I’m reading the Case Against Reality at the moment, although finding it a little difficult to maintain interest. I’ve also listened to some of his panel discussions and debates. (I have the mischievous notion that maybe he’s up to the ‘then there is no mountain’ stage of the Zen koan.)

I guess the main quibble I have is that his ‘fitness beats truth’ puts too much weight on biological determinism. I’ve long argued that not every human faculty is determined by biology alone, and that through language, reason and abstract thought we are able to discern things that other creatures cannot. Yes, bats can ‘see’ by sonar, and many other animals have uncanny perceptual abilities, but only h.sapiens can, as it were, weigh and measure the Universe. And indeed Hoffman is appealing to science to arrive at his judgement about the misleading aspects of cognition so presumably he has attained a perspective outside that. Anyway I’ll keep reading it, as it’s a book I’ve been meaning to finish for a good while.

The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophy of Biology (1961), Hans Jonas.

I will review it but the over-arching question is teleological. (I guess the micro tubules referred to in that video are the same as those that Penrose and Hameroff refer to in their Orch OR theory?)

Remember then that biosemiosis is in fact a surprising story of how machine like is the basis of life and mind. Semiosis is about how informational switches regulate entropic flows. — apokrisis

You say that but I’m inherently distrustful of mechanistic metaphors past a certain point. I can see how the analogy works but I can’t see how it accommodates the fact of intentionality at a deep level. Apropos of which, one of the books that turned up in my research today was The phenomenon of life: toward a philosophical biology, Hans Jonas. It was published in, I think, the sixties but I’m instinctively drawn to it. Do you know it?

:up: Will read with interest.

It was crazy effective. But not actually baffling anymore. — apokrisis

What Wigner found baffling was not that maths was so effective, but why it was. And also the way mathematics developed in one context proved effective in totally different contexts and in completely unexpected ways. Whence the conscilience between mind, world and mathematics? He doesn’t offer an answer to that question but it does suggest to me that the cosmos is more mind- than machine-like.

Wittgenstein I find very helpful in this. — Constance

Thank you. Myself, less so, although I'm always very interested in what you and the other contributors have to say on it.

physically real structure (or physically realised structure), — apokrisis

An important distinction. My observation is that biosemiotics is not strictly physicalist in orientation, based as it is on the principles of signs and intepretation, and that it's part of a wider movement away from physicalism in science generally, also apparent in physics itself. We have discussed many times previously the question as to the nature of information, meaning and mathematical objects and whether they can be described as physical. But conventions around what does and doesn't constitute scientifically-respectable discourse is also a factor in that conversation. How to think about mind, in particular.

I have some thoughts on the subject of the relationship between physics, logic and mathematics. Despite the drawbacks of the 'Cartesian division', I had the idea that the mathematization of the quantifiable attributes of natural objects nevertheless enabled enormous breakthroughs in the physical sciences. And that is because it enables the application of mathematical reasoning to physics (and much else besides). As is well-known, that has given rise to many astounding discoveries on the basis of maths (such as Diracs' discovery of anti-matter particles.) As to why this is so effective, that seems to be the source of some bafflement - Wigner's famous article on the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics' contains 12 instances of the word 'miracle'. But on the semiotic and enactivist view, it's really not so baffling, as the structure of experience is in some fundamental respect also the structure of 'the world'. That at least is the way I've been thinking about it.

However (according to Spinoza), when the world is seen rigthly, Reality is seen as an 'undivided Whole', the only One Substance, God, in a way that is actually reminiscent of Parmenides IMO or indian advaita Vedanta — boundless

The problem, as Spinoza diagnoses, is that people normally desire “perishable things” which “can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure” . As these things are “perishable”, they cannot afford lasting happiness; in fact, they worsen our existential situation, since their acquisition more often than not requires compromising behaviour and their consumptions makes us even more dependent on perishable goods. “But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, unmixed with any sadness.” Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you. — Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

We instinctively want to be in a positive state and be from pain/suffering/unease. Also, we have a natural instinct of survival. And yet, our own nature contradicts those innate insticts. That, I believe, leads to a perception of 'unfairness' in this world, which can itself bring pain (and we, by instict, seek distractions from it...). So, I think that the awareness of the 'unfairness or imperfection of the world' doesn't come from reflexion but it is pre-reflexive*. We feel this unfairness, so to speak because our fragility and our being liable to death contrast our instinct.
I think that the religious 'seeking' of an escape/liberation/salvation is therefore ingrained in us. — boundless

I was musing on the well-known saying of 'thinking outside the box'. As is common knowledge the origin of this expression is a cognitive test wherein the user has to connect five dots arranged in a square shape with a single unbroken line. The only solution is to extend the line 'outside the box', hence the expression. The intention is to test the aspirant's problem-solving skills.

So it occured to me that religion provides an analogous, 'outside the box' solution to the intrinsic suffering of existence. 'The box' in this analogy is 'the natural world', that is, the world that can be known by the natural senses (and their extensions in the form of scientific instruments.) In Christianity this ‘beyond’ takes the form of belief in the afterlife or the future Second Coming. In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is understood that over the course of lifetimes, the aspirant can be released from the cycle of re-birth.

It is of course true that a secular culture doesn't recognise any such possibility as matter of principle. Hence in this context any solution to the suffering of existence is ameliorative, through medical, economic, political and technological means to treat illness, inequality, and so on. Which, as far as natural life is concerned, is obviously hugely advantageous - none of us would want to go without these advantages and it is in this respect that secular culture has dramatically improved the quality of life for billions.

But from a philosophical perspective, as naturalism excludes the possibility of consequences in another life, then justice is only meaningful in the sense that it can be administered by society.There are no consequences possible beyond natural life. Secular philosophers such as John Rawls address this through the concept of fairness and equity. But it takes religion to provide a sense of cosmic justice.

But isn't there something deficient about Wittgenstein's apodictic religion? After all, he was claimed as the emblem of the vociferously anti-religious Vienna Circle, and even if they were wrong in so doing, they were a highly intelligent group of individualis who found support for their views in his texts. On this forum, the last lines of the Tractatus are most often used as a kind of firewall against discussion of anything deemed religious. His religiosity can be discerned only with difficulty. As i understand it, his acolyte Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband both became committed Catholics. Were they prepared to make explicit what was only implicit in Wittgenstein's texts (I understand he was buried with Catholic funeral rites, but that this caused some disquiet amongst many of his associates.)

There is an ancient tradition of aphophaticism in Christianity, the acknowledgement of the deficiencies of speech and reason to reach out to the divine. But that tradition was still sacramental and sacerdotal, much was embodied in and conveyed by the liturgy, the rites and rituals, even the architecture. All of which was driven by the awareness of the imperfection of ordinary human nature, a.k.a. the fallen state. Only an exceptionally perceptive reader might be able to glean that from reading Wittgenstein.

you can see he talks about all the same stuff as me. Modelling relations, anticipatory models, enactive cognition. So sits pretty squarely in what has now become the mainstream paradigm of cognitive science. — apokrisis

Very much. His main claim to fame was a lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. He's pretty wide-ranging but tries to stay within the bounds of cognitive science.

He has no handlers because he cannot be handled. He cannot even control himself. — Fooloso4

I've been reading that he has two campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who have been trying to domesticate him and get him to stick to talking points. They were behind all the talk about the new, 'unifying' Trump after the NDE, and were also behind the pushback against Project 2025. But, as some commentator said, there's Teleprompter Trump and then there's Truth Social Trump, and the latter is the real one, and impossible to corral.

One that is neither stranded in realism or idealism but founded in a lived relation that humans have with their world. — apokrisis

There's a rather awkward neologism I've heard several times of late, 'transjective - transcending the distinction between subjective and objective, or referring to a property not of the subject or the environment but a relatedness co-created between them.' I wonder if that is what you have in mind, and whether it also describes applied mathematics? (I assume it's a word of recent origin, wiktionary's earliest usage dates only to 2009.)

What if the person is me? — Mww

I can still refer to you as being a subject of experience. It's innate to language - 'the subject' is a fundamental component of English grammar. In grammatical terms, the subject in a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is performing the action of the verb or being described by the verb. For example, in the sentence "I did that," 'I' is the subject who undertakes the action of doing. It also ties into the philosophical notion of the subject as the agent or experiencer in discussions about consciousness and experience. So, in both linguistic and philosophical contexts, the idea of 'the subject' as the one who acts or experiences is well established.

subject DOES NOT belong to experience, but is presupposed by it — Mww

Sure. But how does that bear on the common-sense observation that a person is the subject of experience? I mean, it is a grammatically correct expression. 'I believe you were involved in a serious traffic accident recently. That must have been a terrible experience.' So, this is something you can't say?

My contention is the relation of subject to experience, in which “subject of experience” makes no sense, under the assumption that “subject” here was meant to indicate a rational intelligence. — Mww

I can't understand the distinction you're trying to make here. Persons are subjects of experience, are they not? That you and I are both subjects who have experiences is hardly controversial is it?

in Indian/Far eastern philosophy, many religious traditions developed a version of a 'two truths doctrine', the 'conventional truth' (what we might call 'consensual reality') and the 'ultimate truth' (only known by the 'liberated'). — boundless

Quite true, but there's no conceptual equivalent to liberation (mokṣa, Nirvāṇa) in Western philosophy.

Anyway - other than the ref to Sisyphus I was going to agree.

studied Camus for the higher school certificate. The only thing I’ve ever read about Camus that made me warm to him was about his split with Sartre..

Between this and his VP pick, I wonder if one or more of his advisors are intentionally trying to sabotage him. — Michael

No, I think he defies them. Wouldn’t be surprised to see them walk out.

Philosophy can be a practice – "spiritual exercise" (Hadot) — 180 Proof

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). These practices were used in the ancient schools in the context of specific forms of interpersonal relationships: for example, the relationship between the student and a master, whose role it was to guide and assist the student in the examination of conscience, in identification and rectification of erroneous judgments and bad actions, and in the conduct of dialectical exchanges on established themes. — IEP

for learning (again) to see the world as perfect and thereby, like Sisyphus, always striving to perfect our communities and ourselves (e.g. ethics-as-tikkun olam). — 180 Proof

Why Sisyphus? Sisyphus is an icon for futility and pointlessness. Sisyphus can’t strive for anything, only repeat the same pointless action forever.

‘In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a denizen of Hades. According to the myth, Sisyphus was condemned to an eternal punishment in the Underworld (Hades) where he was forced to roll a massive boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down each time he neared the top, compelling him to start over indefinitely. This punishment was given to him for his deceitfulness and trickery during his lifetime, which included cheating death twice.’

Didn't know that — bert1

I picked it up in a podcast about Trump's use of language.

The origin for what I write, is of course, the foundational crisis in mathematics. — Tarskian

Of course. Should be obvious to everyone.

He (Wittgenstein) was a deeply religious philosopher as he realized that this dimension of value in our existence is utterly transcendental and yet permeated our existence. — Constance

John Cottingham on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion (pdf, 11 pages).

Hence, philosophy is a mathematical capability of the language at hand. — Tarskian

Some feedback: I notice since you've joined that you have a strong tendency to devise your own definitions, interpretations and standards for what constitutes philosophy. All well and good, but consider the implications of the term 'idiosyncratic'. Idiosyncratic means 'pertaining to a particular individual' (It is the same word root as 'idiom' and 'idiot', which originally meant 'one who speaks a language nobody else can understand' - no pejorative intended, as there are also idiosyncratic talents.)

Just sayin'. ;-)

So Trump has just well and truly blown up his own campaign again with his dreadful performance at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. (Why did his handlers even let him appear?) All of this nonsense about 'when Harris declared herself to be black', insinuating that this was because it was politically advantageous to do so. Again, a barrage of lies, innuendoes, insults and falsehoods and a huge hit on the GOP attempt to outreach to the Black vote. (Nothing about policy, of course, because with Trump, ego is the sole reality.) The worse the polls get, the more frantic he becomes, and then he makes ever more outrageous statements to attract attention.

But the self or subject is never an appearance — Mww

Isn't this where the 'transcendental ego' and 'transcendental apperception' figures?

Transcendental ego, the self that is necessary in order for there to be a unified empirical self-consciousness. For Immanuel Kant, it synthesizes sensations according to the categories of the understanding. Nothing can be known of this self, because it is a condition, not an object, of knowledge. — Brittanica

As for transcendental apperception:

There are six steps to transcendental apperception:

All experience is the succession of a variety of contents (pace Hume).
1. To be experienced at all, the successive data of experience must be combined or held together in a unity for consciousness.
2. Unity of experience therefore implies a unity of self.
3. The unity of self is as much an object of experience as anything is.
4. Therefore, experience both of the self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are the conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced.
6. These prior syntheses are made possible by the categories. Categories allow us to synthesize the self and the objects.

///

if only I were to understand how such reasoning comes about, my personal cognitive prejudices notwithstanding. — Mww

The centrality of 'the subject' is fundamental to phenomenology:

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl. Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one—one which, in Kantian terms, focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge, though, of course, Husserl believes the Kantian way of articulating the consciousness—world relation was itself distorted since it still postulated the thing in itself. — Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology, p144

"Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place" pretty well sums up the whole point of the 'mind-created world' OP. I acknowledge at the outset, my approach is based on what I've learned from both phenomenology and non-dualism, and also from meditation.

The fact that the world is 'imperfect' is actually a good motivator for spiritual practice, I think. — boundless

:up:

I don't think ↪Wayfarer would limit his own worldview to any Idealist doctrine, although he seems to be favorably inclined toward Kastrup's Analytical Idealism. — Gnomon

Not least because he's current, and because he's part of the scene - he's debating and appearing on panel sessions etc. He gives voice to an idealist perspective, not that I worship the guy or anything, but his output is pretty impressive, in my view.

So, Way is philosophically correct that, absent a "conscious being", no measurement takes place in the material world — Gnomon

Thank you once again. I will bring it to bear on the topic of the OP. The basic point of my argument is that we do not really see 'what is'. We're unaware of our own sub- and unconcious machinations and as a result we project them onto 'the world', an inevitable consequence of our ego-centred individualist culture. That is the point of 'awareness training' and philosophy as a spiritual discipline, is the attainment of self knowledge. Much of what goes under the heading of philosophy nowadays comprises methods to rationalise the human condition, although what philosophy really should be doing is critiquing it. That is the context in which the question of the fairness or otherwise of 'the world' should be assessed.

"The mind is the subject of experience" is inept or even deceptive. — Banno

That humans and other sentient beings are subjects of experience is both obvious and central to any philosophy, but somehow you still manage to obfuscate it.

There's a current article on Aeon about the wasteland of analytic philosophy, Philosophy was Once Alive.

Rachel Maddow points out that Trump has said on a number of recent occasions that ‘I don’t need your votes, we have plenty of votes’. She also notes around 70 known 2020 election deniers have found their way into management positions in electoral offices in swing states. Trump/MAGA has form trying to stitch up or throw elections and will have had plenty of time to work on it this time around. I wouldn’t like to believe it, but I also wouldn’t put it past them.

your claim:

You want consciousness to be the special thing — Banno

I have explained the sense in which the mind is not ‘a thing among other things’. It is perfectly clear.

and there you’re referring to the object of your present experience appearing to you as subject (although it shouldn’t have to explained.)

It was indeed facetious, since the quote had so little to do with the issues at hand. — Banno

The way you see them, anyway….

So long as you’re trying to treat consciousness, or mind, or observation, as one among the other objects in the world, then you’re adopting a faulty perspective. — Wayfarer

Hence:
it implies the observer, who is not in scope for the objective sciences
— Wayfarer
and
I reject any notion of ‘consciousness as substance
— Wayfarer

But how can you have it both ways? You both physicalism and dualism. — Banno

As I said at the beginning of mind-created world, my argument is perspectival. So long as you’re trying to treat consciousness, or mind, or observation, as one among the other objects in the world, then you’re adopting a faulty perspective. The mind/observer/subject is not an object in the world, one factor among others, to be considered alongside gravity or radiation. It is that which discloses such things as gravity and raditation and sub-atomic particles, amidst innumerable other things. It is the subject to whom all this occurs or appears. The ‘unknown knower’.

You will recall I quoted the first para of Schop’s WWI a few pages ago:

It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself.” ~ Schopenhauer

To which you responded:

and therefore he has eyes and hands! Why are eyes and hands OK, but not the sun or the earth? — Banno

I thought this response was so comically off the mark that I replied with an emoji. So trying again, and possibly for the last time - the reason ‘the mind’ (observer, subject) is not in scope for science IS NOT that it is a ‘mysterious spooky substance’, but because it’s ‘the subject of experience’. Which is never included in the scientific reckoning, for the obvious reason that it’s not amongst the objects of perception.

Is it possible to 'split' the thread? — boundless

This thread is well beyond that. It’s like the many worlds interpretation where every possible variation happens. :lol:

Linde says it changes our perception of what appears to be ‘the past’.

That’s pretty right - I do hold to a form of epistemic idealism. But I also claim that what we can claim is real is inextricably connected to what we can know, which I think is a consequence of my training in Buddhist philosophy.

As far as QBism is concerned, it says that each individual has a separate observation, and to that extent, it undermines the claim that they’re all observing the same thing. In other words, it calls objectivity into question - which is too high a price for its critics.

You want consciousness to be the special thing that collapse wave functions, but you don't want it to be different to the other stuff of the universe. — Banno

Thank you for that question. It is only taken about five years of argument to get to this point. I will carefully compose a response in due course.

*

IIRC there was a paper by philosopher Michel Bitbol that discussed this kind of thing — boundless

Bitbol one of the great discoveries I’ve made reading this forum. He’s written a book on Schrodinger’s philosophy of physics, which is a bit difficult without advanced physics, but many of his other papers are well worth reading, such as It is Never Known but it is the Knower. (By the way, during your absence I wrote an OP on idealism which you can find here.)

You presume it must involve a conscious being, — Banno

As did Schrödinger. But it’s metaphysically embarrassing, isn’t it, because it implies the observer, who is not in scope for the objective sciences. (If you bother to read the OP I wrote on idealism, you will notice I reject any notion of ‘consciousness as substance’ right at the beginning.)

that article was specifically about John Wheeler with additional commentary by Andrei Linde. Wheeler is the one known for the participatory universe idea. You can see how he gets that from the ‘delayed choice’ experimental results, particularly his thought-experiment where the experimental apparatus comprises light arriving from distant qasars.

Christian Fuchs who developed QBism was one of Wheeler’s (many) students but I think Wheeler had passed on by the time he started publishing. I listened to a long interview with him recently, I find his account of the interpretation of the physics quite understandable.

on second thoughts, don't worry about telling me. But it's worth the read.