So, in the zombie case the sights, sounds, feelings, emotions and so on were detected but never consciously, even though the zombie is able to report about what was detected in as much detail, and with as much nuance as we are.

In contrast the "blind experiencer" can detect the sights sounds and so on, perhaps not as reliably and with as much subtlety of detail as the conscious experiencer, but they cannot report on it because they believe that they have detected nothing. Let's say this is a failure of connections between brain regions or functions.

So, now it looks like the zombie and the blind-experiencer are actually similar, except that the zombie who has no experience at all nevertheless speaks as though it does, whereas the other consciously believes it has no experience, which amounts to saying it, like the zombie, has no conscious experience. However in fact it does have experiences albeit unconsciously.

The question then seems to be as to how it would be coherent to say in the case of the zombie, that all these feelings, experiences, sights, sounds and so on can be detected and yet to simultaneously say that nothing was experienced, when the zombie itself speaks about he experiences.

Another point that comes to mind is that I think we are not consciously aware of probably almost everything we experience, in the sense of "are aware of' like when, for example, we drive on autopilot.

No doubt you are aware of the phenomenon of blindsight where people are able to navigate environments even though they are not conscious of being able to see anything at all.

Imagine extending that syndrome to experience as a whole where someone would say they were not aware of experiencing anything, even though being able to navigate environments, guess correctly what has been said to them, guess what they had just tasted or smelt or what kind of object they had felt or touched and indeed respond to the question as to whether they experienced anything. all; without any conscious awareness of having experienced anything at all.

The P-zombie case, as specified would seem to be the very opposite to that, in that the zombie would say that they had seen, heard, felt, tasted, etc., while not having actually had any experience of anything at all.

While the experience-blindness case seems weird in that experience is occurring without being conscious of it, the zombie case seems altogether impossible in that they would be reporting experiences which, by stipulation, they didn't have.

Not sure which bullet you are referring to...

Do you think P-zombies are a real possibility or merely something we imagine we can imagine?

The being would have experiences, that created memories that might affect its future behavior - so in that sense, it would be a sort of first-person experience. — Relativist

So, it would be no different than the LLMs in that they are changed by their experiences.

You haven't answered the question which I posed prior to Wayfarer's subsequent response which your post that I ma responding to responds to :

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings. — Janus

I actually don't like the term "first person"―it is so humancentric. I also don't like the "dimensionless point" model of subjectivity.

The related question that comes to mind is whether you think consciousness is possible absent feelings and whether you equate consciousness with first person experience. Is it possible to have feelings without a sensate body?

If the processes can be programmed, then an artificial "mind" could actually be built that had 1st person experiences. — Relativist

What makes you think the background mental processing couldn't be programmed? It's algorthimically complex, involving multiple parallel paths, and perhaps some self-modifying programs. But in principle, it Seems straightforward. .As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic. — Relativist

I generally agree with your argument and find Wayfarers stipulative point about the fact that all attitudes are first person attitudes to be either irrelevant or trivial.

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings.

If someone tries to get other people to stop acting cruelly, then I would say that they believe in a moral norm that applies to everyone and not just themselves, even if they say that they "understand that not everyone shares my perspective." — Leontiskos

They might try to stop people acting cruelly because they feel the victim's pain and see the propensity for cruelty as a mental illness (not being able to empathize, feel another's pain).

:cool:

Yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about orientation. It’s more of a negation of the rational interpretation of insights. The insight is made, witnessed and logged, stored in memory. It is not rationalised. (It is rationalised at a later date in a different department of thought, but that is entirely separate from the experience of the insight). — Punshhh

It doesn't sound like you are disagreeing with what I've said, although it does sound like you think you are. I don't deny the reality of altered states of consciousness, and the profound effects they can have on people's lives. It's been a reality in my own life. I am just wary of drawing discursive conclusions from those altered states.

It enriches our lives, but doesn't tell us anything about what is the case, in my view.


On the contrary, it is our most direct arena of discovery. Enabling us to escape our discursive tendencies. — Punshhh

My point was that if you try to frame your insights into accounts of what-is-the-case in some quai-empirical sense, which is precisely not to escape our discursive tendencies, you will inevitably produce something that may or may not have any bearing on actuality. Whether it does or not is rationally undecidable. That said, all that matters is how you feel about it, and no justification is required for that.

I agree with you that the idealism/ materialism debate is senseless. It just doesn't matter. As someone quipped "no matter, never mind".

I think what we call the “actual world” is fraught. If you mean the world of gravity, water, and buses that can run over people, then I have no problem accepting that. If you mean politics and religion then these are somewhat arbitrary social constructions. I am also open to idealism, but I don't see how this is a particularly useful view. — Tom Storm

That is what I meant. I believe that people of all cultures experience the world of sky and earth, plants and animal, gravity, water, food, sex, illness, physical decline and death and countless other things. I don't believe those realities are culturally or mentally constructed, although culture will mediate how we think about them, of course.

I’ve generally held that morality seems to be pragmatic code of conduct that supports a social tribal species like humans to get along, hence almost universal prohibitions on lying, killing, murder, and other harms, along with a concurrent veneration of charity and altruism. Hierarchies also seem baked into this. — Tom Storm

I agree with you about the pragmatic basis of ethics and morality. We don't need a lawgiver. That said many people seem to lack a moral compass, but I don't think religion has helped with that at all. I mean, look at child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other religion-affiliated institutions. Of course I'm not saying religion is a cause, but the religious idea that sex is somehow dirty or sinful may well contribute to perversions.

I agree with about hierarchies being inherent in human social life (as it is with animals too). Hierarchy is basically a source of, and probably outcome of bias. We have the possibility of approaching morality and ethics rationally (ideally without bias).

That's interesting. I had no religious upbringing as my parents were of a secular mindset, although my mother always said she believed there must be more to life than just this world, and she purchased a book from a book club entitled German Philosophy from Leibniz to Nietzsche which I tried to read when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It awoke something intuitive in me, but of course I couldn't really understand it.

Mum sent me to Sunday School when I was about 7, because she thought I should be exposed to religion so I could make up my own mind about it. Apparently I asked so many troublesome questions they asked her not to send me back.

Anyway you didn't answer my other questions. Of course you are under no obligation to do so.

One other question I would like to ask is whether you believe there are cross-cultural moral commonalities.

Edit: I see you have answered the questions in question as I was writing.

Interesting, thanks. Where did you come across this critter? Does it spend much time above ground? I hadn't noticed a lack of African members, but now that you mention it, I can't recall anyone stating they are from Africa.

Anyway, sorry to sidetrack the thread. I would join in but I fear I am too obtuse, or of the wrong mindset, to properly understand possible world semantics.

Jesus mate, you must have been a precocious child of 7 or 8 to be thinking in terms of culture, reality construction, potential worlds beyond our sense experience and human reality being perspectival. What were you reading at the time?

Do you think the culture, the shaping it does and the values it produces are real in the sense of being actually operative? Are linguistic practices themselves real happenings? What about biology? Is it all a matter of cultural construction too? Do you believe there is an actual world which contributes anything to our sense experience and contributes to shaping culture?

Beeeautiful...was it in your garden in some possible world?

Hmm, I've been pondering this since I was 7 or 8. — Tom Storm

I would have thought you are too level-headed to take such thinking seriously, even at an early age.

We can go there if you like, but I tend to avoid such ideas here as it can be seen as woo woo. — Punshhh

I've spent enough time thinking about it, to be satisfied that there is no point to it, since we can have no knowledge of such things.

Yes, I do agree with this, but it becomes complicated because I subscribe to the idea that what we know can be radically altered by the addition of one new thought, like when we have a lightbulb moment. — Punshhh

I was only referring to ordinary knowledge of the world. I think the kind of intuitive ideas you are referring to may or may not be knowledge, and that there is no way to tell. That said, I'm all for imaginative speculation, but I value that in terms of the feelings it may evoke, not because I believe it tells me anything about reality.

The non-discursive knowledge I referred to is the knowledge of participation, familiarity, feeling. It enriches our lives, but doesn't tell us anything about what is the case, in my view. If we try to convert it into discursive knowledge we inevitably seem to go astray.

The matter of pure reason is interesting. I understand reasoning, I’m not sure what “pure” adds to it. — Tom Storm

What I had in mind was simply reasoning based on unbiased premises. Take, for example, the dialogue between Thrasymachus and Socrates about the nature of justice. Thrasymachus argues that justice consists in the "advantage of the stronger". That can be challenged on the basis that such an opinion is based on a bias in the favour of power. Of course the powerful can force a situation where their wishes carry the day and are purported to be just, but it doesn't stand up to rational scrutiny. So, there is no purely rational (i.e. unbiased) justification for equating the wishes of the powerful with justice.

We might still be subject to Descartes' 'evil daemon', meaning that what we've gone through life thinking is real and substantial might in the end be illusory. I think that's a legitimate cause of angst. — Wayfarer

There is no escape from the downward spiral of such absurd thinking, except to reject it for what it is.

I think you did pretty well, and I agree with the general argument you've presented. Another tack, in my view, would be to point out to anyone who cares that their moral views be supported by "pure" rationality, that there is no purely rational reason why anyone deserves less moral consideration than anyone else.

This is the basis of the idea that we are all equal before the law. no one would want to live in a society wherein murder, rape, theft, slavery, exploitation and so on are condoned or even advocated.

There may be no moral facts, but there are facts about people's moral attitudes. I doubt you could find anyone who advocates the above -mentioned acts. There can be honor even among thieves.

I don't have time to read that now to find out whether the article accords with my own understanding of Whitehead, but I'll just note that according to my understanding, for Whitehead the subject is not a transcendental ego, and subjecthood is not confined, as I said above, to humans, animals or even plants.

So, "subjects" for Whitehead does not refer just to us, and he was opposed to human exceptionalism. Actual occasions of experience would count, I think, for Whitehead as subjects, in that there is a subjection to experience. He also speaks of subjection and superjection, but I am not clear enough from memory to explain that right now.

I don't know what you allude to by "strangely familiar" but Whitehead would certainly agree with you that scientific understanding should not be confined merely to thinking in terms of efficient causation.

The other thing to remember about Whitehead is that although his initial training was in physics and mathematics, he though poetic language is of prime importance in philosophy, and that all explanations are more or less inadequate to experience.

The "bifurcation of nature" can be understood in more than one way. Whitehead specifically had Kant and the German idealists (other than Schelling whose philosophy he admired and was influenced by) when he spoke of the bifurcation of nature. "Phenomenon/ noumenon", "Will and Representation", "Appearance and Reality", "Subject and Object", "Matter and Mind" and so on—he saw all as being philosophically misleading, at least as I read him.

As I understand Whitehead, actual occasions of experience are for him the real existents, and objects are mere hypostatization's. However, he was a "pan-experientialist" in that he did not confine experiencing to humans, animals or even plants. This "experiencing" would explain how Levin's "bots" are drawn (by feeling and not by any sort of imposed-from-above conscious intention) to the self-organizing behaviors they exhibit.

I mean even fundamental particles organize themselves in a profoundly ordered way.

I kind of do too, but it feels important to hold it up as a desideratum. Even unreachable goals can be motivating, and express something aspirational about the overall human project of knowledge. — J

Totally agree. I'm with Peirce on the idea of metaphysical and scientific truth as something asymptotically approached by the community of enquirers.

"Life is meaningless" is surely a mood everyone has felt at some time. How can we fall into such a mood? (other than reading Sartre's Nausea :smile: ). Usually by noticing, often with horror, that the values we hold, and organize our lives around, cannot be discovered in the world in the same way we discover what Heidegger called (in Manheim's translation) "essents" -- rocks and birds and math problems and everything else that has being but not being-there-for-us (Dasein, more or less). But as you say, living as a human is more than that, or at least so some of us believe. — J

Right, Heidegger captures that mood nicely in his idea of Vorhandenheit translated as 'present-at-hand" in its contrast with Zuhandenheit, translated as 'ready-to-hand. When we are dealing seamlessly with the world the ready to hand becomes transparent, and the meaning of things is found in their use as "affordances". The hammer and nails "disappear" when we are in that 'flow' state, and it's when something goes wrong and we suddenly become aware of the hammer as just a brute object, a bare existent, without meaning other than to be analyzed into its components, that we fall into a state of "rootlessness" (my word, not Heidegger's) wherein things become meaningless objects.

As a musician you would be aware of that meaningful flow state. Meaning is found in feeling, if we attempt analyze it, it disappears. For me, to live fully is to live a life of intense feeling, with the intellectual concerns informed by, not separate to, that life. I tried reading Nausea once—I wasn't able to get far with it. On the other hand I love Camus' works, which are explicitly about finding the deepest meaning without the need for transcendence.

Levin himself says he doesn't have a clear idea of what "platonic space" is. He posits it because mechanistic causation cannot really begin to explain morphogenesis. If the platonic space is not an inherent "minding" within things, then we have a problem of understanding just what and where we should think it is.

Embryogenesis already shows that cells somehow cooperate to produce very specific forms. The idea of a platonic space is, at this stage at least, an explanatory add-on. We know that something non-mechanistic, something livingly organic, must be at work everywhere in the world, but we have no clear idea of what it could be.

Whitehead, whose philosophy you know I have long admired, sees the whole of nature as organic, and in that sense physics would be rightly a part of biology. Whitehead has no room in his philosophy for a "transcendental ego", and I agree with him in that—I think it is a linguistically driven reification—a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", to use Whitehead's phrase.

In this sense we know about this domain, or arena we find ourselves in. But what is that? And is that the world, or effectively a mirror in which we see ourselves? The world giving us what is apposite to our nature. — Punshhh

I don't know the answer to that—we are given what we are given. Are you suggesting Karma?

Yes, we do know things about the world, but we don’t know what it is we know, or what it means, apart from what it is to us and means to us. So again, the mirror.

I’m not suggesting Solipsism, but rather that for whatever reason the world is veiled from us and that veil presents as our nature. We are the veil, it is for us to clear the veil and make it transparent. So we, our being, can see the world through it. — Punshhh

I think we do know what it is we know. I would just say that discursive knowledge will be forever incomplete, and also that discursive knowledge of a thing is not, and cannot be, the thing itself, because the discursive knowledge is an idea and the thing known is not.

We know the world non-discursively and that non-discursive knowledge is not separate from what is known. We always already do know the world non-discursively, it is just a matter of learning to attend to that, rather than being lost in discourse and explanation. Mind you, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with discourse and explanation, just that it needs to take its place alongside our non-discursive awareness, lest we lose ourselves in the confusion that comes form "misplaced concreteness" (Whitehead).

We already do that for much of our days. The "spotlight" of conscious awareness is operative for far less of our time.

:smile: Cheers. I am not averse to Platonism, and I don't think Aristotle was either. The latter viewed the forms, and potentiality and possibility, as immanent rather than transcendent. I think it is our outdated notion of matter as "mindless stuff" that leads to positing a transcendent realm of perfect forms and universals. I like Whitehead's idea of a "world-soul", which I see as being akin to Spinoza's "natura naturans" (nature as a creative force). Spinoza calls that God, but God in Whitehead is not the creator, but rather the first and necessary creation that unifies all experience, and evolves along with everything else.

There is some interesting research being done by Michael Levin et al, which seems to show that not all self-organizing forms must have evolved. It does seem to suggest an inherent self-organization of matter, a kind of pansychism and Whitehead's philosophy also incorporates this idea. But the idea is not that of some eternal, overarching, transcendent mind or consciousness that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. For me soul is equivalent to psyche (in line with Jung) not with consciousness. The greater part of the soul or psyche is unconscious. Our consciousness does not create the world, but is always already "thrown into the world", subject to forces of which it can be but dimly consciously aware, but which are nonetheless felt. Whitehead's philosophy makes much of feeling.

And we can even put a highly skeptical slant on "real for us" and insist that this is a kind of bastard child of true Reality, consisting of illusions and "perspectives," without changing Nagel's point. Illusions actually happen; if we see something illusory and believe it is (deeply) Real, this is an experience we have. It has to be explained, just as much as anything else, if we want to give a complete account of the world we encounter. Of course, when we start parsing "real" in a way that requires a capital R, we start to confuse ourselves. — J

That is what is said by religions like Buddhism and Hinduism—that we live behind a veil of illusion, "maya". But there the illusion is the illusion of subjectivity/ objectivity, of separation—an illusory artefact of the discursive, dualistic mind. Nonetheless that illusion is a part of reality—That we have the illusion is not itself an illusion—the idea is that it shuts us off from a larger, non-discursive, ultimately non-dual Reality.

I doubt whether a complete account of the world we encounter is possible—it is always going to be a work in progress, and always limited by its very discursivity. For me the notion of reality with a capital R denotes the fact that our judgements, our accounts, although they are A reality, are not Reality in its fullness, but merely judgements and accounts. The map is never the territory.

To say that meaning does not come from being is little different than saying that meaning does not exist. Contrariwise, anyone who leads a meaningful life would of course reject such a "law." — Leontiskos

It seems to me this is really a pretty trivial strawman. Of course we can say, in one sense that meaning comes from being—simply because everything comes from being. Also the meaning in people's and other animal's lives comes from those lives, obviously—and life is being, but it is not merely being in the sense of sheer mere existence. The point is that the idea of meaning does not come from the mere idea of being.

Well, we see things very differently. For me the key is the arational, when it comes to any knowledge or understanding which is not empirical, discursive, dialectical or logical. if it can be captured in language at all the arational is more akin to the metaphorical, the poetic. It evokes rather than describing, measuring or explaining.

To be sure, that is part of symbolic language, but it is closer to 'symbolic' in the sense meant by Jung than it is the idea of a symbol representing something or other in the sense of strict reference.

"Meta-cognitive insight" is always given in symbolic language. So the question then becomes "what can it be insight into beyond linguistically mediated conceptual relations?". I prefer to think of insight which is beyond language as being both primordially pre-cognitive and pre-linguistically cognitive―and it seems to follow that anything we say about will be a distortion. So, it follows that what I just said is also a distortion.

And this takes us back to the question as to whether "the brain or mind constructing the world" is itself a (linguistically reificatory) construction of the brain or mind, and hence both a harbinger of infinite regress and a distortion. It's like the ouroboros trying to consume itself.

I wasn't trying to suggest mind/brain identity―the same question applies to mind as to brain: is "the mind constructing reality" itself a "mind-constructed reality"? "The mind constructing reality" seems to be a judgement and hence a much more conceptually mediated "thing" than our perceptual experience itself.

In relation to mind/ brain identity I think it makes no sense to say they are identical. I think the way it is usually understood by those who don't take mind to be a separate substance is that mind(ing) is an activity of the brain.

I would say it is an activity of the whole (enbrained) body, with perhaps some of the minding going on without requiring brain activity at all. Levin's work (with "zenobots" and "anthrobots") suggests that cells do their own "minding" without requiring a brain, and that even these zenobots and anthrobots (which are just clumps pf cells) are able to do some coordinated minding. It has long been known that jellyfish are colonies of cells with no central brain.

Is the "brain constructing reality" a brain-constructed reality?

And this Reason can tell us that we, or the animals being discussed, don’t and can’t know anything about the world. — Punshhh

Even if we frame 'the world' as the 'in itself', forever beyond human experience (as Kant would have it) it seems undeniable that if we and the animals didn't know anything the world we would not survive for long, and it seems that that "knowledge" is not discursive knowledge at all, but is given pre-cognitively (if what is cognitive is defined as that to which we have conscious rational access). So the conclusion would be that we do know things about the world, but cannot prove that we do. It is merely the inference to what seems to be (to me at least) the best explanation for what we do experience.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.
— Janus
I can buy that.
— Ludwig V

Me too. As Nagel says, how the world appears to us is part of what is real. — J

I think that's an important point. We can say that what is beyond the possibility of experience, whether in principle or merely in practical actuality cannot be real for us except in imagination, and hence transcendental idealism follows. But that argument seems to me to be a kind of "cooking of the books" and for the sake of honest intellectual bookkeeping we should admit that we do think that whatever is beyond our possible experience is real in itself, with the other category being whatever is amenable to experience, which is thought of as being real for us.

I think that is a very common way of thinking―people think of God like that. We cannot prove or know whether God exists, but if he exists he must be real and if he doesn't exist then he is imaginary. So we would then have empirical realism and transcendental realism, two different categories of the real, the nature of the latter of which we are terminally ignorant about iff we don't allow that what is real for us tells us nothing about what is real in itself. That question is the one which cannot, even in principle, be definitively answered―if we hold a view about it we take a leap of faith.

The question then becomes as to whether there can be any worthwhile point arguing about which faith is true.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience―yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. — Janus

No, we don't. We inhabit the world in which we live. Inner experience is what reveals that world to us. — Ludwig V

What I meant was that each of inhabits an individual Umwelt. Others of course appear there. We know that others have their own Umwelts, and we also know they see what we see, and from this we know (leaving aside radical scepticism which is fuelled by mere linguistically imagined
possibilities) that there is a real world distinct from all our Umwelts. We experience, and only experience, that world via our Umwelts (world models). So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.

As usual: quotes from your authorities and attempts to dismiss what I've said by associating it with empiricism or positivism instead of addressing what I've actually said. You claim I've been inconsistent but apparently can't point out any inconsistency. :roll:

Experience can show us what is the case. It can never show us what must be the case or what should be And logical necessity lives entirely in that second domain. — Wayfarer

Experience shows us what is the case. Due to our symbolic linguistic ability we can reflect upon and generalize about the features of our experience to derive what must be the case in regards to anything we would count as perceptual experience. What should be the case is another matter, and concerns the pragmatics of the relations between individuals and communities, such that each may thrive. Social animals are always already instinctivley good to their own, for the most part.

You'd be well advised to heed your own advice! — Wayfarer

If you think I've been inconsistent please point it out by quoting the relevant material. You never seem to be able to resist making personal slurs. That tells me you must feel threatened.

Yes—animals must have perceptual systems that are adequate to guide response. That’s a claim about functional adequacy. It says nothing about truth in the rational sense: about propositions, validity, necessity, or justification. — Wayfarer

Functional adequacy, in fact extremely precise functional adequacy, does say something about what our rational truth propositions are based upon, which you would know if you have ever seen a bird flying at high speed through a forest. The bird has a true picture of where the trees are, of the "state of affairs", otherwise it would smack into them and die.

The issue under discussion (which is tangential to the 'mind-created world' argument) is not whether perception must be good enough to survive, but whether survival explains the existence of a faculty that can grasp what must be the case—logical necessity, valid inference, contradiction, mathematical truth. That kind of truth does no direct survival work at all, and yet as the rational animal we are answerable to reason. — Wayfarer

Logical necessity, valid inference, contradiction, mathematical truth are symbolically enabled elaborations of that functionally adequate picture of the world that is enabled by the senses. Reason has no authority beyond consistency, and must remain true to that which supports it, i.e. actual experience, or lose all coherency.

Functionally accurate in what sense? As said, non-rational animals can and have survived ever since the beginning of life without a rational grasp of truth. — Wayfarer

Rational grasp of truth is not the point. If our senses did not give us an adequately true picture of what is going on around us we wouldn't survive for long. And by "we" I mean animals also.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception. — Punshhh

Right, but I don't see that as "uniformity, but as similarity. By 'animals' I presume you mean invertebrates. If evolution is right, then all we animals without exception, and even plants and fungi, share a common ancestor. We find repetition and difference.

I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question. — Punshhh

I don't think that is in line with current understanding in biology. It's now thought to be also a matter of which genes are activated―eopigenetics. Also Michael Levins works suggests other factors in play.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence). — Punshhh

Yes, it is true that we are corporeally isolated from the rest of the Universe here on Earth. I am certainly not denying that we (all organisms) share a world that is in itself (as opposed to the myriad experiences of it or "Umwelts"), independent of all of us.

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen. — Punshhh

I think that shared experience requires an actual world, which is in various ways perceived by all.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

Husserl sees mathematics as absolutely necessary, ideal truth that is constituted by the universal structures of intentional consciousness, — Wayfarer

I am not seeing how that is different than saying mathematics is constituted by mind.

No, I'm not at all sure. I see mathematics along Husserlian lines as necessary structures of intentional consciousness. So neither 'in' the mind nor 'in' the world. That's the rub. — Wayfarer

Note, I said "may be, to be sure" not "is, to be sure". I think the notion of "intentional consciousness" is somewhat vague. If mathematics is not an inherent aspect of the mind nor of the world, or of the interactions between mind and world, then from whence does it come? We know number is inherent in the world of experience simply because there is diversity, and there can be no diversity without number.

Potted histories don't really explain anything.

Mathematics may be somehow inherent in nature, to be sure. Or it may be a formal abstraction from the human experience of diversity, or both. Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness" may only relate to human experience if we assume that human experience tells us nothing about what may be beyond it.

You offer psychological explanations for what is generally believed by materialists in terms of "commitments" and "fears" and you say this constitutes a predicament of modernity. I think this is a projection, and I think the real problem is that our society is polarized. There is still plenty of religion around―in terms of traditional religious cultures and syncretic new age beliefs, and the religious are often opposed to the materialists and vice versa. Why can people not accept that we may have different faiths in the presence of unknowing?

For me, the real problem is the dogma or rational-based insistence on there being "One Truth" for all, rather than a more relaxed pluralistic acceptance of different worldviews, and the understanding that good, sensible ethics is not wedded to any particular system of metaphysical thought.