2. Establish the scientific method with truth as the only and unquestionable value. — unenlightened

Berkeley has the mind of God to hold everything in place — Tom Storm

Probably only if you accept the somewhat outlandish idea that there is a mind-at-large which we are all 'offshoots' of. — Tom Storm

He declares that the basic doctrine of the Upanishads, namely what he calls the doctrine of Identity, or the thesis that allegedly separated minds are identical with one another, and that our mind is identical with the absolute basis of the world as a whole, is the only credible solution to the apparent conflict between the experienced unity of consciousness and the belief that it is dispersed in many living bodies.

“It is by observing and thinking this way that one may suddenly experience the truth of the fundamental idea of Vedânta. It is impossible that this unity of knowledge, of feeling and of choice that you consider as YOURS was born a few years ago from nothingness. Actually, this knowledge, this feeling and this choice are, in their essence, eternal, immutable and numerically ONE in all men and in all living beings (...). The life that you are living presently is not only a fragment of the whole existence; it is in a certain sense, the WHOLE” *

From his reading of the Advaita Vedânta, and from the basic experience he associated with it, Schrödinger inferred that the basic illusion, in our naive and scientific view of the world, is that of multiplicity. Multiplicity of minds in the living bodies, and multiplicity of things in the material world. About the first type of multiplicity, Schrödinger wrote : “what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of aspects of one thing, produced by deception (the Indian Mâyâ)”. “The doctrine of identity can claim that it is clinched by the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us even experienced more than one consciousness, but there is no trace of circumstantial evidence of this even happening anywhere in the world” — Michel Bitbol

So, it seems impossible to think that objects don't persist, and some more than others, obviously. So, I don't follow Hume in thinking that we have no reason to believe that objects persist. What makes the case even stronger is observing the behavior of the animals most familiar to us that shows that they also see the same things in the same locations as we do. — Janus

Berkeley's subjective idealism was already "analytic" in the sense that he postulated that observation and conception is tautologically equivalent to existence. Many philosophers misunderstand this principle.

For example, they take the principle to imply that unobserved items disappear from existence. But this doesn't follow from the principle, for according to the principle it isn't false that unobserved objects exist, but nonsensical. — sime

We have big brains that are very adaptive. — Mark Nyquist

I'm thinking the best approach is brain state, a singular definition, existence in the present moment only, and physically based on neurons holding specific content. — Mark Nyquist

I am claiming that there are no disembodied minds. — Fooloso4

in the context of Monism, the question of information is very messy. — Mark Nyquist

The Big Bang model posits nothing physical or otherwise before the first physical event. — Janus

In fairness, I do not know whether or not he does. — creativesoul

What’s that ol’ adage? If it was easy everybody’d be doing it? — Mww

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color. — creativesoul

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’ — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

We have to recognise it as raw data to begin with, right? — Tom Storm

Berkeley's subjective idealism was already "analytic" in the sense that he postulated that observation and conception is tautologically equivalent to existence. Many philosophers misunderstand this principle.

For example, they take the principle to imply that unobserved items disappear from existence. But this doesn't follow from the principle, for according to the principle it isn't false that unobserved objects exist, but nonsensical. — sime

are you saying that the raw material is like noumena - there is something there but we don't see it as it is. — Tom Storm

We get into this deep enough, you may find your idealism was Kantian all along — Mww

It (i.e. Mary's room thought experiment) presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

It is not the analysis of the firing of nerve fibers but the actual firing of nerve fibers through stimulus that could cause a third person to report feeling pain. — Fooloso4

Physicalism is not a rejection of mind. — Fooloso4

Wayfarer used to make exactly the opposite argument, that because the content of a statement can be translated from one language to another -- as we might convert from imperial to metric, say -- this content must be somehow transcendent or whatever — Srap Tasmaner

The recognition that a living organism can be conscious, is not reductive. To look at an organism as a whole is not reductive physicalism. To claim that consciousness must come from elsewhere because a physical explanation must be reductive is misguided. — Fooloso4

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’ — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

I can see absolutely no reason to think that individuation relies on conscious observers. — Janus

I think monism can handle that but it is worth a closer look or you will end up arguing for Dualism — Mark Nyquist

Modern science is a methodology, whose primary result is knowledge. — Pantagruel

Modern science emerged in the seventeenth century with two fundamental ideas: planned experiments (Francis Bacon) and the mathematical representation of relations among phenomena (Galileo). This basic experimental-mathematical epistemology evolved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, it took a stringent form involving (1) a mathematical theory constituting scientific knowledge, (2) a formal operational correspondence between the theory and quantitative empirical measurements, and (3) predictions of future measurements based on the theory. The “truth” (validity) of the theory is judged based on the concordance between the predictions and the observations. While the epistemological details are subtle and require expertise relating to experimental protocol, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis, the general notion of scientific knowledge is expressed in these three requirements.

Science is neither rationalism nor empiricism. It includes both in a particular way. In demanding quantitative predictions of future experience, science requires formulation of mathematical models whose relations can be tested against future observations. Prediction is a product of reason, but reason grounded in the empirical. Hans Reichenbach summarizes the connection: “Observation informs us about the past and the present, reason foretells the future.”

The demand for quantitative prediction places a burden on the scientist. Mathematical theories must be formulated and be precisely tied to empirical measurements. Of course, it would be much easier to construct rational theories to explain nature without empirical validation or to perform experiments and process data without a rigorous theoretical framework. On their own, either process may be difficult and require substantial ingenuity. The theories can involve deep mathematics, and the data may be obtained by amazing technologies and processed by massive computer algorithms. Both contribute to scientific knowledge, indeed, are necessary for knowledge concerning complex systems such as those encountered in biology. However, each on its own does not constitute a scientific theory. In a famous aphorism, Immanuel Kant stated, “Concepts without percepts are blind; percepts without concepts are empty.” — Edward Dougherty

an idea makes you miserable, or afraid, or ecstatic then yes it can have consequences. But such responses are not inherent in the idea: the same idea might make one person afraid and another ecstatic, for example. — Janus

But, he captured the basic idea metaphorically, by using the philosophical concept of "Form". In his Hylomorph theory he made a pertinent distinction between physical Matter and metaphysical*1 Form. — Gnomon

Pi for example is a non-physical... It does not physically exist. A ratio of circle circumference to diameter. Basic math, and it's a manipulations of brain states like this that are what information is about. Compare that to DNA molecules that are physically fixed and obviously they are not the same thing. — Mark Nyquist

In any case, I don't think one's metaphysical views have any bearing on one's spiritual practice — Janus

I have often heard philosophers, including gifted ones, assert that according to transcendental idealism 'everything exists in a mind, or in minds' or 'existence is mental'. This is a radical error. It is not what Kant or Schopenhauer were saying, nor is it what they believed. On the contrary, both of them believed that the abiding reality from which we are screened off by the ever-changing surface of our contingent and ephemeral experiences exists in itself, independent of minds and their perceptions or experiences. If reality had consisted only of perception, or only of experience, then it would presumably have been possible for us to encompass it exhaustively in perception or experience, to know it through and through, without remainder. But that is not so, and the chief clout of transcendental idealism is contained in the insight that while it is possible for us to perceive or experience or think or envisage only in categories (in the ordinary, not Kant's technical, sense) determined by our own apparatus, whatever exists cannot in itself exist in terms of those categories, because existence as such cannot be in categories at all. This must mean that in an unfathomably un-understandable way, whatever exists independently of experience must be in and throughout its whole nature different from the world of our representations. But because the world of our representations is the only world we know ‚ and the only world we can ever know ‚ it is almost irresistibly difficult for us not to take it for the world tout court, reality, what there is, the world as it is in itself. This is what all of us grow up doing, it is the commonsense view of things, and only reflection of a profound and sophisticated character can free us from it. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

I don't think one's metaphysical views have any bearing on one's spiritual practice; on one's ability to realize equanimity, non-attachment, peace of mind or whatever you want to call it. — Janus

A modern equivalent would be Cognitive Behavior Therapy: if you undertake that practice, you are not there to argue about its metaphysical or phenomenological claims, but rather to accept the set of ideas that constitute the therapy and practice in accordance with them. — Janus

Askesis of Desire
For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). These practices were used in the ancient schools in the context of specific forms of interpersonal relationships: for example, the relationship between the student and a master, whose role it was to guide and assist the student in the examination of conscience, in identification and rectification of erroneous judgments and bad actions, and in the conduct of dialectical exchanges on established themes.

In this broad and sweeping argument, Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world, and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.

As you say, the object really exists. — Fooloso4