Absent evidence, we resort to reasons. Someone can give you a reason for thinking that idealism is better than panpsychism, you weigh those reasons based on your experience and proceed to adopt either view, or you can reject them both.

The issue I see with your use of "physical" here, is that it stands in for publicly observable phenomena, that is a thing many people can point to and see.

That leaves out an awful lot. But, this specific issue aside, you can say that metaphysical ideas are not subject to testing, only reasons.

Yes.

Then again, we don't know much about creativity at all and we can say it's as real as anything else. I mean, we all have it to an extent and it leads to discoveries on some occasions.

I suppose the surprising thing is that we even manage to have theories that "connect" us to the world at all. There's no reason to suspect any advantage in terms of survival based on science creation.

We have not (all of us, or most of us) agreed as to what metaphysics even is.

Jeez man. I suppose we are only left with the option that "metaphysics" means, whatever anyone chooses it to mean.

I don't know if this obscurity is due to the topic itself, which could be the case, or if simply we are just confusing ourselves.

I can certainly see the appeal of using "physics" as ones metaphysics, and then forget about all the other issues that will arise. Or, as is said, "shut up and calculate."

The thing is that ordinary use varies, and there is a sense of knowledge that answers the JTB criteria. The truth criterion is justified by locutions such as "I thought I knew that P, but I was wrong" (i.e. I didn't actually know that P). Or "A thinks that she knows that P, but she is mistaken." — SophistiCat

Sure. As is the case for most words.

But I agree that JTB picks out at best some, but not all ordinary senses of knowledge. — SophistiCat

Yup.

I don't see the benefit of saying knowledge must be JTB.

As I see it, insisting on JTB forces an unnecessary constraint on what knowledge is. It can lead us to conclude that people who study ancient Mythology, pre-modern science and much common sense belief to not be knowledge at all.

Heck, even all our current beliefs could turn out to be wrong, and we would know nothing.

It's better to let go of this constraint and simply use the word knowledge as we tend to do in ordinary life, which usually does not pose much problems in discussion, outside of specific cases like this.

But that's just me.

Yes, a fine balancing act indeed. The problem is finding arguments against what I believe, say, a Cudworthian innate-ism - I won't go into the details here , that deserves a thread- but I genuinely (I think) try to look for arguments against it, there are some but I'm not confident they touch the main issue.

The other metaphysical idea, does have more holes in it (things in themselves), those arguments are better, but not definitive in a way that I could abandon them.

That's my version. Others adhere to say, modern materialism, or panpsychism surely go through a similar process, as you do too, I'd wager.

It's a bit like adopting a stance in modern physics actually, you go through an intense phase of thinking about the problem, then you have an idea which you think is best: "many worlds", "Copenhagen", etc. It should be hard to change your mind, given the time invested.

I think this is a good idea. If I remember rightly from long ago reading Peirce spoke this way. Hume point out there is no deductively valid reasoning to support our belief that the so-called laws of nature will continue to hold sway. On the other hand there is an enormously complex and coherent scientific picture, and no well-documented exceptions have been observed. — Janus

Yes, Peirce and Hume are correct. For all we know, tomorrow gravity could work differently, unlikely to happen, but not impossible. If we take multiverse ideas seriously, then different "laws" might reign. There is no great word for this, "law" sounds too sacred, "habits" sounds to anthropomorphic, but better overall.

I could be wrong but I thought black holes were theoretical entities which were posited on account of our understanding of the laws of nature. I believe I've read that they have subsequently been observed, but I'm not sure. (I could search that but I can't be bothered). — Janus

Yeah, they exist. They even were able to picture one (due to the light if a nearby star): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01155-0

I like Spinoza's deus sive natura ("God or nature'). For us nature is God indeed (but I don't agree with the pantheistic reading of Spinoza's idea) I agree that the great philosophers would likely have very different views if they were alive today..

I don't think what science tells us about the world should be blithely ignored or that we should believe in certain metaphysical notions just because they might "feel right" (which could just amount to serving our wishes regarding how we might like things to be). — Janus

This sounds correct to me. I don't see any good reason to be suspect of nature. Everything is a natural thing, I see no scienticism here, nor denying all those very profound experiences most of us have, which we cannot explain.

I think that, despite our best efforts to the contrary, we end up adopting a metaphysics we like. Maybe we are uncomfortable with the idea, but then one accepts is it as a very good direction to go in.

All that's to say, nature is mind-boggling. That's a good thing, to me.

I wonder if much of these discussions about science being this or that could be alleviated by speaking of "habits", rather than "laws", as this latter term implies something of which there can be no exception.

But we know circumstances in which such universal "laws", break down, in black holes or near the singularity. We might discover more exceptions when the James Webb telescope goes to space (hopefully) in a few months and takes extremely high resolution images.

I personally don't see the problem in substituting "God" for "nature". That's what makes sense now, I reckon a good deal of the traditional figures in philosophy (perhaps not all) would've agreed, given how things have changed.

In a certain sense, yes.

Metaphysics is merely the extension of Reason into un-mapped territory, beyond current understanding, or beyond the scope of empirical evidence — Gnomon

That's part of it, until it becomes part of empirical investigation, then it's stops being called metaphysics.

Metaphysics arises from the mismatch between what we can experience given the creatures that we are, and the craving that we have for knowledge which we cannot fully attain.

Schopenhauer's will a sound idea. Also Cudworth and Kant's "things in themselves", which are quite legitimate problems, which are very hard to clear up.

Currently Reading:

The Revisionaries by A.R. Moxon

Re-reading:

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth

Even though I very much enjoyed this book the first time through, this time now there's so much more to take out of it, it truly is a goldmine of knowledge and insight. I can surely see why Chomsky thinks these ideas are richer than Kant's, in some respects at least.

It's a bit of shame he's not much, much better known. But, being a very dense theologian does not help.

The problem arises immediately when when you counterpose "thought" with the "physical world". One must explain why thought cannot be physical. What is it about thought specifically that prevents it from being a physical thing?

The distinction to make is between dependence and mind-independence, and the question is, are there things independent of physical minds (this is a provocation, but merited)? There are many ways to slice this question, I'll simplify to two options:

Either there is not something independent of mind or there are things independent of mind. I think there are things independent of mind, because we cannot come anywhere near close to exhausting concepts by thinking alone. And there are things we discover which we would not come up with absent empirical investigation.

But the world is a postulate, used to make sense of experience. As for God, I don't see how this helps much, unless specified some specific function.

The noumenal anchors us in realism. That the thing in itself is unknowable doesn't mean it's meaningless or nonsense. It serves the purpose of rooting reality in the world, not just in our head. — Hanover

That's how I see it too. It would be rather strange indeed if the things we saw, for some reason, looked as they do to us, absent us. That is, river and stones would like as they seem, absent us, with all the colours, textures and the like. Surely not the everyday concepts "river" and "stone" would be around though.

If we postulate things in themselves, then we can say there is something that exists absent us, which does not depend on mind.

Thanks!

That's the real truth. :wink:

Yes. Science turned into scienticism makes for very poor philosophy, in fact, leaves most of it out.

As to the world absent people, there are vague notions I have. But it's part of the game of belonging to the human species.

Of course.

In all likelihood, I am quite mistaken in several of my views and beliefs, maybe most of them.

It's not clear to me. You can speak of this topic as you wish, that's not a problem.

We agree on physics.

I think you are using reality in the sense of including everything, which invites all kinds of views and perspectives. This view will depend on our proclivities, inclinations, preferences and biases. It's not so much as I can say you are "wrong" or you say the same to me, it's related to usefulness to each person.

Well, now it depends on what you mean by reality. Do you mean everything ranging from human beings, ideas, Gods, to a rock onto a novel? There's little of explanatory depth when the range is so wide.

If you mean by reality what's fundamental to things and the universe, then physics will tell you a good deal about it, they do and are examining the fundamentals of reality. I just don't think we can pierce "the bottom layer", as it were. This is the area in which some physicists begin saying things like like certain particles arise out of nothing.

Or that the "nothing" we use doesn't exist. I think these are different terms that may signal a point of no further depth of insight. I may be wrong.

I think I'm using this distinction too much, and it perhaps strays from the intended use, but, I think Sellars' distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image is roughly correct, or at least a good step in the right direction of a fundamental distinction.

What you say about different realities would apply to the way we make sense of the world intuitively, but not the way the mind-independent world works. I think there is a way the world works mind-indpendently, and physics gets us as close as we can to know what it is. But I don't think physics reaches the final causes of things, it is beyond what physics is intended to do.

But if you are comfortable or believe that there is only mind and no external, independent of us, world, then what you say may be easier to accommodate.

I think we basically reach a point in which we cannot discover the "ultimate aims" of nature, that is a final explanation or cause. We can go so far as we can posited a good relational theory. Likely related to the way we think as a species.

Man, this "hard problem" really captures the imagination of folks. But we can put aside other hard problems, which, we never had an answer for.

So the hard problem of motion, which was made explicit with the discovery of gravity, we've never understood but have accepted, otherwise, physics would've stayed stuck.

Yeah, the brain - matter - so constituted gives occasion for the emergence and formation of experience. Given how non-substantial matter is, it should be less puzzling that thoughts can arise in the brains of certain creatures.

We start with experience, the bigger mystery is not "subjectivity", that's given, but the world.

:ok:

I can see that my projections are pretty smart and often clash with each other.

:cool:

I'm very sorry to hear about these issues you are having with your sister. Mental disorders are extremely complicated to deal with, and absent some good professional care, it's hard to say much that will be of help.

Assuming her condition is one which ebbs and flows, that is rises to manic proportions and comes back down again, you could try to talk to her when she's in a relatively reasonable frame of mind, try to tell her that she needs professional help and possibly medication. In these moments you might want to point out that there is no reason why anyone would want to harm her, to the contrary you love her and want to help. The crucial part here is finding the right time.

Having said all this, I think you are aware that she is not your responsibility, which is not to say that you shouldn't care, not at all, but only that a person who is in such a state can only be helped to the degree that they want help. If they refuse it at all costs, then you cannot physically force her to go anywhere. I know it's easy and understandable to feel guilty, that means you are an empathetic person, but try not to let that escalate into guilt.

Good luck.

Well, that's a bit of a relief. Now we have to hope poorer countries get enough vaccines so as to stop new variants from arising.

Yes. And I think Schopenhauer was quite acute in making that observation. Somehow, at bottom, we are all one thing. Somehow the appearance of difference emerged with sufficient cognitive capacities.

. I'm not convinced the question "But what are they, really?" is not nonsensical, even though it may seem sensical enough. It relies on the idea of an omniscient mind which could exhaustively know what things truly are in a kind of absolutely total way. — Janus

'What are they really' presupposes a perseptive-less view or an omniscient view of all possible lived experience of all living creatures experiencing a "similar object". My thought is more, what grounds these appearances? Structures, negative noumena, will? One can say "well it's all atoms and fields at bottom". But from our representations of objects all the way down to atoms, there is a massive gap in our knowledge.

Imagine being in front of a tree with all senses. You lose sight, the tree is still there. You can touch it, hear it, etc. Now lose touch. You can still hear it, taste it if you like. But keep on going. You lose your traditional five senses. But we can't deny an object exists out there.

The problem I see with saying we make everything up and that idealism is the case, is that it doesn't work at all without a God or some such entity, something that guarantees that we all see the same things. Absent a deity it seems to be an idea incapable of explaining anything at all. — Janus

We have essentially the same genes, and one human being can be used in experiments, as a substitute for the whole species when it comes studying perception, or medication and so on. Why would we drastically experience a different world, people with severe cognitive problems aside?

We just project the world entirely. But don't have enough knowledge to see how we do this. I don't believe this at all, but it's what remains if we don't postulate a structure, etc.

structures and events we perceive, although obviously not known exhaustively, are real and somehow isomorphic with what is independent of us and our perceptions and judgements. But we are always pushing the limits of language, so if we don't attempt to speak from "beyond ourselves" we will save ourselves from uttering what is pretty much useless nonsense. — Janus

Then it is a mere difference on the use of our words. A structure or an event unperceived by a conscious being capable of making these discriminations is not too different from things-themselves.

Beyond this, structures or things or whatever you want to call it, our knowledge is indeed in very shaky grounds. But if something akin to this is not postulated, I don't see how we avoid saying that we make everything up and are left with pure idealism.

I think we could clarify these notions by speaking about what they can't be.

I suspect such notions are contrasted with a priori knowledge - a complicated subject, which I'm trying to clear up.

Funny how hard "naïve realism" turns out to be!

It makes sense given those circumstances.

I'm confused. I would've sworn in another conversation we had that you thought the idea was useful.

I currently re-reading Cudworth, a persecutor to Kant, who stated a similar doctrine almost 100 years before the Critique was published. It's very interesting.

He say that of these things themselves, we feel only motion - effects the objects induce in us, specifically to creatures like us, that we then attribute all this richness we take for granted. The idea being there was something here prior to us existing, but it cannot be defined using the concepts we apply to nature.

But there's also Schopenhauer, who says that the-thing-in-itself is will, energy, the same thing you feel when you move your arm is what it would be like to be anything else in the universe, if it were conscious.

So there's no need to say that things in themselves are completely, 100% unknowable. Perceiving effects, feeling as a subject and object or using the idea as a limiting notion, so as to not postulate a relational ontology ad infinitum, are useful and have content, to me anyway.

So it depends on how you take these ideas. I would agree, if we can know nothing at all about it, then the idea is not too useful.

Why is that surprising? It's a novelty and they still get food.

I think we're assuming surprises must be negative or have negative connotations.

I don't doubt that experiment, but I don't see what is revealing about it. What the alternative, because the mice get food in a different pattern, they're just not going to eat?

Conditions for those experiments are a bit suspect. They put a mouse in a cage with a lever containing some kind of drug. With nothing else to do, bored to exasperation, they'll pull the lever: it could be good or it could be bad. It's better than endless staying still.

When they recreate these experiments in a social setting, with many mice containing other stimulating things like small mounds and wheels and the like, barely any mouse opts for the lever. Some do, but a very small amount, which sounds correct given a sample group.

It's not clear based on what they say. Perhaps we should distinguish surprise from stimulus and think of it as a kind of continuum. An organism would want to avoid surprises, meaning life-threatening situations, while seeking stimulus, a way to channel and then release energy.

Unless one stipulates that surprises must be avoided for survival. Then perhaps surprise is a bad term and we'd need a new one, such as "threat".

If life is the complexification of processes that lead to ever more elaborate organisms, given the right atmospheric conditions, then the first life to emerge would be quite "stupid" and have an incredibly poor model of the world.

On these conditions, the dark room would not matter, the organism would just "do stuff", to release energy and go back to oblivion. This tendency of doing stuff for the sake of it would carry on to most species as a residue of very primitive impulses. A dark room provides no stimulus and no potential reward. It would be safe, until the organism starves.

Better to release that energy doing something, while trying to be mindful of minimal safety precautions. Everything is going to perish anyway so, there's not much risk. In the grand scheme of things, living a few more months or years, is nothing compared to experiencing many things in a short time frame.

We can get stuck on Kant, which is fine, there's lots of stuff there.

We can also simplify a bit while still being as accurate as we can be and we say there are "things themselves" which play a role is cementing my experience of the world.

What we know and are familiar with is what we take to be our ordinary image of the world: rivers, trees, clouds, birds, etc. But to attribute these very same things to the world, absent our ordering and classification is not coherent.

Of things themselves we are only acquainted with effects, which feed into an innate structure that attributes, not only "thatness" to items, but colours, smells, etc., not to mention the concepts which we use so (seemingly) effortlessly.

But we cannot go behind these, as much as we may want to.

We have two meanings of the word "philosophy", perhaps unfortunately. There's the traditional meaning going back to the Greeks, which many people here are concerned about.

Then there's this whole "philosophy" meaning "what you think about the world" as when a person asks another "what's your philosophy on this situation? or "At Johnnie Walker our philosophy is that..."

Everyone has the latter one, much fewer the traditional meaning. So the adage is true, with the said qualification.

Very interesting and useful. Thanks.

I had in mind ontology and metaphysics, not so much general worldly affairs. In that respect, who we are, what's going to happen, what should I do and so on, well yes, a lot of people are interested in that.

When we speak about the foundations of knowledge or of objects, then the topic becomes one of reduced interest: "pointless questions", "naval gazing", etc.

People do have a general curiosity yes, but I think that, given the capacities we have to understand the universe to some extent, it is not appreciated nearly enough. Then again, we are all different and I get that.

Yeah. Even in questions which we could make some progress or elucidate the topics, it will only appeal to very few people. I have in mind something like Schopenhauer's will or Descartes dualism. One can give arguments for or against these things, but not many people care.

I suppose some do like the basics of physics, atoms, black holes and the like. But much else is just not very relevant to the common man.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. Yep, nature loves to be a big tease. I don't know why, not like she cares.

Welp, we'll see how much this omicron varient has already spread. It seems to me that once they've detected it as a new strain, it's already too late.

It's been almost two years with this thing already. We may have another interesting year next year.

Time flies...