Your coffee cups are safe.

So we agree on this? — Banno

If you wish to discuss it, at least make some reference to that post I entered on the previous page, the book the thread is about, or the video which features Donald Hoffman, author of the book that this thread is about.

The cup is in the dishwasher. — Banno

Johnson kicks stone.

One of the points Donald Hoffman makes in that video above answers the question I had of him, 'what does objective mean?' At 1:37 he says 'By objective reality, I mean what most physicists would mean: that something is objectively real if it would continue to exist even if there were no creatures to perceive it.'

Take the time to watch that video. Hoffman features in it.

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking. — Apustimelogist

Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious.

Now you might say ‘so what? We all know that subatomic particles are spooky, but that doesn’t apply to the objects of day to day experience.’ But the issue is, day to day objects are supposed to be composed of these same particles and forces which were supposed to be ‘fundamental’. This was to become the subject of the ‘Bohr-Einstein’ debates that were to run on until Einstein’s death decades later.

Bohr and Heisenberg’s attitude (although differing in some respects) constituted the basis of what comes to be called the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. It’s not a scientific theory but commentary on the implications of quantum mechanics.

Copenhagen posits that quantum systems don’t have definite properties until they are measured or observed. Prior to observation, particles exist in a state of superposition, where they can hold multiple potential states at once. It is only upon interaction with an observer or measurement device that one of these possibilities becomes reality. Bohr said that it was impossible to say whether said objects were 'really' waves or 'really' particles, because the answer to that depended on the way the question was asked.

This leads to the key role of the observer: the act of observation itself plays a fundamental role in “collapsing” the quantum wave function, determining the specific outcome of a particle’s state. In other words, in quantum mechanics, reality at the subatomic level isn’t fixed until it’s observed, blurring the line between objective existence and subjective experience.

This view clashes with classical physics, which assumes an objective world that exists independently of observation, as Einstein famously advocated with his rhetorical question about the moon. For Copenhagen proponents, the observer is essential in the transition from potentiality to actuality.

This suggests that, at least at the quantum level, the observer is integral to how the world takes form, raising deep questions about the nature of reality. And despite much water under the bridge, the question about the moon remains an open one. That is the distant background to much of the discussion about physics in Hoffman's book.

But there's another layer of argument altogether, that from cognitivism. Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. This is going on every second. A lot of Hoffman's argument is based on analysis of those cognitive processes and what conditions them.

In my view, a philosophical precursor to that can clearly be traced back to Kant, who likewise understood the sense in which the mind creates the world - this is his famous 'copernican revolution in philosophy'.

On the basis of all of this, I generally argue for the fact that, while the objective domain is independent of any particular observer - you or me - the objective world nevertheless is grounded in the irreducibly subjective process of world-construction. And that because of the over-valuation of science and objectivity, this constructive process is generally invisible to us. That is the subject of the book, The Blind Spot of Science, by Frank, Gleiser and Thompson. And also Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles S. Pinter.

He’s behaving like a juvenile. Spouting conspiracy theories and insults. His handlers are desperately trying to get him to sound like he knows what he’s doing, to no avail. The further behind he falls the more he will flail. There’s a chance that he will actually become pathetic. That’ll be the death knell.

I actually didn't like his excursus in speculative idea of contemporary physics — boundless

Me neither. Didn’t really understand it either. Although I can see the connection with QBism.

…beings that are conscious to be conscious. — boundless

‘Meta-conscious awareness’ is the term, I believe.

I'm finding Donald Hoffman's book alternately interesting and frustrating. His formula of 'fitness beats truth' makes me want to ask what is the ‘truth’ that is ‘beaten by fitness’. He says that we don’t see ‘objective reality’ but that we see what evolution primes us to see. But at the same time, as we all have the same evolutionary heritage, then why that can’t also be ‘objective’? We’ll all share a very large pool of common objects of experience, so if I call a tomato an orange, or measure a meter to be 80cm, I’ll be objectively mistaken.

Anyway - perceptive review of the book by a physicist can be found here https://4gravitons.com/2024/02/23/book-review-the-case-against-reality/

Wayfarer, I keep telling you I'm a lot more open to your ideas then you'll allow in your own head. Give people a chance, especially if they're willing to engage with you. — Philosophim

Fair enough, point taken, I will keep that in mind in future. Apologies if I was dismissive.

Stevenson was widely scorned for his research, as the whole idea of reincarnation is anathema to both regular science and Christian culture (where it was essentially declared heretical in the fourth century.) I’ve brought him up a few times on the forum but it provokes a lot of pushback. I think there’s a tendency to be either repelled by the idea or to be fascinated by it. Stevenson’s cases are not at all of famous historical figures. The remembered previous lives were generally those of very ordinary people, who often lost their lives in tragic circumstances. That’s one of the aspects of his research that lends plausibility.

Stevenson was associated with the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, the activities of which are mainly concerned with parapsychology and other paranormal phenomena. He has a successor there, Jim Tucker, but he’s not so well known (or notorious!) as was Stevenson.

From my point we can replace the word physics with, "Measureable". And as I noted earlier, logically, if there is some other type of substance that interacts with the human body, it must be detectable in some way. It would be part of reality, and measurable. — Philosophim

The word ‘substance’ can be misleading in this context. As a technical term in philosophy it means something very different to the usual meaning, which is ‘a material with uniform properties’. In philosophy, the word derives from ‘substantia’, which was the Latin word used to translate the Greek ‘ouisia’ from Aristotle. ‘Ousia’ is nearer in meaning to ‘being’, and ‘substantia’ is supposed to mean ‘that which stands under’. So in some ways, the meaning is nearer to ‘subject’ than ‘substance’ in the normal sense. But I think it’s misleading to believe that ‘substance’ in this context can be taken to mean something objectively measurable or perceptible - although that is obviously suggested by Descartes ‘mind-body’ dualism. I think it’s a major legacy issue from early modern philosophy.

I have often thought the memories and their preservation could be captured somehow. Generally though memory is stored as a medium, and it needs a translator to process it into an experience. — Philosophim

Animals often seem to remember things, like homing pigeons or Atlantic salmon that find their way back to their home stream from across the ocean. We put it down to ‘instinct’ as if that explains it, or assign it to their ability to somehow read magnetic fields. But what if there are biological fields? This is where Rupert Sheldrake comes in. And he’s another maverick, many dismiss him as a quack - when his first book was published, the then-editor of Nature said it ought to be burned (‘for exactly the same reason that Galileos’ books were banned - they were heresy!’) But anyway, he has a theory of morphic resonance, that ‘nature forms habits’, and that these are expressed in both organic and inorganic forms (i.e. through crystal formation.) Sheldrake has published quite a few papers on it, but again they’re frustratingly inconclusive. I’m afraid it always seems to be that way in respect of paranormal studies, (in fact I wonder if that is actually a ‘feature not a bug’. His research findings can be reviewed at sheldrake.org.)

But then, as we’re talking about reincarnation, it is a fringe issue, so maybe fringe theories are apposite. In any case, I don’t find the idea that ‘nature forms habits’ to be startlingly outlandish - the difficulty seems to be, in what medium are such memories preserved? I won’t venture an answer, but I don’t think it’s a ridiculous question. Although maybe the underlying idea behind both topics is the sense that the universe is more ‘mind-like’ than ‘machine-like’ in its operations.

I'm not complaining about criticism, but about the weird appeal to authority. You didn't actually say why my analogy was poor. — hypericin

I didn't mean to annoy you. I included a link to a book review which was earlier shown to me on this forum. It's Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which talks about the 'mereological fallacy':

In Chapter 3 of Part I - “The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience” - Bennett and Hacker set out a critical framework that is the pivot of the book. They argue that for some neuroscientists, the brain does all manner of things: it believes (Crick); interprets (Edelman); knows (Blakemore); poses questions to itself (Young); makes decisions (Damasio); contains symbols (Gregory) and represents information (Marr). Implicit in these assertions is a philosophical mistake, insofar as it unreasonably inflates the conception of the 'brain' by assigning to it powers and activities that are normally reserved for sentient beings. It is the degree to which these assertions depart from the norms of linguistic practice that sends up a red flag. The reason for objection is this: it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. These claims are not false; rather, they are devoid of sense.

Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being. Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter.

Australian cities are overwhelmingly motonormative. Partially because of the dictates of distance and geography, as it's a vast landscape with long distances between urban centers and suburbs. There's been a big push in Sydney to upgrade public transport, taking the form of a driverless metro train system which has cost billions and involved tunnelling under Sydney harbour.

Parts of the Sydney CBD have been made car-free, but it's ringed by busy roads. And Sydney also now has about the most expensive network of toll roads in the world. In my childhood, the only toll in Sydney was southbound on the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1 shilling, in pre-decimal days.) Now there are electronic tollgates all over the place, it costs me twenty bucks to drive from my home in the greater metro area to my son's place. A lot of people in the outer suburbs pay hundreds of dollars a week in tolls.

But then, there's also been a concerted push, mainly by Green-leaning councillors, to upgrade bikeways in the City of Sydney. But Sydney is not kind of bicyclists, because it's hilly, and because of the traffic. Overall Australia is overwhelming motonormative and I can't see it changing anytime soon.

Consider that nirvana is not really a knowledge claim (enlightenment), but a value claim (liberation) — Constance

I don't think that's correct, the honorific name 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'. And according to Buddhist dogma, what is known is 'the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering'. To be enlightened is to be liberated from the morass of suffering that is entailed in saṃsāric existence. I'm not saying you should believe it, but that is what Buddhists themselves would say. In Platonic terms, there's definitely a 'noetic' element to Nirvāṇa, insight into a truth.

The only way I can confirm such an idea evil is a privation would be to ignore the direct evidence of suffering. But is this reasonable? — Constance

I agree it seems a preposterous notion, but I believe there's a sense in all the cosmic religions that existence is inherently imperfect and bound to entail suffering. In Christianity, that is represented in the Fall and the original sin. In Buddhism, it is represented by beginningless ignorance in which living beings are ensnared. The first link in the chain of dependent origination in Buddhism is ignorance. Liberation from ignorance is also liberation from being reborn due to karma (although in Mahāyāna doctrine, enlightened beings may be voluntarily born out of compassion.)

Alongside the 'doctrine of evil as privation' there's also the kind of theodicy explained by John Hick in his Evil and the God of Love. Hick argues that suffering plays a crucial role in the development of moral and spiritual virtues. According to Hick, humans are not created as perfect beings but rather as morally immature creatures with the potential to grow into morally and spiritually mature individuals. Suffering and challenges are necessary conditions for this growth, as they provide opportunities for individuals to develop virtues such as courage, compassion, and patience. Hick also says that for love and goodness to be genuine, they must be freely chosen. Suffering is a consequence of the freedom that God grants humans. This freedom allows for the possibility of both good and evil actions. Without the possibility of suffering, free will would be meaningless, and humans would be automatons, incapable of genuine love and moral choice.

The reason this all seems alien to modern culture, is that today's culture tends to normalise the human condition, by putting the individual self at the fulcrum. But then, that's the essence of a secular age, the only redresses being political, social and technological.

:up: Thank you :pray:

Thank you both, I’ll chew it over.

I’m thinking of the most basic form, what it is that any being described as conscious has.

Rational consciousness can reflect on that. I’m trying for the bare-bones definition.

Assembled throng of philosophical worthies: I think I have a simple definition of consciousness (which i might as well put here as start a thread).

>>Consciousness is the capacity for experience<<

What do we think?

Obviously, he's an authority on what he does know - which is physics after the free miracle — AmadeusD

What’s the ‘free miracle’?

I posted a sketch of a non-materialist metaphysic a few posts above. As I’ve noted, I think Stevenson’s research on children who claim to remember previous lives and the corroborating information is noteworthy but I understand from previous conversations that you reject it.

All well and good - but that also embodies a perspective, somewhere outside both the mind and the world. A mental picture, if you like, or image of the self-and-world.
— Wayfarer

I'm not sure what you mean here. — Apustimelogist

I will try and explain again. You said:

I think its more about trying to be as clear as possible. I think its about the idea that there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within that. It is a slave to other parts of the objective world that undergird it, not independent from those things; the evidence relating our minds to neurons and physics is overwhelming. There is no harm trying to clarify that relationship as precisely as possible. — Apustimelogist

All well and good, but I'm referring to the sense in which even this realist view is itself a mental construction. To form that picture, you have to adopt a perspective that is outside of both and that contains an image or concept of both 'the world' and 'the mind'. I think we're in agreement on that.

I suppose I should acknowledge my agenda, so to speak. I'm resistant to the kind of realist view which subordinates the mind to the scientific perspective itself, which seeks to explain philosophical issues through a scientific perspective. And why? Because philosophy has an inextricably qualitative dimension which eludes a strictly objective analysis, but which is nevertheless fundamental to our well-being. The scientific image of man often tends to deprecate or belittle that.

As for this somewhat mysterious issue of 'seeing things as they are' - I believe that that is what is conveyed by the faculty of 'sagacity'. The archetypical sage is able to arrive at a holistic understanding of nature of being, not necessarily in conflict with the scientific image, but also not necessarily disclosed by science itself, although scientists do describe moments of insight which correspond with that.

And speaking of sages, here I'm reminded of several passages from Erwin Schrodinger's 'Nature and the Greeks':

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. ...

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them. ...

The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. … For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy." ...

The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed.
In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I?

As for Lommel, again, you never posted any of his evidence or argumentation. For all I know, he's a quack. I'm not going to take time out of my day to read an entire book, as I'm not arguing for consciousness existing outside of the body. If he has good arguments, post them — Philosophim

Non-Local Consciousness, Pim Van Lommel. It's a kind of summary of his research. He notes this anecdote from a nurse:

'During night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. He was found in coma about 30 minutes before in a meadow. When we go to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the ‘crash cart.’ After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose. He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration. Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. The moment he sees me he says: ‘O, that nurse knows where my dentures are.’ I am very, very surprised. Then the patient elucidates: ‘You were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that cart, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath, and there you put my teeth.’ I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR. It appeared that the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with the CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself.'

Although it is clear that replication of this kind of event in controlled laboratory conditions might be challenging, but they are often reported in the literature. (The paper discusses attempts to corroborate this kind of evidence by placing objects in proximity of ICUs where such procedures are carried out, but with no conclusive results.)

He has an entry on Wikipedia also.

You keep taking the time to treat me like I'm an idiot, and I keep proving you wrong. Is this ever going to change? — Philosophim

I don’t believe I did that, nor did I wish to imply it. You can't have a conversation you don't like without falling into ad hominems. If I've been critical, it's because of what I see as the presuppositions you bring to bear, for example:

Currently the hypothesis, "Our consciousness does not survive death," has been confirmed in applicable tests. You'll need to show me actual tests that passed peer review, and can be repeated that show our consciousness exists beyond death. To my mind, there are none, but I am open to read if you cite one. — Philosophim

Where the obvious difficulty is that of obtaining an objective validation of a subjective state of being and which only occurs in extreme conditions. Would, for instance, the peer review group also had to have had NDE's? The 'replication crisis' in psychology is severe enough even for much more quotidian matters. Myself, I don't really see how the claim that there can be a state beyond physical death is ever going to be scientifically validated, although I believe there are research programs underway to do that.

I brought up Ian Stevenson's research into children with past-life memories, because it's obviously a more realistic source of objective data than are NDE's. Reason being, the subject children will make claims about his or her remembered previous identity, and those claims can be subjected to documentary evidence and witness testimony. And I have read it - I did take his two-volume Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect out of the library, and read large parts of it (although it's two very large volumes and much of it worded in the dry technical terminology of medical literature). But it is the consequence of the examination of several thousand such cases. It's easy to dismiss Stevenson as a crank or charlatan but he did amass a considerable amount of data which I happen to think is a more empirically reliable source of data than NDE testimonies.

I also laid out a sketch of an alternative metaphysic, within which the idea of continuity from life-to-life might be considered plausible, to which you didn't respond.

I have no problem with his pointing out the fact scientism can't explain itself, but it would be more reasonable to point toward the need for a metaphysical model that fills the gap he identified. — Relativist

You make many solid points there, and I'll need to do some more reading, obviously. I will own up that the reason for my hostility to Armstrong, and he was the professor of philosophy were I was an undergrad, was that I believe that materialist theories of mind are incorrect in principle. But I also recognise that he was a brilliant thinker and that to get into the ring with him would take someone with a lot better skills than myself. I don't believe your responses really do adequately address the challenges of modern physics, but I know better than to try and pursue that line of argument. Anyway, many points to consider there and I appreciate that.

I think its about the idea that there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within that. — Apustimelogist

Further to this point. The idea I keep coming back to is that we instinctively accept that mind is 'the product of' matter. The causal chain which supports this contention is ostensibly that of the neo-darwinian synthesis, which proposes that the brain evolved through the aeons to the point where it is able to generate the mind-states that comprise experience. So, mind as a product of matter - the essential contention of materialist theory of mind.

But what we understand as physical facts are in reality dependent on the mind. That doesn't mean we can generate our own facts gratuitously or casually - I often quote the maxim, 'everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts'. And I think that's true. There is a massive and ever-growing body of objective facts. But again, I argue that objective facts are invariably surrounded and supported by an irreducibly subjective or inter-subjective framework of ideas, within which they are meaningful, and one which the empiricist understanding of 'mind-indendent nature' doesn't acknowledge.

Hence this graphic from physicist John Wheeler:




The caption reads, ‘what we consider to be ‘reality’, symbolised by the letter R in the diagram, consists of an elaborate paper maché construction of imagination and theory fitted between a few iron posts of observation’ (from his paper Law without Law.)

This is also suggested by a paper on a physics experiment known as Wigner's Friend which creates an experimental setup that calls into question that subjects all see different perspectives on the same thing. This experiment shows that two subjects can see different results that are both supposedly 'objectively true'. So it's touted as 'calling objective reality into question' although that needs to be carefully interpreted. It doesn't mean 'anything goes' or that total relativism reigns. As noted, there's indubitably an enormous range of objective facts about which you or I can be right or wrong. But there is also a subjective element which is generally overlooked by 'objectivising' tendencies of today's scientific culture.

Chapter 6 in Hoffman's book deals with a lot of this kind of material.

The earth's not flat! It's turtles, all the way down!

I think its about the idea that there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within that. — Apustimelogist

All well and good - but that also embodies a perspective, somewhere outside both the mind and the world. A mental picture, if you like, or image of the self-and-world.

What Hoffman et al are doing is actually de-constructing that sense - which is what you yourself said in an earlier post! I'm slogging through his book, and there's a lot of data from cognitive science and evolutionary biology. But through that he's arriving at the counter-intuitive insight that the brain/mind in essence constructs the world which we reflexively believe is 'out there'. And there's a lot of pushback on that point, because it undermines our instinctive sense of what's real. Hoffman himself says in an interview that he finds it difficult to really accept the implications of his own theory!

the evidence relating our minds to neurons and physics is overwhelming. — Apustimelogist

But is it? Who are the case studies for that view? I know of a clique of academic philosophers who are customarily associated with pretty hard-edged materialist theories of mind: they are P & P Churchland, a married couple who are both academics, Alex Rosenberg, and the late Daniel Dennett are frequently mentioned in this regard. They were very much the target of David Chalmer's argument, and I think the argument succeeds. (There are also naturalist philosophers of mind, like John Searle, who are critical of the materialists, it was Searle who dubbed Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as 'Consciousness Explained Away'.)

But going back to the point I made above, brains and neurons and physics are themselves mental constructs, in some fundamental sense. It doesn't mean they're 'all in the mind' in an obvious or gross kind of way, but that the mind (or the observer) imputes meaning and value to the terminology and principles of those sciences. So there is a fundamentally mental or subjective element to those theories, which is never disclosed, because they're not critically aware of them. They impute to the objective and external what is really being generated by the mind. So there's a vicious circle at back of it, the attempt for science to explain itself. Kant was aware of that in a way the above philosophers can never be.

Similarly, science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience. — Apustimelogist

But it's a question philosophy must grapple with. So if we continue to operate within the boundaries of empiricism it's fair to question whether we really are engaging with philosophy.

I don't need to know what is happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now to believe there are some definite events happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now. — Apustimelogist

By bringing them to mind! You can't say anything about them, unless you do that.

That science is a rational form of inquiry doesn't require a supernaturalist metaphysics to justify; the "causal regularities" he refers to can be accounted for as laws of nature (relations between universals). — Relativist

But, are universals themselves physical? I know David Armstrong says they are, but I think his is a revisionist account of universals shoehorned into a materialist framework and undermined by science itself. (For example, the Copenhagen interpretation suggests that quantum entities do not have definite properties until they are observed, which conflicts with Armstrong's view that properties (or universals) exist independently of perception and measurement). And the ontological status of 'the laws of nature', and why the Universe has just these laws and not some other, is also neither a scientific question nor something that can be adjuticated by physics.

In the SEP entry on Physicalism, cited above, there is a section on 'the problem of abstracta' which is precisely that numbers and the like are not material in nature - and yet they are also basic to the success of the mathematical physics which underpins a great deal of science. There is still controversy in philosophy of mathematics as to whether the Platonist view is the correct one, and Platonism maintains that number is real but immaterial (which is why it is controversial.) So the ontological status of universals and abstracta is far from a settled question.

So:

"For scientific inquiry itself rests on a number of philosophical assumptions: that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; that this world is governed by causal regularities; that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and so forth. Since science presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle." ~ Edward Feser — Relativist

I think this is quite true, and will often defend this argument. The succinct way of expressing it is that 'naturalism assumes nature' - it starts with the apparently self-evident fact of the existence of the empirical world, to be studied by science. But again, that apparently innocuous assumption always entails an implicit metaphysics and epistemology. An example is the status of objectivity: I've argued at length in another thread that objectivity is itself reliant on there being a subject to whom objects appear (per Kant). The fact that communities of subjects see the same sets of objects doesn't undermine that. And then, there's the observer problem in physics, already noted, concerning the objects of physics itself which are essentially abstractions in the first place.

So I think Feser is quite justified in that claim.

As you know, many of us don't think there is any problem to face up to. — T Clark

Not seeing a problem does not amount to grounds for dismissing it.

That's not phyicalism, it's scientism — Relativist

They’re nearly always joined at the hip. Are there any advocates for ‘scientism’ who do not hold to physicalism? We look to science as the arbiter of what is real, and science is best equipped to deal with the objectively measurable and inferences grounded against objective measurement. So I think Feser’s metal-detector analogy is perfectly apt, especially in a discussion such as this one. We are pre-disposed to a metaphysical view that is in concordance with science, hence the constant eye-rolling and exasperation when mention is made of researchers who question physicalism.

Nor was I aware there was a special authority required to make philosophical claims. Maybe we should be verifying everyone's philosopher cards here. — hypericin

An important part of philosophy is criticism, especially of poor analogies and misapplied categories.

People want to hold onto words like "agency" and "rationality" and "subjectivity" without analyzing what they mean because they fear it deconstructs their humanity. — Apustimelogist

And I see you as reflexively hanging on to something like scientism, the belief that philosophy must always defer to the white lab coat of scientific authority. To ‘deconstruct’ the mind is to analyse it in terms of something else, or of its constituent elements - the impossibility of which is precisely the point of Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’ article. I don’t want to thrash all that out again, but nothing you’re saying indicates that you are facing up to that problem.

Must they be hallucinatory? I don't know. I never claimed that. Did you read our discussion and my points, or are you only taking a later post? — Philosophim

Never?

If a bunch of people have a hallucination, no one doubts they have a hallucination. But the fact that multiple people have a hallucination is not an argument for that hallucination being real. — Philosophim

The point about Van Lommel and Ian Stephenson is simply to indicate that large data sets exist, that researches have wrestled with the question as to whether nde’s and past-life memories have any basis in reality. I could take the time to reproduce some of their examples for discussion, but I have a fair idea of what the response would be, so I’m not going to bother.

Is it a mistake to say that hearts pump blood? — hypericin

Not in the context of physiology and anatomy, but it’s not an apt comparison with cognition and judgement. It appeals to the supposed authority of neuroscience to make philosophical claims about the mind - very different thing to the circulation of blood.

I have an issue with the expression 'consciousness surviving the body'. I think it's inherently self-contradictory insofar as consciousness is generally understood to be an attribute of physical organisms and is generally not perceived in any other context. But then, I also think the tendency to see this question in these terms is due to the framework in which this is understood.

There was an opinion piece published in Scientific American, by physicist Sean Carroll, called Physics and the Immortality of the Soul. Carroll argues that belief in any kind of life after death is equivalent to the belief that the Moon is made from green cheese - that is to say, a ridiculous idea.

But such an assertion is made because of the presuppositions that he brings to the question, the perspective through which he views it. In other words, he depicts the issue in such a way that it would indeed be ridiculous to believe it.

Carroll says:

Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?

I can think of an answer to this question, which is that the soul is not 'made of particles' and that the idea that the soul is 'made of particles' is not at all characteristic of what is meant by the term 'soul'. (Some of the ancient Stoics and Hindus did believe in a form of subtle matter, but I'll leave that aside. And I'll also leave aside the implicit hubris.)

First recall that the Greek term interpreted as 'soul' was 'psuche' or 'psyche' which is of course still with us as a form of a word for 'mind' (preserved in 'psychology'). But I think the soul could be better conceived in terms of a field that acts as an organising principle - analogous to the physical and magnetic fields that were discovered during the 19th century, that were found to be fundamental in the behaviour of particles. This is not to say that the soul is a field, but that the field analogy might be a better metaphor than particulate matter. (And bearing in mind, in Aristotle, the soul is given as 'the form of the body', where 'form' is akin to 'animating principle'. It is not 'the shape' nor is it conceived of as a separable entity.)

Morphic Fields

So - just as magnetic fields organise iron filings into predictable shapes, so too might a biological field effect be responsible for the general form and the persistence of particular attributes of an organism. The question is, is there any evidence of such 'biological fields'?

Well, the existence of 'morphic fields' is the brainchild of Rupert Sheldrake, the 'scientific heretic' who claims that:

Morphic resonance is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. It enables memories to pass across both space and time from the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self-organizing systems, such as molecules, crystals, cells, plants, animals and animal societies, have a collective memory on which each individual draws and to which it contributes. In its most general sense this hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

As the morphic field is capable of storing and transmitting remembered information, then 'the soul' could be conceived in such terms. The morphic field does, at the very least, provide an explanatory metaphor for such persistence. (This also resonates with the idea of the collective unconscious (Jung) and the alayavijnana, the ‘storehouse consciousness’ of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Meaning that the soul or psyche is analogous to a standing wave or whirlpool structure in such a medium, the 'cittasantana' or mind-stream of Mahāyāna Buddhism. )

Children with Past-Life Memories

But what, then, is the evidence for such effects in respect to 'life after death'? As mentioned previously a researcher by the name of Ian Stevenson assembled a body of data on children with recall of previous lives. Stevenson's data collection method comprised the methodical documentation arising from the seeking out and recording of a child’s purported past-life recollections. Then he identified from journals, birth-and-death records, and witness accounts, the deceased person the child supposedly remembered, and attempted to validate the facts from those sources that matched the child’s memory. Another Scientific American opinion piece notes that Stevenson even matched birthmarks and birth defects on his child subjects with wounds on the remembered deceased that could be verified by medical records.

On the back of the head of a little boy in Thailand was a small, round puckered birthmark, and at the front was a larger, irregular birthmark, resembling the entry and exit wounds of a bullet; Stevenson had already confirmed the details of the boy’s statements about the life of a man who’d been shot in the head from behind with a rifle, so that seemed to fit. And a child in India who said he remembered the life of boy who’d lost the fingers of his right hand in a fodder-chopping machine mishap was born with boneless stubs for fingers on his right hand only. This type of “unilateral brachydactyly” is so rare, Stevenson pointed out, that he couldn’t find a single medical publication of another case. — Are We Sceptics Just Cynics?

Carroll goes on in his essay to say that 'Everything we know about quantum field theory (QFT) says that there aren’t any sensible answers to these questions (about the persistence of consciousness)'. However, that springs from his starting assumption that 'the soul' must be something physical, which, again, arises from the presumption that everything is physical, or reducible to physics. In other words, it is directly entailed by his belief in the exhaustiveness of physics with respect to the description of what is real.

He then says 'Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that "new physics" to interact with the atoms that we do have.' However, even in ordinary accounts of 'mind-body' medicine, it is clear that mind can have physical consequences and effects on the body. This is the case with, for example, psychosomatic medicine and the placebo effect, but there are other examples.

He finishes by observing:

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.

But that is not what 'most people have in mind'. As mentioned above, the idea of a self that transmigrates life to life is condemned in no uncertain terms in Buddhist scriptures, which do otherwise accept the reality of re-birth. But that is what physicalism ‘has in mind’ because it's the only way to conceive of something if you think that all that is real is matter.. If you start from the understanding that 'everything is physical', then this will indeed dictate the way you think about it. And while it may be true that there is no such 'blob' as Carroll describes, that is not what the 'soul' is; but what it might be, is something that can't be understood in the terms of Carroll's ontological presuppositions.

So, I myself don’t much like the terminology of ‘consciousness surviving death’, especially when ‘consciousness’ is defined in terms of an attribute of conscious beings. The fact that we feel compelled to conceive it that way is a consequence of the ‘objectifying’ tendency which is deeply rooted in the way we think about it. But very subtle questions of identify, metaphysics and epistemology underlie this issue.

Physicalism is, in slogan form, the thesis that everything is physical.... The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. — Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, Physicalism

great work man and we're all in your debt. :pray:

I figured it was a capacity problem. I wonder if there's a way of deleting draft comments by age. I know it saves all mine and they go back years. Every so often I go and delete a few but it's like pulling weeds.

Ship to lighthouse: ‘Change your heading!’

I bought the Kindle edition for a lot less than that. Anyway, never mind, I won't try and sell it. I cover some of the details in the mind-created world thread.

lumpen idealism. — apokrisis

I know an oxymoron when I see it.

You should look into Pinter's book. The reason I say it will be unsung, is because it was a labour of love on his part, he's a mathematics emeritus - now deceased - who in the last part of his very long life devoted considerable energy to cognitive science. But as he's not published in that field - all his previous books were on algebra and the like, JGill knows them - nobody in the field paid much attention to his Mind and the Cosmic Order, which I think is a shame. He doesn't push an idealist barrow, although I think his book provides some grounds for it. I don't think you would see it as incompatible with your biosemiotic philosophy.

For a year or more, Democrats have been facing the dim prospect of keeping a historically old, historically unpopular incumbent in the White House. Resignation and hopelessness were Joe Biden’s real running mates. Then with that debate performance, it became clear to the most significant forces in the party that Biden simply could not win in November. Amid a rising pressure campaign and worsening polls, the president yielded and stepped down from his reelection bid.

It was as if the Democratic Party had rediscovered a power that it had never used, maybe never even been aware of; far from being a “coup,” it was the execution of the essential task of a political party: The use of formal and informal power to protect itself from political disaster.

Within a matter of two weeks, voters now faced a reality that had previously seemed impossible: “You don’t want to vote for Biden or Trump? Now you don’t have to! You want change? Here she is!” The flood of money, volunteers and crowds toward Harris testifies to the power of that sentiment. — Trump’s Crucial Power Has Been Neutralized

I said months ago that the replacement of Biden would completely changed the dynamic of the election - and it has. That’s why MAGA is kvetching about it, waxing sentimental for ‘poor old Joe’, when really all they wanted was an easybeat.

Yeah, well. I'm not all in on him, but still positively disposed. But I still think Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles S Pinter, is a superior book covering very similar territory, and much more philosophically coherent. (And probably, sadly, forever unsung.)