“…. That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its form. (…) It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us à posteriori; the form must lie ready à priori for them in the mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation….” (A20/B34) — Mww

Here again the echo of Aristotle's form-matter dualism. He transposes Aristotle’s schema from the level of substances to the level of cognition. Instead of matter/form being ontological constituents of objects, they are now epistemic constituents of experience:

Sensation provides the raw material (matter).

Space and time provide the form that makes it intelligible.

The two together yield phenomena — objects for us.

When we draw a figure or number, that becomes the appearance, and that, conditioned by space, combined with time already established as present in the mind, and we have an actual phenomenon. — Mww

That is very helpful - it helps me understand much better Kant's connection of time with number and space with geometry. :100:

Everything that physics theorizes to exist is causally interconnected. Physicalism is a thesis that the complete set of causally connected things comprise the totality of reality. It seems to me it is this interconnectedness that is the anchor.

The term "physicalism" is used largely for historical reasons. These are discussed in the SEP article on physicalism. Personally, I make sense of it by considering proper subsets of the sorts of things commonly treated as existing: spiritual/supernatural objects (e.g. angels), abstract objects, and physical objects. Physicalists deny the existence of the first two. — Relativist

But again, please understand what I see as the fundamental category error in this formulation. By casting the non-physical in terms of 'spiritual/supernatural objects', you are already framing it within the paradigm of objectivism - the assumption that whatever is real, is, or could be, an object of cognition. Notice the empiricist presuppositions in this attitude. This is a metaphilosophical point concerning questions about how philosophy itself is conceived.

This orientation toward “what is objectively so” is a distinct cognitive mode, one that shaped modern science and the so-called “scientific worldview" (and, hence, so much of modern life). It begins with Galileo’s distinction between primary (measurable) and secondary (sensible) qualities, and with Cartesian dualism, which divided res cogitans from res extensa. A further division soon followed between “natural” and “supernatural.” The Charter of the Royal Society, for instance, explicitly forbade canvassing metaphysical questions, assigning them to the Churches, which then held enormous power.

These divisions can be summarized quickly, but they represent a major chapter in intellectual history (the subject of Edmund Husserl's posthumously published "The Crisis of the European Sciences"¹). The challenge is that we are so immersed in this orientation that we don’t see it; it provides the spectacles through which questions are viewed. Philosophy, to my mind, means learning to look at those spectacles, not only through them.

All that in mind, “the nature of being” can be understood very differently. In phenomenological (and also Indian) philosophy, being is participatory: something we are always already enacting, not a detached object of analysis (even though objectivity has its place). Here, the subject–object split is not the sole lens through which existence must be interpreted. And if nothing is said about what is spiritual, that might only be because, with Wittgenstein, there is 'that of which we cannot speak', but which is nevertheless of foundational significance in philosophy. But the upshot is, there are things that are subjectively real, that is, can only be known first-person, but which are as foundational as any purported 'atomic objects of cognition'. This is what we designate Being, which includes the irreducible fact of the subject to whom the objective world is disclosed.

Are you are claiming that universals are nothing but abstractions of aspects of the things we perceive, measure, and theorize: existing exclusively in minds but having no ontological significance to the objects thenselves. That would be fine, but it's a different definition. — Relativist

I think, again, this question is posed against the implicit division of subject and object, mind and world. And, again, this is so deeply knit into our way of being that it's very difficult to see it any other way. But my take on universals is that they are intrinsic to the way in which the mind assimilates and interprets sensory experience. Intellectual abstractions, the grasp of abstract relations and qualities, are what binds rational conceptions together to form coherent ideas. But these are neither 'in the world' nor mere pyschological constructs, they are universal structures of intelligibility disclosed through consciousness. (As you've mentioned Edward Feser's blog, see his Think, McFly, Think.)

Particulars are reducible to simpler particulars, all the way down to the ground: atomic particulars/states of affairs which are irreducible. These atomic states of affairs still have all 3 sets of constituents (bare particular, intrinsic properties, relations to other particulars). ... Electrons had -1 electric charge before anyone recognized there were electrons and they each have this exact charge. — Relativist

You've opened the door here to the fundamental question that arose with quantum mechanics, that of 'observer dependency'. And you can't defray that by claiming that this is only one of various competing interpretations. Even the competing interpretations are trying to account for the fact of observer-dependency, or show some way in which it can be discounted. And that, in turn, is necessitated by the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle doesn’t necessarily imply “no reality” before observation, but it does mean that the classical assumption—that particulars have determinate, observer-independent properties at bottom—can’t be sustained without qualification. What is real, is a range of possibilities expressed by the wave-function (ψ), which are condensed into a single value by registration or measurement (the so-called 'wavefunction collapse'²).

So when you write that “particulars are reducible … all the way down to atomic states of affairs,” you’re really invoking a metaphysical picture inherited from classical physics. But precisely that picture is what quantum mechanics has called into question, forcing contemporary physicalism to uncouple itself from physics as such. Which, again, implies that Armstrong's 'atomic facts' are conceptual placeholders.

My one hope is that you have a bit more respect for my position after this exchange. — Relativist

While I certainly respect your contributions and the clarity and courtesy with which you’ve presented your position, I must respectfully disagree with the philosophy of physicalism.

What would help would be some short description of a reasonable form of idealism. — Relativist

A'friend link' to my Mind-Created World on Medium.

Mind over Matter, interview with Bernardo Kastrup.

--------------------------------------------

1. How the untimely death of RG Collingwood changed the course of philosophy forever, Prospect Magazine, for insights into Ryle's attitude towards Husserl

2. The Timeless Wave of Quantum Physics, Wayfarer.

In its early modern form, materialism drew its authority directly from the successes of the new science. Galileo’s mathematization of motion, Descartes’ mechanics of matter, and Newton’s laws of gravitation seemed to reveal the basic structure of the cosmos. To be a materialist was simply to affirm that what physics discovered was what reality ultimately consisted of. Nature, on this view, was transparent to the methods of natural philosophy, and materialism gained its prestige by tying its fortunes to the steadily advancing discoveries of science.

By contrast, contemporary physicalism has quietly shifted ground. It still borrows the authority of science, but without committing itself to whatever physics currently says about the world. Instead, it invokes “the scientific worldview” in a more nebulous sense, using scientific facts when they support its claims, but disclaiming any dependence on physics when they do not. The result is less a rigorous ontology than a posture of allegiance: a declaration that, whatever reality ultimately turns out to be, it will count as “physical” by definition. This maneuver preserves physicalism from refutation, but only by reducing its content to a loyalty oath.

The mind-created world, as I understand the OP, has no external cause and is a monism where everything that exists has mental properties. — JuanZu

Not quite what it says. I don't claim that the mind is constitutive of objects in the way that wood is constitutive of boats or clay of pots. It is an epistemological arrgument.

I acnowledge that the word 'created' might be a poor choice of words in the context. I'm referring more to the role of the mind in constructing or synthesising what we take to be a completely independent and external world.

I have a book published mid 1980’s The Intelligent Universe, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingha mentioned in the article. They made a good case for panspermia, I felt. They say there are vast clouds of proto-organic matter drifting around in the cosmos, and that when planetary conditions are right, some of it might fall to ground and begin to combine and develop. Also that viruses arrive in interstellar matter. Hence the name ‘panspermia’ - the idea of the earth as a fertile ovum and comets as interstellar sperm. I like it more than Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’.

how can physicalism transcend physics? If physics is not relevant to physicallsm, then why describe such a foundational ontology as “physical” at all? Physical compared to what?
— Wayfarer
I googled the definition of Transcend:
"to rise above or go beyond the limits of"

Each of the postulates of physicalism goes beyond what physics can properly do:
-identify the ontological structure of existents as states of affairs
-the ontology of universals: that they exist at all; that they exist immanently
-the ontological structure of laws (relations between universals); physics can identify instrumentalist methodology (equations). As I described, theoretical models are heuristics and/or metaphysical claims.
-that physical reality = the totality of reality. — Relativist

Thanks for clarifying. But this seems to sharpen the question rather than resolve it. If physicalism transcends physics in the sense you describe, then these postulates are not discoveries of physics but metaphysical commitments. In that case, why call the framework ‘physical’ rather than simply metaphysical realism?

If the claim is that “physical reality = the totality of reality,” then the term “physical” is carrying a great deal of weight. But if what you mean by “physical” is not fixed by physics itself, then what anchors it? Otherwise, “physicalism” looks less like an ontology than a promissory note: asserting that whatever is real must fall under the heading of the physical, even when the meaning of “physical” is left indeterminate.

I’ve already disputed the idea that universals are physical. I’ve been researching it and found another philosopher, E J Lowe, who also disputes this idea from within an analytical perspective. Lowe rejects Armstrong’s “physicalist” version. Armstrong insists that universals exist wholly in each of their instances — so that “redness” is literally a physical constituent of each red object. Lowe argued this borders on incoherence: how can one and the same entity be wholly present in two places at once? He advocates a weak form of immanence, where universals are always instantiated but are not themselves located in space and time. Universals, in Lowe, are not reducible to particulars nor are they spatiotemporal. That’s why he says they are “always instantiated” but not literally in space and time. He goes on to argue on these grounds and other grounds that physicalism is incoherent.

Me, I say that universals can only be recognised by a mind. They are dependent on the mind’s ability to identify likeness etc. They are part of the intellectual apparatus of rational thought.

every object that is examined is accounted for by simpler and simpler components. The absence of a bottom layer implies the series as a whole isn't accounted for, and it would be impossible for an infinite number of parts to assemble. — Relativist

That problem is not addressed by the assertion that at bottom, everything must be physical, especially in the absence of any notion of the physical that is stipulated by physics.

That is really all I have to say on the matter. I am not and will never be persuaded by physicalism.


Re Ontic Structural Realism - I don’t much like their style. Same for much of analytical English-speaking philosophy, Armstrong, Lewis, Quine etc. I’m interested in existentialism, phenomenology, non-materialist philosophy of mind, Buddhism and Eastern philosophy.

A remark like this suggests to me you aren't trying to understand, and are instead casting judgement, rooted in your own perspective. — Relativist

Philosophy is critical. I too feel that criticism of the idealist ideas I put forward is based on their not being understood. Philosophical debates are often like that. But I stand by the criticisms I’ve offered and I don’t see them as having been rebutted.

I appreciate the time and care you've taken to explain your viewpoint but I'm afraid we'll remain at loggerheads.

Example: Armstrong's "atomism" is an ontological claim that there is an irreducible bottom layer of physical reality. — Relativist

But how can physicalism transcend physics? If physics is not relevant to physicallsm, then why describe such a foundational ontology as “physical” at all? Physical compared to what?

And if the irreducible bottom layer of reality cannot, even in principle, be identified by or with the theories of physics, then on what basis is it called "physical"? Armstrong’s “atoms” may be a neat philosophical posit but unless they’re tied to some determinate content, why regard them as more than symbolic? And if they’re only symbolic, then the reality they possess is conceptual rather than physical.

And what, for that matter, is the supposed threat of “infinite regress”? If Armstrong’s atoms were shown to be untenable, what regress would be entailed? It seems to me that invoking the specter of regress is simply a way to secure closure by stipulation — to insist that there must be a final layer, whether or not physics ever finds one.

Physicalism respects the discoveries of physics, and as such is a form of scientific realism, but it doesn't entail treating any specific findings in physics as an element of the ontology or as a set of assumed facts upon which it depends. — Relativist

How convenient!

The scope of ontology is the totality of existence. Physicalists are philosophers who assert the physical world to BE the totality of existence, but it is not a conclusion derived from physics. — Relativist

But surely the totality of existence includes human beings. You're not seeing the point of Chalmers critique:

It (the 'hard problem' is problematic for a physicalism that assumes science can and will answer all questons about the natural world — Relativist

But it's important to grasp that this is not the meaning of the 'hard problem'. It's not the want of knowledge about the natural world. It's pointing to a matter of principle, not something which can be solved by the accumulation of further facts. In a way, the hard problem of consciousness is simply a rhetorical device: it is pointing out that no matter how sophisticated the objective understanding of consciousness, the first-person nature of experience (or existence) will always elude that description. That isn’t a gap waiting to be filled — it’s the structural blind spot of objectivist science. But I won't repeat myself, and thanks again.

You could say the role of the synthetic a priori in science is precisely to bridge the gap between logical necessity and empirical causation. Logic alone gives tautologies, while experience alone gives contingent observations. Kant’s point is that principles like “every change in velocity has a cause” are synthetic a priori: they enable prediction, but also hold necessarily for all possible experience. That’s what allows physics to be both law-governed and universally valid.

Of course, it’s said that much of this comes to grief in quantum physics (but that’s a separate topic and even there the debate turns on how to interpret the a priori structures of knowledge, not on whether they exist at all.)

They’re different topics, but there is a way of connecting them, subject of a forthcoming OP.

What is the ideal situation in which an a priori judgment is imagined to take place? Prior to what, exactly, can we know that 7+5=12? — J

A priori means “prior to experience.” If you tell me you have seven beers in the fridge and I bring to another five to give you, I can know you have twelve beers without opening the fridge door. That’s a trivial example, but it illustrates the point: the truth of 7+5=12 doesn’t depend on checking the fridge.

This is where Kant’s answer to Hume comes in. Hume divided truths into those that are true by definition (analytic) and those known only from experience (synthetic a posteriori). Kant showed there’s a third, crucial category: synthetic a priori judgments, which extend knowledge while still being necessary. That’s how mathematics and mathematical physics are possible — Dirac’s deduction of antimatter being a dramatic case in point.

Kant didn’t believe in Plato’s innate ideas, but he did argue that the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the understanding are innate conditions of human reason. Later, Quine challenged these distinctions in Two Dogmas of Empiricism, but that’s a separate debate.

I submit that it is incompatible with the Gerson view of Platonism. — Paine

Sure, but that is not a topic of debate in this thread.

Quite, the Prolegomena. That’s where I read it.

A nice case of the “unreasonable effectiveness” is Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter — it literally “fell out of the equations” long before there was any empirical validation of it. That shows mathematics is not just convention or generalisation, but a way of extending knowledge synthetically a priori.
— Wayfarer

IMO, that is a merely an instance of an inductive argument happening to succeed. A purpose of any theory is to predict the future by appealing to induction -- but there is no evidence of inductive arguments being more right than wrong on average. Indeed, even mathematics expresses that it cannot be unreasonably effective, aka Wolpert's No Free Lunch Theorems of Statistical Learning Theory. — sime

But inductive arguments are a posteriori by definition. Dirac’s prediction of antimatter was not an inductive guess but a deductive consequence of the mathematics of the electron. It’s a perfect case of the synthetic a priori: by synthesising the elements of the theory, he saw that negative counterparts must exist — long before observation confirmed it.

The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment. — Bateson, Form, Substance, and Difference

That is perfectly in keeping with the ‘mind-created world’. Bateson is one of the sources of ‘enactivism’ and a major influence in The Embodied Mind, which comprehensively deconstructed ‘the view from nowhere’.

If mathematics were merely convention, then its success in physics would indeed be a miracle — why should arbitrary symbols line up so exactly with the predictability of nature? And if it were merely empirical, then we could never be sure it applies universally and necessarily, which is precisely what science assumes (hence the endless invective directed at things which are said to fall outside physical laws). Kant’s claim is that mathematics is neither arbitrary convention nor empirical generalisation, but synthetic a priori: it extends knowledge while still being based on necessary truths.

A nice case of the “unreasonable effectiveness” is Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter — it literally “fell out of the equations” long before there was any empirical validation of it. That shows mathematics is not just convention or generalisation, but a way of extending knowledge synthetically a priori. (Of course, as Sabine Hossenfelder reminds us, mathematics can also mislead if we take the beauty of equations as a substitute for empirical test.)

I’m objecting to the theory that mathematical knowledge can be attributed to the generalisation of or abstraction from experience. We have to have the ability to count and perform various other mental operations on concepts in order to grasp maths. And even then there is an enormous range of skill that can be observed amongst people, with a Terrence Tao at one end of the spectrum, and those with a rudimentary ability in mathematics at the other. No amount of experience can close that gap, if the ability is not there.

Briefly, although it wasn’t on the curriculum of the courses I did.

In my view, he makes too little of what can be derived from experience in combination with symbolic language — Janus

Kant in no way denied the fundamental role of language, I don’t think that would have ever occurred to him.

The ‘empirical doctrine of mathematics’ is associated with John Stuart Mill, although as I understand it, very much a minority view.

What Kant seems to gloss over is that this kind of a priori reasoning is distilled from perceptual experience, — Janus

Other creatures also have perceptual experience, and some can even discriminate small quantities. But they don’t go on to develop arithmetic. That shows arithmetic is not just “distilled” from perception, but depends on something prior in our cognitive framework — the capacity to represent number as such, and to apply operations universally and necessarily.

I'm familiar with Quine's argument, which is why I mentioned it, but my aim here, as the 'synthetic a priori' was mentioned, was simply to recap what they are.

Can you provide an argument that supports it. — Janus

I provided the argument for it upthread, but it was ignored. That argument was, you have wildly divergent views of what quantum physics means (realist, idealist, anti-realist etc), so how can you appeal to physics for a metaphysical thesis, when these foundational issues are still a matter of controversy.

...supposed authorities... — Janus

They're known as 'citations'.

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'.
— The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

What scientific study does he cite for this empirical claim? If my dog goes and gets a ball when I say "go get your ball," even new balls not previously seen, have I disproved his claim by showing the dog's understanding of categories? If not, what evidence disproves his claim? — Hanover

Perhaps by scattering a range of balls of different sizes and saying 'fetch the large, white ball' or 'the ball nearest the lemon tree.' That might do the trick.

If you are waiting for Wayfarer to provide an actual argument you'll be waiting a long time, perhaps forever. — Janus

You might turn your attention to the 3 arguments presented in the post above this one.

Such as the claim that 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature'. How would you respond to that?

You’re right that one can treat “7+5=12” as analytic by stipulation, or check it a posteriori with pebbles. But Kant’s point is that neither account explains why mathematics is both necessary and informative. If it were analytic, it would be tautological; if empirical, it would be contingent. The synthetic a priori is his way of capturing that “in-between” character. It also has bearing on how mathematics is 'unreasonably efficacious in the natural sciences.'

Who are you showing this to? — Relativist

I hope to make a plausible case for anyone reading. So, sure, I seek to persuade. I've explained, I hope, that I believe physicalism is lacking in some fundamental respects (as would any other critic of physicalism.) As you are advocating physicalism, then I would hope to show you in particular what's wrong with it.

This has no bearing on the what I said, except to the extent that Philosophy deals with more than ontology (the ONLY thing physicalism is dealing with). — Relativist

Would I be correct in saying that you believe that 'ontology' comprises 'the set of all actually existing things', and that your position is that all actually existing things are physical? After all, you said:

Physicalism is the theory that everything that exists, is composed of physical things, and that they act and assemble entirely due to physical forces due to laws of nature.
.... — Relativist

...physics theory makes the theoretical claim that everything that exists in the material world (the domain of physics) is composed of elements of the quantum fields (as identified in the standard model) It's a claim supported by evidence and theory ....The metaphysical claim is that an object IS its physical compostion, there's nothing more to the object..

I don’t intend to misrepresent you, but when you define physicalism as the thesis that everything that exists is composed of physical things, governed by physical forces and laws of nature, supported by an argument from 'the scope of physics', then from my point of view it does sound like physics is being taken as the ontological grounding for your metaphysics. How is it not?

You don't agree, but you haven't explained why you disagree. — Relativist

I have, repeatedly, but you haven't engaged with the arguments I've put forward.

First, do you recognize any cogency in David Chalmers' argument? That 'the nature of experience' cannot be fully captured by scientific descriptons? If you don't, why not? If you do, how does it fail as argument against physicalism?

Second: I've made the point (and again, this is not something of my devising), that scientific method assumes at the outset a division between subject and object, and assigns primary reality to the objectively-measurable attributes of objects, while assigning appearances to the so-called 'secondary attributes' of the subjective mind. I'm saying that physicalism overlooks or ignores this methodological division, and this has philosophical consequences. This is the thrust of the article The Blind Spot of Science is the Neglect of Experience. The thrust of phenomenological philosophy is based on recognising the implications of this 'bifurcation' of the world into subjective and objective.

Third: I've mentioned the conflicing interpretations of physics. Rather than open a whole can of worms, let me boil it down to this question. Neils Bohr said "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature." Werner Heisenberg: 'What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Now, surely, this has some bearing on your physicalist thesis. These two scientists were central to the discovery of the modern theory of the atom. Yet they're saying that physics does not describe nature as it is. Do you think that is so? If not, why?

I can consider most philosophical issues even when framed in terms inconsistent with physicalism. That's because I regard the framing as paradigm, which can be utilized without ontological commitent to the paradigm. — Relativist

This seems to rest on a misunderstanding of philosophy as such. Scientific models can indeed be treated as paradigms without ontological commitment — Newtonian mechanics still works fine for spacecraft navigation, even if we know relativity is more fundamental. Same with quantum physicists' 'Shut up and calculate'. But philosophy isn’t just a pragmatic use of conceptual models. Its concern is precisely with what is real, and what it means to exist. To treat philosophical frameworks as if they can be referenced without ontological commitment is to miss the point of philosophy. Ontology can't be firewalled of to a specialised sub-division separate from the rest of philosophy, it's intrinsic to it.

I've given the above arguments repeatedly over the course of this thread, and to my recollection, you haven't engaged with any of them, other than the vague accusation of them being 'category mistakes'. If they are, then how so?

I asked ChatGPT ‘When an LLM ‘gets’ a joke and signal ‘ha ha’ - it doesn’t actually feel amused, so much as recognizing it as a joke and responding accordingly, right?’

Chat GPT: ‘Yes, when an LLM ‘gets’ a joke and says ‘ha ha,’ it isn’t actually amused — it’s just recognizing the pattern of a joke and producing the kind of response people usually give. It’s a simulation of amusement, not the feeling itself.

So just like brain-image reconstructions give us a modelled output rather than direct access to the brain’s “movie” ‘.

That's an interesting Pinker quote, although I myself frequently think in English sentences - not that I regard that as typical or as something everyone would do. Others have said here there are people who can read and speak perfectly well without ever being aware of a stream of thought in their minds. I think my 'bottom line' with respect to AI (with which I now interact every day) is that LLMs are not subjects of experience or thought. And if ask any of them - Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT - they will affirm this. They are uncannily like real humans, right down to humour and double entrendes, but they're reflecting back at us the distillation of billions of hours of human thought and speech.

Furthermore, I don’t think it’s helpful to frame this as though my philosophical outlook simply reduces to my personality or my particular “areas of concern” which is essentially a form of ad hominem argument. I've given reasons, not just preferences, for why I think physicalism must be incomplete as a philosophy. If you believe I’ve misunderstood, then the most productive way forward is to show where the reasoning fails, not to suggest the reasoning is invalid because of the kind of person offering it just prefers a different approach.

I've given numerous, documented reasons for my arguments, including:

• The Hard Problem: first-person experience (“what it is like”) is not captured by third-person physical accounts.
• Universals and theory of meaning: truths, logical relations, and mathematical structures are not physical categories, even if they can be represented in physical media.
• The Blind Spot: since Galileo, science has bracketed the subject to focus exclusively on objects — but philosophy must also account for the subject who knows and experiences.

All of these are dismissed by you as 'category errors' or 'not relevant' without any attempt at addressing them.

The reconstructions are extraordinary, no question. But it’s important to see what’s really happening: the system has to be trained for hours on each subject, with researchers mapping brain activity against known images and then building statistical models to translate those signals back into visuals. So what we’re seeing isn’t the brain “projecting” a movie by itself, but a reconstruction produced through a pipeline of human design, training, and interpretation. Without that interpretive layer, the raw neural data wouldn’t 'look like' anything. They don’t show that the brain literally contains images — they’re model-based translations of neural activity, not direct readouts of images 'stored' in the neural data.

But their (ancestral) life is vivid in the expression of character and disposition of particular individuals. That view does not mesh well with the vision of souls being their own thing but also conscripted to the "material" world. — Paine

Care to elaborate on that?

The actual answer is yes. — punos

That technology is astounding, no question. But it should be born in mind that those systems are trained on many hours of stimulus and response for particular subjects prior to the experiment being run. During this training the system establishes links between the neural patterns of the subject, and patterns of input data. So human expertise is constantly being interpolated into the experiment in order to achieve these results.

My question then is if the dog had propositional knowledge, then he is engaging in thought, and the dog might also know that if he tries to sit on the mat next to the cat he will be swatted. Is this then the distinction you're drawing between humans and animals just that humans are unusual in that they use sentences to express their thoughts where animals do not? — Hanover

Well, bear in mind, that was a paraphrase of Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick's book. But it is also addressed in a polemical argument by Aristotelian philosopher Jacques Maritain:

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge. — The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

Physicalism is an ontological grounding thesis, not an effective paradigm for answering all questions about the human condition - your areas of interest and concern. — Relativist

But surely philosophy is concerned with the whole range of questions about the human condition. The task of science is to explore and explain what exists; philosophy asks what it means to exist. That inquiry is not merely subjective in the sense of personal preference, but recognises that the subject is ineliminable.

Similarly with the way you see the relationship between science and the metaphysical theory of physicalism. You reject my description of the relationship, and you misconstrue it or insist on your own view. — Relativist

Yet you’ve said repeatedly that physics provides the paradigm for metaphysics — that the “ontological grounding” is the ontology of physics. You said earlier

Most of mental life is better considered from completely different perspectives. My issue is specifically with ontology: what actually exists. I think ontology can be set aside for the issues you raised. If this is wrong, and there is such a dependency then there's a burden to make an epistemological case for that ontology. — Relativist

That “burden,” as you phrase it, could only be met by demonstrating the objective existence of some “non-physical thing.” But this already presumes the physicalist framing, where what counts as real must be an object existing in the same way as physical entities.

On “immanent universals”: my criticisms here are not inventions of my own — they’ve been made by many philosophers. If I tracked down the sources, I could easily point to published critiques (e.g. E. J. Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics (Oxford, 1998) - Lowe argues against Armstrong’s immanent realism, suggesting that it fails to account for the reality of universals and necessary connections.)

This approach gives you a valid reason to reject physicalism (i.e. it's inconsistent with your world-view), but does not constitute the objective take-down of physicalism that you think it is — Relativist

And that is relativism in action. You hold physicalism as true; I work from an idealist framework. You don’t recognise the kinds of arguments I offer, not because they are subjective, but because they cut against what you take to be undeniable. Physicalism starts by bracketing out the subject in order to ascertain what exists independently of the subject; Kantian idealism (which you don't seem to recognise) shows why this is untenable.

I don't think you are interested in understanding. — Relativist

I've learned a great deal from this forum, about new subjects, schools of thought, and philosophers that I'd never heard of. I read constantly, often the sources that others have recommended, and I often quote from external sources in support of my arguments. So, sure, I'm interested in understanding,

But the bottom line is, you can't conceive of a way in which physicalism might be false. So, I'm quite happy to leave it there, but I will not concede that what I'm arguing is 'subjective' in any pejorative sense. But I will agree that my philosophy is incompatible with physicalism, as I would hope it to be!

//I also note you had nothing to say about David Chalmers’ challenge to physicalism//

All this is the story of someone escaping responsibility to someone else. What I wrote above - no one is responsible for anything. The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier. — Astorre

I don't really understand what you mean by this. I think you correctly identify the role of Protestantism in the formation of individualism, and the role of Christianity in grounding the value of the person. And also that these are very much one of the 'pillars of liberalism'. The founding philosophers of liberalism generally had a commitment to the social contract in the form of reciprocal rights and duties (although today the rights seem to be exaggerated and duties deprecated.) All of this was developed against an implicitly Christian background, from which the idea of social equality originated (as opposed to the rigid social hierarchies of the preceeding cultures). Furthermore that the ideal of progress was a version of the Eschaton transposed into a secular register. But the human condition, as such, was never envisioned to be complete or capable of fulfilment in the original Christian sense. So while liberalism grew out of that soil, it lost its connection to it in some fundamental way with the decline of faith.

So what next stage of liberation could there be, if not some version of the utilitarian ethos of the 'greatest good for the greatest number'? I think the obvious issue is the need to culture to transition from an economy of abundance to one of scarcity, as that is what the world is facing. We can't sustain the levels of consumption of goods and energy that the West has grown used to. Already we overshoot the Earth's capacity to sustain the consumption of resources which outstrips the natural regenerative capacity of the planet on an earlier date each year (see Earth Overshoot Day). So what kind of economic or political system would recognise or validate frugality and conservation rather than conspicuous consumption? That doesn't look a lot like 'freedom' in the economic sense, which is the freedom to pursue and fulfil one's desires.

Actually a pioneering political economist comes to mind, E F Schumacher, who published the trendsetting Small is Beautiful book in 1973, one of the early influential books in sustainable economics. Schumacher argued in his chapter on Buddhist Economics that economics should serve people rather than the other way around. The Buddhist model prioritizes well-being, meaningful work, simplicity, and ecological balance over the Western fixation on growth, profit, and consumption. He frames this not as a religious doctrine but as a reminder that economics is always rooted in values, and that the Western “science” of economics has its own unexamined metaphysics—one that Buddhist economics can help illuminate and counterbalance (although it must be noted, he developed this concept whilst an economic adviser in Burma, which has hardly gone on to become an exemplar for any kind of development.)

Nevertheless, the broader point stands: that Western capitalism has prioritised material abundance and consumption as the hallmark of progress, and it's a model that is not sustainable in the face of the scarcities that are threatening global well-being. So maybe the kind of liberation that needs to be sought, is the liberation from endless consumption - which does sound rather Buddhist.

Hey, I like that. Very helpful framing, thank you.

Hope you read that poetry above, it is really very good. I understand a lot more about Alfred North Whitehead just having read it.

Great work. Process philosophy sung into verse—beautifully done. :clap: :pray:

As you say, there are no synthetic a priori judgements, but as Kant says, that logical construct (proposition, judgement), in which the conceptions have no relation to each other but are connected in thought, are called synthetic a priori judgements, and are used by the cognitive faculties as principles. — Mww

Might be a good place for a recap of what the synthetic a priori is, and the role it has in Kant's COPR. The phrase “synthetic a priori” is one of the pivots of the entire text. Kant thought the whole problem of pure reason could be summed up in the question: how are synthetic a priori judgments possible? (B19).

The types of judgements are:

• Analytic a priori = true by definition, like “all bachelors are unmarried.”
• Synthetic a posteriori = adds new content, but known through experience, like “this apple is red.”
• Synthetic a priori = adds new content, but is knowable independently of experience.

That last category was Kant’s unique insight. Mathematics is built around it — “7+5=12” is not analytic, because “12” isn’t contained in “7+5,” but it’s still a priori. Geometry also: “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” And physics relies on principles like “every change has a cause,” which aren’t derived from experience but condition how we can have experience of a lawful world in the first place (indeed are central to the whole idea of there being physical laws.)

This is why Kant recognized the synthetic a priori judgment as fundamental to science. They’re what make mathematical physics possible — and because physics underpins so many other domains, they’re indirectly what make large parts of the other sciences possible. Without them, knowledge would collapse into either tautology (analytic truths) or mere observation (synthetic a posteriori). The ability to make predictions based on axioms is central to scientific method, and that ability depends on having judgments that are both synthetic (they extend knowledge) and a priori (they hold universally and necessarily).

Kant’s point was that the mind isn’t just passively recording facts, but actively structuring experience according to a priori forms and concepts. That’s how we get laws of nature that are universal and necessary, rather than just habits of expectation.

So when people debate whether the “synthetic a priori” really exists, it’s worth remembering: Kant wasn’t spinning an abstraction — he was trying to explain the actual success of mathematics and Newtonian science. His claim is that you can’t make sense of those successes without granting that there are truths that are both synthetic and a priori.

Nowadays, there is debate over whether there really are laws of nature (see Nancy Cartwright, No God, No Laws.) There is also the tendency to regard such Kantian posits as aspects of psychology or to relativise them in other ways (Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism for instance.) But in Kant's terms, the idea of the 'synthetic a priori' is basic to the entire project of the Critique, and without it the possibility of mathematics and natural science as objective knowledge would be left unexplained.

Nevertheless, I think it must be acknowledged that the consequences of Galileo's overturning of Aristotelian physics was of major consequence in intellectual history, was it not? That that was central to the Scientific Revolution and the advent of the worldview of modern science, which is the topic under discussion.

How germane is it to the point at issue? I started with a quote from James Glattenfelder's synopsis of his book (as mentioned by @Gnomon), and then provided some context for why he would make the claim that he did.

fringe cases. I'd go with Chomsky.

Well, sure - there is much commentary on the fact that Galileo was deeply influenced by Plato in conceiving of “the book of nature” as written in mathematics. He was also indebted to Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Plato into Italian, one of the hallmark achievements of the Renaissance. Platonic and Neoplatonic influences run through much of early modern thought. Copernicus, for example, set out to show that the orbits of the planets were perfect Platonic circles—though Kepler was later to correct this with his vital discovery that they are elliptical.

By contrast, in Aristotelian philosophy, “matter” was only ever a potential something; outside of form, it had no intrinsic existence. Aristotle’s prima materia was a theoretical posit, not a substance you could pick up and throw. Galileo, however, shifted the emphasis: he insisted on the primacy of the measurable attributes of matter—those that could be captured mathematically. As John Vervaeke observes, matter now also possessed inertia, hence the modern concept of “inert matter.” So here the idea of inert matter, now devoid of intentionality and purpose, but conceived instead as passive, measurable, and defined in mathematical terms.

That would figure - he doesn't know, because without any language, there would be no way for ideas to 'register in memory' so to speak (at a guess).

Presumably, they are stil able to speak, so, form concepts, understand meanings and grammar - all of which require thought.