• Wayfarer
    20.6k
    There have been many debates about whether it is meaningful to speak of what exists in the absence of an observing mind. It is, of course, the argument behind the question 'does a tree fall in the forest if there is nobody there to see it?' which is a famous philosophical conundrum.

    In relation to this, I have had the idea that the hallmark of anything that exists is that it is determinate - or that it has a definition, which, I guess, is another way of stating the same thing. If we think of any phenomenon, then by definition we are considering things that exist - even if unobserved. So we can safely surmise that there are trillions upon trillions of astronomical objects that we (and possibly no sentient being) will ever observe, even with the James Webb Telescope. We would be on safe ground to claim that they nevertheless exist, but that is still a presumption, even if a very safe one.

    The reason I raise the question of 'determinateness' is that it does have bearing on the 'does a tree...?' question. More generally, I like to argue for the view that whatever we believe to exist (even things existing unobserved) exists in a determinate manner - meaning that if we encounter a previously-unseen celestial object, we will know what kind of thing it is. But that still leaves room for the assertion that the kind of reality the world has outside of the mind of the observer is indeterminate. That means that it is not non-existent, but it's also not strictly speaking existent. At best it has a kind of presumptive existence - but I think there is a natural tendency to take this presumption as an established fact, when it's actually not. That is the crux of the issue I'm trying to articulate.

    What comes to mind here are some of the conundrums arising from modern physics. In a profile article of the late, great John Wheeler, we read:

    Wheeler conjectures we are part of a universe that is a work in progress; we are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself — and building itself. It's not only the future that is still undetermined but the past as well. And by peering back into time, even all the way back to the Big Bang, our present observations select one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe.

    Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles. Wheeler likes to use the example of a high-energy particle released by a radioactive element like radium in Earth's crust. The particle, as with the photons in the two-slit experiment, exists in many possible states at once, traveling in every possible direction, not quite real and solid until it interacts with something, say a piece of mica in Earth's crust. When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real. In this case the mica, not a conscious being, is the object that transforms what might happen into what does happen. The trail of disrupted atoms left in the mica by the high-energy particle becomes part of the real world.

    At every moment, in Wheeler's view, the entire universe is filled with such events, where the possible outcomes of countless interactions become real, where the infinite variety inherent in quantum mechanics manifests as a physical cosmos. And we see only a tiny portion of that cosmos. Wheeler suspects that most of the universe consists of huge clouds of uncertainty that have not yet interacted either with a conscious observer or even with some lump of inanimate matter. He sees the universe as a vast arena containing realms where the past is not yet fixed.
    Does the Universe Exist if we're not Looking?

    In Wheeler's famous phrase, we live in a 'participatory universe'.

    Another example from quantum physics:

    At its root, the new idea (Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously) holds that the common conception of “reality” is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.

    “This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.

    Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”
    Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities

    In other words, reality comprises a real 'realm of possibility', from which particular ('determinate') outcomes are precipitated. This is very different from the naive realist view in which the unknown is comparable to 'unseen planets', because there is an ontological distinction in play between what is potentially real and what has been actualised (i.e. is determinate).
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    Doesn't the Sorites Paradox call into question "determinateness" as a property or condition of "what exists"? Both sand-grains and sand dunes exist yet the difference between them (i.e. phase-transition) is indeterminate.

    Also, whether or not Wheeler's participatory universe speculation is ultimately the case vis-a-vis quantum physics, we exist as classical beings within, or at the level of, nature constituted by classical constaints; what difference does Wheeler's speculation make to our lives – striving for 'the good life' – philosophically or practically?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    reality comprises a real 'realm of possibility', from which particular ('determinate') outcomes are precipitated.Wayfarer

    I have a lot of sympathy for this view, it's basically the same as my own, but I'd quibble with the word 'reality'. I don't think we use the word 'reality' that way. We use the word 'reality' to describe our collective 'precipitated outcomes'. When I ask (say, suffering from temporary hallucinations) "Is that teapot real" I mean something more like "does everyone else see that?", not "does the foundational state of the universe contain a teapot"

    I think science (which is at least partly what Wheeler is doing) should merely describe the nature of the things we already use words for. I don't think it should be in the business of re-defining how we ought to use words.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Fair point, in the sense that there are kinds of things that are difficult to define. I’ll have a think about that.

    The Heisenberg article explicitly states '“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’.”

    As for 'describing the nature of things we already use words for' - surely not. Mathematical physics has necessitated the development of both new forms of mathematics, and the coining of new words ('spin', 'color', 'charm') to describe new discoveries.

    The point about physics that it is purportedly concerned with fundamental particles, so the question as to what role the observer has in determining the outcome of the experiment is philosophically significant. The fact that it was so, was the main point of dispute between Bohr and Einstein. It certainly has an impact on how we think about the nature of reality - so many of the books on physics have sub-titles that refer to that (‘Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality’, for instance.)
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    More generally, I like to argue for the view that whatever we believe to exist (even things existing unobserved) exists in a determinate manner - meaning that if we encounter a previously-unseen celestial object, we will know what kind of thing it is. But that still leaves room for the assertion that the kind of reality the world has outside of the mind of the observer is indeterminate. That means that it is not non-existent, but it's also not strictly speaking existent. At best it has a kind of presumptive existenceWayfarer

    Aren’t you just mixing up epistemology with ontology?

    But semiotics can fix it. All life and mind is semiotically self determinate. It comes with a model - some form and purpose encoded in DNA/neurons/words/numbers - that does determine the kind of thing it intends to be. Or at least limits the extent of material accidents so as to be able to function as that thing.

    Then the wider physical and chemical world is at best pansemiotic. It has no coded representation constraining its being. But it does have an environment, an informing context, that again shapes it to be the kind of thing it is for some general reason.

    So a river or a mountain or a star all have that kind of environmental determinacy.

    A landscape or any other natural structure has to reflect the constraints of the laws of thermodynamics. Disposing of flows becomes the purpose shaping its being, and the forms that result are inescapable patterns.

    So there is a ton of ontological-level determination in the universe. Every star, every river, every sand dune, looks much the same just because some geometries are maximally efficient and can build themselves by material accident. They don’t need an epistemology - some encoded blueprint or instruction set.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Aren’t you just mixing up epistemology with ontology?apokrisis

    They're intimately linked.

    Once upon a time there was a wave function, which was said to completely describe the state of a physical system out in the world. The shape of the wave function encodes the probabilities for the outcomes of any measurements an observer might perform on it, but the wave function belonged to nature itself, an objective description of an objective reality.

    Then Fuchs came along. Along with the researchers Carlton Caves and Rüdiger Schack, he interpreted the wave function’s probabilities as Bayesian probabilities — that is, as subjective degrees of belief about the system. Bayesian probabilities could be thought of as gambling attitudes for placing bets on measurement outcomes, attitudes that are updated as new data come to light. In other words, Fuchs argued, the wave function does not describe the world — it describes the observer. “Quantum mechanics,” he says, “is a law of thought.”
    A Private View of Quantum Reality

    --

    They don’t need an epistemology - some encoded blueprint or instruction set.apokrisis

    Quite. Which is why I'm highly sceptical of the 'pan-semiosis' ploy. Life and mind are one thing, rivers and sand dunes something else.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Well, in my humble opinion, there hasta be some kinda interaction between things to, in a way, establish their existence (to each other). A tree exists insofar as it crashes to the ground and produces a sound in the process and likewise for the ground.

    For conscious, thinking beings like ourselves, there's a further fact viz. knowledge of existence/the interaction - this is an additional layer to being/existence: There is existence simpliciter (interaction) and then there is knowledge (of existence/interactions).

    Reality is incomplete then if it is, as Wittgenstein states, the totality of facts if there are no beings like us capable of knowing these facts.

    As for "expanding the definition of reality", I'm afraid, it won't do us any good. We could decide to call black a color (we erroneously do), but that doesn't affect the fact that black can't be like red, green, mauve, etc. because black is when all colors are absorbed, unlike other true colors. In other words, we may expand the definition of reality but souls and stones will still be different enough to preclude any radical inferences we might wish to make.

    My two cents...
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    The Heisenberg article explicitly states '“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’.”Wayfarer

    "Expand", maybe. "Replace" is what I'm less convinced by.

    Mathematical physics has necessitated the development of both new forms of mathematics, and the coining of new words ('spin', 'color', 'charm') to describe new discoveries.Wayfarer

    Indeed, but not told us that words we've been using for one purpose are 'wrong'. Correct use of language is determined by the community using the word, not by some subset.

    It certainly has an impact on how we think about the nature of reality - so many of the books on physics have sub-titles that refer to that (‘Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality’, for instance.)Wayfarer

    Yes, I think that each time we discover something new (say quarks) we have to expand what is real to accommodate. A scientist suffering from temporary hallucinations might still say (looking at his machine) "is that quark real, or am I seeing things again".

    What I object to is the idea that 'that teacup isn't real'. It is real because thst teacup is the sort of thing we use the word 'real' to describe and that's the only measure there is of what a word means.

    What we might have discovered is some property of real things we didn't know about before (like they don't exist until we observe them).
  • Mww
    4.5k
    the hallmark of anything that exists is that it is determinate....Wayfarer

    “Anything that exists” is a latent presupposition. Attributing sufficient warrant to this presupposition, “determinate” is a valid inference, insofar as something has already been subsumed under a categorical rule.

    On the other hand, “anything that exists” is a general conception not derived by a particular inference, which implies there is either a different categorical rule, or none at all, under which “anything” may be subsumed.

    For humans, it is impossible to cognize anything not subsumed under a categorical rule. It follows that “anything that exists” cannot be determinate under a definition, but rather, “anything that (possibly) exists” must still be determin-able under a definition.

    there is an ontological distinction.....Wayfarer

    Absolutely. Which calls into question the determinate warrant for “anything that exists”.
    ————-

    whether it is meaningful to speak of what exists in the absence of an observing mind.Wayfarer

    Put a check mark in the not-even-a-chance column for me. Although, if I’m being metaphysically honest, I’d substitute rational intelligence for mind.

    Oh....I like your Pinter stuff.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    What I object to is the idea that 'that teacup isn't real'. It is real because thst teacup is the sort of thing we use the word 'real' to describe and that's the only measure there is of what a word means. — Isaac

    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    We can and do make mistakes, oui monsieur/mademoiselle?

    America is named after Amerigo Vespucci despite the fact that she was discovered by Christopher Columbus. A catrographical boo-boo that remains uncorrected to this day.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    Correct use of language is determined by the community using the word, not by some subset.Isaac

    This makes no sense. Do you propose that we hold the entire community to a vote every time we wonder whether language has been correctly used or not? Even if we did that, unless the vote was unanimous, we'd still be left with only a subset saying that the use was correct. Clearly, "correct" language use does not require such unanimity. It only requires that the one spoken to understands the one speaking.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    whether it is meaningful to speak of what exists in the absence of an observing mind.
    — Wayfarer

    Put a check mark in the not-even-a-chance column for me. Although, if I’m being metaphysically honest, I’d substitute rational intelligence for mind.

    Oh....I like your Pinter stuff.
    Mww

    Glad you noticed it. My comments on it got a bit of attention from Joshs, but seemed to go by most people. Good book, in my opinion.

    'Nous' is the word I think is missing from today's philosophical discourse.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Random question.

    If particles are just ideas or more idea than rocks are, why don't we see particles that fail the gold standard test of materialism viz. nothing (material) can travel faster than light. In other words why are ideas behaving like matter? It just doesn't add up!
  • Mww
    4.5k


    As in Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VI, or, Prior Analytics.....yes, though maintained pretty much intact through the Enlightenment, now woefully absent as such.

    As if the wonder of human intelligence can be displayed on a ‘scope, traced with a red dye. Or brought forth from a couch at $300/hr.

    (Sigh)
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    Aren’t you just mixing up epistemology with ontology?
    — apokrisis

    They're intimately linked.
    Wayfarer
    This is "true" mostly for perennialists, platonists, theists, idealists & naive realists.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    we exist as classical beings within, or at the level of, nature constituted by classical constaints; what difference does Wheeler's speculation make to our lives – striving for 'the good life' – philosophically or practically?180 Proof

    Been thinking about this comment since you posted it. Bloody good question. And if some variation of idealism is true, I don't think it makes any difference to what I'll do next....
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    we exist as classical beings within, or at the level of, nature constituted by classical constaints; what difference does Wheeler's speculation make to our lives – striving for 'the good life' – philosophically or practically?
    — 180 Proof
    Tom Storm

    I hadn't really noticed that question till this comment. And I say it makes an important difference.

    Consider the widely-accepted paradigm, that life and mind are thrown up as a byproduct of essentially meaningless physical processes, or as emergent properties of those processes. This is the consensus view of scientific or secular culture. Concommitant with that view is determinism, the idea that humans are not conscious, rational agents, and that the choices they appear to make are not really within their control. (I'm not suggesting that you're saying this but that it is a widely-held attitude nonetheless.)

    Wheeler's ideas can be interpreted as meditations on the way that what is latent or unmanifested - what is indeterminate - becomes manifest or realised - made real - through human agency. It is a philosophical idea that was also suggested by the discoveries of quantum physics in the early 20th century. So this suggests that we're not simply the accidental by-products of a meaningless process, as per Jacques Monod or Richard Dawkins. Maybe a more apt metaphor is that the universe discovers itself through the agency of rational sentient beings, and that this is one of the ways that it is becoming understood.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    Consider the widely-accepted paradigm, that life and mind are thrown up as a byproduct of essentially meaningless physical processes, or as emergent properties of those processes.Wayfarer

    I understand this point, but for me, 'meaningless scientism' or 'meaningful idealism' notwithstanding, it is still up to me to determine my values and actions and choose my path, wherever this might lead. All this might be illusory, or it might be connected to unknowable transcendence - but I don't think it makes any functional difference as I go about my business. :wink:
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    Consider the widely-accepted paradigm ...Wayfarer
    Appeal to popularity, again. C'mon, stop with the caricatures. :roll:

    Concommitant with that view is determinism, ...
    No, sir! Compatibilism is the most reasonable idea that's consistent with both scientific in/determinism and human experience.

    Wheeler's ideas can be interpreted as [ ... ] It is a philosophical idea that was also suggested by the discoveries of quantum physics ...
    Anything can be "interpreted" in any way you fancy, Wayfarer, but, in natural science, the more consistent an interpretation is with the prevailing experimental evidence, the more credible – reasonable – that interpretation is. Wheeler was as guilty as Bohr & co of committing the mind-projection fallacy insofar as he overdetermined that "observation is consciousness" rather than as a classical physical system-1 interacting with – measuring – a quantum physical system-2 (e.g. wavicle). "The observer" is only ever "conscious" of classical physical system-1 (experimental apparatus) when s/he reads the measurement data. Full stop. The best available evidence is more consistent with the idea that 'the human mind ("consciousness") is a classical, not a quantum, system' than otherwise; and, IMO, it's more reasonable for us to interpret what that means rather than, fairytale-like, speculating in excess / denial of what we do/can not know.

    Maybe a more apt metaphor is that the universe discovers itself ...
    Anthropomorphic fallacy. :eyes:
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    Wheeler was as guilty as Bohr & co of committing the mind-projection fallacy180 Proof

    Is the mind-projection fallacy similar to the 'blind spot' so often evoked by @Wayfarer?
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    All this might be illusory, or it might be connected to unknowable transcendence - but I don't think it makes any functional difference as I go about my businessTom Storm

    Psychologist George Kelly said what matters is not whether the universe exists, but what we can make of it. Of course, how successful we are at this endeavor will have a lot to do with our criteria of successful
    understanding. For instance, if we perceive another as disappointing us, whether we see them
    as making an understandable mistake in judgement, or we believe there are always socially mitigating circumstances shaping them, or whether we think they are simply autonomously free subjects doing evil , will
    depend on the kinds of embedded assumptions
    that you dont believe make any functional difference in you daily life. People kill, torture, punish and condemn
    others based on such embedded assumptions that they don’t think matter to their daily choices.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    I agree. It seems to me that idealism or not - people's embedded values tend to persist above and beyond their ontological assumptions.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    ↪Joshs I agree. It seems to me that idealism or not - people's embedded values tend to persist above and beyond their ontological assumptions.Tom Storm

    I guess what I meant was that embedded values and ontological assumptions are two ways of talking about the same thing. Most of the world’s ethical dilemmas and history of violence results not from a disconnect between embedded values and ontological assumptions, but from their connectedness. It is not hypocrites but sincere zealots we need fear most.
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    I'm not familiar with Wayf's "blind spot" notion.
  • Manuel
    3.9k
    I like to argue for the view that whatever we believe to exist (even things existing unobserved) exists in a determinate manner - meaning that if we encounter a previously-unseen celestial object, we will know what kind of thing it is.Wayfarer

    I think your general gist in accurate, but would quibble with the quoted portion here. If we assume that some of the celestial bodies shown by James Webb are a galaxy or a star, they could well be a galaxy or a star - after all, they seem to have the properties attributed to these things.

    Nevertheless, we could be mistaken. What we take to be a galaxy in a picture could turn out to be a new system or phenomena previously unknown in astronomy. So in these cases, we would not know what thing it is, outside of the very general comment of "being something seen by the James Webb telescope."

    As for the "presumptive existence", yeah, I agree. Something is there absent us, but many (I don't think all of them) of its determinations would be meaningless absent creatures with a capacity for rational thought.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    I'm not familiar with Wayf's "blind spot" notion.180 Proof

    As per this article on his profile page.

    https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    guess what I meant was that embedded values and ontological assumptions are two ways of talking about the same thing. Most of the world’s ethical dilemmas and history of violence results not from a disconnect between embedded values and ontological assumptions, but from their connectedness. It is not hypocrites but sincere zealots we need fear most.Joshs

    Yes. That was careless of me. I see this too.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Is the mind-projection fallacy similar to the 'blind spot' so often evoked by Wayfarer?Tom Storm

    There's a discernable idealist tendency in a lot of recent physics. (I have many stock examples available on request.) But it's an inconvenient truth for materialism which has to explain it away, or reduce it, to something psychological, like projection or something.

    The idea that we are 'the universe made conscious' is a theme in current culture. Julian Huxley, brother of Alduous, argued for a kind of evolutionary humanism:

    Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.
    Julian Huxley
    I'm not familiar with Wayf's "blind spot" notion.180 Proof

    It's not 'my notion'. Tom is referring to an article I linked from Aeon Magazine a couple of years ago, from which:

    To put it bluntly, the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Psychologist George Kelly said what matters is not whether the universe exists, but what we can make of it.Joshs

    Yes, but it's a basic fact that postmodernism rejects meta-narratives, so that tends to consign a great deal of what has been made of it in the past to the wastepaper basket.

    What we take to be a galaxy in a picture could turn out to be a new system or phenomena previously unknown in astronomy. So in these cases, we would not know what thing it is, outside of the very general comment of "being something seen by the James Webb telescope."Manuel

    Yes, take your point. I could also mention the dark matter/energy conundrum, very much a live issue in current cosmology, which posits that dark matter/energy, which can't even be detected. accounts for 96% of the total energy/mass of the Universe. But that's kind of tangential to the point I'm grappling with.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.Julian Huxley

    I guess I don't understand why he would say this. How does Huxley arrive at what seems to be an assumption that there is a path to follow and a purpose? Is this just him working to align evolution with perennialism

    What do you take the last sentence to mean (destiny, role, agent)?
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    It's a reference to the idea that living beings are intrinsic to the Universe, and not simply the 'accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms' (Bertrand Russell's words.) Julian Huxley's scientific humanism was, it has been said, somewhat like Tielhard Du Chardin's but without the religious dimension, although his brother Alduous had a more mystical side (his The Perennial Philosophy is a perennial title). Whereas the standard materialist view is that life is kind of a cosmic fluke and mankind a parvenue (see for example Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity.)

    The idea that evolution is a way in which the Universe comes to know itself can be said of any living beings but (as noted the other day) in humankind this has been made the subject of conscious reflection and exploration - not that it has often been explored in the past. Although there are, for some examples, in the Hermetic tradition, the idea of 'man as microcosm', or the mythology of Adam Kadmon, or the Vedic Hymn of the Cosmic Man (Alduous would have been much more aware of these myths than his brother!)

    You even find the idea in Thomas Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos:

    Nagel’s starting point is not simply that he finds materialism partial or unconvincing, but that he himself has a metaphysical view or vision of reality that just cannot be accommodated within materialism. This vision is that the appearance of conscious beings in the universe is somehow what it is all for; that ‘Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself’. Nagel’s surrounding argument is something of a sketch, but is entirely compatible with a Buddhist vision of reality as naturalism, including the possibility of insight into reality (under the topic of reason or cognition) and the possibility of apprehension of objective good (under the topic of value). His naturalism does this while fully conceding the explanatory power of physics, Darwinian evolution and neuroscience. Most Buddhists are what one might describe as intuitive non-materialists, but they have no way to integrate their intuition into the predominantly materialistic scientific world view. I see the value of Nagel’s philosophy in Mind and Cosmos as sketching an imaginative vision of reality that integrates the scientific world view into a larger one that includes reason, value and purpose, and simultaneously casts philosophical doubt on the completeness of the predominant materialism of the age.The Universe is Waking Up
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