Hume's argument against induction would appear to apply to past events as well though. So inductive arguments about the past get the axe too. "The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776," or "lunar eclipses have been predictable" are the types of statements we believe because we trust the source that is telling us them or because we remember the past events. However, why should we think any source of information is reliable? It certainly can't be because they have been reliable in the past. Why should we think our memory is reliable? If you cannot demonstrate that you have a reliable memory using only deduction, it seems to me like you are SOL. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think this follows, because all the documents we have point to nature behaving in the past as it does now. For example, if we have documents stating that Lunar eclipses were observed on particular dates and if those dates accorded with the dates that we would today retrospectively calculate to be the dates when lunar eclipses would be expected to have occurred then we have some corroborating evidence that the laws have not changed. Add to that the fact that if we have no documents recording observations of violations of what we have come to think of as the laws of nature, then that also supports the belief that nature has not changed its behavior.

The other point is that induction is not so far from deduction if we frame the thinking in terms like "iff the laws of nature have not changed or do not change, then this is what we could expect to observe". The certainty of this deduction is only as strong as this premise is true.

So rather than assuming that laws are invariant I think the more common assumption is that they are good enough for now until someone comes along and points out where we messed up, and on and on the scientific project will go. — Moliere

Yes, I think this is pretty much the right picture.

Another way to read him is to say that if both Hume is right and science works, then science must not proceed by induction. — Moliere

I don't think science needs to claim that what appear to be the invariances of nature must of necessity forever remain invariant. As far as science knows they have up until now remained invariant, so it can proceed on the basis of "if such and such law remains invariant, we can expect to observe this and that or whatever".

:up:

t seems to me that supervenience is all about existential dependency
— creativesoul

I don't think it's about dependency. It's just that two things that track together: "There cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference." — frank

If that goes only one way; that is if there can be a B-difference without and A-difference then A could be said to be dependent on B.

A number of writers make a distinction between physicalism and naturalism on the basis of the inclusion or exclusion of the role of subjective point of view in the determination of the object. — Joshs

If the object is defined as 'the object as perceived' then of course it is trivially true that the subjective point of view would be a determinant. But if the object is defined as 'that which interacts with our senses resulting in perception' then the subjective point of view would be a result, not a determinant.

The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned. — Evan Thompson

Of course, but this says nothing about the "mind-independent something'. It seems obvious that our cognitions are the result of interactions between minds (or embrained bodies) and that which is other to the embrained bodies.

I'm sympathetic to the idea of something like "physicalism without reductionism," but as is discussed earlier in this thread, I'm not sure such a thing currently makes much sense with how physicalism is generally defined. Physicalism might have to become just a vague commitment to naturalism and metaphysical realism to deal with strong emergence (which, to be fair, I think that's how many people colloquially use the term). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think the idea that everything should be explainable in terms of fundamental physics is essential to physicalist views per se, although that might be a defining feature of some reductive physicalist views.

As long as an organizing contribution of a subject can be detected in the description of physical phenomena, then a species of idealism is at work. — Joshs

I don't think this is right. Of course, Ideas can be detected as organizing contributions in the descriptions of phenomena, but it does not follow that the phenomena are pre-cognitively organized by our ideas. In other words, you seem to be conflating descriptions of phenomena with phenomena.

As I have already noted, it seems to me that the most parsimonious characterization of physicalism is simply the view that the Universe existed before there were any minds, or in other words that there have been, are, and will be existents which are not dependent at all on minds. This would not be to deny that there are potentially semantic and semiotic aspects, attributes, relations or functions of physical existents. Naturally that potential cannot be actualized without an interpreting mind.

The argument that claims that because it is a mind which says that there are existents which are mind-independent, it follows that there can be no mind-independent existents, is a very weak argument which trades on conflating what we say with what actually might exist independently of our saying. As far as I can tell this impoverished argument (in the West at least) comes from Schopenhauer.

But then we do know, from the inside, what a brain is "like" by having experience, given that experience must arise from this organ. The issue is, what parts of it are we experiencing? That's very hard to know at this stage. — Manuel

Right, we may generally feel our thoughts to be centered in our heads, but we don't, without being told or seeing someone's head opened up, even know we have a brain. Our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and our most sensitive organs of touch are all clustered on our heads, so we have the intuitive sense that the head is central to our experience. We have absolutely no sensation that is intuitively identifiable as neural activity.

What about 'energy' or 'force'? In physics it is energy or force which is understood to cause change, which would mean that wherever you have talk of energy or force, change and hence causation is implicit.

:cool:

I've also taken issue elsewhere with the overly simplistic notion that physical explanations are "causal", the image of A causing B causing C and the folk hereabouts who think this an adequate description of the world. "Cause" isn't a term used in physics, having been replaced by maths since Galileo. But it lingers in meta-physics and in pop philosophy of science. — Banno

I think your dismissal of the idea of causation as being relevant in physics is overly simplistic. One of the issues with thinking in terms of local efficient causes is that it ignores global conditions, which produces a false impression of strict linearity or "causal chains" instead of networks of energetic influences.

Causation can broadly be understood as energy exchange, without the elimination of complexity, an elimination introduced by simplistic "efficient" notions of causation, and this understanding in terms of energy would seem to be compatible with physics, with the rest of science and with the understanding of everyday events in general.

I agree with this. But I would like to add that, if we accept causality, aren't the changes in the laws of nature caused by something? And if so, isn't that cause something that we could consider to be a more fundamental, subjacent, law of nature? — Lionino

If the laws of nature have evolved then we might understand that as a kind of universal tendency towards habit-forming, just as things seems to have a universal tendency to dissipate over time. Causes are usually understood as local influences, exchanges of energy, whereas habit-forming or dissipation might be better understood as global tendencies or constraints.

That seems to me to be a uniting theme on materialism -- something, be it qualia, intentionality, mind, or spiritual things, is somehow reduced to or explained away as a physical, material, or natural process of things. (I'd include supervenience as a kind of reduction, so I mean that term broadly) — Moliere

Yes, it's a matter of perspective—I see it more as a case of those being better understood as physical, material or natural processes than as being "reduced to explained away" by that understanding. It doesn't seem to me that anything important is being lost or diminished by thinking that way.

Nice. Can I borrow this? — Tom Storm

Cheers—but, I cannot loan what I never owned.

Ah - ok. Yes, this is reasonable. I believe that the mental is another aspect of the physical though, so it's not an opposition, but your point is well taken. — Manuel

I agree—I tend to see 'mind' as a verb not a noun, and I see mental functions as one kind of physical function. The tricky part is that the physical aspects of mental functions are well-hidden from us; we don't so easily feel the physical aspects of mental functions as we might, for example, with digestion. We don't feel our brains, I mean that's why they can be operated on without anaesthetic.

Energy yes - as far as I know, I think this applies. Entropy is tricky though, is the universe an open or closed system? What is order and what is disorder? Ben-Naim has written about this, it's quite interesting. — Manuel

Right, entropy is a complex and hard concept to pin down, but I was referring just to the way everything seems to "run down" over time. the way heat disperses and things in general are dissipative structures. Thanks for the text reference; I''ll check it out,

If one does. I'm saying that 'substance' is a poor choice of words, for the reasons I gave. I'm not denying the reality of the mind.
— Wayfarer

Yes, substance is problematic and dated. But if qualified, it can be used, though it can lead to confusions. — Manuel

I think some of the confusions comes with thinking that only objects or entities exist. This may be a spin-off of substance thinking. I see minding, like digesting or running as real functions and "the mind" as a reified container metaphor.

That's a bit misleading I think. I agree with you that Kastrup, while interesting in some areas, goes off the wall with attributing "dissociated boundaries" to objects, this is an extreme extrapolation. — Manuel

Yes, I agree.

But I think we have a pretty decent idea of what mental substance, if one wants to use that term is, we have it with us all the time, it's what we are best acquainted out of anything. Which is why we can read novel, participate as jurors, pass laws, create art, etc. — Manuel

All those 'mental' things are not independent of the physical, whereas there seem to be many physical things which are independent of the mental, and it's on account of that that it seems (to me anyway) more plausible to think that the physical is fundamental than that the mental is. And I think that's what substance in the philosophical context, at least, means "that which stands under" or something like that.

The nature of the non-mental physical, is rather stranger. We only understand 5% of it, from a theoretical standpoint, even here, we have plenty of problems understanding this 5%, it's the other 95% of the universe, that we know almost nothing about, save that it needs to be postulated in order to make the 5% we do know, work. — Manuel

Yes, we posit dark energy and dark matter to make our theories about what is actually observed consistent with the math. But I'm really not referencing cosmological or physics theory, I'm just going with the more basic fact that everything seems to be constructed of energy in its manifold configurations and conditioned by energy exchange and entropy. We don't know of anything that escapes those conditions.

It's a philosophical point, not an empirical hypothesis, although I grant it might be a difficult distinction. — Wayfarer

My point was only that it does not logically follow. We are well outside of anything that could be empirically tested with this topic. Consequently, I see it as being merely an imaginable possibility that there was nothing prior to mind, but in the face of everything we experience and know, it seems implausible—to me at least.

I think that's a good way to characterise it. I think the clearest dividing line is between emergentist and non-emergentists regarding mind. When materialists or physicalists identify as such, what they usually end up meaning is that they don't think any consciousness or intentionality was there at the start.

Galen Strawson possibly bucks this trend as he claims to be a physicalist panpsychist. — bert1

Yes, I think that's right—the idea is that the Universe was not planned or intentionally created and that mind emerged much later in the picture.

'Before there were any minds' is an idea that only a mind can entertain. — Wayfarer

So what? It certainly doesn't follow from that obvious truism that nothing existed prior to the advent of mind. It might follow that nothing was experienced, but that is not the same thing.

The alternative is to avoid holding to substance ontologies altogether, which is my way of dealing with the issue.

Interesting. I can't quite see the distinction so far. — Tom Storm

As I said earlier, I don't believe there is a coherent distinction. And I received no answer from @Wayfarer in the way of an attempt to explain it. So, I am left thinking that he cannot explain it.

It's very simple: anyone who believes the universe existed before it contained any minds is a physicalist, as long as they don't posit a transcendent mind. We may not be able to exhaustively and comprehensively define physical substance, but what we know gives us good reason to think it is at base energetic.

Talk of mental substance, when everything we know tells us that mental phenomena are entirely dependent on this energetic foundation seems to me to be incoherent. We may not fully understand the idea of physical substance, but we have no idea at all of what mental substance could be.

I find the attempt to dismiss physicalism on the grounds that it entails the idea that everything should be explainable in the terms of fundamental physics to be a red straw herring.

By my estimation we're a group of people who either aren't doing philosophy or don't wish to be doing it. — fdrake

I think that very much depends on what you would count as "doing philosophy".

It doesn't seem as though any reductive physical explanation could account for the obvious semantic/ semiotic aspects of things. It doesn't follow that the latter is non-physical, it's just that purely mechanistic explanations cannot cut it when it comes to signification, reference and meaning.

Mechanistic explanations are digital and deterministic, whereas it seems that reality, the physical, is most plausibly analogue and non-deterministic.

O right, sorry—I've merged two discussions here, so it's a case of 'half-wrong thread'. That said, the topics are closely related; "mind-created world" vs 'physically existent world'.

That particular essay is attempting to stay within the guidelines of Madhyamaka philosophy - 'middle way'. When asked if the self exists or does not, the Buddha does not reply, but maintains a noble silence. — Wayfarer

Yes, I understand that, but such silence does not constitute a philosophical position. That said, bear in mind that I am no advocate of holding philosophical positions, but the subject of the thread was as to what is the best argument for physicalism, and I stated that physicalism, understood as the idea that there are mind-independent existents, seems to me the most plausible inference to explain the world we experience.

I don't see a cogent distinction between the idea of an 'Alaya' or 'storehouse' consciousness and the notions of a universal or collective consciousness, deity or God; they all seem to me to be variations of the same theme with few differences between them that make a difference. The only difference that makes a significant difference seems to me to be the idea of a personal God.

Worth a mint too I imagine. I think I prefer albino blues guitarists. — Tom Storm

The latter are probably even rarer than albino ravens, so they should be worth even more than a mint.

Is the OP question regarding the metaphysical/ ontological or the epistemological notion of physicalism?

Naughty boy...paraphrasing war criminals!

I understand that all non-black things are non-ravens. — Tom Storm

Albino ravens are apparently a thing.

That 'mind at large' suggests an objective reality. That is the reification involved. A subtle but important point, discussed extensively in Buddhist scholastic philosophy and in debates with the Brahmins.

Oh, and Happy New Year to you, although it's already an old year, I copped a traffic radar booking on Day One. :fear: complete with double points. — Wayfarer

What do you mean by "objective reality"? A mind at large in the 'God' or 'universal mind' sense is not an object, but if we want to say it is real, then we are positing it as an actuality, no?

Bad luck about the traffic fine...it appears that traffic radars have no conception of "happy new year".

Then give us a physical explanation of why folk sometimes do not stop at the red light. And what often happens next. — Banno

In case you failed to notice this:

In any case physicalism does not necessarily entail that everything must be explainable in terms of physics, although of course that may be one interpretation of the meaning of the term. — Janus

That said, human behavior may be explainable in neuronal, that is physical, terms, but it does not follow that neurology is reducible, in the explanatory, if not the ontological, sense, to physics.

SO explain, using only physics, why folk stop at the red light. — Banno

So, you're not asking about the physical workings of traffic lights but about human behavior. Of course, people don't always stop at red lights, so the question is inapt.

In any case physicalism does not necessarily entail that everything must be explainable in terms of physics, although of course that may be one interpretation of the meaning of the term.

From the essay:

Each being possesses this storage consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world’ — even though this apparent world does not possess an intrinsic reality.

I can't see any distinction between this idea of a collective consciousness and the idea of "mind at large". What would you say is the difference?

Crappy Newt's Ear!

What is the alternative to physicalism? The only alternative I can think of is idealism. What are the differences between them? The former says that there are mind-independent existents, and the latter says there are not. Which seems the more plausible? To me physicalism seems more plausible because it can explain how it is that we and the animals (judging from their behavior) all perceive the same world, without positing a god or universal mind.

So, for me, I tend towards physicalism as being the inference to the best explanation for the world as we experience it. At the same time, I don't deny that there is a semantic or semiotic aspect that is inherent in physicality, so a kind of pan-semiosis, which becomes all the more evident as biological life has apparently evolved into ever more complex forms.

As the a.i.'s continue to improve, and achieve human level AGI, people are going to look to the sciences to provide answers to basic questions: are these AGI's conscious? What rights do they have? How should we treat them? These questions will then become the most outstanding problems in science.

Where do you disagree with that? — RogueAI

To me it doesn't matter how much AGI may look like human intelligence—I'll consider them conscious when it becomes obvious that they actually care about anything.

Odd then, that physics can't even explain how traffic lights work. — Banno

What do you think is missing in the physical explanation of the workings of traffic lights?

:up:

But an acorn is not an oak-tree; it is the possibility of an oak-tree. — Ludwig V

Yes, but a particular acorn and the oak tree it becomes (if indeed it does so, of course) are linked, and hence their identities are linked, in a way that neither is linked with other acorns and oak trees. They are linked as phases of a particular process of growth and transformation; a unique history so to speak.

The problem is with Kant. How can he discover what is necessary and universal just from experiences using transcendental deduction?

I think we already use the categories to make sense of experiences. It is on the basis of reflection upon how experiences must be for us in order that we can make sense of them that the synthetic a priori is generated, as I understand it.
— Janus

Yes, we use the Categories to make sense of experiences.

However, Kant's transcendental deduction derives the Categories from these very same experiences.

How is this not circular? — RussellA

We can reflect on the general nature of experience or perception and derive the ineliminable attributes. For example, perception of objects is unimaginable without space, time, form and differentiation.

Kant's twelve categories are:

Quantity: Unity Plurality Totality

Quality: Reality Negation Limitation

Relation: Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident) Causality and Dependence (cause and effect) Community (reciprocity)

Modality: Possibility Existence Necessity

These categories seem to be Kant's attempt to pinpoint what is essential to the ways we understand things. Do you not think we can reflect on our experience and thinking in order to discover the essential elements?

Nagel's argument is focused on the nature of reason itself and how certain principles, like those of logic and mathematics, are not just human constructs but are instead intrinsic to any rational thought. The idea is that to even argue against these principles, one would have to use them, thus demonstrating their inescapable nature. (This is also the basis of his rejection of accouting for reason in terms of evolutionary adaption - to appeal to successful adaptation as the grounds for reason, attempts to provide a grounding outside of reason itself, thereby undercutting the sovereignity of reason.) — Wayfarer

When we identify the characteristics that are essential to reason, that is to human reasoning, and formulate them as principles that is a different thing than conjecturing about how our capacity to reason may have evolved. Kant's categories show us how we can think about quantity, quality. relation and modality. Someone might come up with some other categories that Kant didn't think of. For example, it occurs to me that 'nullity' might have been included in the 'quantity' list of categories.

It seems reasonable to think that the categories reflect the nature, not just of our thinking, but also of the things we think about. Reason could not have evolved, and cannot exist, in a "vacuum", it must have something "outside itself" to work with. How do I know what I said in the last sentence is true? By reflection on the nature of reasoning; it's a phenomenological insight, not something that can be empirically demonstrated perhaps. It's akin to Kant's:

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

But then it seems a bit too clever. It's not like I don't understand what people mean by these terms even though these distinctions can be brought up. — Moliere

I tend to think that anywhere a valid distinction can be drawn then it should be drawn, while keeping in mind that in some contexts the distinction probably doesn't matter.

Of course. The rhetorical question I posed was, does it make sense to say that (1) this a creation of the brain and (2) is therefore "physical"? — Wayfarer

If something is a creation of something physical, it would seem to follow that it is physical. What is the problem with saying that the physical has both a potential and actual affective, semantic or semiotic dimension?

Did 'the law of the excluded middle' - a basic logical principle - come into existence as a result of evolution? Or rather, did we evolve to the point of being able to grasp something that was always already so? — Wayfarer

The law of the excluded middle is just a formulation of the fact that two things cannot occupy the same space and time (for us at least). In other words, it is entailed by Leibniz' Identity of Indiscernibles. Any thing is either this thing or some other thing; there is no middle position.

I see the clear odorless liquid coming out of the faucet and presume it's H₂O — Moliere

It is very unlikely to be pure H2O. You could make an argument that because water commonly contains all sorts of solutes and is yet still referred to as "water" that 'water' is therefore not equivalent to H2O. The truth or falsity of such an argument would depend on perspective, though, so perhaps there is no unequivocal fact of the matter there.

Therefore, what happens in the world, the Bishop moving diagonally, is necessary and universal once the rule has been made, even though the rule itself is neither necessary not universal.

For Hume, no knowledge about the world, discovered by a constant conjunction of events within experiences, can be either necessary nor universal, in that, even though the sun has risen in the east for 1,000 days, there is no guarantee that on the 1,001st day it doesn't rise in the west. — RussellA

The chess rules could be changed, just as we might think the laws of nature that determine that the Sun rises in the east could change. In fact it is far easier to see how the rules of chess might be changed.

However, Kant wanted to show that it is possible to discover knowledge about the world that is both necessary and universal from experiences of the world using a transcendental argument. From a careful reasoning about one's experiences, it is possible to discover pure concepts of understanding, ie, the Categories, that are necessary and universal, which can then be used to make sense of these experiences. — RussellA

I think we already use the categories to make sense of experiences. It is on the basis of reflection upon how experiences must be for us in order that we can make sense of them that the synthetic a priori is generated, as I understand it.

Good analysis!

Citation please. I searched and could find no clear answer to this question. They are obviously not bonded as they are in either liquid water or in ice. In any case, when water evaporates, it is referred to as water vapour.

there are no lone molecules of water. — Moliere

Are there lone molecules of H2O?

And I'm pointing out that what counts as an individual is nothing to do with substance, but with how we choose to use names.

You are using a screw driver as a hammer. — Banno

I think this is right as far as it goes, but on the other hand biological organisms can generally be identified by their DNA, and this would seem to be the most reliable method of identification.

If we wanted to posit that an organism could be you or me, but have a different DNA, then what criteria could be used to identify the organism as you or me? As I see it, stipulation won't cut it.