even a fundamental difference between animals with language and all that comes with that, such as humans, and other animals without being bothered by the fact that we are all animals. — Baden

We're related to all other species and descended from earlier hominids, but 'the human condition' is identifiable as a unique state. After all, scientists say we now live in the anthropocene.

Which premise do you disagree with? — NOS4A2

I said, if the aim of the argument is to prove that humans are animals, then P1 already says it, so it begs the question. Begging the question is 'assuming what an argument sets out to prove'.

that there is a difference in kind between h.sapiens and other species
— Wayfarer
A difference, sure. A fundamental one? When did that change occur, or do you not consider humans to have animal ancestry? — noAxioms

I'm quite familiar with paleoanthropology and paleontology. The precursor species of early hominids would have gradually developed characteristics unique to humans such as the upright gait, opposable thumb, and enlarged cranium, but it really came into its own with the development of the hominid (neanderthal and h.sapiens) forebrain over a relatively short span of evolutionary time. It enables h.sapiens to do things and to understand levels of meaning that other species cannot.

You said somewhere recently that Vervaeke's "relevance realization" operates at all levels of life. What could this be but some kind of understanding (however) rudimentary) that something is of whatever significance it is for the organism". — Janus

Agree. But Vervaeke would also say that h.sapiens have greater horizons of being than do other animals, because of reason, language, self-awareness, and all that this entails. So what is relevant for human existence has greater scope than for non-human animals, although that aspect of his work is more concerned with philosophy than biology, per se, whereas relevance realisation is something characteristic of organisms in general. But this is where evolutionary biology tends to be reductionist as its criteria are chiefly concerned with the requirements for adaptation and survival. As a Dawkins or a Crick would put it, you are ' robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes' or 'You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules'. Nothing buttery, as it has been called.

What do you mean by the "sovereignty of reason"? Reason by itself delivers no knowledge. — Janus

But it delivers considerable capacity to gain knowledge, surely you would agree. H.sapiens by dint of reason is able to do many things which animals can not. (There have been interminable, and to my mind pointless, arguments about this in the Rational Thinking Human and Animal thread.)

What is the actual argument for why accepting the evolution of reason would undermine those principles? — Janus

The 'argument from reason' is that reasoned inference must convey facts that are internal to reason. Seeking to justify such reasons with reference to the extent to which they provide an adaptive or evolutionary advantage undermines the sovereignty of reason by saying that it's claims have some grounds other than their self-evident nature. As Thomas Nagel puts it:

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. ...

The reliance we put on our reason implies a belief that even though the existence of human beings and of ourselves in particular is the result of a long sequence of physical and biological accidents, and even though there might never have come to be any intelligent creatures at all, nevertheless the basic methods of reasoning we employ are not merely human but belong to a more general category of mind. — Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, from The Last Word, Thomas Nagel

If the aim of the argument is to prove that humans are animals, then it begs the question, because it starts by presuming the conclusion.

Personally, I'm in agreement with Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, that there is a difference in kind between h.sapiens and other species, due to the human ability to speak, reason, create art and science, etc.

Such explanations may be counted as false if it can be definitively shown that they cannot possibly explain what they purport to. — Janus

I think Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism and Victor Reppert's version of the argument from reason are both plausible arguments against evolutionary materialism. In evolutionary theory, the mind and capacity to reason are presented in terms of biological adaption. However if the mind and reason are reduced to these terms, then this undermines the sovereignty of reason. We can discuss the details of that if you like.

Do you really believe that the Universe would not exist without us? — Janus

I've just fielded that question in the mind-created world thread. It would be better to discuss it there.