It is, really. I think I’ve interacted with ChatGPT every day since launch, which is now two years. It’s also really helpful in professional matters, I have won a contract to do product documentation for a smart comms device. ChatGPT provided instant background to the protocols used by this device (which I’d never heard of) and a lot of other industry-specific information.

I’ve begun to think of the ‘A’ in ‘AI’ as standing for ‘Augmented’, rather than ‘Artificial’. Because that’s what it is.

Well, to address your objections more completely.

Constructivism (and my position in the OP) does not deny that objects exist independent of perception. The key point is that our knowledge of such objects is mediated by subjective processes—experience and prior knowledge shape how those objects appear to us. This does not negate their independent existence but highlights the active role of the subject in any knowledge of them.

I keep emphasizing that there are two distinct meanings of 'mind-independent': a practical meaning and a metaphysical meaning, the latter corresponding to metaphysical realism.

The practical meaning refers to the fact that many things—trees, mountains, other people—exist independently of your mind or mine in the sense that they do not rely on our individual perceptions to exist. This is uncontroversial and consistent with everyday experience.

Metaphysical realism, however, illegitimately extends this practical sense to claim that the world-at-large exists entirely independently of all mind, as if it is fundamentally separate from the act of perception or any cognitive structuring. This leap goes beyond what can be demonstrated and assumes what it needs to prove, ignoring the role that mind plays in shaping the world we experience. Recognizing this distinction is key to understanding why metaphysical realism is not as secure as it seems.

This distinction between the practical and metaphysical meanings of 'mind-independent' is consistent with Kant's insight that empirical realism is compatible with transcendental idealism. We can acknowledge that objects exist independently of our individual perceptions in the practical, phenomenal sense while also recognizing that this does not mean they exist as they are 'in themselves,' apart from the structuring role of mind.

You seem to be conflating knowledge with what we have knowledge of. I guess it depends on what you mean by "knowledge". Knowledge by aquainatance can be equated with bare perception, but discursive knowledge also incorporates judgement regarding what is perceived. — Janus

I agree that knowledge and what we know are distinct. However, my argument is about the relationship between the two: what we know is dependent on our cognitive and rational faculties.. Even bare perception, which you equate with knowledge by acquaintance, involves a structuring process, if any object it to be identified - even to know what it is requires that it be identified..Cognition is thus always mediated by sensory and cognitive abilities.

The fact that different subjects see the same objects doesn't vitiate constructivism. Shared experiences arise because we inhabit a shared world and possess similar sensory and cognitive apparatuses, leading to intersubjective agreement. However, this does not prove that the world is 'mind-independent'—only that our minds process shared inputs in similar ways.Furthermore different subjects can see the same objects in competely different ways, depending on what preconceptions or prior knowledge they bring to what they see.

The questions are matters of faith because there is no possibility of logical proof or empirical confirmation regarding the question of whether the world is fundamentally physical or mental. — Janus

If deciding whether reality is 'physical' or 'mental' requires a leap of faith, then realism is in no better position than idealism. Metaphysical realism claims that the world exists independently of the mind, but it cannot justify this beyond an appeal to reason—an appeal that idealism and constructivism also make. The difference is that idealism and constructivism openly recognize the unavoidable role of the mind in structuring experience, making them more consistent with how knowledge actually operates. In doing so, they are forthright about their reliance on reason rather than claiming a privileged metaphysical certainty.

it's not that I don't see the point, but that I disagree, and that is the point which you seem to be incapable of seeing. — Janus

Right back at ya! :-) (I mean, from what you say, I can't see what it is you're taking issue with.)

Incidentally I am seeing how this 'mind creates world' meme is proliferating on the Internet right now. In various substack and medium feeds, plus Aeon and Big Think there are articles on it practically every day, some thought-provoking and sober, some entirely ridiculous.

Right - it makes sense. In some ways it's similar to the enactivist 'building the path by walking it' approach. There are similar ideas coming out of cognitivism, and, of course, the Vervaeke lectures and the 'salience landscape' and 'relevance realisation'. But that is a fair distance from the hard core neo-darwinian view.

Natural selection has no goals. — Questioner

Right. That's the salient point when it comes to invoking evolutionary biology as a rationale for ethical normativity.

The fact that we and the animals all share the same world and see the same things at the same times and places shows that what we perceive is not only determined by the mind but is also constrained by the physical nature of the senses and what is "out there". — Janus

I don't think constructivism denies that, nor do I in the OP - as I said I acknowledge there are objects unseen by any eye. I think you're still seeing both constructivism and idealism as stating that reality is 'all in the mind'.

Contructivism's core idea is that knowledge is a construction created by the mind, based on experience and prior knowledge, which provides the conceptual framework into which experience is incorporated. Radical constructivism stays neutral about the mind-independent world. It says, "We can't know reality as it is; we only know how we construct it."

It's more concerned with how we learn, think, and know than about making metaphysical claims. It is applied to fields such as education, cognitive science, and systems theory. "Reality is like a map you create as you navigate a territory—you can't claim the map is the territory itself." But the important thing to note is that it is largely epistemological, concerned with knowledge.

Analytical idealism accepts these premisses, but then goes a step further in proposing a metaphysic in which reality is mental in nature.

But as said in the OP, my main focus is not proposing a substantial metaphysics. In some way, my own approach is more aligned with constructivism. But they're both opposed to metaphysical realism. But it doesn’t mean dismissing reality or saying 'reality doesn't exist' —it's that both constructivism and phenomenological idealism recognize the importance of subjective experience as a fundamental structure of experienced reality. And it's just this subjective element which is 'bracketed out' by objectivism. The critique of metaphysical realism (drawing from Kant) is that it fails to notice how the mind actively structures reality through establishing conditions of subjective experience. Realism assumes that the world is 'just so' independent of the observer, yet overlooks how much of what we take as real is mediated by this subjective structuring process.

Which is exactly what the passage about Husserl states:

Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

.

So this is not a 'matter of faith', and I think the reason you keep saying that over and over again is because you're not seeing the point.

(Incidentally the above info about constructivism was gleaned from Constructivist Foundations. Information about analytical idealism can be found on Essentia Foundation.)

Trump has stated he intends to pursue a deal. — Tzeentch

Trump is basically implying that he will cave to Putin, whom he constantly expresses admiration for. As said many times, I believe Putin is wholly and solely responsible for the criminal invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of billions of dollars worth of property and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Wholly and solely. It is desperately important that Putin is defeated and seen to be defeated, and that will be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, outcome. But anything less is capitulation to a murderous autocrat.

Seems to me those questions are closely related, even intertwined. — Janus

Which questions? Incidentally, my reference to 'the passage I quoted' was actually a reference to the excerpt about Husserl that I posted in the Mind-Created World thread - I got my wires crossed between these two threads. I think discussoion of the 'mind-independence in Husserl' question ought to be in that other thread.

Why does nature produce the sublime? — EnPassant

Well said, and a very easy question to loose sight of.

Thanks, but going on the review, hardly mainstream ('discursive niche construction?' :yikes: ) And I'm sure, not what the post I was responding to has in mind. What that Richard Polt OP is criticizing, is the widespread tendency to simply assume that evolutionary biology provides a kind of default basis for normativity, along the lines of what is 'advantageous for survival' ('oldy-moldy darwinism'). It's more evolution as secular alternative to religion.

Where would I look for examples of this kind of approach? And in respect of human culture, how would 'normative patterns of functioning' be related to or grounded in evolutionary biology per se?

The elephant is our instinctual, emotional self, and our rationality is the rider. — Questioner

Plato had something similar to that, albeit a charioteer rather than an elephant. But it's a venerable metaphor.

My claim is that we are the result of our evolution - but it produced wide spectrums of behavior, emotions, aptitudes, perspectives, intellect, abilities, ways of thinking, etc. etc. — Questioner

Question, then: is it not possible that humans are under-determined by evolution? This would mean that, while certainly not denying the facts of evolution, it is legitimate to question the sense in which the human condition might be understood solely through the lens of biological theory.

The main drivers of adaptive behaviour are the ability to compete, and show up in most vertebrate behaviour as the famous 'Four Fs' of behaviour - fighting, feeding, fleeing, and sexual reproduction. It is not difficult to trace the influence of these behaviours on human activities. But how does this dictate or determine ethical behaviours?

Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.

In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness, as (biologist E. O.) Wilson puts it, nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless. — Richard Polt, Anything but Human

He clearly states it. The fact that we all share many common elements of experience is not an argument against constructivism, because it simply means that we overall construct the world in the same way.

Constantly interpreting these questions as an ‘appeal to faith’ doesn’t do justice to them. Husserl was committed to a scientific approach.

I don’t think the passage I quoted considers that question. The key point for me was his objection to treating consciousness as part of the domain of naturalism. And the mistaking of the ‘idealized and objectified’ concepts from the natural sciences as providing a real account of reality in itself. (oh sorry that was a reference to the passage posted in the other thread.)

Is aporia a paradox? I recall in Theatetus that it was more a question to which there were several possible answers and no way to tell which is right.

In the Theaetetus, aporia emerges in the dialogue’s examination of knowledge, where Socrates leads the participants to recognize the inadequacy of various definitions. The state of aporia isn’t necessarily a paradox but rather a deliberate moment of intellectual humility or openness, signaling that more inquiry is needed.

That’s what I was getting at.

….a person who happened to want to create a universe…. — Clearbury

:roll:

Certainly the odds of there being a designer who wished to create a world such as this are going to be every bit as long as the odds that a world such as this arose by chance. — Clearbury

I don't think of God as being like a kind of super-engineer, a cosmic designer who literally oversees all the details of the cellular biology and organic life. Classical theism - not the beliefs of modern-day evangelicals on the whole - says that God is 'simple' (meaning not composed of parts) - not something which is more complex than the Universe that He has created.

The argument that I think is persuasive, at least to me, is the version of the cosmological anthropic argument that stresses the very small numbers of constants that are required to have very specific properties, in order for complex matter of any kind to form. 'Just Six Numbers' is the title of a book on that. Mind you, that book is not an 'argument from design' and its author stays mum on whether he believes in God, presenting that as one among other hypotheses. But the idea that all of what exists is dependent upon a very small number of specific constraints seems more in line with the idea of divine simplicity, than examination of the massive complexity of life and the universe.

As to the argument that the fundamental constraints are 'brute fact', and the existence of anything is dumb luck, I wonder if that amounts to any kind of explanation at all.

I say this, because the idea of God as a designer or super-engineer is wildly mistaken even for those who don't believe in any kind of higher power. I think it arises from attempting to scale up a naturalistic understanding to a cosmic scale, but it's not informed by any kind of insight into the who or what of God.

That said, Stephen Meyer's 'scientific intelligent design' is subject to criticism by other Christians, as I've already noted upthread, on similar grounds (e.g. here and here). For a popular-level insight into classical theism, have a read of God does not Exist, by Pierre Whalon (and no, it's not atheist polemics) and also He Is Who He Is, a review of a book by David Bentley Hart. These might, at least, make it a little clearer what the God is that we don't believe in.

Lawrence Krauss wrote a book named A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. But, his "nothing" turned out to be a strange sort of something : a fluctuating quantum field, complete with governing laws and empowering energy. So, his "nothing" simply meant "no gods". — Gnomon

You might be interested to know that this book got a savage review in the New York Times from David Albert, who is a professor of physics and expert in interpretations of quantum physics:

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story. — David Albert

Story goes that Krauss reacted furiously to this review and kicked up a huge stink. (This is all 12 years ago mind you.) In the end, Daniel Dennett had to take him aside and tell him to cool it.

Krauss may be a good science writer and communicator, but he's an absolutely crap philosopher as far as many are concerned.

Tyler Durden is smart, courageous, iron willed, etc. They have some of the key ingredients for flourishing in spades. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And there's the rub. If the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of virtue, then who's to say that's not good? Suffice to say that St Augustine holds convictions on that question which may not be shared by others, even if I myself can plainly see the sense in them. So again in the absence of a summum bonum it is hard to see what provides the pole to the moral compass, so to speak.

Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence? — Tom Storm

The former. The 'world-knot'. My feeling is that due to the 'instinctive naturalism' that Husserl calls out in the post above, we've not only lost the connection to 'the unconditioned' but we've forgotten that we've forgotten. Heidegger's 'forgetfulness of being'. Phenomenology and existentialism are both concerned with that.

(There's a well-known anecdote about Heidegger, that one day a colleague found him reading D T Suzuki (who at the time was lecturing at Columbia University and was well-known in the academic world.) Heidegger looked somewhat abashed, but said, 'if I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings'. Of course it would be overly simplistic to say that he was in any meaningful way Buddhist or would adopt Buddhism. But I think both sources have a sense of the existential crisis of modernity. )

So, there's two parts to your observation. One being agreement with the general idea of cognitivism or constructivism, but the second being about 'totalising claims about meaning'. I think that can only be a reference to claims about what is beyond or outside the domain of naturalism, which suggests the supernatural, hence 'woo' in today's lexicon.

Here I'm drawn to a Buddhist perspective (and there are Buddhist references in the original post.) The awareness of the world-creating activities of mind is actually the salient point of vipassana, insight meditation. The Dhammapada begins with a line something like 'our life is the creation of our mind'. Throughout the early Buddhist texts, the point that is repeated over and over is awareness of and insight into the chain of dependent origination which gives rise to conditioned consciousness. In this context, It's not so much a matter of 'getting behind' those patterns, as of seeing through them - which is an arduous discipline.

There is an unequivocal statement in the Suttas 'there is that which is unconditioned, that which is unmade, that which is unfabricated' (ref). But in Buddhism, that is not a matter of faith, like 'faith in God' in the West, but one of insight. It does require faith, in that one has to have faith in it in order to take on such a discipline. But Buddhism is generally critical of dogmatic views (dṛṣṭi) one way or the other. That is why mindfulness is compared with the Husserlian epochē, 'bare awareness' of the qualities of consciousness. The connection between Buddhism and phenomenology is quite well documented nowadays. There's a wiki entry on Husserl's readings of Buddhism.

Regrettably the usual reaction is 'oh, you mean religion'. An attitude that I think is very much a product of our specific cultural history and what religion means to us. The answer has to be yes and no - religious in some respects, but not in others, as it has been defined very specifically as to what is included and what isn't, in Western cultural history.

The emergence of organic life marks the beginning of a rudimentary form of awareness. Unlike inanimate matter, living organisms actively maintain themselves, preserving their internal organization while remaining distinct from their environment. This self-maintenance, or autopoiesis, introduces a basic subject-object relationship, where the organism differentiates itself from the "other" that surrounds it. Crucially, this perspective departs from a strictly materialist account, which often focuses solely on physical processes. Instead, it recognizes the primacy of relational dynamics and the concept of "otherness" as foundational to life. Hans Jonas and Evan Thompson highlight this, emphasizing that life is characterized by its orientation toward, and interaction with, the world, laying the groundwork for more developed forms of awareness and cognition. But the point is, it is relational from the get-go.

I've found an extract from Husserl's Critique of Naturalism, copied from the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology. I was sent that as a .pdf a long time ago, early days on the other Forum, and reading this excerpt, I realise that it comprises most of what I know about Husserl, and also most or all of my own 'critique of naturalism'.

The critique of naturalism

Soon after writing the Logical Investigations, as we have seen, Husserl came to the view that his earlier researches had not completely escaped naturalism. After that Husserl constantly set his face against naturalism, but his most cogent critique is to be found in his 1911 essay, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Husserl thinks that all traditional philosophy, including Descartes and Kant, had treated consciousness as something having a completely natural being, a mere part of nature, and a dependent or epiphenomenal part at that. Even Kant had misunderstood transcendental psychology as a psychology. Husserl regards naturalism both as the dominant theoretical outlook of his age and also as deeply embedded in our ordinary assumptions about the world surrounding us. In other words, our pre-theoretical engagement with the world has an inbuilt bias towards naive naturalism. This is fine in our ordinary practices in the world, but when naturalism is elevated into an all-encompassing theoretical outlook, it actually becomes far removed from the natural attitude and in fact grossly distorts it. Husserl’s critique of naturalism is that it is a distorted conception of the fruits of scientific method which in itself is not inextricably wedded to a naturalist construal.

Husserl’s conception of naturalism relates to his understanding of the projects of John Locke, David Hume, and J.S. Mill, as well as nineteenth century positivists, especially Comte and Mach. Naturalism is the view that every phenomenon ultimately is encompassed within, and explained by, the laws of nature; everything real belongs to physical nature or is reducible to it. There are of course many varieties of naturalism, but Husserl’s own account in his 1911 essay more or less correctly summarises the naturalistic outlook:

"Thus the naturalist…sees only nature, and primarily physical nature. Whatever is, is either itself physical, belonging to the unified totality of physical nature, or it is, in fact, psychical, but then merely as a variable dependent on the physical, at best a secondary “parallel accomplishment”. Whatever is belongs to psychophysical nature, which is to say that it is univocally determined by rigid laws."

As naturalism has again become a very central concept primarily in contemporary analytic philosophy, largely due to W.V.O. Quine’s call for a naturalised epistemology, it is worth taking time here to elucidate further Husserl’s conception of naturalism. Indeed, precisely this effort to treat consciousness as part of the natural world is at the basis of many recent studies of consciousness, for example the work of Daniel Dennett or Patricia Churchland. Compare Husserl’s definition with that of David Armstrong for example:

"Naturalism I define as the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system."

In Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, Husserl explicitly identifies and criticises the tendency of all forms of naturalism to seek the naturalisation of consciousness and of all ideas and norms. Naturalism as a theory involves a certain ‘philosophical absolutising’ of the scientific view of the world (Ideas I § 55); “it is a bad theory regarding a good procedure”. Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal. Indeed, a new science of psychology, with laws modelled on the mechanical laws of the physical domain, was then brought in to investigate this carved off subdomain, but it was guilty of reifying consciousness and examining it naively. Husserl constantly points out that such a division of the world into physical and psychical makes no sense. For Husserl, naturalism is not just only partial or limited in its explanation of the world, it is in fact self-refuting, because it has collapsed all value and normativity into merely physical or psychical occurrences, precisely the same kind of error made by psychologism when it sought to explain the normativity of logic in terms of actual, occurrent psychological states and the empirical laws governing them. The whole picture is absurd or ‘counter-sensical’ in that it denies the reality of consciousness and yet is based on assuming the existence of consciousness to give rise to the picture in the first place (Ideas I § 55). Or as Husserl says in the 1911 essay: “It is the absurdity of naturalizing something whose essence excludes the kind of being that nature has."

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. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

@Relativist - note the reference to D M Armstrong.

Notice the connection between aporia and epochē.
— Wayfarer

This is interesting. Can you say more about that? — J

It was really rather a stray thought. The question was raised about how you would know if you really did momentarily experience the existence of another person in a dream state. I said it was an unanswereable question - hence ‘aporetic’, the kind of question for which there is no answer. Which has something in common with epochē, ‘suspension of judgement about what is not evident’. But to me, the awareness of those kinds of questions, while not knowing whether or how they can be answered, signals a kind of openness to possibility. Neither ruling out the possibility nor believing it.

Russia is invading Europe with China’s money, Iran’s weapons, and North Korea’s troops. Chinese ships captained by Russians are destroying undersea natural gas pipelines and telecom cables in the Baltic Sea. Russian weapons used in Ukraine are built with Chinese components. Russia is causing mayhem on the streets of the UK. Their mercenaries have been raping and plundering their way through Africa and using the proceeds to finance the war in Ukraine. Iran, supported by China, has encircled Israel with its proxies and set the better part of the Middle East—and key shipping lanes—alight. Putin regularly threatens us with nuclear weapons. What could this be if not a world war? — It's Time to Call This WWWIII

Oh, sorry, my bad. Yes I had McGinn's books in mind. Also Evelyn Underhill and Dean Inge, although they're a bit dated.

When I was still at school, I had the peculiar idea that if I suddenly swapped consciousness with the person walking towards me, AND I also instantly was connected to his or her memories at that moment, then there'd be no way of knowing what had happened. Rather peculiar thing to think, I grant, but at the time it seemed significant. Something about the universality of the experience of 'I'.

Although, the saying is: the difference between a mystic and a philosopher is that the philosopher tries to explain it. The mystic doesn't. — frank

Oh, I don't know about that. If you read up on Christian mysticism, the real blue-blood mystics such as Eckhardt and the other Rhineland mystics, they were both philosophically literate and rigorous. Eckhardt's sayings are dotted with 'an authority says' or 'according to a master' and each of those, you can have no doubt, would be a reference to a Boethius or a Dionysius or a Plotinus or some such. Mystical is, of course, the name for a whole bunch of fuzzy-sounding platitudes, but the real mystics may be both precise and rigorous.

For me self-knowledge is about coming to understand the patterns of thought that we have unconsciously fallen into which lead to suffering and learning to let them go as much as possible. — Janus

That's the spirit, and really not that remote from what I want to convey.

What are events without perspective? — schopenhauer1

That seems like one of the antinomies of reason, doesn’t it? In a practical sense, we can’t ‘think outside thought’. I think that's the same point that Schopenhauer makes with 'time has no beginning but all beginnings are in time'. Events absent any observer aren't simply non-existent, but neither are they existent, as 'an event' has to be delimited in time and space, comprising some elements and excluding others. Of course, from our perspective, we can discern untold events that happened prior to our own individual and species' existence. But that's still from within a perspective.

Notice the connection between aporia and epochē. Something I've learned to feel comfortable with.

Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me. — J

That's the point Cartwright makes in No God, No Laws. It's also discernable from the whole heritage of Western science, where until the modern period, natural laws were regarded as God's handiwork. The lineage of that idea can be traced back to Greek philosophy. But then in the modern period God becomes 'a ghost in his own machine' as Ted Dace put it.

But there's another interesting issue, which is the relationship of physical causation and logical necessity. I started a thread on that some time back, but it predictably went around in circles as there are wildly divergent opinions. But I'm forming the tentative understanding that in some real way, mathematics does more than model or represent - that in some sense the Universe *is* mathematical. That's not a new idea either. Someone alerted me to this book, The Pythagorean World, Jane McDonell, but a lot of it is beyond me as I don't have the training in mathematical physics.

The argument against reincarnation seems applicable here - in what sense was the person in the Irish Cottage the same as jgill? If all they shared was 'I AM', how do we conclude that they are the same? — Banno

I don't know if that's an answerable queston.

is the criteria for what is real to be that it feels real? — Banno

I think that's rather simplistic. Consider as an analogy, a major life-event, either a positive or negative one. It might have an impact on your whole view of the meaning of your existence, for better or for worse. I think epiphanies are like that in some respects, although of course such things are difficult or impossible to convey to others. But it is interesting how many people will tell of such life-changing experiences if the opportunity arises.

I see no reason to believe that we should ever be able to achieve an overview which is more than a more or less vague sketch. Just as even the most complex computer models of the weather are still vastly less complex than the actual weather systems. — Janus

That's what Colin McGinn says, 'mysterianism'.

From this our position of radical uncertainty I see no justification for any conclusions about unity in any sense beyond the acknowledgement that there must be coordination in a system too complex for us to understand except in part and in terms of parts. — Janus

Which conflicts with the fundamental dictum of Socratic philosophy, 'know thyself'.

This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic. — J

I think the Platonist tradition naturally tended to understand laws as the doings of the demiurge laid down at the foundations of time. That still resonates, at least for me, although it is of course consigned to history as far as most people are concerned, having become absorbed into, and then rejected along with, theology. (I really have to make the time to study the Timeaus and commentaries. Apparently a major source of inspiration for a youthful Heisenberg.)

As for the 'regress' - perhaps what we perceive as laws and regularities are necessarily true. Asking why they must be, is rather like asking why two and two equals four. In fact a whole epistemological question might revolve around trying to understand the way in which such regularities exist. As you will know, philosophers of science like Nancy Cartwright questions the whole idea of natural law, in her books such as How the Laws of Physics Lie. She doesn't call into question the pragmatic effectiveness of science but questions whether it is really 'lawful' in that traditionally-understood sense (see No God, No Laws.)

as pointed out in the OP, I think it is possible to note that there must be relations, laws, between objects (which would include some form or forms of causality) even if it is not the same as the law of causality which is a priori. No? — Bob Ross

Well, in relation to Schopenhauer, the problem goes away because objects are ideas. The world and everything in it is Idea, as it has 'passed through the manufactory of the brain' and with it, entered the domain of time and space. That aspect of Schopenhauer makes sense to me! Where I'm having the problem is, if Will is 'blind and irrational', how come the exquisite symbiologies of biological existence?

:pray: I found validation of sorts when I picked up a small pamphlet on the Teaching of Ramana Maharishi. He was a famous spiritual guru, passed away in 1960, who lived in an ashram in southern India, which is still a major attraction. I never really pursued his teachings beyond reading about them, but the basic meaning is that the 'I AM' is the Self of all beings. More about him here https://www.gururamana.org/.

If I was to connect this to some modern theories, I guess one can relate back to informational theories. — schopenhauer1

From the original essay

By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience⁴.

The footnote reference is to the problem of the subjective unity of experience, part of the neural binding problem. That problem is how to account for the way in which the brain combines disparate kinds of information, such as size, shape, location and motion into a single unified object. While a lot is known about the various sub-faculties that perform each of the specialised tasks, no faculty can be identified that can account for the unified sense of self. That paper acknowledges that this inability corresponds to Chalmer's 'hard problem' and Levine's 'explanatory gap', meaning that at this time, how the brain does this remains 'a scientific mystery'. This has been interpreted by theistic philosophers of evidence for the soul, although I wouldn't frame it that way, as again it tends towards treating the soul (or mind or self) as an object, which it never is.

I don't know if you recall, but the other week I was wondering if the self might be understood in terms of Terrence Deacon's absentials. I ran that by ChatGPT and got the following response:

That’s a fascinating connection! Indeed, Deacon’s concept of *absentials*—things defined by what is absent or by constraints rather than by tangible, present entities—applies beautifully to the Neural Binding Problem and the elusive nature of subjective unity. In Deacon’s view, *absentials* represent phenomena that aren’t located in specific material structures but emerge through relational patterns or constraints, shaping the outcomes without being directly observable.

The sense of subjective unity—our coherent, integrated perception of the world—is a perfect example of this kind of phenomenon. Neuroscience, for all its discoveries, hasn’t pinpointed a single “place” or mechanism where this unity resides because it isn’t a material structure that can be isolated or mapped. Instead, it arises from the intricate coordination of separate processes, without a single, stable neural correlate. In Deacon’s terms, the sense of unity is an *absential*: it’s defined by the coherence that emerges from the absence of a unifying, tangible structure, relying on how different parts of the brain constrain and synchronize each other to produce a seamless experience.

This interpretation enriches the Neural Binding Problem by suggesting that the solution may not lie in identifying a specific “thing” responsible for unity but rather in understanding how the lack of a centralized structure itself creates the conditions for unity. Just as Deacon’s absentials can shape the dynamics of complex systems, the brain’s fragmented but synchronized processing generates the “unity” that we experience subjectively. This approach also reinforces the limits of purely material explanations, as this unity exists in the relationships and constraints between parts rather than in any specific brain region. — ChatGPT

I have to say, this maps pretty well against both Schopenhauer and the Buddhist 'anatta' (no-self).

I would like you to tell me why you think your attitude to the nature of the subject and subjective experience, to whether it is material or immaterial, is crucial to your understanding of the human existential situation and the mindful living of your life. — Janus

OK, I've gone back and looked at your response to when I first linked that article. You said you can't see any point to it at the time, whereas I still think it was an important article. It was associated with a conference on the topic at Dartmouth at which the authors and others spoke, and is now published as book by MIT, which I found to be an excellent book. But, hey, maybe we should just agree to disagree on that.

Looking at the question you raise above:

The subject and subjective experience can be considered to be material without losing either, Subjective experience is just as real as anything else, but it is obviously not an object of the senses. Why should that make it any less material or real? — Janus

Subjective experience is certainly real, but how can it be considered material? I don't understand how you can think that.

If you can't be bothered trying to understand it, I can’t be bothered trying to explain it to you. But it’s absolutely nothing to do with ‘the afterlife’.

'There already' is a concept.

I don't understand this because I see no reason why materialism necessarily eliminates the subject — Janus

You've been telling me you don't understand it, ever since I first posted an OP on it, linked to the Aeon essay in 2019. Maybe you should review the essay and quote some passages and spell out why you think it doesn't make the case that it's claiming to make. Otherwise, I will conclude that the reason you keep saying you don't understand it, is because you don't understand it.

When we look at the objects of scientific knowledge, we don’t tend to see the experiences that underpin them. We do not see how experience makes their presence to us possible. Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that bestows absolute knowledge of reality, independent of how it shows up and how we interact with it. — The Blind Spot

It's Phenomenology 101.

There would be gold in Boorara, even if there were no folk around to know that there was gold in Boorara. — Banno

Something which can obviously ever be known once it has been discovered. Once it has been discovered, you will know it was there already, but not up until then.

If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survival; and since we know that it is the case that the brain does exactly that (as apodictically certain by the conscious experience you have had which has allowed you to navigate reality in a sufficiently accurate way to survive), it must be false that reality lacks any laws. Therefore, it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the human experience which we have, which is sufficiently accurate to survive reality, that reality has proper laws. — Bob Ross

I've been reading from Schopenhauer again. Something he says struck me with particular force, of late, which is this:

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is — p34

My bolds. There is a volume of literature on the subject of whether causality really exists in the world, or whether it is something attributed to it by the human mind. But Schopenhauer's view is that it is neither: causality is the relation between ideas, but how the world occurs for us IS as idea. So that the logic that holds between ideas also holds in the world, because these are not ultimately separable.

Having said that, though, I find it very hard to square the logic inherent in ideasm such as the law of the excluded middle, with Schopenhauer’s insistence on the irrational and blind nature of Will. If Will is irrational, then how come Wigner’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences?’ How is it that the order of nature so readily lends itself to mathematical analysis and prediction? That sure seems neither blind nor irrational to me. It is there I feel that the Platonist must know something that Schopenhauer does not. But then, there are whole sections of Schopenhauer I haven’t read, including his seminal essay on the Pinciple of Sufficient Reason.

This is definitely enough material for an entire term paper, although whether I have the time and energy to really explore it remains to be seen.

then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no? — 180 Proof

If it’s contingent ‘all the way down’, then how is it not chaos? I think the Platonist intuition is that laws exist at a deeper level than contingent facts, that laws somehow dictate, as much as predict, how specific particulars will behave, all other things being equal. What happens on the surface level is what appears as phenomena - ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’ - but why things happen as they do, is the consequence of uniform regularities that are real on a different level to the phenomenal.

But as discussed in another thread, the difficulty with that, is that there are no 'other levels' in current philosophy. There’s only the horizontal dimension of effective causation; the vertical dimension is generally excluded from naturalism, as naturalism anchors itself to the domain of phenomena and mathematical analysis arising from it.