• Australian politics
    We'll play AC/DCArcane Sandwich

    'You're the Voice' would be preferable.

    It is interesting that many of the folks are volunteers. I mean, that's positive. It increases the participation of the people in politics (in my opinion).javi2541997

    However, shouldn't be forgotten that voting is mandatory. When my son moved permanently to the US, he would regularly receive fine notices for not voting via our Australian address, until I pestered him to file the requisite forms and get taken off the electoral roll. Although I think mandatory voting is a good thing, overall, even though there's a certain kind of paradox to it (and Australia is not unique in that respect.)

    Certainly no one here drinks FostersBanno

    Especially with the hundreds of beer varieties on offer at virtually every suburban bottleshop.
  • Australian politics
    what is the AEC sounding out staff on their availability for? Is it something related to elections?javi2541997

    that's right - all the folks who man the voting booths and conduct the ballot, many of them volunteers. The latest it can be is May 2025 but it could be April or any time before then.
  • Mathematical platonism
    number does appear in the phenomenal world—we encounter great numbers of phenomena.Janus

    Because as a rational sentient being, you can number them.

    Also what does it mean to say that number, laws etc are objects of nous? Does it simply mean that they are ideas?Janus

    The point about objects of intellectual cognition such as numbers, geometric and scientific principles and the like is that while they are ideas, they are the same for all who think. They're not the property of individual minds. See in this post 'Augustine on Intelligible Objects'.

    If numbers, laws etc., and all other objects are ideas in the "One Mind" then surely, they exist as such. Do you believe they stand out for the "One Mind" ? If so then they must exist for that mind, no?Janus

    There are many difficult metaphysical questions involved in this enquiry. First, I don't believe, on the same grounds that I don't believe numbers exist, that the 'One Mind' exists. It is an expression, like a figure of speech, to convey the irreducibly mental side of whatever can be considered real. Put another way, whatever is real, is real for a mind. But that mind is never an object of experience, it is only ever the subject to whom experience occurs.

    (From Eriugena, "things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to exist, whereas anything that, “through the excellence of its nature,” transcends our faculties is said not to exist. According to this view, God, because of his transcendence, is said not to exist. He is described as “nothingness through excellence.” Likewise Paul Tillich 'to argue that God exists is to deny Him.')

    I've started to explore the connection between the unknowable subject and Terrence Deacon's absentials. Absentials, as you will recall, are 'constitutive absences: A particular and precise missing element that is a critical defining attribute of 'ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences.'

    I have often said to you that your position needs a universal mind or God in order to explain how we all experience the same world. But you always seem to pass this over and to be reluctant to posit such a mind.Janus

    Because it's a reification. To declare that such a mind exists is to make of it an object, one among others. The sense in which intelligible objects are reified into 'objects' parallels the sense in which God is reified into 'a being'. (Heidegger also makes a similar point in his distinction of seine and seiendes.)

    As for how we experience the same world, I invariably reply that as we are members of the same species, language-group, culture and society, then there is a considerable stock of common experiences which we will draw on in interpreting what we see. But it's nevertheless true that different individuals all experience a unique instantiation of reality albeit converging around certain commonalities.
  • Australian politics
    well, as I said, more's the pity that nuclear has been made subject to partisan politics. It's too big an issue, but I guess if Dutton looses, that will be the end of debate about it.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Splendidly put sir. They arise from our experience and interpretation of the world. See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/955313 for an excerpt from the book I mentioned.
  • Mathematical platonism
    But what we don't often hear are the ideas Joshs has proposed in more detail.Tom Storm

    I've found a book on Husserl, phenomenology and mathematics. Tough going but I think my very simple grasp of philosophy of maths can co-exist peacefully with Husserl's.
  • Australian politics
    Albanese would like to distance himself from the Greens,Banno

    Regardless, I noticed last night that Hanson-Young was talking up the necessity of supporting Albanese over the Coalition. The Greens are losing voters in spades, they need to shift more towards the centre. Wouldn't be surprised to see a Labor-Greens-Teal coalition.

    Interesting perspective from Pyne, although I think it presumes that Dutton is playing a kind of three-dimensional chess strategy when I'm sure his attitude was a lot more simplistic than that.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Which is why I keep mentioning Thinking Being. This book has been put online, in reality it's out of print and when available was very expensive. The online unauthorised copy is a fully bookmarked .pdf. The chapters on Parmenides and Plato are well worth the effort of reading, they will set anyone straight on the origin of the platonic forms. (This book is highly recommended by John Vervaeke, that's how I found it.)

    You never answer the question so often posed to you. How could something that does not exist in space and time be real? Real in what sense?Janus

    What do you mean, 'I never answer it'? I have >23k posts on this forum, and a significant proportion are devoted to just this question. I've said already in this thread:

    My heuristic, and it is only that, is that numbers, laws, etc, are real but not existent as phenomena. They do not appear amongst phenomena, but can only be discerned by the intellect (nous). So they are, in the Platonic sense, but not the Kantian, noumenal objects, object of nous. Of course, we rely on them automatically, transparently, and continuously, in the operations of discursive thought, whenever we make inferences or judgements. But the elements of those judgements do not, themselves, exist in the way that tables and chairs and Banno's beloved crockery exists. Without them, though, we could not even converse, let alone pursue philosophy.Wayfarer

    So there's my answer to it, it was the substance of my first forum post. Criticize it all you like, but don't say I haven't tried to answer the question! Which is, a distinction between what is real, and what exists, where the latter is a small sub-section of the former.

    This was my first ever forum post, around 2008:

    Reveal
    Here I want to consider whether there is a difference between what is real and what exists.

    'Exist' is derived from a root meaning to 'be apart', where 'ex' = apart from or outside, and 'ist' = be. Ex-ist then means to be a seperable object, to be 'this thing' as distinct from 'that thing'. This applies to all the existing objects of perception - chairs, tables, stars, planets, and so on - everything which we would normally call 'a thing'. So we could say that 'things exist'. No surprises there, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that proposition.

    Now to introduce a metaphysical concern. I was thinking about 'God', in the sense understood by classical metaphysics and theology. Whereas the things of perception are composed of parts and have a beginning and an end in time, 'God' is, according to classical theology, 'simple' - that is, not composed of parts- and 'eternal', that is, not beginning or ending in time.

    Therefore, 'God' does not 'exist', being of a diffrent nature to anything we normally perceive. Theologians would say 'God' was superior to or beyond existence (for example, Pseudo-Dionysius; Eckhardt; Tillich.) I don't think this is a controversial statement either, when the terms are defined this way (and leaving aside whether you believe in God or not, although if you don't the discussion might be irrelevant or meaningless.)

    But this made me wonder whether 'what exists' and 'what is real' might, in fact, be different. For example, consider number. Obviously we all concur on what a number is, and mathematics is lawful; in other words, we can't just make up our own laws of numbers. But numbers don't 'exist' in the same sense that objects of perception do; there is no object called 'seven'. You might point at the numeral, 7, but that is just a symbol. What we concur on is a number of objects, but the number cannot be said to exist independent of its apprehension, at least, not in the same way objects apparently do. In what realm or sphere do numbers exist? 'Where' are numbers? Surely in the intellectual realm, of which perception is an irreducible part. So numbers are not 'objective' in the same way that 'things' are. Sure, mathematical laws are there to be discovered; but no-one could argue that maths existed before humans discovered it.

    However this line of argument might indicate that what is real might be different to what exists.

    I started wondering, this is perhaps related to the platonic distinction between 'intelligible objects' and 'objects of perception'. Objects of perception - ordinary things - only exist, in the Platonic view, because they conform to, and are instances of, laws. Particular things are simply ephemeral instances of the eternal forms, but in themselves, they have no actual being. Their actual being is conferred by the fact that they conform to laws (logos?). So 'existence' in this sense, and I think this is the sense it was intended by the Platonic and neo-Platonic schools, is illusory. Earthly objects of perception exist, but only in a transitory and imperfect way. They are 'mortal' - perishable, never perfect, and always transient. Whereas the archetypal forms exist in the One Mind and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby things are formed. They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence.

    So the ordinary worldly person is caught up in 'his or her particular things', and thus is ensnared in illusory and ephemeral concerns. Whereas the Philosopher, by realising the transitory nature of ordinary objects of perception, learns to contemplate within him or herself, the eternal Law whereby things become manifest according to their ratio, and by being Disinterested, in the original sense of that word.

    Do you think this is a valid interpretation of neo-platonism? Do you think it makes the case that what is real, and what exists, might be different? And if this is so, is this a restatement of the main theme of classical metaphysics? Or is it a novel idea?
  • Mathematical platonism
    some Platonic realmTom Storm

    I think there is confusion around the term 'platonic realm'. There is a domain of natural numbers, right? Where is it? Obviously a silly question; 'domain' is in this context a kind of metaphor, like a 'place' or 'realm', when there really is no such place or realm. Nevertheless the domain is a real one, in that it includes integers but not imaginary numbers. Go back to that essay What is Math I quoted right at the start of this thread. We read 'Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous.' And that, I reckon, is what is behind the myth of the 'platonic realm'. We try to imagine it as a literal domain or place, which doesn't make sense, but then, only things that exist in space and time are considered real. So the 'platonic realm' then becomes imagined as a kind of ghostly palace with ethereal models of ideal objects, when it is not that at all. It is a domain of 'objects' that can only be grasped by reason.
  • Does theory ladeness mean I have to throw out science...and my senses...?
    Any organism capable of sensation and movement, even an amoeba, constructs and interprets its world relative to norms of sensorimotor engagement with it. With Barad, Deleuze, Haraway and Rouse we are able to include the inanimate world as itself organized agentially (configurative assemblages) relative to itself, such that one part of the world interprets another by intra-affectiing with it. Expanding your conception of agency would allow you to avoid the charge of anthropocentrism.Joshs

    I contemplate the idea that the appearance of organic life is also the appearance of intentionality in rudimentary form, beginning with the physical division of organism and world, even if rudimentary organisms have no conscious sense of self. (I’m reading Mind and World at the moment.) But I see ontological distinctions or gradations between the organic and the inorganic, the sentient and insentient, and between rational and other sentient beings. I don’t believe in extending the idea of agency to the inorganic domain, as I’m not a materialist of any stripe, nouveau or traditional. (That’s why I can deal with biosemiosis, but not pansemiosis.)

    The Buddhist view of the significance of human life is relevant to this discussion. In Buddhism, only in human form is release from saṃsāra possible. I suppose that might be considered anthropocentric but in other respects Buddhists have not sought ‘dominion over the whole Earth’ as the Semitic religions have encouraged. (See David Loy, Are Humans Special?)
  • Mathematical platonism
    If Wigner’s point is that the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics, then that’s precisely what I’m trying to invalidate. It’s the human-constructed norms of nature that are written in the language of mathematics, not anything to do with nature ‘in itself’.Joshs

    But doesn’t that assume the very separation between mind and world that elsewhere you’re very keen to criticize? Humans are, after all, part of the very world which mathematics describes so effectively. While it’s true that ‘not everything that counts can be counted’, the human ability to intuit the quantifiable forms of nature seems, as Wigner says, tantamount to a miracle. (Plato has Socrates say it is something the soul learns before the descent into the material world.)

    Applied mathematics has been extraordinarily effective because it enables us to connect mathematical with physical principles. Schopenhauer noted in passing that science ‘really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another’ because, for him, the entire domain of phenomenal experience comprises ideas. He also says that science cannot get at the ‘inmost truth of things’, with which I also agree. But it nevertheless enables an enormous range of powers. That’s the sense in which Plato deems Dianoia (mathematical and geometrical knowledge) higher than sense perception, although not the highest form, which is noesis.
  • Does theory ladeness mean I have to throw out science...and my senses...?
    does that mean I can't trust anything science says?Darkneos

    You're asking a very big question in this OP, but not a question that science itself can answer, because it’s about judgement. Scientific methods delivered us the systems we interact with to read and write on this Forum, and it works fine. So in that sense you can trust it. But questions of meaning, philosophical questions about the nature of reality and so on, are not necessarily the kinds of issues that science itself can answer. Science assumes a mind-independent reality, but often overlooks the role of the mind in arriving at judgement of it.

    But the evidence showing how theories can alter our perception...Darkneos

    Not our perception, our judgement - again a question of meaning. This shows up in physics, subject of the other thread you started: nobody disagrees that quantum theory works, but there's huge disagreement about what it means. The predictions are reliable, but what it's telling us about the nature of reality is another thing altogether.


    I'm not sure what anti-realism is but I find it hard to fight against it.

    From the wiki page it means:

    In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed
    Darkneos


    I agree. But you can be a philosophical 'anti-realist' and still be completely realistic when it comes to the practical affairs of life - making a living, paying bills, and so on. What the anti-realist is really point out is that how the world appears to us is in some important way the product of the mind-brain. We perceive but also interpret the sensory data, and those judgements are internal to the mind, such that we don't notice the role our mind plays in constructing what we take to be independently real.

    I've found this video very insightful regarding this question. It's exploring basically the same question as you're asking.

  • p and "I think p"
    I’m generally in agreement with everything you’ve said in this thread. But one of the thoughts it has triggered in me, is the role of language and, therefore, syntax and grammar, in conscious thought. Being able to think in words. Of course, I say that as a primarily verbal person, who has made a living as a technical writer and spends an inordinate of time writing on this forum. But engaging in this form of thought and activity, requires an understanding of not only the laws of grammar, but (hopefully) also those of correct inference. And that is something only intelligent subjects, or rational agents, properly possess. After all, today’s naturalism never tires of assuring us that the Universe as such does not display such a rational order, that it is something that us humans superimpose on it. And that is something that only a rational, conscious agent can do!
  • Mathematical platonism
    Mathematics arose from observing phenomena in the physical worldjgill

    And, more than ‘observing’. Cats and dog are quite capable of ‘observing’ the things humans observe. But only h.sapiens can measure and quantify.

    (I read somewhere in my incessant stream of internet content that the basics of physical geometry were invented - or discovered - by the Egyptians, as a consequence of having to re-create fence lines on the Nile delta after the annual flood season. This involved apportioning highly irregularly-shaped parcels of land so that each landowner ended up with the right quantity, even though the shapes of their allotments were completely different to the year before. But then, they did build the Pyramids…..)
  • Mathematical platonism
    thereby highlighting an intriguing link between physical causation and logical necessity, which today’s philosophy generally describes in terms of separate domains.
  • Mathematical platonism
    You mean, alternative mathematical systems that could produce similar results?

    A big part of that paper is not that maths just happens to work, but that powerful predictions can arise from mathematical models that were not at all expected when the model was initially created, sometimes in subjects that seem remote from the one to which it was initially applied. So why is it that mathematical predictions so often anticipate unexpected empirical discoveries? He doesn’t attempt to explain why that is so, as much as just point it out.

    I myself am a critic of ‘scientism’, the attempt to subordinate all knowledge to mathematical quantfication, but I don’t think that invalidates Wigner’s point.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Forgetting the role such presuppositions play leads to such confusions as Wigner’s famous paper on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics in the natural sciences.Joshs

    Can you explain what about Wigner’s famous paper you think is confused?
  • p and "I think p"
    It’s just a focus, and Rödl’s book is very focused. Otherwise, questions like ‘what is consciousness’ and ‘are animals conscious’ just become like hundreds of other topics on this forum.
  • p and "I think p"
    Context! Sebastian Rödl's book is about human reason. The title is "Self-Consciousness and Reason: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism" (Google Books preview.) I don't think, from what I've read so far, that 'animal consciousness' is even considered in this book.
  • p and "I think p"
    As far as animal intelligence is concerned, a rudimentary sense of 'self and other' would characterise any life whatever, even that of single-celled organisms, in that the hallmark of any organism is its ability to maintain separateness from the sorrounding environment. Minerals and inorganic matter, on the other hand, have no such separation and are altered by whatever energetic forces and chemical influences act on them from the sorrounding environment; they are not agents, in that sense. But I for one don't believe that insects, amoeba, reptiles, and fish engage in thought as such, as their behaviours can be explained solely in terms of stimulus and response. The higher animals - primates, canids, felines, whales, bears, birds - have a correspondingly greater or more elaborated sense of themselves, defending territories and mates, and many can recognise themselves in mirrors (see the mirror test.) But I think questions about 'whether animals think' really belong in the Rational Thinking Humans and Animals thread.

    I bolded Kant's phrase, above, because it focuses on what we'd like to understand better -- just what the heck does it mean for consciousness to "accompany" something? Would we know it when it happened? As a thesis, can it be falsified by experience?J

    There's a word I've only become aware of recently 'ipseity'. It means 'having a sense of self'. It seems pretty straightforward that as far as self-aware beings are concerned, ipseity in the sense of the differentiation between self and other, me and not-me, is fundamental, as noted. In simple organisms, I think it operates without any conscious sense or self-awareness as such. Perhaps higher animals, and certainly in humans, the self becomes self-aware. But whether that sense constitutes an 'experience' is moot - I would say not. I would say it signifies the capacity for experience. Unconscious, anaesthetized or asleep, that sense of self falls into abeyance - there is no self-awareness, although in sleep the parasympathetic nervous system maintains a low level of self-awareness sufficient to rouse the subject if needed. In any case, when anaesthetised, (and leaving aside the perplexing cases of near death experience where subjects report seeing their body from the outside) there is no experience nor the capacity for it. But the conscious state is not so much an experience, as the medium of experience. //As per your #3//
  • Behavior and being
    You mean the one from the University of Canterbury?
    — Wayfarer

    Yep.
    apokrisis

    Actually that makes perfect sense to me, little as I know about physical cosmology.
  • Behavior and being
    Physics isn’t in conflict with the existence of life and mind. It was the entropic move needed to make possible the informational counter-move.apokrisis

    So might I enquire where consciousness/awareness enters the picture as you see it? Causal or consequential?
  • Behavior and being
    This is the fractal distribution of matter and energy that best characterises Nature. We see it in the Cosmic Web. It is the new "better" explanation for dark energyapokrisis

    You mean the one from the University of Canterbury? Dark Energy May Not Exist

    The design develops from within due to the way Being has to grow into a realm that can lawfully persist.apokrisis

    Would that comprise an 'overall increase of intelligibility'? Does that sound Hegelian? (Then again Peirce professed affinities with Hegel.)

    So organisms arose when they stumbled across the further trick of encoding information using genes, neurons, words and numbers.apokrisis

    Don't they have to exist before they can stumble across anything?

    n principle, life and mind just are expressions of the generalised cosmic desire to optimise dissipation.apokrisis

    Likewise, 'desire' can't help but sound teleological or anthropomorphic. Perhaps 'tendency' might be preferable.

    For that matter, the capitalised Being above - does that refer to or distinguish living beings in particular? What is the capitalisation intended to signify?
  • p and "I think p"
    there are thinking things that do not have a sense of selfPhilosophim

    Any examples come to mind?
  • p and "I think p"
    I know nothing of those other guys, so, there is that…Mww

    Sebastian Rödl is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Leipzig University and an advocate of absolute idealism, associated with G W Hegel:

    “According to Hegel, being is ultimately comprehensible only as an all-inclusive whole (das Absolute). Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know its object (the world) at all, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being.”

    Perhaps Rödl could be seen as resuscitating German idealism.
  • p and "I think p"
    It's almost like a phase shift, a new way of conceiving something that had always seemed obvious. Both Kimhi and Rödl are asking us to rethink what we thought we knew.J

    I probably should not leap into this breech, but I think I understand the meta-philosophical reason for this. I think it's linked to something which John Vervaeke calls 'participatory knowing':

    Participatory Knowledge

    Participatory knowledge is the knowledge of what it’s like to play a certain role in your environment or in relationships.

    Vervaeke considers this to be the most profound of the four types of knowledge. It involves being in a deep, transformative relationship with the world, participating fully in something that is wider than you.

    It is not just knowing about, but knowing through active engagement and transformation within specific contexts or environments. It shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the world, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging.

    This kind of knowledge is experiential and co-creative, often seen in the dynamics of relationships, culture, and community participation.

    With the advent of liberal individualism, the individual becomes 'atomised' and knowledge becomes increasingly propositional and procedural. The participatory nature of 'know-how' (Kant's 'practical reason?' Aristotle's 'phronesis'?) becomes occluded or reduced to the propositional. The existential dimension is obscured, an insight which is associated more with continental than analytic philosophy.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Oh. Well Jim Franklin is indeed a UNSW philosopher, so an easy misidentification to make.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Jim Franklin was a customer of Campus Computers at Usyd in the late 1980’s, when I was manager there. He was then quite a gnomic figure back then with long hair and beard. (I went to a book launch of his in 2023 and made the acquaintance of a nice academic with whom I corresponded for a few months thereafter. Franklin didn’t remember me although I wouldn’t have expected him to. See also his criticism of Stove’s Gem, which I think is quite applicable to many debates you and I have had.)
  • p and "I think p"
    Yes, agree! I didn’t read it carefully enough. I read one, and then four, but now you mention it, 3 hits the nail on the head.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Philosophy in Australia is not that simple.Banno

    Thanks for the link, will read with interest. As I’ve often mentioned, Armstrong was HoD when I was an undergrad, and as an aspiring counter-cultural philosopher, I was duty bound to reject Materialist Theory of Mind on the basis of the title alone. Of course he was an erudite and persuasive fellow, but I’ve formed the view that the variety of materialism he advocated was basically a form of Christian heresy, based on re-interpreting the Aristotelian universals as scientific laws.

    Keith Campbell, on the other hand, I liked a lot. His Philosophy of Matter unit was the best individual course I did in philosophy. Got an HD for an essay on Lucretius. :cool:
  • p and "I think p"
    Yes, you can see it, and report accordingly, as a rational sentient being.
  • p and "I think p"
    I vote '1'. Just as Kant (and Husserl) say, 'transcendental' means 'necessary for thought but not accessible to it'. We're generally *not* self-conscious in that we take 'the world' to exist independently of us, not seeing the way in which the mind itself has constructed the framework within which that idea is meaningful. That kind of introspective self-awareness is hardly prized by our consumerist culture.

    Some people are aware of it, some are not.J

    Those who are, possess a finer sense of self-awareness than those who don't. It's called 'discriminative wisdom'.


    The “I think” accompanies all our thoughts, says Kant.J

    ...whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. — Wayfarer

    That 'implicit perspective' is the same as what Rödl argues for, I suspect, although I'm still taking it in.
  • Mathematical platonism
    Give me a specific example of such behavior on my part. With quotes.Arcane Sandwich

    I did just that, but you're in such a hurry to reply that you didn't notice.

    Then don't debate with me. No one's forcing you.Arcane Sandwich

    Sure thing. Hope you enjoy your time here, but might serve not to spread yourself too thin.
  • Mathematical platonism
    And I'm saying that you get it backwards or upside down, in pursuit of so-called anti-scientific certainty.Arcane Sandwich

    But without any supporting argument.
  • Mathematical platonism
    I'm beginning to form the view that you're too confused to debate with. You will jump in with an appeal to Mario Bunge, who you mention frequently, who is a textbook scientific materialist and ' professor of scientism', yet when those ideas are challenged, you will say, 'hey that's not me, that's him!' - even though you're the one who introduced him and appeared to argue for his position. What gives? You will say things that I find quite agreeable and then a couple of sentences later, say the very opposite. Maybe your screen name is well-chosen. :chin:
  • Mathematical platonism
    you won't find the feeling of "I'm hungry" anywhere, on your anatomy table.Arcane Sandwich

    No kidding. Anyone will know that corpses do not have appetites.

    Why are you against the very concept ofcognitive neuroscience to begin with? That's the part that I can't seem to wrap my head around. Like, it's not that crazy as you make it sound, man. Bunge himself said that one of the cutting edge sciences of today is cognitive neuroscience.Arcane Sandwich

    I'm not opposing them. I'm saying they don't support the view that neural states are identical to the contents of thought or that the elements of consciousness can be reduced to the neurophysiology.

    The point I've made, which indeed you haven't wrapped your head around, is that the world within which materialism is true, is one created by the brain/mind. I'm saying materialism gets it backwards or upside down, in pursuit of so-called scientific certainty.

    I'm not Bunge.Arcane Sandwich

    But you did say:

    my solution is better than yours, because my solution is technically Bunge's solution to the problem. If this is reduced to community terms, I prefer to agree with Bunge than with you on that point.Arcane Sandwich

    That is the view that I was critiquing, whether or not you later chose to defend it.

    Hang on, you will say. What about those amazing devices which allow science to reconstruct images from neural data? Subject thinks 'yacht', and lo, a yacht appears on the monitor.
    — Wayfarer

    I've never heard of such a thing. I don't think that's possible,
    Arcane Sandwich

  • Mathematical platonism
    Fluff. Let me lay it out for you. Bunge et al, the scientific materialists want to bring mind under the ambit of the neurosciences - firm, objective, and measurable. Thoughts are brain patterns - what could be more obvious? But their problem is, that try as you might, you will never find a thought in the neural data. It is just as Leibniz said - blow up a brain to the size of a mill and stroll through it. You will never find a thought inside it.

    Hang on, you will say. What about those amazing devices which allow science to reconstruct images from neural data? Subject thinks 'yacht', and lo, a yacht appears on the monitor. But let's not forget that experts in neuroscience and information technology painstakinly construct and train these systems to recognise such correlations, which allows them to reconstruct the imagery that is display on the monitor. The expertise and rational abilities of the scientists is interpolated into the picture in order to produce those results. (Also see Do You Believe in God, or is That a Software Glitch.)

    What has actually happened is the cognitive science, not neuroscience as such, although incorporating aspects of neuroscience, has discovered that the brain/mind actually manufactures or constructs what we take to be the 'objective world', the world within which the firm and unyeilding statements of the natural sciences are meaningful. Of course, one of Bunge's nemeses, Arthur Schopenhauer, anticipated this long before either neuro- or cognitive science existed:

    materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But ...all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the Idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained. — WWI

    Bolds added.

    Fine, then, you might say. Let's detect the system in the brain which supplies this 'machinery and manufactory' so to show once and for all that it is a physical system. But neuroscience has been able to do no such thing! It has found that 'enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience.' This provides direct scientific validation of Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness', something which the same paper actually says.

    So - what of numbers, universals, and the like? I say, along with the phenomenologists, that these are regular structures in consciousness, something like laws of thought. But you'll never trace them back to neural transactions, as such, as they possess a unitary and simple nature that is of a different order to the phenomena of neuroscience. This is why I will insist that numbers (etc) are real but not existent. They obtain and hold within a universe of discourse (wittgenstein's 'language game') - whereas Bunge's crude materialism wants to imagine them encoded in biochemical format, as kind of physical symbols, as oxymoronic conception as there has ever been.
  • Mathematical platonism
    It is biology, apparently. As in, it is the biology of the brain of a member of the human species.Arcane Sandwich

    If a species evolves to the point where it can recognise 'the law of the excluded middle', does that entail that 'the law of the included middle' can be understood as a product of biology?
  • Mathematical platonism
    If π is a brain process in your brain, and also a brain process in my brain, then it is two different things.

    But if that were so, when I talk about π I am talking about a quite different thing to you, when you talk about π.

    When we each talk about π, we are talking about the same thing.

    Therefore π is not a brain process in your brain
    Banno

    It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea' also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy - The World of Universals


    Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

    This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.

    The above also applies to number.
  • Question for Aristotelians
    Thank you, appreciated. I’ve found some articles on the topic also.
×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.