The perceiver is at one end of a causal chain of intermediaries — RussellA

And what is the nature of this chain?

Even the mighty Rupert abases himself for the holy $.

‘Donald Trump has attacked Rupert Murdoch in a blistering statement, accusing him of betraying his Fox News television hosts by admitting that he doubted their conclusions about the 2020 election.

“Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table,” the former US president posted to his platform Truth Social.’

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-attacks-murdoch-for-throwing-his-anchors-under-the-table-20230302-p5cor5.html

Trial hasn’t even started yet!

The relativity of simultaneity is not at issue in this discussion.

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact.
— Wayfarer

But it's not an empirical fact. Emprical facts are observables. So, what is it? — Janus

I am saying that the fact there was a time before humans existed is an empirical fact supported by the fossil record and an abundance of geological and paleontological data which can be observed. Iis that not so?

I'm not asking you to explain time, I'm asking you what you mean by time if you are positing it as something different than the subjective experience of duration, and the subjective understanding of time as 'past, present, future'.

It is obvious that there was not such a time prior to human life. So, I am asking you what you mean by saying that there was a time prior to humans. — Janus

There was a time prior to humans, but time itself is not completely objective - it is in some fundamental sense dependent on the observer. That is what I had hoped to convey with the quotation from Paul Davies, who says that the passage of time is reliant on there being an observer, and that if the state of the universe is described in the equations of quantum cosmology, then time simply 'drops out'. This 'observer dependency' is what ultimately underminees physicalism, as physicalism presumes that the objects of physics are real independently of any mind. It is also at the basis of the overall 'observer problem' in physics generally.

And the reason I said that this can be related to Kant is because of this passage:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. (CPR, A369)

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. (A370)

I would have hoped that, given the challenging nature of the issue that this is about as clear as it can be made. If that will not suffice, then I won't press it any further. (I'm also intrigued that Kant appears to concede dualism in that passage.)

I said earlier in this thread, my main aim is to argue that humans are intrinsic to the universe, not an accidental byproduct.. That remains the case. In earlier times that would be an assumed implication of religious mythology, now it has to be established on the basis of philosophy.

I tried to give as direct an answer as possible to this question:

What could it then mean to say that there was a time before human beings existed? Are you able to say? — Janus

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact. But in a philosophical sense, taking the empirical facts as the last word constitutes the 'naivete' that the passage about Husserl refers to.

Of course I am not going to pretend to be able to explain time. Many minds much greater than mine have attempted that. I am simply pointing out that it has an inextricably subjective element, and not in a trivial sense.

I keep acknowledging that I think the empirical world, as conceived, and to some extent as experienced, is a collective representation, so I fail to see what purpose you think there might be in lecturing me about ideas which I am probably more familiar with than you are. — Janus

That is at odds with many of the objections you raise, but then, maybe it's just for the sake of argument.

Which would be a great question, and one which I am in no way qualified to answer. I will find the passages I thought significant a little later when I have some time.

It depends on what you mean by 'time'. If it is taken to mean the subjective sense of duration, or the conception of past present and future, then of course it cannot exist independently of subjects by definition. Beyond that, how would we know? — Janus

It's not a trivial matter. There was a time before humans existed, as is well attested by empirical science. But the entire framework within which empirical science depends is first and foremost noetic or intellectual. 'From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

that is the constant theme of this debate. What is called 'the natural attitude' is the default and anything that questions it is fiercely resisted, as can be seen.

I was referring to Descartes' use of the term 'res' in 'res cogitans'. The Latin term 'res' is translated as thing or object. You claimed not to be able to see where the conflation of 'substance' in the sense meant by 'ousia' in Aristotelian philosophy, and 'substance' in the everyday meaning of 'material with uniform properties' originated. I'm saying that it originated with Cartesian dualism.

It is not inconsistent with general usage to think of a thing as a being. — Janus

Inanimate objects are not referred to as 'beings', and beings are not referred to as 'things'. It is precisely the tendency to reify beings as things which is at the basis of modern materialism.

Again I submit a passage from Paul Davie's book about the sense in which time itself is a projection of the observing mind, to wit:

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 loses 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

I submit that this supports the Kantian assertion that 'time is one of the forms of our sensibility', rather than something that exists objectively and independently of any observer. Which is not to deny the empirical fact that there was a time before human beings existed, as Kant was also an empirical realist.

Everything that we do, all that we do, just seems so minuscule & insignificant, when seen from the bigger picture of everything. — niki wonoto

That 'bigger picture' is something that only h.sapiens can be made aware of, as far as we know. So you're scaring yourself.

As far as I know it means "thing" or "being"; — Janus

It emphatically does not mean, 'being'. It means a thing, matter, or object., and is also the root of 'reality'. So in answer to the question, how did the meaning of the Aristotelian ousia (the original root of 'substance') become conflated with matter, or 'thinking stuff' - there's your answer. It is at the root of almost everything said or thought about this question, here and everywhere else.

the conflation of substance with subject is completely alien to Spinoza, and I can't think of anywhere else it could be found. — Janus

What is the direct translation of ‘res’ in ‘res cogitans’ (Descartes)?

You could see it as another milestone in the gradual erosion of faith in reason. After all reason and causation are you would think intimately linked. I think I’ll start a thread on it.

That’s ok you’re asking good questions but I’ll leave others to tackle that one.

:cool:

:lol:

What was the problem? — L'éléphant

Basically the problem was that this particular mod hated my guts and would initiate or join any pile-on concerning myself. All water under the bridge.

See e.g. this post and subsequent criticism. SLX posted a link to an apparently classic article by Charles Kahn, which I read pretty carefully, and which I think supports my interrpretation.

That is what I took this to mean:

assimilating causal dependence to logical dependence

Are you guys referring to a specific OP? — Paine

I am of the view that the word 'ontology' refers to exploration the nature of being, as distinct from the study of phenomena or the analysis of what kinds of things there are, which I said is the domain of science proper. I was told this was highly eccentric and idiosyncratic (in no uncertain terms) whenever I mentioned it (this was by a former mod, streetlightx, who is no longer a contributor. He was highly educated but often vitriolic in the extreme). Anyway, carry on, this is a digression.

Whenever I mentioned my take on the meaning of 'ontology', SLX would go completely ballistic, but he's not around any more.

After all, not all beings are conscious. — Fooloso4

In my taxonomy, beings are differentiated from things precisely because they are animated (by soul, in Aristotle’s terms.) And you can see it in that even the simplest organisms embody intentional actions even if not conscious in any real sense, although that will sound too near vitalism for most.

It is as if you said: "Hard problem? What hard problem? There is no hard problem. Consciousness just is. No further explanation is needed or possible." — Fooloso4

The ‘hard problem’ argument is aimed at a specific audience namely those reductionists who claim there is or can be a physical explanation for the nature of consciousness. It’s a hard problem for naturalism. But there is no such problem for those who don’t make that claim.

:up:

hopefully they’ll get their just desserts at this forthcoming trial.

Which physical laws, AP, prevent us from building / growing a 'self-aware AI' — 180 Proof

No physical laws accurately describe sentient beings except insofar as sentient beings are subject to physical laws such as the law of gravity. But sentient beings operate by principles which can't be reduced to the laws of physics, such as the ability to act intentionally, heal, maintain homeostasis, reproduce, and so on. None of these operations are necessarily reducible to physical laws.

A computer, as I'm sure you're aware, could theoretically be constructed from pipes and water, or stones and rubber bands, although it would obviously be wildly impractical, as micro-electronics offer efficiencies of scale that could never be realised in such media. But, in principle, a computer is just a fantastically advanced abacus that performs calculations and outputs results. So why would it ever be possible for such a device to become a being? You could, as Kastrup says, symbollically represent kidney function on a modern computer with great accuracy, but you would not expect the computer to urinate.

it has to be shown that the definition of the divine essence or substance involves its existence — Copleston

Without reference to Spinoza in particular, let's recall that substance in philosophy has a meaning nearer to 'being' or 'subject', whereas 'substance' in everyday speech has the connotation of matter ('substance - a material with uniform properties') . I think, however, the phrase 'the divine subject' conveys the gist of the idea more accurately than 'the divine substance'.

Part of the definition of the divine being is that He IS - (compare Exodus 3:14 'I AM THAT I AM') - in other words, God is 'necessary being'. So the very possibility of the idea of God implies the reality of God - which is the ontological argument as Copleston says.

Note this passage:

The notion of necessary being, applied to God and withheld from man, indicates that God and man differ not merely in the characteristics which they possess but more fundamentally, in their modes of being, or in the fact that they exist in different senses of the word 'exist'. ...

Paul Tillich...emphasises the distinction to the extent of using different terms to refer to the reality of God and of man respectively. Human beings and other created things exist; God, on the other hand, does not exist, but IS. This is the most recent way of formulating a discrimination which has been classically expressed in the history of Christian thought by the idea of the necessary being of God in contrast to the contingent being of man and of the created order.

There are, however, two importantly different concepts which have been expressed by the phrase ‘necessary being’. ‘Necessity’, in a philosophical context, usually means logical necessity, and gives rise in theology to the concept of a being such that it is logically impossible that this being should not exist.' — Cambridge Dictionary of Theology

assimilating causal dependence to logical dependence

I interpret this phrase to mean that, as God is the sole real substance (or subject), then causal relations are subordinate to logical dependence. What we see as contingent is in reality strictly determined by God's omnipotence of which logical necessity is a manifestation.

I think nowadays it is customary to say that logical necessity and physical causation are not bound in such a way, and in fact are not even necessarily connected, although I'm not sure about that.

You have been affected by an idea, not by anything physical, so it is quite a different matter to physical causation.

The optic nerves, responsible for transmitting electrical pulses to create an image is another. You know... light passes through the pupil, etc. In other words, there is energy there, too. — L'éléphant

What if I write something that makes you so annoyed your hands begin to shake. What kind of causation would that be?

. The idea that science is entirely constructed and not in any way determined by the world seems patently absurd. — Janus

I think your addition of 'entirely' and 'not in any way' completely changes the meaning of what was quoted. One may perfectly accept that there is an enormous domain of objectively-verifiable fact to which we all must conform. They are indeed physical constraints - but don't forget that Berkeley himself frequently stated, he did not for one minute deny the reality of the objects of perception, only that they don't have the attributes that we normally credit them with, of being real independently of perception.

I remember when I first encountered Peter Berger's book The Social Construction of Reality. I too thought it absurd and declaimed angrily about it in a tutorial. 'Do we put the stars in the sky', quoth myself, banging fist on table. But I gradually came to see that I was misunderstanding his point. It's more that our world, the 'lebenswelt' of humans, is constructed from meanings, because we interpret experience according to our cultural constructs and so on. (One of David Loy's books, that I haven't looked at, is called The World is Made of Stories.)

I'm starting to think - actually I made this point at the outset - that a better term than idealism might be constructivism (grabs bit of random text from internet):

Originally proposed by sociologists of science, constructivism or social constructivism is a view about the nature of scientific knowledge held by many philosophers of science. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is made by scientists and not determined by the world. This makes constructivists antirealists. Constructivism here should not be confused with constructivism in mathematics or logic, although there are some similarities. Constructivism is more aptly compared with Berkeley’s idealism.

Most constructivist research involves empirical study of a historical or a contemporary episode in science, with the aim of learning how scientists experiment and theorize. Constructivists try not to bias their case studies with presuppositions about how scientific research is directed. Thus their approach contrasts with approaches in philosophy of science that assume scientists are guided by a particular method. From their case studies, constructivists have concluded that scientific practice is not guided by any one set of methods. Thus constructivism is relativist or antirationalist.

Many of the cognitive scientists who emphasise the role of the brain in 'constructing' reality are like this in many respects - not that they all draw the same philosophical conclusions, but many are anti-realist in this sense. You can also see how it maps against Kuhn, Feyerabend etc.

you have the idea in Buddhism that nirvana is samsara — Janus

That is specific to Nagarjuna's philosophy. No Theravadin would ever agree with that. Furthermore even Nagarjuna adds that grasping the precise meaning of this teaching is of basic importance, comparing it to picking up a poisonous snake - don't grasp it correctly, and it will kill you!

The Dominion Voting Machines v Fox News has produced a wealth of incriminating evidence even before going to trial in April. NY Times reports that Murdoch admitted under oath that he should have reigned in his commentators from spreading The Big Lie, but did not (link copied as 'gift article' so should open without paywall).

Rupert Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, court documents released on Monday showed. ...

...Dominion has said the actions of Fox hosts including Mr. Carlson, Mr. Hannity, Ms. Bartiromo and Mr. Dobbs — and the producers and executives overseeing their programs — were anything but a dispassionate recitation of newsworthy claims of fraud. Rather, Dominion has argued, the internal communications it has uncovered point to how Fox employees behaved with “actual malice” — the legal standard required to prove defamation.

water under the bridge.....

There is nothing incoherent in the idea that there are innate categories of mind. — Fooloso4

Kant's categories were adapted almost verbatim from Aristotle, according to this entry.

The mind’s a priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a special set of concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments possible. These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only manifest as the form which particular judgments of objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already revealed what the fundamental categories of thought are. The special set of concepts is Kant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotlewith a few revisions — IEP, Kant's Metaphysics

.

Hugh Everett was drunk when he thought of it. He never got a hearing from Bohr. He left academia and worked on ICBM missile systems, dying early, an alcoholic, with a clause in his will that his ashes be put out in the garbage.

Which they were.

(Source The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III, Scientific American)

Incidentally the Scientific American article ends with a poignant note which Everett had apparently included in the original version of his dissertation, to wit:

Once we have granted that any physical theory is essentially only a model for the world of experience,” Everett concluded in the unedited version of his dissertation, “we must renounce all hope of finding anything like the correct theory ... simply because the totality of experience is never accessible to us.

That's the one thing he said which makes sense to me.

Why the Many Worlds Interpretation has Many Problems, Philip Ball

The main scientific attraction of the MWI is that it requires no changes or additions to the standard mathematical representation of quantum mechanics. There is no mysterious, ad hoc and abrupt collapse of the wave function.

There’s the motivation. Read on for the remainder.

Question about anomalous monism - it acknowledges there are no physical laws governing mental causation, but as mental causation occurs, and everything that occurs is physical, then mental events must be physical, as there is nothing else they could be.

Did I miss anything essential?

cherry-picked.

Interestingly, Alvin Plantinga takes this idea to show how evolutionary ideas undermine naturalism. — Richard B

Beat me to it, I was going to say exactly that. But they draw very different conclusions as far as I can see - Hoffman doesn’t seem to read any religious implication, or even specifically philosophical conclusions, from his work, he sees himself as a cognitive scientist first and foremost. One thing Hoffman does say is that ‘reality is conscious agents all the way down’, which can’t help but remind me of Liebniz’ monads, although I don’t know if he’s ever commented on that or anyone else has noticed it.

It's not that philosophers have cast out spiritual thinking, so much as that the stuff we know about the world isn't found in spiritual thought. — Banno

The automatic association of philosophical idealism with 'spiritual thought' is what is at issue. I think it amounts to a prejudice - there is a taboo in play. It's very much shaped by cultural dynamics.

As regards Hoffman, here's an abstract in the form of a Q&A. He says straight up 'The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality' on the grounds that our perception is shaped by evolutionary biology to orient us to what is effective for survival. To be honest, I'm not sure I buy his argument but I am going to finish the book first.